David Gewirtz / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
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ZDNET's key takeaways
Claude Code hit $1 billion fast by transforming real developer workflows.
Agentic coding built my complex iPhone app in just 11 days.
Early command-line access gave Claude Code a huge adoption edge.
Anthropic's Claude Code, a programmer's tool, just reached $1 billion in revenue a mere six months after its release. I've been managing and selling programming tools since I was a mere pup. Take it from me, this has never been a vibrant market. And here's Anthropic, pulling in a billion since May.
Also: Anthropic just released Claude Opus 4.5 - here's how it stacks up against other leading models
Let's put this in perspective. The IT world's last mega-shift was cloud computing, spearheaded by Amazon's AWS, which launched in 2006. According to Forbes, AWS reached $500 million by 2010 and was expected to reach $1 billion by the end of 2011. Not to diminish the incredible value AWS has provided for companies worldwide (including my own), but it still took six years for the last major IT earthquake to drive demand into unicorn territory.
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