Anthropic appears poised to cement its position as a dominant force in artificial intelligence. The company is reportedly in talks to raise tens of billions in a funding round that could value it at approximately $950 billion, potentially outpacing OpenAI's $854 billion valuation from its March funding round. Business customers are increasingly gravitating toward Anthropic's Claude over OpenAI's ChatGPT, with a recent report showing Anthropic has quadrupled its market share among business users since May 2025.
Cat Wu, who joined Anthropic in August 2024 as head of product for Claude Code and Cowork, has played a pivotal role in this growth. Wu has guided the evolution of Claude from a simple informational chatbot into a sophisticated coding tool and beyond. She works closely alongside Boris Cherny, a core technical member at Anthropic and creator of Claude Code, with the pair earning the internal nickname "Batman and Robin." Wu oversees the development of new features and product strategy for the company.
Wu sat down for an interview at the second annual Code with Claude conference in San Francisco last week, where she discussed her approach to product development. According to Wu, Anthropic's primary focus isn't monitoring competitors but rather staying at what she calls "the exponential." The company instilled this philosophy throughout its teams, operating on the belief that AI capabilities will continue improving rapidly. Wu argued that fixating on competitors leaves companies perpetually behind, noting that focusing on external benchmarks typically results in lagging two weeks to a month behind execution speed.
The development pace at Anthropic has been relentless, with the company releasing at least six models last year and nearly matching that number already this year. Wu expressed optimism that this rapid release cadence would continue, pointing to steady improvements in model capabilities. She suggested future deployment strategies might shift, citing how the company handled its Glasswing release as an example of evolving approaches to bringing new models to users.