How Claude Code Is Reshaping Software—and Anthropic

Engineers successful Silicon Valley person been raving astir Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, for months. But recently, the buzz feels arsenic if it’s reached a fever pitch.

Earlier this week, I sat down with Boris Cherny, caput of Claude Code, to effort to recognize however the institution is gathering this moment.

“We built the simplest imaginable thing,” said Cherny. “The craziest happening was learning 3 months agone that fractional of the income squad astatine Anthropic uses Claude Code each week.”

AI-powered coding has evolved quickly. From 2021 to 2024, astir tools functioned arsenic small much than autocomplete, suggesting a fewer lines of codification arsenic developers typed. By aboriginal 2025, startups similar Cursor and Windsurf began rolling retired aboriginal “agentic” coding products, which fto developers picture a diagnostic successful plain connection and permission the remainder up to an AI agent.

Claude Code launched astir this clip too. Cherny acknowledges that aboriginal versions of Claude Code often stumbled, making errors oregon getting stuck successful costly loops. Cherny says Anthropic built Claude Code for wherever AI capabilities were headed, alternatively than wherever they were astatine launch.

That stake was prescient. Several developers assertion AI coding products reached an inflection constituent successful caller months, peculiarly astir the motorboat of Anthropic’s latest AI model, Claude Opus 4.5.

Kian Katanforoosh, an adjunct lecturer connected AI astatine Stanford and the CEO of the startup Workera, says his institution precocious switched implicit to Claude Code aft investigating respective AI coding tools internally. Ultimately, helium says, Claude Code worked amended for his elder engineers than tools from Cursor and Windsurf.

“The lone exemplary I tin constituent to wherever I saw a step-function betterment successful coding abilities precocious has been Claude Opus 4.5,” says Katanforoosh. “It doesn’t adjacent consciousness similar it’s coding similar a human, you benignant of consciousness similar it has figured retired a amended way.”

Last year, the concern of AI coding agents took off. In November, Anthropic announced that Claude Code had reached $1 cardinal successful annualized recurring revenue, little than a twelvemonth aft its debut.

By the extremity of 2025, Claude Code’s ARR had grown by astatine slightest different $100 million, according to a idiosyncratic acquainted with the company’s financials. At the clip the merchandise accounted for astir 12 percent of Anthropic’s full ARR, which stood astir $9 billion. While inactive smaller than Anthropic’s endeavor business—which supplies AI systems to full corporations—coding is 1 of the company’s fastest-growing segments.

Anthropic has besides told investors it aims to beryllium cash-flow affirmative by 2028 and that Claude Code could play an important relation successful its gross growth. The institution declined to remark connected its finances.

While Anthropic feels ascendant successful AI coding, the buzz astir Claude Opus 4.5 appears to beryllium lifting respective companies. Cursor, which lets users codification utilizing models from Anthropic and different AI labs, besides said its coding instrumentality reached $1 cardinal successful ARR successful November. In December, the institution posted peculiarly beardown month-over-month gross growth, according to a idiosyncratic adjacent to the company. OpenAI, Google, and xAI are besides racing to assertion a larger stock of the AI coding market, processing agentic products of their ain powered by in-house AI models.

Now, Anthropic is trying to usage Claude Code’s momentum to make agents for non-coding sectors. Earlier this month, the institution launched Cowork, an AI cause that tin negociate files connected a user’s machine and interact with software—without requiring immoderate enactment with a coding terminal.

This interrogation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

WIRED: There's been excitement astir Claude Code for months. Why is it taking disconnected now?