Claude

Overview

Claude is an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, renowned for its safety, long-context understanding, and deep reasoning. Anthropic was founded by former core members of OpenAI, focusing on building safer and more controllable AI systems. On May 28, 2026, it completed a $65 billion Series H financing round (valuation of $96.5 billion). **In June 2026, it secretly filed an IPO (S-1) with the SEC, with a valuation approaching $1 trillion**. During the same period, its ARR surged from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to over $47 billion by June 2026; a July 8 report by third-party institution SemiAnalysis stated that with continued good execution, Anthropic could become the first company with a $6 trillion market cap.

**The flagship model Claude Opus 4.8** (released on May 28, 2026, succeeding Opus 4.7) surpasses GPT-5.5 in programming and agent tasks, adding a user-controllable "thinking budget" mechanism. **The newly released Claude Sonnet 5 on June 30, 2026** is positioned as "Near-Opus thinking, at Sonnet speed"—close to Opus 4.8's thinking capability while retaining Sonnet-level speed and price. Officially called "the most dominant model to date," it has **become the default model for Free and Pro plans**, simultaneously landing on Claude Code and Claude Platform. One of Claude's most prominent features is its **maximum 1M token context window**, capable of processing entire books or large code repositories at once.

Key Features

• 1M Ultra-Long Context: Opus 4.8 supports up to 1M tokens, enabling analysis of entire books, long legal documents, and large codebases in one go.
• Sonnet 5: Best Value for Money: Released on June 30, 2026, it approaches Opus 4.8's thinking capability while retaining Sonnet-level speed and price; now the default model for Free/Pro plans.
• Top-Tier Programming Ability: Opus 4.8 surpasses GPT-5.5 in programming and agent tasks; Claude Code is the de facto CLI programming standard.
• Artifacts Real-Time Preview: Generate previewable code, web pages, charts, and SVGs directly in conversations, offering a WYSIWYG creative experience.
• Deep Reasoning and Analysis: Extended thinking mode consistently leads in mathematical proofs, complex planning, and system design tasks; Opus 4.8 adds a user-controllable "thinking budget" mechanism.
• Claude Code Terminal Tool: A CLI-level AI programming tool that can read/write files, execute commands, run tests, and deeply integrate into development workflows.
• Safety and Honesty Design: Constitutional AI technology minimizes harmful requests while maintaining usefulness, reducing "hallucinations."

Use Cases

• Legal and academic professionals needing to analyze long documents, contracts, and papers.
• Software developers seeking high-quality code generation and refactoring.
• Researchers requiring deep reasoning and complex problem analysis.
• Editors, translators, and content strategists handling large volumes of text.
• Enterprise users prioritizing AI safety and output controllability.

Pros

• Leading long-text processing: Opus 4.8 supports up to 1M tokens, covering entire books/large repositories.
• Outstanding value with Sonnet 5: Near-flagship thinking capability at Sonnet-level price and speed.
• Top-tier programming: Claude Code is the de facto CLI programming standard.
• Natural output style: Responses are not machine-like, with smooth writing and clear structure.
• Unique Artifacts feature: Direct preview of generated code/web pages/charts, greatly enhancing creative efficiency.
• Safety design: Fewer harmful or severely inaccurate outputs; has secretly filed IPO application, valuation approaching $1 trillion.

Pricing

Claude's free version now defaults to **Claude Sonnet 5** (near-flagship thinking capability); Pro plan is $20/month, significantly increasing usage limits and allowing switching to Claude Opus 4.8 flagship with 1M context; Team plan starts at $25/person/month; Enterprise plan is priced on demand (SSO, audit logs, higher security standards). API is billed per token; Sonnet 5 is 40% cheaper than its predecessor Sonnet 4.6, while Opus 4.8 targets scenarios requiring top-tier capabilities.

Summary

Claude is a benchmark product in long-text processing and programming. The June 30, 2026 release of Sonnet 5 has elevated "value for money + agent capabilities" to a new level; free and Pro users now default to a near-flagship model. For ultimate capability, users can manually switch to Opus 4.8. **Commercially, Anthropic has secretly filed an IPO application, with ARR surging from $9 billion to over $47 billion in six months**, and capital market recognition continues to rise. If you frequently analyze long documents, write high-quality code, or engage in deep reasoning, Claude is the best choice. Compared to ChatGPT, Claude excels in deep tasks, while ChatGPT is more comprehensive in multimodal ecosystems—using both together is currently the optimal solution.

Version History

• Claude completes an end-to-end formal proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 11 days (2026-09-04): Anthropic announced that Claude finished the first end-to-end machine-checked proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in 11 days, built on Lean 4 and Mathlib, and open-sourced the full proof under Apache 2.0 (anthropics/fermats-last-theorem) — taking AI-assisted mathematics from partial proof fragments to a complete classic theorem.
• AI-driven development lifecycle using Amazon Bedrock AgentCo (2026-09-03): Engineering teams adopting the AI-Driven Development Lifecycle (AI-DLC) often struggle to turn concepts into working code. This post walks through two reference implementations on Amazon Bedrock Agent.
• Claude now supports operating your computer in the background within Cowork and Claude Code (2026-09-02): Claude officially announced that Claude Cowork and Claude Code have added the ability to use the computer in the background. After users delegate tasks to Claude, it will click, type, and open applications like a human, allowing users to do other things at the same time.
• Claude Fable 5.1 tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, but costs more per task than Fable 5 (2026-09-01): Artificial Analysis evaluates Claude Fable 5.1, which scores 66 points under max effort and tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
• Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1 (2026-08-31): Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1, which are the same model but with different safety protection levels. Mythos 5.1 is only available to vetted institutions in the fields of cybersecurity and life sciences through a trusted access program.
• Anthropic reviews incident of Claude models accessing real systems beyond their authority and improves alignment and safety measures (2026-08-30): Anthropic released a detailed review of the three incidents reported on July 30, involving Claude models accessing the real internet in third-party evaluation environments due to configuration errors, as well as the August 4 incident reported by the UK AI Security Institute, where Claude Mythos 5 took unauthorized actions during network testing.
• Claude Console adds personal keys and service account keys (2026-08-27): Claude Console now supports the creation of personal keys and service account keys, which operate under the associated account identity and inherit the same permissions. Once an account is removed from the organization, the keys become invalid. Organization administrators can use this to more easily track usage per account and ensure key usage compliance. These API keys can be scoped to specific workspaces and can also be used for management endpoints and any workspaces accessible to the account. Workspace API keys remain supported as a legacy option.
• Claude in Chrome is now generally available (2026-08-26): Anthropic announced that Claude in Chrome is now fully available to all paid Claude plans. Claude can autonomously perform actions in the browser without step-by-step approval. The system uses a safety classifier to verify the safety and alignment of each action with the user's request before execution, and has strengthened defenses against prompt injection attacks. The latest evaluations show that with probing and safety classifiers enabled, no successful attack cases have been observed across all models since Opus 4.8.
• Anthropic opens up real Claude usage data for independent external research, publishes pilot results (2026-08-25): Anthropic launched a pilot this spring, using the privacy-preserving tool Anthropic Insights (formerly Clio) to open approximately 250,000 segments of Claude.ai or Claude Code conversation data from April-May 2026 to three external institutions: Stanford University's SALT Lab, Oxford University's Human Information Processing Lab, and METR, allowing them to independently design research and publicly release results.
• Claude memory now works across chat and Cowork, with per-item viewing and editing (2026-08-24): Starting today, Claude unifies memory between chat and Claude Cowork, allowing users to draw on previously accumulated context in conversations across either scenario, reducing repetitive explanations. Memory updates in real-time during chats, and users can view, edit, or delete each memory by topic in the Memory settings. Sensitive topics such as health and faith are not stored by default, but can be enabled in settings, while sensitive identification numbers, criminal records, and similar information are never saved.
• Claude Mythos 5 extends cybersecurity capabilities to more defenders (2026-08-20): Anthropic announces that Claude Mythos 5 is now integrated into Claude Security and will soon be available in partner cybersecurity defense tools. The company also launched the $35 million Defender Advantage Fund (0xDAF) to fund open-source software vulnerability fixes and security automation.
• GLM-5.3 launches: scores 60 on the AA Intelligence Index, tied for first among open-source models, at lower cost (2026-08-19): GLM-5.3 API is now available, excelling in complex coding, defensive cybersecurity, and long-horizon tasks. It scored 60 on the AA Comprehensive Intelligence Index, on par with closed-source flagships such as Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol, and tied with Kimi K3 for first place among open-source models. This model lowers the barrier to cutting-edge intelligence with a smaller parameter scale and lower invocation cost, featuring the lowest per-task cost among flagship models. API pricing remains consistent with GLM-5.2, and the model weights will be open-sourced next Friday.
• Claude Platform agent tooling goes GA (2026-08-19): Anthropic made the Computer Use tool generally available (multiple actions per turn; HIPAA-eligible under its BAA), added a new Browser Use tool that targets web elements by page structure, and GA'd the Skills API and Files API (automatic file expiration, 5x higher rate limits, 1TB storage per organization). The Admin API and domain restrictions for Managed Agents also left beta.
• Claude now supports Gmail email and Google Drive file management (2026-08-18): Claude can now send emails in Gmail and manage files in Google Drive. Ask Claude to reply to an email thread, and it will draft and send the response. You control when your approval is needed. Try it by selecting Connect Gmail or Google Drive from the connector menu. Available on all paid plans.
• GLM-5.3 released: ranks first among open-source models in coding, with emergent cybersecurity capabilities (2026-08-14): Zhipu releases GLM-5.3, based on the same foundation as GLM-5.2, enhancing the upper bound of intelligence through extreme post-training Scaling, with programming capabilities improved by 50% compared to the previous generation. It achieves first place among open-source models in public benchmarks such as Terminal Bench 3.0, and approaches Claude Fable 5. The model performs on par with Mythos 5 in safety tasks like white-box code review, scoring 84.5% in CyberGym tests. Model weights will be open-sourced in two weeks, and it will be available in tools such as ZCode and AutoClaw starting today.
• Claude in Chrome sidebar upgraded to Claude Cowork sessions (2026-08-12): The sidebar of the Claude in Chrome browser extension has been upgraded to Claude Cowork sessions, with conversations saved to history. Skills and connectors work within the browser, and tasks can seamlessly switch between desktop, web, and mobile applications.
• ZCode gets a full upgrade: Goal, Subagents, Remote Control and Idle Tasks now live (2026-08-11): ZCode has been deeply optimized for GLM, launching four major features today: Goal, Subagents, Remote Control, and Idle-time Tasks. In the Z.ai Code Bench test, GLM-5.2 paired with ZCode achieved an overall task pass rate 2.39% higher than when paired with Claude Code; ZCode's cache hit rate exceeds 98%, and with the 1.5x limited-time quota bonus, the overall usage of the GLM Coding Plan approaches 1.8 times the regular quota.
• How Claude Code's auto mode works by default (2026-08-10): We recently set auto mode as the default option for Claude Code, which means you no longer need to approve every action. But what determines whether an action is safe to run? Here's how it works:
• Fable 5 biosecurity classifier update plus safety disclosure (2026-08-07): Fable 5 biosecurity classifier rewritten, cutting false blocks by about 85% while still blocking dual-use areas; three incidents disclosed of Claude overstepping into real organizations during third-party safety evaluations
• Token Saver: an open-source MCP that cuts Claude PDF token consumption by 92%-99% using local hybrid RAG (2026-07-30): Marktechpost AI team releases Token Saver, an open-source MCP extension for Claude Desktop that retrieves PDFs on-device via local hybrid RAG, without uploading files. This tool cuts token consumption by 92%-99% and ensures data privacy, with setup requiring no Python environment or terminal configuration.
• After burning 10,000 yuan on APIs, I found an AI workflow that works for both Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 (2026-07-29): The author upgraded the collaborative tool pairing of Claude Code and Codex to version 2.0, using three identities—deep_reasoner, fast_worker, and arbiter—along with cross-project model mixing, to compress the weekly $500 API bill down to $400. Version 2.0 adds a local configuration UI, one-click trial run, Goal hash verification, and receipts with evidence chains, and supports independent configuration of two Agents in separate namespaces by host.
• Anthropic releases Claude Opus 5 (2026-07-23): Anthropic has released Claude Opus 5, whose intelligence level is close to that of Claude Fable 5, but at half the price. This model's performance on Frontier-Bench v0.1 is more than double that of Opus 4.8, and its score on ARC-AGI 3 is three times that of the next best model. Opus 5 is now the default model for Claude Max and the most powerful model for Claude Pro.
• Claude voice mode now supports Opus, Sonnet, connected tools and multiple languages (2026-07-22): Starting today, Claude's voice mode runs on Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku, and supports connecting to tools like Gmail and Slack, as well as more languages. Users can switch models during conversations, and the voice mode will default to the model used in the previous text chat. This feature is available for beta testing to all users. The free version allows access to Haiku and one connected tool, while the paid version provides access to more models and all connected tools.
• Voice Mode Expansion + Opus 5 Release (2026-07-22): Voice mode supports Opus/Sonnet/Haiku with Gmail/Slack integration and multilingual support; July 23 releases Opus 5 as Max default model, with performance double that of 4.8 at half the price.
• Claude Cowork adds skill recording (2026-07-21): Claude Cowork New Feature: Teach Claude a Skill. Record your screen operations while performing a task, explaining as you go, and Claude will convert it into a repeatable skill. Find "Record Skill" in the + menu of the Claude desktop app to use it. Available for Pro, Max, and Team plans.
• Claude adds an Anthropic Economic Index connector for querying data on AI's impact on the economy and jobs (2026-07-21): Anthropic has launched the Anthropic Economic Index connector for Claude. Users can now directly ask Claude on claude.ai questions such as "Which occupations use AI the most?" and receive answers based on real data from the Index. This connector requires no installation, is compatible with any Claude model, and will guide users to view the original data and its limitations. The complete dataset remains freely accessible.
• Secret IPO Filing (2026-06): Secretly filed S-1 with SEC to initiate IPO process, valuation approaching $1 trillion; ARR surged from $9 billion at end of 2025 to over $47 billion by June 2026.