How Claude Code is reshaping software – and humanity

Engineers in silicon Valley was interested in the AI ​​encryption tool Anthropic, Claude Codefor months. But lately, the buzz seems to have reached a fever pitch.

Earlier this week, I sat down with Boris Cherny, president of CloudCode, to try to understand how the company is handling this moment.

“We built the simplest thing possible,” Cherny said. “The craziest thing is finding out three months ago that half the sales team at Anthropic is using Claude Code every week.”

AI-powered encryption has evolved rapidly. From 2021 to 2024, most tools did little more than just autocomplete, suggesting a few lines of code as developers write it. By early 2025, startups like Cursor and Windsurf began rolling out early “agent” coding products, which allow developers to describe a feature in simple language and leave the rest to an AI agent.

Claude Code was launched around this time. Cherney admits that early versions of CloudCode often stumbled, made errors, or got stuck in costly loops. Cherny says Anthropic designed Claude Code for where AI capabilities are headed, not where they were when they launched.

This was a wise bet. Many developers claim that AI coding products have reached a level Inflection point In recent months, particularly around the launch of Anthropic’s latest AI model, Closing of business 4.5.

Kian Katanforoush, an assistant lecturer in artificial intelligence at Stanford University and CEO of startup Workera, says his company recently turned to Claude Code after testing several AI coding tools internally. Ultimately, he says, Cloudcode worked better with its senior engineers than with Cursor and Windsurf tools.

“The only model I can point to where I’ve seen a gradual improvement in programming capabilities recently is the Claude Opus 4.5,” says Katanforoush. “It’s not like he’s programming like a human, you kind of feel like he’s figured out a better way.”

Last year, the business of artificial intelligence crypto agents took off. In November, Anthropic announced that CloudCode had reached $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, less than a year after its debut.

By the end of 2025, Claude Code’s annual revenue rate had increased by at least another $100 million, according to a person familiar with the company’s financials. At the time, the product represented roughly 12 percent of Anthropic’s total ARR, which was about $9 billion. Although still smaller than Anthropic’s business — which provides AI systems to entire companies — programming is one of the company’s fastest-growing segments.

Anthropic also told investors that it aims to be cash flow positive by 2028 and that Claude Code could play an important role in its revenue growth. The company declined to comment on its financial conditions.

While Anthropic seems to be king in the AI ​​programming space, the buzz around Claude Opus 4.5 seems to have lifted many companies. Cursor, which lets users code using models from Anthropic and other AI labs, said its coding tool reached $1 billion in ARR in November. In December, the company reported strong month-over-month revenue growth, according to a person close to the company. OpenAI, Google, and xAI are also racing to claim a larger share of the AI ​​coding market, developing their own agent products powered by in-house AI models.

Now, Anthropic is trying to capitalize on Claude Code’s momentum Create proxies for unencrypted sectors. Earlier this month, the company launched Cowork, an AI agent that can manage files on a user’s computer and interact with software — without requiring any interaction with the coding terminal.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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