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 Cowork 新增技能录制功能 (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 新增 Anthropic Economic Index 连接器，可直接查询 AI 对经济与职业的影响数据 (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.
- Claude 语音模式现已支持 Opus、Sonnet 及连接工具与多语言 (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.
- Anthropic 发布 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.
- 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.
- 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.