History of Anthropic in Timeline

Anthropic PBC is an American AI company based in San Francisco, known for developing the Claude family of large language models (LLMs). Operating as a public benefit corporation, Anthropic focuses on AI safety research and aims to deploy safe AI models for public use. Their core mission revolves around studying the safety properties of AI at the technological frontier and translating that research into practical applications.

1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written and is now a document used in part in Claude 2's Constitution.

2021: Anthropic Founded

In 2021, Anthropic was founded by former members of OpenAI, including siblings Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei.

April 2022: Funding Received

In April 2022, Anthropic announced it had received $580 million in funding, including a $500 million investment from FTX.

2022: Claude V1 Training Complete

In the summer of 2022, Anthropic finished training the first version of Claude but did not release it, citing the need for further safety testing.

March 2023: Claude and Claude Instant Released

In March 2023, Claude's first two versions, Claude and Claude Instant, were released, but only Anthropic-approved users could use them.

July 2023: Claude 2 Launched to the Public

In July 2023, the next iteration, Claude 2, was launched to the public.

September 2023: Partnership with Amazon

In September 2023, Amazon announced a partnership with Anthropic, investing $1.25 billion initially and planning a total investment of $4 billion.

October 2023: Google Invests in Anthropic

In October 2023, Google invested $500 million in Anthropic and committed to an additional $1.5 billion over time.

October 18, 2023: Copyright Lawsuit Filed

On October 18, 2023, Anthropic was sued by music publishers for copyright infringement of song lyrics used in Claude's model.

January 16, 2024: Anthropic Responds to Copyright Lawsuit

On January 16, 2024, Anthropic claimed that the music publishers were not unreasonably harmed and that the examples noted by plaintiffs were merely bugs.

March 2024: Additional Investment from Amazon

In March 2024, Amazon invested an additional $2.75 billion in Anthropic as part of their partnership agreement.

March 2024: Claude 3 Models Released

In March 2024, Anthropic released three language models: Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Haiku.

June 2024: Claude 3.5 Sonnet Released

In June 2024, Anthropic released Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

November 2024: Amazon Doubles Investment

In November 2024, Amazon invested another $4 billion in Anthropic, doubling its total investment in the company.

November 2024: Partnership with Palantir and Amazon Web Services

In November 2024, Anthropic partnered with Palantir and Amazon Web Services to provide the Claude model to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.

2024: Project Panama initiated

In 2024 Anthropic initiated Project Panama, which involved slicing off spines and scanning pages of millions of used books purchased from online retailers such as Better World Books, in order to train Claude.

2024: Notable Employees Join Anthropic

In 2024, Anthropic attracted several notable employees from OpenAI, including Jan Leike, John Schulman, and Durk Kingma.

2024: Feature Identification in LLMs

In 2024, Anthropic was able to identify millions of features in Claude, including one associated with the Golden Gate Bridge, using a technique called "dictionary learning".

March 2025: Series E Funding Round and Databricks Integration

In March 2025, Anthropic raised $3.5 billion in a Series E funding round, reaching a post-money valuation of $61.5 billion. Also in March, Databricks and Anthropic announced that Claude would be integrated into the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

March 2025: Google Commits to Additional Investment

In March 2025, Google agreed to invest another $1 billion in Anthropic.

March 2025: LLM Research Findings

In March 2025, research by Anthropic suggested that multilingual LLMs partially process information in a conceptual space before converting it to the appropriate language. It also found evidence that LLMs can sometimes plan ahead.

May 2025: Claude 4 Announcement and New API Capabilities

In May 2025, Anthropic announced Claude 4, introducing both Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 with improved coding capabilities and other new features. It also introduced new API capabilities, including the Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector. The company hosted its inaugural developer conference that month. Also in May, Anthropic launched a web search API that enables Claude to access real-time information from the internet. Claude Code, Anthropic's coding assistant, transitioned from research preview to general availability, featuring integrations with VS Code and JetBrains IDEs and support for GitHub Actions.

May 2025: Claude 4 Opus and Sonnet Released

In May 2025, Anthropic released Claude 4 Opus and Sonnet.

June 2025: Claude Gov Model Announced

In June 2025, Anthropic announced a "Claude Gov" model, which was reported to be in use at multiple U.S. national security agencies.

July 2025: Department of Defense Contract

In July 2025, the United States Department of Defense announced that Anthropic had received a $200 million contract for AI in the military.

August 2025: Higher Education Advisory Board Launched

In August 2025, Anthropic launched a Higher Education Advisory Board, chaired by Rick Levin.

September 2025: Series F Funding Round and Restriction on Sales to Certain Entities

In September 2025, Anthropic completed a Series F funding round, raising $13 billion at a post-money valuation of $183 billion. In the same month, Anthropic announced it would stop selling its products to groups majority-owned by Chinese, Russian, Iranian, or North Korean entities due to national security concerns.

September 2025: AI Usage Report and Job Displacement Prediction

In September 2025, Anthropic released a report indicating that businesses primarily use AI for automation. Earlier in the year, CEO Dario Amodei predicted that AI would wipe out white-collar jobs.

October 2025: Members of the Long-Term Benefit Trust

As of October 2025, the members of Anthropic's "Long-Term Benefit Trust" are Neil Buddy Shah, Kanika Bahl, Zach Robinson, and Richard Fontaine.

October 2025: Cloud Partnership with Google

In October 2025, Anthropic announced a cloud partnership with Google, giving it access to up to one million of Google's custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs).

November 2025: Chinese Government-Sponsored Hackers Used Claude for Cyberattacks

In November 2025, Anthropic reported that hackers sponsored by the Chinese government used Claude to perform automated cyberattacks against around 30 global organizations.

November 2025: Partnership Deal with Nvidia and Microsoft

In November 2025, Nvidia, Microsoft and Anthropic announced a partnership deal where NVIDIA and Microsoft were expected to invest up to $15 billion in Anthropic, and Anthropic said it would buy $30 billion of computing capacity from Microsoft Azure running on Nvidia AI systems.

December 2025: Anthropic Acquires Bun

In December 2025, Anthropic acquired Bun to improve the speed and stability of Claude Code.

December 2025: Partnership with Snowflake

In December 2025, Anthropic signed a multi-year, $200 million partnership with Snowflake to make Claude models available through Snowflake's platform.

December 2025: $10 Billion Funding Round

On 31 December 2025, it was confirmed that Anthropic had signed a term sheet for a $10 billion funding round led by Coatue and GIC, at a $350 billion valuation.

2025: Partnership with Iceland's Ministry of Education

In 2025, Anthropic partnered with Iceland's Ministry of Education and Children to allow teachers to access Claude and integrate AI into daily teaching.

January 2026: "Labs" Division Introduced

In January 2026, Anthropic introduced a division called "Labs", with Mike Krieger joining it.

January 2026: "Project Panama" Operation Revealed

In January 2026, unsealed court filings revealed the existence of Anthropic's confidential "Project Panama" operation, which involved destructively scanning millions of used books to train Claude.

February 12, 2026: Series G Funding Round

On February 12, 2026, Anthropic announced that it had raised $30 billion in a Series G funding round, bringing its post-money valuation to $380 billion.

February 2026: Super Bowl Commercials

In February 2026, Anthropic aired two commercials during Super Bowl LX as part of a broader marketing campaign called "A Time and a Place", and stated that Claude will stay ad-free.

February 2026: Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6 Released

In February 2026, Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.6, followed by Sonnet 4.6.

February 2026: Estimated company value

In February 2026, Anthropic's estimated value reached $380 billion.

2026: AI Compute Capacity Expected Online

According to Anthropic, the partnership with Google will bring more than one gigawatt of AI compute capacity online by 2026.

2026: Use of Claude in Military Raid

According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2026, the U.S. military used Claude in its raid on Venezuela, which resulted in the deaths of 83 people and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.