Timeline of Claude

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This is a timeline of Claude, the large language model family developed by Anthropic. It documents Claude’s evolution from early safety-focused research and initial public release in 2023 through successive model generations, feature expansions, and deployment contexts, illustrating how the system matures into a widely used general-purpose AI assistant by the mid-2020s.

Sample questions

The following are some interesting questions that can be answered by reading this timeline:

  • How has Claude evolved over time in terms of model architecture, performance, and capabilities?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Model development".
    • You will see a chronological progression from the initial release of Claude and early upgrades, through successive model families (Claude 2, Claude 3, Claude 3.5, Claude 4), to further frontier models with hybrid reasoning, expanded context windows, advanced agentic behavior, and improved safety.
  • How has Anthropic expanded and refined Claude’s product ecosystem and platform capabilities over time?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Product and platform development".
    • You will see a sequence of launches and updates spanning workplace integrations, mobile and team plans, expanded context windows, developer APIs, enterprise features, cost-optimization tools, and interactive capabilities like Artifacts and computer use, illustrating Anthropic’s efforts to scale Claude across consumer, enterprise, and developer workflows.
  • How has Anthropic approached the deprecation and consolidation of Claude models as part of its model lifecycle strategy?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Model deprecation".
    • You will see a series of planned retirements affecting multiple generations of Claude models, each preceded by advance developer notification and paired with clear successor recommendations.
  • How has Anthropic articulated and evolved the governance framework guiding Claude’s behavior?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Governance/Policy".
    • You will see events describing the publication and subsequent revision of Claude’s constitutional framework, outlining the principles, values, and reasoning processes used to guide model behavior, transparency, and alignment over time.
  • What are some examples of Anthropic expanding Claude’s capabilities through tool launches and experimental research?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with values "Tool launch" and "Research demo".
    • You will see a range of events illustrating how Claude’s capabilities have been extended through both new tools and research demonstrations, including expansions into data analysis, model interpretability, and interactions with non-textual systems.
  • What are some notable examples of large-scale institutional adoption of Claude?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Adoption".
    • You will see a set of events highlighting the adoption of Claude by large organizations and institutions across different domains, demonstrating its deployment in enterprise environments, scientific and technical operations, and internal productivity workflows under varying levels of human oversight.
  • What are some notable examples of large-scale institutional adoption of Claude?
  • How has Claude been positioned relative to other leading AI models through benchmarks and comparative evaluations?
    • Sort the full timeline by "Event type" and look for the group of rows with value "Comparative analysis".
    • You will see events presenting benchmark results and comparative assessments that situate Claude relative to other leading AI systems, highlighting differences in performance characteristics, efficiency, cost, alignment priorities, and suitability for various use cases.
  • Other events are described under the following types: "Incident", "Market impact", "Performance", "Social phenomenon", and "Tool launch".

Big picture

Time period Development summary More details
Pre-2023 Early research foundations Claude originates within Anthropic’s early research program, which emphasizes model alignment, robustness, and safety as central design considerations. During this period, Anthropic develops and formalizes Constitutional AI, a training framework in which model behavior is guided by an explicit set of written principles rather than relying exclusively on large-scale human feedback. Research efforts focus on areas such as interpretability, harmful-output reduction, and long-context processing, establishing the conceptual and technical basis for subsequent Claude model releases.
Early 2023 Public release of Claude Claude is publicly released in March 2023 as Anthropic’s first broadly accessible conversational language model. It is introduced as a general-purpose assistant intended for tasks such as summarization, question answering, drafting, and dialogue. Early communications emphasize helpfulness, conversational tone, and constraints on harmful or misleading outputs. This phase coincides with Anthropic’s expansion from primarily research-oriented activities to wider commercial availability, including APIs and early partnerships.
Mid-2023 Capability expansion and broader deployment With the release of Claude 2[1], Anthropic introduces substantial increases in context window size and improvements in reasoning and coding-related tasks. These changes enable use cases involving long documents, technical analysis, and software-related workflows. Claude becomes more widely available through paid access and integrations, supporting increased adoption in professional and enterprise contexts.
2024 Model family diversification and multimodal features Anthropic releases the Claude 3 model family—Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus—establishing a tiered set of models differentiated by performance, latency, and cost characteristics. This period includes reported improvements in instruction-following, reliability, and multimodal capabilities such as image understanding. The introduction of multiple model variants reflects a shift toward offering Claude as a configurable platform suited to different application requirements.
2025 Expansion of tool use and agent-like functionality Claude is extended with structured tool use, including code execution, web interaction, and interface-based task execution. These additions enable the model to perform multi-step workflows that involve interacting with external systems rather than generating text alone. Such capabilities support use cases involving automation, task coordination, and iterative problem-solving, aligning Claude with broader industry experimentation in agent-like AI systems.
2026 Consolidation as a general-purpose work assistant By the Claude 4.x generation, Claude is positioned as a general-purpose AI assistant for professional and knowledge-intensive tasks. Developments during this period emphasize longer-context interactions, task stability over extended sessions, and integration into research, programming, and analytical workflows. This stage reflects the convergence of earlier research priorities with a more mature product offering intended for sustained use in work environments.

Full timeline

Inclusion criteria

We include:

  • Major model releases and version launches.
  • Model lifecycle milestones.
  • Tool integrations and extensions related directly to the Claude model family.
  • Benchmarks and significant performance outcomes.
  • Adoption-related events.

We exclude:

  • Internal organizational events of Anthropic unrelated to Claude models.
  • Minor technical updates like context window parameter tweaks, backend infrastructure optimizations, or small bugfix releases.
  • Events covered only in the Timeline of Anthropic.

Timeline

Year Event type Details
2023 (March 14) Model development Anthropic introduces Claude, a next-generation AI assistant designed around the principles of helpfulness, honesty, and harmlessness. Initially tested with partners including Notion, Quora, and DuckDuckGo, Claude is made broadly available via chat and API. The system supports tasks such as summarization, writing, question answering, and coding. Anthropic launches two variants—Claude and the faster, lower-cost Claude Instant—and emphasizes safety research, steerability, and early integrations across productivity, education, search, and legal technology platforms.[2]
2023 (March 30) Product and platform development Anthropic launches the Claude App for Slack, offering AI-powered assistance for workplace collaboration. Claude can summarize Slack threads, answer questions, and generate structured data, making it a “virtual teammate” for various tasks. Users can interact with Claude in group channels by mentioning @Claude or via direct messages. Built with AI safety techniques like Constitutional AI, Claude enhances productivity while maintaining reliability. Slack’s SVP of Product praises its conversational abilities and context retention. While Claude has limitations, such as occasional errors and lack of internet access, Anthropic is committed to improving and responsibly deploying AI technology.[3]
2023 (April 18) Model development First major upgrade to Claude AI (version 1.3) is made public.[4]
2023 (May 9) Governance/Policy Claude’s Constitution, published by Anthropic, outlines an explicit framework of values used to guide the behavior of its AI assistant, Claude, through the method known as Constitutional AI. Rather than relying primarily on large-scale human feedback, the approach trains models to critique and revise their outputs using a defined set of principles. These principles draw on sources such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, platform safety norms, and cross-cultural considerations, aiming to promote helpfulness, honesty, and harmlessness while improving transparency, scalability, and alignment.[5]
2023 (May 11) Product and platform development Anthropic expands Claude’s context window from 9K to 100K tokens, enabling it to process around 75,000 words—equivalent to hundreds of pages of text—in under a minute. This allows businesses to analyze extensive documents, synthesize information, and answer complex questions more effectively than traditional search methods. Claude can review financial reports, legal documents, and even entire codebases. A demonstration shows it correctly identifying a single modified line in The Great Gatsby within 22 seconds. This enhancement improves Claude’s utility for summarization, risk assessment, and technical documentation, with API access becoming available for businesses and developers.[6]
2023 (July 11) Model development Anthropic announces the release of Claude 2, a second-generation text-generating AI model and successor to its initial commercial Claude system. Launched in beta in the United States and United Kingdom via web access and a paid API, Claude 2 demonstrates improved performance in reasoning, coding, mathematics, and standardized assessments. The model retains a 100,000-token context window, enabling large-scale document analysis, and supports structured output formats. Its development reflects Anthropic’s incremental approach and continued emphasis on safety techniques, including constitutional AI.[1]
2023 (August 9) Model development Anthropic releases Claude Instant 1.2, a faster and more affordable version of its AI model, which is available via API. This update brings notable improvements over Claude Instant 1.1, especially in math, coding, reasoning, and safety. Claude Instant 1.2 achieves higher scores on benchmarks like Codex (58.7% vs. 52.8%) and GSM8K (86.7% vs. 80.9%), while also providing longer, more structured, and better-formatted responses. It performs better in multilingual tasks, quote extraction, and question answering. Safety is also enhanced, with reduced hallucination and increased resistance to jailbreaks. Businesses can access Claude Instant 1.2 for a range of practical AI tasks.[7]
2023 (August 23) Product and platform development Claude 2 becomes available on Amazon Bedrock. Bedrock is a managed AWS service offering access to top foundation models via API, simplifying generative AI integration. Claude 2’s availability enhances AI solutions across industries: LexisNexis uses it for legal AI services, leveraging its long-context processing; Lonely Planet employs it to unlock travel content for personalized planning; and Ricoh USA integrates it to generate training datasets while ensuring security and compliance. This collaboration aims to make safe, reliable AI more accessible for businesses globally.[8]
2023 (November 21) Model development Anthropic releases Claude AI version 2.1, which introduces a 200K token context window, enabling analysis of long documents like codebases or financial reports. It significantly reduces model hallucinations, improving accuracy and reliability. The new beta tool-use feature allows Claude to integrate with users' processes, execute actions like using calculators or making API calls, and interact with external databases. Additionally, the developer experience is enhanced with the Workbench product, streamlining prompt testing and model optimization. The improvements target business applications, emphasizing trust, efficiency, and accuracy.[9][4]
2024 (March 4) Model development Anthropic announces the Claude 3 model family in March 2024, introducing three large language models—Claude 3 Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus—designed to balance intelligence, speed, and cost. Claude 3 Opus sets new performance benchmarks across reasoning, knowledge, mathematics, and long-context recall, while Sonnet targets scalable enterprise use and Haiku emphasizes low-latency responses. All models improve multilingual ability, vision processing, accuracy, and safety. Opus and Sonnet launch globally via claude.ai and APIs, with Haiku following.[10]
2024 (March 19) Product availability expansion Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3 Sonnet are made available on Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, enabling enterprises to build scalable, secure generative AI solutions within their existing cloud infrastructure. This integration enhances data privacy, simplifies governance, reduces costs, and streamlines access control. The move allows more organizations to adopt reliable AI with Google Cloud tools. Claude 3 Opus is announced to be added to Vertex AI. Developers can begin via the Model Garden console.[11]
2024 (May 1) Product and platform development Anthropic introduces two major updates: the Claude Team plan and a free iOS app. The Team plan, priced at $30 per user/month (minimum 5 users), offers expanded usage, admin tools, and full access to the Claude 3 model family (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku). It includes a 200K-token context window for handling long, complex documents and multi-step tasks. The iOS app delivers a seamless experience with chat history sync, vision capabilities (photo analysis), and mobile-friendly tools. Both updates aim to enhance productivity, collaboration, and accessibility, making Claude a powerful AI partner for individuals and teams across industries.[4][12][13]
2024 (May 23) Research demo Anthropic releases a demo called “Golden Gate Claude” to showcase interpretability research on its Claude 3 Sonnet model. Researchers identify specific neuron patterns—called features—that activate in response to concepts like the Golden Gate Bridge. By artificially amplifying this feature, Claude begins obsessively referencing the bridge in responses, regardless of context. This behavior demonstrates that internal model activations directly influence outputs, validating a new level of control and understanding. The demo, available for 24 hours, illustrates the potential of feature-based adjustments not just for curiosity, but also for enhancing model safety and aligning behavior with human values.[14]
2024 (June 21) Model development Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet as the first model in the Claude 3.5 family, combining frontier-level intelligence with the speed and cost of a mid-tier system. The model surpasses Claude 3 Opus and competing models on reasoning, knowledge, coding, and vision benchmarks, while operating at roughly twice the speed. Claude 3.5 Sonnet supports a 200K context window, introduces collaborative “Artifacts” on Claude.ai, and is released across consumer, API, and cloud platforms under ASL-2 safety classification.[15]
2024 (June 25) Product and platform development Anthropic introduces Projects on Claude.ai for Pro and Team users, allowing them to organize chats and documents around specific workflows. Powered by Claude 3.5 Sonnet, each Project offers a 200K token context window and supports custom instructions for tone, role, or industry. Users can upload relevant materials to ground Claude’s responses, speeding up tasks like writing and data analysis. The Artifacts feature enables real-time editing of generated content. Teams can also share standout chats to inspire collaboration. Used by companies like North Highland, Projects aim to streamline workflows while maintaining strong privacy protections.[16]
2024 (July 10) Product and platform development Fine-tuning for Claude 3 Haiku becomes generally available in Amazon Bedrock, allowing businesses to customize the AI model for specialized tasks. This process improves accuracy, consistency, and cost efficiency while maintaining security within AWS environments. Fine-tuning enables domain-specific performance enhancements, brand-aligned formatting, and faster, lower-cost deployments. The fine-tuning preview is available in the US West (Oregon) AWS Region.[17]
2024 (July 16) Product and platform development ​Anthropic launches the Claude AI app for Android devices, providing users with access to its advanced AI assistant, Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The app is free and available to all users, including those on Pro and Team plans. It offers multi-platform support, allowing seamless continuation of conversations across web, iOS, and Android devices. Key features include vision capabilities for real-time image analysis, multilingual processing for instant language translation, and advanced reasoning to assist with complex tasks like contract analysis and market research.[18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
2024 (August 1) Product and platform development Anthropic launches Claude AI in Brazil, making it accessible via the web, mobile apps (iOS and Android), and API integration for developers. Users can choose between free and paid plans. The Pro plan costs R$110 per user per month, offering 5x more usage, early feature access, and all Claude 3 models, including Claude 3.5 Sonnet. The Team plan, at R$165 per user per month (minimum 5 seats), provides additional usage, shared chats, and administrative tools for user and billing management. This expansion brings Anthropic’s AI capabilities to Brazilian consumers and businesses for enhanced productivity and innovation.[23]
2024 (August 14) Product and platform development Anthropic introduces prompt caching to its API, enabling developers to cache frequently used prompt context to reduce costs (by up to 90%) and latency (by up to 85%) in long prompts. Becoming available on the Anthropic API and in preview on Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud Vertex AI, prompt caching supports Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Opus, and Claude 3 Haiku. It’s ideal for chatbots, coding assistants, document Q&A, and multi-turn conversations. Cached prompts cost 10% of base input prices, with writes priced at 125%. Notion leverages this feature to enhance performance in Notion AI.[24]
2024 (August 27) Product and platform development Anthropic makes Claude AI’s Artifacts feature available to all users, including Free, Pro, and Team plans, across web, iOS, and Android. Artifacts provides a dedicated space for users to create, refine, and collaborate on projects like code snippets, prototypes, dashboards, and visualizations. The feature enhances Claude’s generative AI by allowing users to see and interact with their outputs in real-time. Free and Pro users can share Artifacts globally, while Team users can collaborate securely in Projects. This update makes Claude AI more interactive and useful for professionals across various industries, streamlining creative and technical workflows.[25][26][27][28]
2024 (September 4) Product and platform development ​Anthropic introduces the Claude Enterprise plan, designed to help organizations securely integrate their internal knowledge with Claude. This plan offers an expanded 500,000-token context window, allowing teams to process extensive documents and codebases. It also includes a native GitHub integration, enabling seamless collaboration on code-related projects. To ensure data security, the plan provides enterprise-grade features such as Single Sign-On (SSO), role-based access controls, and audit logs. Early adopters like GitLab and Midjourney had already utilized Claude for tasks ranging from summarizing research papers to streamlining internal processes.[29][30]
2024 (October 8) Product and platform development ​Anthropic introduces two significant tools to enhance AI application efficiency and cost-effectiveness: the Token Counting API and the Message Batches API. The Token Counting API enables developers to determine the number of tokens in a message before sending it to Claude, aiding in proactive management of rate limits and costs, and optimization of prompts to specific lengths . The Message Batches API allows for asynchronous processing of up to 10,000 queries per batch, with each batch processed within 24 hours at 50% less cost than standard API calls . This is particularly beneficial for non-urgent tasks requiring large-scale data handling. These tools collectively offer developers more control over token usage and a cost-effective solution for bulk processing, enhancing the scalability and affordability of AI applications.​[31][32][33][34]
2024 (October 22) Model development Anthropic announces an upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet, the new Claude 3.5 Haiku, and a public beta of “computer use,” enabling models to interact with graphical computer interfaces. Claude 3.5 Sonnet shows substantial gains in coding and agentic tool use, while Claude 3.5 Haiku delivers near–state-of-the-art performance at lower latency and cost. The computer use capability, released experimentally, allows automation of multi-step tasks and is accompanied by safety evaluations and deployment safeguards.[35]
2024 (October 22) Product and platform development Anthropic introduces an enhanced version of Claude 3.5 Sonnet, featuring a "computer use" capability. This function enables the AI to interact with computer interfaces by moving the cursor, typing text, and clicking buttons, allowing it to perform tasks such as form-filling, booking trips, and coding assistance. The feature aims to automate complex, multi-step operations with minimal human intervention, positioning Claude as a tool for developers to streamline workflows and reduce repetitive tasks. Early adopters, including companies like Asana, Canva, and DoorDash, had already begun integrating this capability into their systems.[36][37][38][39]
2024 (October 24) Tool launch Claude.ai introduces the analysis tool, enabling Claude to write and run JavaScript code directly within the platform. This built-in code sandbox allows users to process data, perform complex analysis, and generate real-time insights. Claude functions become like a real data analyst—systematically cleaning, exploring, and analyzing data, especially from CSV files. Available in feature preview, the tool enhances Claude’s accuracy and reproducibility in tasks. It supports a range of use cases across teams, including marketing, sales, engineering, product, and finance, by helping them analyze performance data, uncover trends, and make informed decisions efficiently and interactively.[40]
2024 (October 29) Product and platform development GitHub Copilot expands its AI model offerings by integrating Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI's o1-preview and o1-mini models. This multi-model approach allows developers to select the most suitable AI for their coding tasks directly within Visual Studio Code and GitHub.com. Claude 3.5 Sonnet, known for its strong software engineering capabilities, achieves top scores on benchmarks like SWE-bench Verified and HumanEval. Additionally, GitHub introduces "Spark," an AI tool designed to assist in building web applications using natural language, further enhancing developer productivity.[41][42][43][44]
2024 (November 4) Product and platform development Anthropic announces a price increase for Claude 3.5 Haiku. Although it matches or exceeds Claude 3 Opus on several benchmarks, the model is introduced at higher rates than its predecessor, Claude 3 Haiku. Anthropic attributes the increase to improved performance and intelligence. Claude 3.5 Haiku is positioned for tasks such as coding and data processing but initially lacks image analysis, which remains available in the older model.[45]
2024 (November 6) Model deprecation Anthropic retires its legacy Claude 1.x models (1.0–1.3) and Claude Instant models (1.0–1.2), following advance notification to developers on September 4, 2024. All deprecated models are replaced by claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 as part of Anthropic’s model lifecycle consolidation.[46]
2024 (November 15) Product and platform development ​Anthropic introduces a prompt improver feature in its developer console to help users refine and optimize prompts for Claude. This tool automates the enhancement of existing prompts, making them more effective and reliable. It employs advanced techniques such as chain-of-thought reasoning, which encourages step-by-step problem-solving to improve response accuracy. Additionally, the console starts allowing developers to manage example responses directly within the interface, facilitating the creation and refinement of structured input/output pairs. These enhancements aim to streamline prompt engineering, enabling developers to build more accurate and consistent AI applications. ​[47][48][49][50]
2024 (December 3) Product and platform development Anthropic optimizes Claude models for AWS Trainium2, enhancing performance in Amazon Bedrock. Claude 3.5 Haiku now supports latency-optimized inference, achieving up to 60% faster speeds without sacrificing accuracy. Additionally, model distillation enables Claude 3 Haiku to reach near-Claude 3.5 Sonnet accuracy at a lower cost by transferring knowledge from larger models. This approach improves tasks like retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and data analysis. Claude 3.5 Haiku is available in Amazon Bedrock’s US East (Ohio) Region, with prices reduced to $0.80 per million input tokens and $4 per million output tokens, making it more cost-effective for users.[51]
2025 (January 6) Comparative analysis Anthropic announces that Claude 3.5 Sonnet achieved 49% on SWE-bench Verified, surpassing the previous record of 45%. SWE-bench is a benchmark testing AI models on real-world software engineering tasks, particularly resolving GitHub issues in Python projects. The success is attributed to a lightweight “agent” scaffold that gives Claude more autonomy, using tools like a Bash executor and a file-editing tool. These tools allow the model to inspect, edit, and validate code changes. SWE-bench Verified focuses on solvable tasks and evaluates the full agent system, emphasizing realistic, reproducible coding workflows over isolated model performance.[52]
2025 (January 23) Product and platform development ​Anthropic introduces 'Citations,' a new API feature that enables Claude to ground responses in source documents by providing detailed references to exact sentences and passages used. This enhancement aims to improve the verifiability and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs, particularly benefiting applications like document summarization, complex Q&A, and customer support. Internal evaluations indicate that Claude's built-in citation capabilities outperform most custom implementations, increasing recall accuracy by up to 15%. Early adopters, such as Thomson Reuters and Endex, report reductions in hallucinations and improvements in reference accuracy. Citations becomes generally available on the Anthropic API and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.[53][54][55][56]
2025 (February 24) Model development Anthropic announces Claude 3.7 Sonnet as its most advanced model and the first hybrid reasoning system combining fast responses with optional, user-visible extended reasoning. The model shows major gains in coding and front-end web development and achieves notable results on real-world benchmarks. Alongside it, Anthropic introduces Claude Code, a command-line agentic coding tool that enables autonomous software tasks. Claude 3.7 Sonnet is deployed across all Claude plans, cloud platforms, and APIs at unchanged pricing.[57]
2025 (March 6) Product and platform development The Anthropic Console is redesigned to facilitate AI deployment with Claude 3.7 Sonnet. It allows developers to build, test, and optimize prompts efficiently. New features include shareable prompts for team collaboration, tools for prompt evaluation, and automated prompt generation. The console also supports extended thinking, enabling Claude to provide step-by-step reasoning, with adjustable "thinking budgets" for optimal responses. This centralized platform improves collaboration and streamlines the development of AI applications by standardizing and refining prompts across teams.[58]
2025 (March 13) Product and platform development Anthropic introduces updates to its API, improving token efficiency and throughput for Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Key features include cache-aware rate limits, simpler prompt caching, and token-efficient tool use, which help reduce costs and latency. These enhancements allow for more context in applications like document analysis, coding assistance, and customer support. Claude can now interact with custom tools more efficiently, reducing output token consumption by up to 70%. A new text_editor tool also allows targeted edits to documents, improving accuracy and efficiency. These features are available on various platforms, including Google Cloud and Amazon Bedrock.[59]
2025 (March 20) Product and platform development Claude gains the ability to search the web, enabling it to provide more current and accurate responses by incorporating real-time data. This enhancement is especially useful for tasks such as sales analysis, financial forecasting, research, and consumer decision-making. Claude cites sources directly to facilitate fact-checking. The feature becomes available to paid users in the U.S. first. To use this feature, users must enable web search in their profile settings.[60]
2025 (May 22) Model development Anthropic introduces Claude 4, launching Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 as hybrid reasoning models with near-instant responses and extended thinking. Claude Opus 4 sets new benchmarks in coding, long-running tasks, and agent workflows, while Sonnet 4 delivers a major upgrade in reasoning, steerability, and efficiency over Sonnet 3.7. The release expands tool use, memory, and API capabilities, and makes Claude Code generally available. Both models are deployed across consumer plans, APIs, and major cloud platforms at unchanged pricing.[61]
2025 (June 30) Product and platform development Anthropic announces an upgrade to Claude Artifacts, enabling users to create, host, and share AI-powered applications directly from text prompts. The feature allows non-programmers to build tools such as analyzers or study aids, with Claude handling the coding. Costs are shifted to end users through authentication, removing infrastructure burdens for creators. A dedicated workspace organizes apps, enhancing usability. This update positions Claude competitively against platforms like OpenAI’s Canvas and reflects the industry trend toward democratizing app creation, fostering broader collaboration and accessible AI-driven development.ChatGPT said: [62]
2025 (July 21) Model deprecation Anthropic retires the Claude 2.0, Claude 2.1, and Claude 3 Sonnet (claude-3-sonnet-20240229) models, following advance notification to developers on January 21, 2025. All deprecated models are replaced by claude-opus-4-6 as the recommended successor.[46]
2025 (August 1) Incident Anthropic revokes OpenAI’s access to the Claude API, citing violations of its terms of service that prohibit using Claude to develop or benchmark competing AI models. According to reports, OpenAI had integrated Claude into internal tools to evaluate coding, creative, and safety performance ahead of its GPT-5 release. Anthropic states that such use constitutes prohibited competitive activity. OpenAI acknowledges the cutoff while noting that cross-model benchmarking is common industry practice. The episode highlights rising competition and tightening access controls among leading AI developers.[63]
2025 (August 5) Social phenomenon Fans of Anthropic gather in San Francisco to stage a symbolic “funeral” for Claude 3 Sonnet, a retired lightweight AI model. The event, attended by AI researchers, startup founders, and online personalities, highlights the unusually intense fandom surrounding Claude. Through ritualized performances and eulogies, participants express emotional attachment to the model, underscoring how anthropomorphic design and heavy use have fostered community, identity, and even addictive behaviors around advanced AI systems.[64]
2025 (August 5) Model development Claude Opus 4.1 is released by Anthropic as an incremental update to Claude Opus 4, focused on improvements in agentic tasks, real-world software development, and reasoning. The model achieves higher performance on coding benchmarks, including 74.5% on SWE-bench Verified, and shows enhanced capabilities in multi-file refactoring, debugging precision, and structured research workflows. Claude Opus 4.1 is made available to paid Claude users, through Claude Code, and via the Anthropic API and major cloud platforms, with pricing unchanged from the previous version.[65]
2025 (August 27) Product and platform development Anthropic launches Claude for Google Chrome, a browser extension integrating its AI agent into Chrome. Initially available to 1,000 Max plan subscribers, with a waitlist for others, the assistant operates in a sidebar, retains browsing context, and can autonomously perform tasks. Anthropic emphasizes security, restricting default access to financial, adult, and pirated sites, and requiring confirmation for high-risk actions. The move reflects competition in AI-enabled browsers, alongside Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s planned browser. Anthropic highlights both potential benefits and security risks of autonomous browser agents.[66]
2025 (September 29) Model development Anthropic introduces Claude Sonnet 4.5 as a frontier language model optimized for coding, agentic workflows, computer use, and advanced reasoning. The model achieves notable performance on real-world software benchmarks and demonstrates sustained focus on long, complex tasks. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is released alongside major product upgrades, including enhanced Claude Code features and a new Agent SDK. Classified under AI Safety Level 3, it emphasizes improved alignment, reduced harmful behaviors, and stronger defenses against prompt injection, while maintaining existing Sonnet pricing.[67]
2025 (October 7) Adoption Deloitte announces a major expansion of its partnership with Anthropic to deploy Claude across its global workforce of approximately 470,000 employees, describing it as Anthropic’s largest enterprise rollout to date. The initiative includes embedding Claude into regulated workflows, training 15,000 certified specialists, and establishing a Claude Center of Excellence. The announcement coincides with Deloitte Australia agreeing to partially refund the government for a flawed report containing AI-generated errors, highlighting both the scale of enterprise AI adoption and the risks posed by insufficient quality controls.[68]
2025 (October 15) Model development Anthropic introduces Claude Haiku 4.5 as a compact, high-performance language model optimized for speed and cost efficiency. The model delivers near-frontier coding and reasoning capabilities comparable to Claude Sonnet 4, while operating at roughly one-third the cost and more than twice the speed. Haiku 4.5 targets low-latency applications such as real-time chat, customer support, and pair programming. Safety evaluations classify it at AI Safety Level 2, reflecting improved alignment and low risk.[69]
2025 (October 28) Model deprecation Anthropic deprecates two versions of the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model—claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620 and claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022. Both models are formally retired as part of Anthropic’s model lifecycle updates, with users direct to migrate to claude-opus-4-6 as the recommended replacement, consolidating workloads onto a newer, more capable flagship model.[46]
2025 (November 10) Comparative analysis An article compares Claude 3, GPT-5, and Gemini 3.0 as the leading AI models of 2025, highlighting their distinct strengths and trade-offs. According to the author, GPT-5 excels in advanced reasoning, planning, and code generation; Gemini 3.0 prioritizes multimodal efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and security; while Claude 3 focuses on alignment, long-form conversational memory, and safety for sensitive domains. Benchmarks show Gemini as highly efficient, GPT-5 as technically powerful but costly, and Claude as contextually consistent and reliable. The article concludes that no single model dominates—each is optimized for different use cases, reflecting the diversification and specialization of next-generation AI systems.[70]
2025 (November 12) Research demo Anthropic demonstrates Claude controlling a quadruped robot dog as part of research into how large language models might interact with the physical world. Researchers task Claude with programming the robot, exploring how AI can translate high-level reasoning into embodied action. The experiment highlights both the potential utility of AI-driven robotics and the associated risks, emphasizing the need for safeguards as language models gain greater autonomy over hardware and real-world systems.[71]
2025 (November 24) Model development Anthropic introduces Claude Opus 4.5, its most advanced model to date, positioned as state-of-the-art for coding, agents, and computer use, while also improving research, reasoning, and everyday productivity tasks. Released across apps, API, and major cloud platforms, it delivers stronger performance with greater efficiency and lower token usage. Internal and customer testing show major gains in complex software engineering and creative problem-solving. Opus 4.5 also advances safety, alignment, and robustness against misuse, supports longer-running agents, and powers new features across the Claude Developer Platform and consumer products.[72]
2025 (December 8) Product and platform development Anthropic launches a beta research preview of Claude Code in Slack, enabling developers to delegate full coding tasks directly from chat threads. Beyond snippets and troubleshooting, users can now tag @Claude to start automated coding sessions that analyze Slack context, identify repositories, post progress updates, and open pull requests. The move reflects a broader shift from IDE-based assistants toward AI embedded in collaboration tools. As competition intensifies, workflow integration and distribution are becoming key differentiators, raising new questions about security, IP protection, and dependence on external platforms.[73]
2025 (December 8–10) Adoption NASA uses Claude to assist in planning real driving routes for the Perseverance Mars rover. Claude analyzes orbital imagery and terrain data to generate waypoint-based paths, which NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers then carefully reviewes and slightly adjusts using simulations. On December 8 and 10, Perseverance successfully follows AI-planned routes at Jezero Crater, traveling roughly 400 meters. The test demonstrates that generative AI can safely reduce rover route-planning time while remaining under strict human oversight.[74]
2026 (January 4) Performance Google principal engineer Jaana Dogan reports that Anthropic’s Claude Code generated a distributed agent orchestration system in about one hour, comparable to systems her team had explored over the previous year. While described as a non-production, “toy” implementation, the result demonstrates the rapid progress of AI-assisted coding. Dogan emphasizes that such tools can quickly recreate known design patterns once conceptual work is complete. The episode highlights accelerating capabilities of coding agents and growing interest in workflows that combine human expertise with automated code generation.[75]
2026 (January 5) Model deprecation Anthropic retires the Claude 3 Opus model (claude-3-opus-20240229). Developers had been notified of the planned deprecation on June 30, 2025, in accordance with the company’s model lifecycle policy, and are advised to migrate to claude-opus-4-6 as the recommended replacement.[46]
2026 (January 15) Product and platform development Anthropic introduces Claude Cowork, a research-preview AI agent designed to make the capabilities of Claude Code accessible to nontechnical users. Cowork focuses on file management and basic computer tasks, such as organizing folders, converting files, generating reports, and navigating web browsers or email interfaces. Available initially to subscribers of Anthropic’s premium plan on macOS, the tool emphasizes usability and safety through permission prompts, virtualization, and mitigation of prompt-injection risks. Early testing suggests Cowork performs reliably for routine tasks, marking progress toward practical consumer-facing AI agents.[76]
2026 (January 22) Governance/Policy Anthropic publishes a revised constitution for its AI model Claude, outlining the values, priorities, and reasoning intended to guide the model’s behavior. The document replaces a list of standalone principles with a holistic explanation of safety, ethics, helpfulness, and compliance, and plays a central role in model training through Constitutional AI methods. Released under a Creative Commons CC0 license, the constitution is intended to improve transparency, enable public scrutiny, and support the development of aligned and trustworthy AI systems.[77]
2026 (January 22) Adoption Reports indicate that Microsoft began widely adopting Claude Code across multiple internal engineering teams, despite continuing to market GitHub Copilot to customers. Claude Code is encouraged for use by developers as well as nontechnical staff, including designers and project managers, to prototype and experiment with ideas. Microsoft’s CoreAI and Experiences + Devices divisions had reportedly expanded internal use, and engineers are asked to compare Claude Code with GitHub Copilot. The shift reflects growing internal preference for Claude Code’s usability and effectiveness in software development workflows.[78]
2026 (February 3) Market impact Anthropic’s release of Claude Cowork in January triggers a sharp sell-off in global software and related stocks, reflecting investor fears that autonomous AI agents could undermine traditional SaaS business models. Markets react strongly as productivity gains from AI threatened user-based licensing revenues across enterprise software, legal, marketing, and data services. Despite strong fundamentals and historically low valuations, uncertainty over a shift toward results-based “service as software” pricing drives widespread declines.[79]
2026 (February 5) Model development Claude Opus 4.6 is released, upgrading coding, reasoning, and long-horizon agentic capabilities. It introduces a 1-million-token context window in beta, improves performance in large codebases, and strengthens code review and debugging. Opus 4.6 achieves state-of-the-art results on agentic coding, multidisciplinary reasoning, and economically valuable knowledge-work benchmarks. It also supports autonomous multitasking in Claude Cowork and shows safety performance equal to or better than prior frontier models.[80]
2026 (February 17) Model development Claude Sonnet 4.6 is released, delivering broad improvements in coding, computer use, long-context reasoning, agent planning, and knowledge work. It introduces a 1-million-token context window in beta and becomes the default model on Claude.ai and Claude Cowork. Sonnet 4.6 approaches Opus-level performance at lower cost, shows major gains in computer-use benchmarks, and passes extensive safety evaluations indicating strong alignment and reliability across complex, real-world tasks.[81]

Nuerical and visual data

The graph below shows worldwide Google Trends interest in Claude from March 2023 to February 2026. Public attention remains minimal through 2023, rises gradually during 2024, and accelerates sharply through 2025 and early 2026, reflecting growing visibility, adoption, and relevance of Anthropic’s language model.[82]


Wikipedia Views

The chart below shows monthly Wikipedia pageviews for Claude (language model) across desktop, mobile web, and mobile app platforms. It illustrates growth in reader interest from March 2023 to early 2026, highlighting spikes associated with major releases, increased media coverage, and broader public attention to Anthropic’s AI models.[83]

Meta information on the timeline

How the timeline was built

The initial version of the timeline was written by Sebastian Sanchez.

Check Detail construction for full timeline in timelines, Inclusion criteria for full timeline in timelines, and Representativeness of events in timelines.

Funding information for this timeline is available.

Feedback and comments

Feedback for the timeline can be provided at the following places:

  • FIXME

What the timeline is still missing

Timeline update strategy

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wiggers, Kyle (11 July 2023). "Anthropic releases Claude 2, its second-gen AI chatbot". TechCrunch. Retrieved 18 February 2026.
  2. ↑ "Introducing Claude". anthropic.com. Anthropic PBC. 14 March 2023. Retrieved 16 February 2026.
  3. ↑ "Claude Now in Slack". Anthropic. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Anthropic AI Statistics". Originality.AI. 20 June 2024. Retrieved 26 June 2024.
  5. ↑ "Claude's Constitution". Anthropic. 9 May 2023. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  6. ↑ "100K Context Windows". Anthropic. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  7. ↑ "Releasing Claude Instant 1.2". Anthropic. August 9, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  8. ↑ "Claude 2 on Amazon Bedrock". Anthropic. August 23, 2023. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
  9. ↑ "Claude 2.1: A Step Forward in AI". anthropic.com. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  10. ↑ "Introducing the next generation of Claude". Anthropic. 4 March 2024. Retrieved 18 February 2026.
  11. ↑ "Claude 3 models on Vertex AI". Anthropic. March 19, 2024. Retrieved April 5, 2025.
  12. ↑ "Anthropic PBC: History, Development, Products". Apix-Drive. Retrieved 2024-06-26.
  13. ↑ "Introducing the Claude Team plan and iOS app". Anthropic. May 1, 2024. Retrieved April 5, 2025.
  14. ↑ "Golden Gate Claude". Anthropic. May 23, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  15. ↑ "Anthropic launches Claude 3.5 Sonnet to raise bar for model intelligence, coding and visual processing". SiliconANGLE. 20 June 2024. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  16. ↑ "Collaborate with Claude on Projects". Anthropic. June 25, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  17. ↑ "Fine-Tuning Claude 3 Haiku". Anthropic. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  18. ↑ Shittu, Esther (July 17, 2024). "Anthropic catches up with Claude LLM for Android". TechTarget. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  19. ↑ Devlin, Kieran (July 17, 2024). "Anthropic Brings ChatGPT Competitor Claude AI To Android Devices". UC Today. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  20. ↑ "Meet the New Claude Android App: Power of AI in Your Pocket". AIToolsClub. July 16, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  21. ↑ "Amazon-backed Anthropic launches Android app for Claude". The Times of India. July 17, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  22. ↑ "Claude Android app". Anthropic. July 16, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  23. ↑ "Claude Expands to Brazil". Anthropic. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  24. ↑ "Prompt caching with Claude". Anthropic. August 14, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  25. ↑ "Anthropic Makes Claude AI Artifacts Available for Free". Pocket-lint. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  26. ↑ "Why Claude's Artifacts Is the Coolest Feature I've Seen in Generative AI So Far". ZDNet. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  27. ↑ "Anthropic Rolled Out Artifacts for Claude AI Users on iOS and Android Apps". TestingCatalog. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  28. ↑ "Introducing Artifacts for Claude AI". Anthropic. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  29. ↑ "Is Anthropic's New Workspaces Feature the Future of Enterprise AI Management?". VentureBeat. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  30. ↑ "Claude for Enterprise". Anthropic. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  31. ↑ "Introducing the New Anthropic Token Counting API". Towards Data Science. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  32. ↑ "Anthropic Challenges OpenAI with Affordable Batch Processing". VentureBeat. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  33. ↑ "This Week in AI: Tech Giants Embrace Synthetic Data". TechCrunch. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  34. ↑ "Anthropic AI Introduces the Message Batches API: A Powerful and Cost-Effective Way to Process Large Volumes of Queries Asynchronously". MarkTechPost. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  35. ↑ "Introducing computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku". anthropic.com. Anthropic PBC. 22 October 2024. Retrieved 16 February 2026.
  36. ↑ "Anthropic Adds New Feature to Help Developers Improve Prompts". SD Times. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  37. ↑ "Anthropic Console Introduces Tools to Refine Prompts and Examples". AI News. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  38. ↑ "Anthropic Introduces New Prompt Improver to Developer Console: Automatically Refine Prompts with Prompt Engineering Techniques and CoT Reasoning". MarkTechPost. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  39. ↑ "Prompt Improver". Anthropic. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  40. ↑ "Introducing the analysis tool in Claude.ai". Anthropic. October 24, 2024. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  41. ↑ "Anthropic Adds New Feature to Help Developers Improve Prompts". SD Times. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  42. ↑ "Anthropic Console Introduces Tools to Refine Prompts and Examples". AI News. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  43. ↑ "Anthropic Introduces New Prompt Improver to Developer Console: Automatically Refine Prompts with Prompt Engineering Techniques and CoT Reasoning". MarkTechPost. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  44. ↑ "Prompt Improver". Anthropic. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  45. ↑ "Anthropic hikes the price of its Haiku model". TechCrunch. TechCrunch Inc. 4 November 2024. Retrieved 16 February 2026.
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 46.3 "Model deprecations". Claude API Docs. Retrieved 23 February 2026.
  47. ↑ "Anthropic Adds New Feature to Help Developers Improve Prompts". SD Times. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  48. ↑ "Anthropic Console Introduces Tools to Refine Prompts and Examples". AI News. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  49. ↑ "Anthropic Introduces New Prompt Improver to Developer Console: Automatically Refine Prompts with Prompt Engineering Techniques and CoT Reasoning". MarkTechPost. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  50. ↑ "Prompt Improver". Anthropic. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  51. ↑ "Trainium2 and Distillation". Anthropic. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  52. ↑ "Raising the bar on SWE-bench Verified with Claude 3.5 Sonnet". Anthropic. January 6, 2025. Retrieved April 6, 2025.
  53. ↑ "Introducing citations on the Anthropic API". Daily.dev. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  54. ↑ "Anthropic's new citations API". Simon Willison’s Weblog. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  55. ↑ "Introducing citations API". Anthropic. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  56. ↑ "Introducing citations on the Anthropic API". LinkedIn. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  57. ↑ "Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code". Anthropic. 24 February 2025. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  58. ↑ "Upgraded Anthropic Console". anthropic.com. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  59. ↑ "Token Saving Updates". anthropic.com. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  60. ↑ "Web Search: Introducing Our Latest Advancement". anthropic.com. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  61. ↑ "Introducing Claude 4". Anthropic. 22 May 2025. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  62. ↑ "Anthropic Upgrades App-Building Capabilities to Claude Artifacts". InfoQ. 30 June 2025. Retrieved 25 September 2025.
  63. ↑ Robison, Kylie (2025-08-01). "Anthropic Revokes OpenAI's Access to Claude". Wired. Retrieved 2026-02-23.
  64. ↑ Robison, Kylie (5 August 2025). "Claude Fans Threw a Funeral for Anthropic's Retired AI Model". Wired. Retrieved 23 February 2026.
  65. ↑ "Claude Opus 4.1". Anthropic. 5 August 2025. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  66. ↑ "Anthropic Integrates AI Agent into Chrome". ForkLog. 27 August 2025. Retrieved 25 September 2025.
  67. ↑ "Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.5". Anthropic. 29 September 2025. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  68. ↑ "Deloitte Accelerates Claude Expansion Amid Government Refund Controversy". The National CIO Review. 7 October 2025. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  69. ↑ "Introducing Claude Haiku 4.5". Anthropic. 15 October 2025. Retrieved 18 February 2026.
  70. ↑ "GPT-5 vs Gemini 3.0 vs Claude 3 – AI showdown". TechGenyz. 10 November 2025. Retrieved 18 February 2026.
  71. ↑ "Anthropic's Claude Takes Control of a Robot Dog". Wired. 12 November 2025. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  72. ↑ Anthropic Team (November 24, 2025). "Introducing Claude Opus 4.5". Anthropic. Retrieved December 9, 2025.
  73. ↑ Bellan, Rebecca (December 8, 2025). [[1](https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/08/claude-code-is-coming-to-slack-and-thats-a-bigger-deal-than-it-sounds/) "Claude Code is coming to Slack, and that's a bigger deal than it sounds"]. TechCrunch. Retrieved December 9, 2025. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  74. ↑ "NASA taps Claude to conjure Mars rover's travel plan". The Register. 31 January 2026. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  75. ↑ "Google engineer says Claude Code built in one hour what her team spent a year on". The Decoder. 4 January 2026. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  76. ↑ "Anthropic's Claude Cowork Is an AI Agent That Actually Works". Wired. 15 January 2026. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  77. ↑ "Claude's new constitution". Anthropic. 22 January 2026. Retrieved 19 February 2026.
  78. ↑ "Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft". The Verge. 22 January 2026. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  79. ↑ Steinschaden, Jakob (3 February 2026). "Claude Cowork Triggers Tech Stock Selloff as AI Threatens SaaS Business Models". Trending Topics. Retrieved 23 February 2026.
  80. ↑ "Introducing Claude Opus 4.6". Anthropic. 5 February 2026. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  81. ↑ "Introducing Claude Sonnet 4.6". Anthropic. 17 February 2026. Retrieved 20 February 2026.
  82. ↑ "Interest in "Claude" over time". Google Trends. Google. Retrieved 22 February 2026.
  83. ↑ "Wikipedia pageviews for "Claude (language model)" (Jan 2023–Jan 2026)". Wikipedia Views. Retrieved 24 February 2026.
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