What is Anthropic?

What Anthropic makes

Anthropic’s main product is Claude, an AI assistant that can write, summarize, analyze documents and images, and help with coding. People use it through:

• The Claude apps on the web, desktop and phone
• Claude Code, a tool for software developers
• The Claude API, which lets businesses build Claude into their own products (here’s what an API is)
• Cloud platforms such as Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud

Claude models come in different sizes, with names like Haiku, Sonnet and Opus, trading speed against capability.

What makes it different

Anthropic says its focus is building AI that is safe, reliable and beneficial. Some of its distinctive work includes:

• Constitutional AI: a training method that guides a model with a written set of principles
• Responsible Scaling Policy: safety commitments that tighten as models become more capable
• Interpretability research: trying to understand what is happening inside AI models

It is structured as a public benefit corporation, a type of company legally required to consider a stated public mission alongside profits.

Who owns Anthropic?

Anthropic is a private company. Its founders and employees hold shares, and it has raised large sums from investors including Amazon and Google, which are also major cloud partners. It has grown into one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world.

Anthropic vs OpenAI

Both companies build large language models and compete closely. OpenAI makes ChatGPT; Anthropic makes Claude. Several of Anthropic’s founders previously worked at OpenAI.

For the basics behind tools like these, read what AI is.