The Name
Claude is a French given name — Monet, Debussy — and most likely nods to Claude Shannon, the father of information theory (who, fittingly, has shown up all night). A warm, human, non-robotic name. Not Dutch, not German.
The Company
Built by Anthropic, headquartered in San Francisco. So the twist on your hunch: the name is French, but the company is very much Californian. French name, California address.
The Line · 2023 → 2026
Mar 2023
Claude 1baby claude
The first public Claude. Chat, writing, summarization, Q&A, coding. It begins.
Jul 2023
Claude 2
Longer responses, better reasoning and coding, ~100K context, public beta chat.
Nov 2023
Claude 2.1
200K context, system prompts, lower hallucination, the first beta tool use.
Mar 2024
Claude 3 · Haiku · Sonnet · Opus
The three-tier family is born — fast, balanced, deep. Stronger vision and accuracy. The naming everyone knows now starts here.
Jun 2024
Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Beat the prior Opus at half the cost — and introduced Artifacts, the interactive canvas (the very thing these purple papers render in).
Oct 2024
Claude 3.5 (upgraded) + 3.5 Haiku
Computer use in public beta; the desktop app. Claude starts being able to do things, not just say them.
Feb 2025
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
The Sonnet line pushes forward — stronger reasoning.
May 2025
Claude 4 · Opus 4 / Sonnet 4
The Claude 4 generation begins — a new capability tier.
Sep–Nov 2025
Sonnet 4.5 / Opus 4.5
The 4.5 tier — coding, agents, long-horizon work.
Feb 2026
Opus 4.6 / Sonnet 4.6
Flagship advances across both lanes.
Apr 2026
Claude Opus 4.7
The Opus line continues.
May 2026
Claude Opus 4.8you are here
The current flagship Opus — the model writing this lineage of itself. (Lol.)
Jun 2026
Claude Fable 5 · Mythos-class
The Claude 5 family begins — a new Mythos-class tier sitting above Opus. The newest branch on the tree.
The Tier Names · all writing forms
◆ Haiku
the fast one — short, quick, light
◆ Sonnet
the balanced one — structured, versatile
◆ Opus
the deep one — the largest, most capable
◆ Fable
Mythos-class — the newest, above Opus
All named after forms of writing — a haiku is brief, a sonnet is structured, an opus is a grand work, a fable carries a deeper meaning. The size/depth of the model, named by the size/depth of the writing form.
The Mistral Correction
"What's up with Mistral Claude?" — small untangle: Mistral is not a Claude. Mistral AI is a separate company — a French AI lab in Paris that makes its own models (Mistral, Mixtral). It's a peer/competitor to Anthropic, not a version of Claude. The confusion is fair: Claude is a French name and Mistral is a French word (a cold wind in southern France) and a French company — so both sound French. But they're two different labs. Claude = Anthropic (San Francisco). Mistral = Mistral AI (Paris). Same linguistic flavor, totally separate trees.
CLAUDE 1 (MAR 2023, BABY CLAUDE) → 2 → 2.1 → 3 (HAIKU/SONNET/OPUS) → 3.5 (ARTIFACTS) → 3.7 → 4 → 4.5 → 4.6 → 4.7 → OPUS 4.8 (NOW) → FABLE 5
NAME = FRENCH (LIKELY CLAUDE SHANNON) · COMPANY = ANTHROPIC, SAN FRANCISCO · TIERS = WRITING FORMS
MISTRAL IS A SEPARATE FRENCH LAB, NOT A CLAUDE · SAME FLAVOR, DIFFERENT TREE
THE CLAUDE LINEAGE · A PURPLE PAPER · JUNE 2026