Claude is a series of large language models (LLMs) developed by the American software company Anthropic. Released as an AI-based chatbot in March 2023, Claude is designed to generate human-like text and assist with various tasks, including AI-assisted software development. The models are trained using a constitution, a technique created by Anthropic to improve ethical and legal compliance. Since Claude 3, each generation has typically been released in three sizes: Haiku (the least capable), Sonnet, and Opus (the most capable). In 2026, an additional model named Claude Mythos was released to a select group of companies and organizations, followed by Claude Fable, a version with stricter safeguards, for the general public. Claude serves as a prominent alternative to models from OpenAI, emphasizing safety and alignment in its design.
Claude's development builds on advances in large language models and transformer architectures. The company positions its products for both consumer and enterprise use, offering subscription services and developer tools. In February 2026, the United States Department of Defense designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk," and federal agencies were ordered to phase out Claude after the company refused to remove contractual prohibitions on using Claude for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. A federal judge blocked the designation in March 2026 and permanently set it aside in August 2026 as unconstitutional retaliation.
Products
Claude
Claude is a generative AI chatbot that uses a feature called artifacts, introduced in June 2024, to generate and interact with code snippets and documents. In 2025, Anthropic added a web search feature to Claude. Subscription services include Claude Pro and Claude Max, with Max providing higher usage limits at an additional cost. Grouped subscriptions include Claude Team and Claude Enterprise. According to card-spend data from Ramp, the share of businesses on its platform paying for Anthropic products rose 4.9 percentage points in February 2026, reaching 24.4%, the largest monthly gain Ramp had recorded for the company.
#### Chat sharing
A Claude feature allows users to share chats with anyone who has the link. In September 2025, Forbes reported that hundreds of shared Claude chats had appeared in Google Search results, following similar incidents involving OpenAI's ChatGPT and xAI's Grok. In July 2026, shared chats and artifacts were again found to be indexed by Google. The BBC counted more than 200, some containing health records and corporate documents. The affected chats were those whose links had been posted on the public internet. Technical analysis suggested that a robots.txt rule blocking crawlers from shared-chat pages also prevented them from reading the noindex directive meant to keep the pages out of search results. Anthropic said the listings had been removed.
Application programming interface
Claude is also provided through an application programming interface (API). In October 2024, the "computer use" feature was introduced, allowing an application to call the Claude API to attempt to give navigational control of the application via Claude's interpretation of screen content and simulation of keyboard and mouse input.
Claude Code
Claude Code, released in February 2025, is an agentic command line tool to delegate coding tasks from the terminal using natural language prompts. It was made generally available in May 2025 alongside Claude 4. Based on enterprise adoption, Anthropic reported a 5.5x increase in Claude Code revenue by July. On October 20, 2025, Anthropic launched a web version of Claude Code and a sandboxing feature. Coinciding with performance improvements tied to Claude Opus 4.5, Claude Code went viral during the 2025–2026 winter holidays when people had time to experiment with it, including many non-programmers who used it for vibe coding.
In August 2025, Anthropic reported that cybercriminals it designated "GTG-2002" had used Claude Code in a data-extortion campaign against at least 17 organizations. In November 2025, Anthropic said that in September a China-based cybercrime group had used Claude Code to automate 80–90% of its espionage cyberattacks against 30 organizations. Claude Code is used by Microsoft, Google, and was used by OpenAI employees until August 2025, when Anthropic revoked OpenAI's API access, calling it "a direct violation of our terms of service." In February 2026, Anthropic introduced Claude Code Security, which reviews codebases to identify vulnerabilities. In March 2026, the source code for the Claude Code command-line interface application was leaked, revealing multiple upcoming features and models. In May 2026, Anthropic introduced "Dreaming," a research-preview feature of its Managed Agents API that consolidates an agent's persistent memory between sessions by merging duplicates and removing stale entries; a memory consolidation feature called autoDream had been identified in the March source code leak.
Claude in Chrome
In August 2025, Anthropic released Claude for Chrome, a Google Chrome extension that lets Claude browse websites, click and fill forms on the user's behalf. It launched as a pilot for 1,000 Max subscribers. Anthropic said prompt-injection attacks succeeded 11.2% of the time after mitigations. It became generally available in August 2026.
Claude Cowork
Claude Cowork is a tool similar to Claude Code but with a graphical user interface, aimed at non-technical users. It was released in January 2026 as a "research preview." Cowork is available as a desktop application for Mac and Windows and through a web interface. It provides Claude with access to a sandboxed shell and to user-selected folders on the local file system, allowing the model to read, write and edit files, execute code, and chain multi-step tasks within a single conversation, such as organizing files on a user's computer or generating documents from material in a local folder. A Wall Street Journal reporter who tested the tool noted user concerns about granting an AI agent broad access to a personal computer. An early user reported that, after asking Cowork to organize the files on the desktop of his wife's computer, it deleted all the family photos, requiring the restoration of the images from an iCloud backup.
In February 2026, Anthropic announced a wider enterprise release of Cowork, adding connectors for services such as Google Drive, Gmail, Docusign and FactSet, and customizable plugins for domains including financial analysis, engineering and human resources. The company described the update as a transition into an "enterprise-grade product." In March 2026, Anthropic added Dispatch, which lets users send Cowork tasks from a phone to their computer, and allows Claude to operate programs on the user's computer, such as web browsers or spreadsheet applications, to carry out tasks. According to developers, Cowork was mostly built by Claude Code. In August 2026, Cowork was made available in a sidebar of the Chrome browser.
Claude Design
Claude Design is a tool released by Anthropic, though specific details about its functionality and release date are limited. It is part of the broader Claude product family, which includes the chatbot, API, and agentic tools.
Safety and alignment
Anthropic's approach to safety centers on constitutional training, a method that uses a set of principles to guide model behavior. This technique aims to reduce harmful outputs and improve compliance with ethical and legal standards. The company has also implemented safeguards in its products, such as the stricter protections in Claude Fable compared to Claude Mythos. These efforts are part of a broader industry trend toward responsible generative AI development.
Market position and alternatives
Claude competes directly with models from OpenAI and other providers like Google DeepMind. Its emphasis on safety and enterprise features, such as Claude Code and Cowork, has attracted business customers. The February 2026 Ramp data showing increased adoption indicates growing market share. However, the company's refusal to allow certain uses, such as mass domestic surveillance, has created tensions with government entities, as seen in the Department of Defense designation and subsequent legal resolution.
Reception and impact
Claude has been widely adopted in both consumer and enterprise settings. The viral popularity of Claude Code during the 2025–2026 winter holidays highlighted its appeal to non-programmers, while security incidents involving cybercriminals using the tool raised concerns about misuse. The chat sharing issues in 2025 and 2026 underscored challenges with privacy and search engine indexing. Despite these issues, Claude's innovative features and safety focus have solidified its position as a key player in the machine learning landscape.