Claude Code's 150% Revenue Surge Catapults Anthropic Past OpenAI in Annualized Earnings

Anthropic’s AI programming tool Claude Code has recorded an explosive 150% surge in annualized revenue, climbing from $1 billion in December 2025 to $2.5 billion by February 2026, per a report by The Information. This growth has lifted Anthropic’s overall annualized revenue to $30 billion, surpassing long-time rival OpenAI on an annualized basis.

Leading Claude Code is Boris Cherny, a self-taught engineer with a non-traditional path: he dropped out of UC San Diego’s economics program but began coding in middle school, working on projects like eBay page code and graphing calculator programs. Cherny spent nearly seven years at Meta, contributing to Messenger and Facebook Groups before joining Anthropic in September 2024. His move was driven by AI’s transformative potential and Anthropic’s focus on safety and long-term impact. Notably, Cherny briefly left for Cursor in July 2025 with product lead Catherine Wu but returned within two weeks, citing alignment with Anthropic’s mission.

Claude Code’s success is tied to model upgrades: launched in February 2025 with slow adoption, it gained traction after Opus 4/Sonnet 4 (May 2025) and Opus 4.5 (November 2025) releases. Cherny claims his team’s per-person revenue is “likely the highest globally,” though team size remains undisclosed.

Claude Code’s rise has shifted developer preferences: Dexterity’s Rob Sun abandoned Cursor, completing a computer vision project in days (a task that would take him 3 years alone). Cursor responded by integrating multiple agents (its own, Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex).

Anthropic extended Claude Code to Claude Cowork, handling legal/finance tasks and daily admin. Notably, Claude Cowork was built by Claude Code in 10 days and auto-fixes bugs via user feedback. Cherny uses it for progress report reminders, flight bookings, and even a Seattle clam digging permit application.

Challenges include a March 2026 source code leak and blocking third-party tools like OpenClaw (sparking backlash). Cherny addressed concerns on X, noting OpenClaw’s remote mobile control feature inspired Claude Code updates.

Anthropic’s Mythos model (multi-hour agent tasks) remains unreleased due to cybersecurity risks. Cherny predicts anyone will do software engineering in a year, as tools eliminate manual coding for many.

Sources

• Toutiao (https://m.toutiao.com/article/7674555863842947630/)