When discussing companies developing frontier AI models, Anthropic is often mentioned alongside OpenAI and Google DeepMind. It is best known for Claude, an AI assistant used for writing, programming, research, file analysis and increasingly complex tasks.
Anthropic is not Claude, however. Anthropic is the company that conducts research and develops models and products. Claude is the name of its assistant and model family.
## How did Anthropic begin?
Anthropic was founded in early 2021 by a team that included former OpenAI researchers and employees. The company has been led from the beginning by siblings Dario Amodei, its CEO, and Daniela Amodei, its President.
Other members of the founding team include Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Chris Olah.
Anthropic says it was established to develop AI systems that people can rely on and to research the opportunities and risks created by increasingly capable AI.
Its early research focused on making large models more steerable, interpretable and robust. In plain language, this means trying to control model behaviour more precisely, understand what happens inside a model and reduce unexpected failures.
## What does Anthropic develop?
Anthropic’s best-known product is Claude, an AI assistant that can work with conversations, documents, code, images, research and other forms of information.
The company introduced Claude commercially in March 2023 after testing it with a limited group of partners. Claude is available through a chat interface, while the Anthropic API allows developers and businesses to integrate Claude models into their own applications and services.
It is important to distinguish between three levels:
– Anthropic is the company.
– Claude is the product and assistant.
– Claude models are the technical systems available inside the product or through the API.
The model running inside Claude can change while the product keeps the same name.
## Why does Anthropic focus on AI safety?
Anthropic describes itself as an AI safety and research company. It says its objective is to build AI systems that are reliable, interpretable and steerable.
Steerability concerns the ability to guide a model towards intended behaviour. Interpretability concerns understanding how a model processes information and why it produces particular outputs.
These are important research objectives, but they do not mean Anthropic’s models are free from errors or risks. The company’s safety focus is a position it states about itself. Its effectiveness must be evaluated through published evidence, independent testing and actual product behaviour.
## What is Constitutional AI?
One of Anthropic’s best-known research approaches is Constitutional AI.
The method gives an AI model a written set of principles that it can use to criticise and revise its own answers. Instead of relying entirely on people to label every response, the model can use these principles when evaluating which answer better follows the intended behaviour.
The word “constitutional” does not mean that the model follows a legally binding constitution. It refers to a list of rules and principles used during training and evaluation.
Choosing those principles remains a human decision. Who writes them, which values they represent and how they handle disagreement are therefore important questions.
## How is Anthropic governed?
Anthropic is a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation. This structure allows its directors to consider a stated public-benefit purpose alongside the financial interests of shareholders.
The company also created the Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent body with authority to select and remove a portion of Anthropic’s board. According to the company, the Trust is intended to protect its long-term mission from short-term commercial pressure.
Being a Public Benefit Corporation does not make Anthropic a nonprofit organisation, and it does not guarantee that every company decision will benefit the public. Anthropic remains a commercial business that raises investment, sells subscriptions and API access, and competes in an expensive and rapidly developing market.
## How does Anthropic make money?
Anthropic earns revenue from Claude subscriptions for individuals, teams and enterprises. It also charges developers and companies for using Claude models through its API.
Claude offers a free plan alongside paid plans with different features and usage limits. API customers are generally charged according to the amount of input processed and output generated by a model.
Models, prices and limits can change. Anyone making a purchasing or technical decision should consult Anthropic’s current pricing documentation instead of relying on figures in a static article.
## What is Anthropic’s relationship with major technology companies?
Training large AI models requires specialised chips, data centres, energy and substantial capital. Anthropic therefore depends on partnerships with major cloud providers and investors.
The company announced in 2024 that Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic had reached $8 billion, while Amazon remained a minority investor. Anthropic also works with AWS on computing infrastructure and makes Claude available through different cloud platforms.
These partnerships provide resources needed to compete at the frontier of AI. They also raise broader questions about the dependence of AI developers on a small number of cloud and capital providers.
## Is Claude safer than other AI assistants?
There is no fixed answer that applies to every model and task. Anthropic invests in safety research and publishes policies and evaluations, but Claude can still make mistakes, hallucinate information and misunderstand instructions.
Results vary according to the model version, prompt, context and evaluation method. Safety comparisons should therefore be based on clearly defined tests rather than a company’s description of its own product.
## What is the difference between Anthropic and Claude?
Anthropic is the company that employs researchers, manages infrastructure, raises capital and develops AI products. Claude is the product through which people and organisations interact with some of Anthropic’s technology.
The distinction resembles that between OpenAI and ChatGPT. The first is a company; the second is a product. Claude is not an alternative name for Anthropic, and Anthropic is not a language model.
## Conclusion
Anthropic is an American AI research and product company founded in 2021. It develops Claude, the Claude model family and an API platform while placing a strong stated emphasis on reliability, interpretability and AI safety.
The company introduced approaches such as Constitutional AI and established the Long-Term Benefit Trust as part of its governance structure. It nevertheless remains a commercial company operating in a highly competitive market and relying on large investments and computing partnerships.
Anthropic should therefore be assessed through the quality of its products, the transparency of its research, measurable safety results and the real effects of its decisions—not through its stated mission alone.