What Is Claude? Anthropic's AI Assistant Explained

Claude is an AI assistant developed by Anthropic — an American AI company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers. Alongside ChatGPT and Gemini, Claude is now one of the most widely used and capable AI systems in the world.

Here is Claude explained — what actually defines it, and why we at BIT-Partners rely on Anthropic's models in our AI projects.

Who Is Behind Claude?

Behind Claude is Anthropic — an American AI company headquartered in San Francisco, founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, along with several other former OpenAI researchers. Dario Amodei serves as CEO, Daniela Amodei as President.

The reason for founding the company: the group had differing views on the speed and safety of AI development at OpenAI — and decided to build their own company with safety at its core from the start. That might sound like marketing — but it's structurally embedded.

Anthropic invests heavily in AI safety research and has developed its own methodology called Constitutional AI, which trains the model according to a defined set of values. The result: Claude tends to be more cautious, more transparent about its own uncertainties, and less prone to hallucinations than many alternatives.

What Can Claude Do?

Claude is a Large Language Model (LLM) — a language model that understands, generates, and analyses text. Specifically, Claude can:

• Write and edit text: — emails, reports, proposals, documentation
• Analyse data and documents: — PDFs, spreadsheets, code, long texts
• Write and debug code: — in all major programming languages
• Answer complex questions: — with nuanced, well-reasoned output
• Think structurally: — plan and execute multi-step tasks
• Understand images: — analyse screenshots, diagrams, and photos (multimodal)

Claude is especially strong when handling long documents. Its context window — the amount of information Claude can process at once — is among the largest on the market.

Claude vs. ChatGPT: What Is the Difference?

The most common question we hear. Both are powerful AI assistants, but there are clear differences:

Claude is developed by Anthropic, places a strong emphasis on safety and transparency, and excels at long, complex analytical tasks. The model is known for openly acknowledging uncertainty rather than projecting false confidence.

ChatGPT comes from OpenAI, is the better-known product, and offers a broader plugin ecosystem through the GPT Store. For many everyday tasks, it is equally capable.

In practice, many businesses combine both — depending on the use case.

The Different Claude Models

Anthropic offers Claude in different sizes, varying in speed, capability, and cost:

• Claude Haiku: — fast and affordable, ideal for simple tasks and high volumes
• Claude Sonnet: — the balanced model for most business applications
• Claude Opus: — the most capable model for complex analysis and reasoning

For most SME projects, Claude Sonnet is the right balance of quality and cost.

How Businesses Use Claude in Practice

Claude can be integrated directly into your own systems via API, or used as a ready-made tool through Claude.ai. Typical business applications include:

• Document analysis: automatically evaluate contracts, invoices, and reports
• Customer service: internal support assistants with access to company knowledge
• Knowledge management: query internal databases using natural language (RAG)
• Process automation: integrated with n8n, Zapier, or custom workflows
• Code assistance: boost developer productivity

Data Privacy: How Secure Is Claude?

A legitimate question, especially for Swiss businesses. Anthropic offers explicit data protection guarantees for enterprise customers: data submitted via the API or Claude for Work is not used to train new models by default.

For businesses handling particularly sensitive data, we recommend private AI implementations — hosted locally or on Azure, with no data shared with external providers. This is one of our core areas at BIT-Partners.

How We Use Claude at BIT-Partners

We work with Claude every day — for developing AI workflows, analysing client data, and automating internal processes. In client projects, we integrate Claude directly into existing systems via the Anthropic API, combined with MCP servers for access to external data sources.

For us, Claude is not just a tool — it is a partner in building modern AI solutions. Take it one step further with AI agents that don't just answer, but act autonomously.

If you would like to know how Claude can be used in your business specifically, book an appointment.