Anthropic's Claude Code is generating an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $2.5 billion, and its architect says companies are comparing its value to the wrong benchmark

Claude Code, Anthropic's coding agent, is generating an annualized revenue run rate exceeding $2.5 billion. Boris Cherny, the architect behind Claude Code, spoke at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen on Monday about how to evaluate its ROI.

Cherny advises customers to compare Claude Code not against other software subscriptions like $20-per-month AI tools, but against the cost of engineering labor. He cited an example of a developer who rewrote an entire codebase from one programming language to another in six days—work he estimated would previously have required a year of engineering time.

At Anthropic, once code generation was automated, code review became the constraint. The company responded by automating that process as well, deploying teams of AI agents with distinct personas to collaboratively review every pull request, followed by security scanning automation.

Anthropic is preparing for what could be one of the largest IPOs in history, five years after its founding.