Boris Cherny created Claude Code as a personal prototype at Anthropic in September 2024, rapidly evolving it into the company's most popular coding tool through quick iteration, internal adoption, and leveraging the Claude 3.6 AI model—though no verified sources confirm it achieved $1 billion in revenue within six months.[1][2][3]
Boris Cherny's Background and Entry into Anthropic
Boris Cherny, a former Meta engineer experienced in building scalable systems like Relay mutations for API consistency, joined Anthropic in September 2024.[1][2] His prior work at Meta involved hacking on JavaScript tools for Facebook Groups and Messenger integrations, honing skills in rapid prototyping and team scaling.[3] At Anthropic, he aimed to familiarize himself with the company's public API by experimenting with the Claude 3.6 model.[2]
Birth of the Prototype
Cherny started with a "barebones" terminal-based version: it could interact with his computer but lacked file reading, bash access, or advanced engineering features.[2] He iterated using simple prompts, tweaking outputs, testing them, and gathering colleague feedback when something "felt off."[2] This solo hacking phase quickly yielded a daily-use tool for himself.[2]
Path to Explosive Internal Adoption
By November 2024—just two months later—Cherny released a dogfooding-ready version.[2] On launch day, 20% of Anthropic's engineering team used it; by day five, that jumped to 50%.[2] He shared it with future core team members, sparking widespread daily use among developers.[2] This validated product-market fit internally, convincing Cherny it could succeed externally.[2]
Building the Team and Key Innovations
Sid Bidasaria, engineer #2, joined in November after discovering the prototype and contributing Claude Code subagents.[2] With founding product manager Cat Wu, the small team enjoyed freedom to experiment.[2] Cherny credits success to focusing on real user problems rather than over-scaling teams early, a lesson from Meta where too many engineers sometimes diluted impact.[3] In a December 2025 podcast, he discussed non-coding uses, competition views, and career advice.[1][3]
Interesting Facts and Rapid Rise
- Lightning prototyping: Cherny built dozens of versions by tweaking AI prompts alone, without initial file or shell access—showing how accessible AI tools enabled solo innovation.[2]
- Meta-to-AI pivot: His Meta experience with "consistency at the cost of reliability" in queuing systems directly informed Claude Code's abstractions, later used company-wide.[1]
- No revenue details confirmed: Sources highlight its status as Anthropic's top coding tool and internal hit, but lack data on $1B revenue in six months (release ~late 2024/early 2025).[1][2][3] For deeper dives, check Cherny's interviews on career growth and tool specifics.[1][3]
