Anthropic: The Quiet Company Behind Claude AI

Claude is owned by Anthropic, a private San Francisco company founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei and five other former OpenAI researchers. Despite major investments from Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and Microsoft, none hold controlling interest. Anthropic is valued at approximately $380 billion as of early 2026. The company operates as a Public Benefit Corporation with a Long-Term Benefit Trust controlling board appointments, designed to prioritize long-term human welfare over short-term profits. Anthropic has made costly principled decisions, including refusing Pentagon demands to lift restrictions on autonomous weapons and denying access to entities linked to adversarial nations.