**The AI Coding Revolution Has Reached a Fever Pitch**
I’ve been noticing a buzz around Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude Code, for months now. But it’s not just the tech community that’s excited – the numbers suggest that Claude Code is experiencing a surge in popularity. I recently sat down with Boris Cherny, the head of Claude Code, to get to the bottom of what’s driving this trend.
As we chatted, Cherny couldn’t help but grin at the astonishing stats. “The craziest thing was learning three months ago that half of the sales team at Anthropic uses Claude Code every week.” That’s serious traction, folks. And it’s not just the sales team – developers from all over are singing the praises of Claude Code.
For those who may not be familiar, Claude Code is part of a new wave of AI-powered coding tools that have come a long way since 2021. Initially, these tools were mostly just autocomplete, offering a few lines of code as developers typed. But over the past few years, we’ve seen the emergence of more advanced “agentic” coding products, which allow developers to describe a feature in plain language and let an AI agent handle the rest.
Claude Code was one of the first to market with this approach, and it’s clear that Anthropic has been pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Cherny acknowledges that early versions of the tool had some growing pains, but he’s adamant that the vision was always to create something that would lead the pack.
And lead the pack it has. Several developers I’ve spoken to claim that AI coding products reached an inflection point in recent months, particularly with the launch of Anthropic’s newest AI model, Claude Opus 4.5. Kian Katanforoosh, an adjunct lecturer on AI at Stanford and CEO of the startup Workera, recently switched to Claude Code after testing several AI coding tools internally. For him, Claude Code was the clear winner.
“I can point to one model where I saw a step-function improvement in coding skills recently – and that’s Claude Opus 4.5,” Katanforoosh says. “It doesn’t even feel like it’s coding like a human – you kind of feel like it’s found a better way.”
Of course, the success of Claude Code hasn’t gone unnoticed. In November, Anthropic announced that Claude Code had reached $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue, less than a year after its debut. And by the end of 2025, that number had grown by at least another $100 million. Anthropic has also set its sights on being cash-flow positive by 2028, with Claude Code playing a key role in that effort.
But Anthropic isn’t the only game in town. Cursor, which lets users code using models from Anthropic and other AI labs, has also reported reaching $1 billion in ARR. OpenAI, Google, and xAI are all racing to claim a bigger share of the AI coding market, developing their own agentic products powered by in-house AI models.
And now, Anthropic is taking the next step by applying the momentum from Claude Code to non-coding sectors. Earlier this month, the company launched Cowork, an AI agent that can handle data on a user’s laptop and interact with software – without requiring any interaction with a coding terminal.
I asked Cherny about the surge in popularity and what’s driving it. Here’s what he had to say:
WIRED: There’s been excitement around Claude Code for months. Why is it taking off now?
Cherny: We’ve been building the best possible product, and it seems like the market is responding. The whole AI coding space has reached an inflection point, and we’re proud to be leading the charge.
As the dust settles, it’s clear that we’re at the dawn of a new era in AI coding. Stay tuned for more updates on this rapidly evolving landscape.
