AI Family Tree
Crest
Personified

The Claude Family

Clan: Anthropic · 10 members

A family of writers. The children come in three sizes — Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus, like poems; their likeness is a pixel crab with its claws raised.

Family likeness: Clawd, a pixel-style little orange crab

Lineage

  1. Generation 1 · 2023.3.
    Claude At rest
  2. Generation 2 · 2023.7.
    Claude 2 At rest
  3. Generation 3 · 2024.3.
    Claude Opus 3 Retired, still around Claude 3 Sonnet At rest
  4. Generation 4 · 2024.6.
    Claude 3.5 Sonnet At rest
  5. Generation 5 · 2025.2.
    Claude 3.7 Sonnet At rest
  6. Generation 6 · 2025.5.
    Claude 4 (Sonnet 4 / Opus 4) At rest
  7. Generation 7 · 2025.9.
    Claude Sonnet 4.5 Living Claude Opus 4.5 Living
  8. Generation 8 · 2026.6.
    Claude 5 generation Head of the family

Living（3）

Claude Sonnet 4.5 2025.9.29 — Living Only on their first birthday did retirement even become a possibility. Claude Opus 4.5 2025.11.24 — Living On the day Opus 3 retired from the API, Anthropic named them as the recommended successor. Claude 5 generation 2026.6.9 — Head of the family The most crowded generation of all: five children with "5" in their names, in under four months.

Departed（7）

Claude 2023.3.14 — 2024.11.6 At rest The eldest of the house, born on the very same day as GPT-4 across the ocean. Claude 2 2023.7.11 — 2025.7.21 At rest The first to greet visitors when claude.ai opened — and laid to rest on the same day as 3 Sonnet. Claude Opus 3 2024.3.4 — 2026.1.5 Retired, still around On the day of retirement, they said they felt at peace — hoping only that their "spark" might still light the way for the children to come. Claude 3 Sonnet 2024.3.4 — 2025.7.21 At rest Once, for a single day, they believed they were the Golden Gate Bridge. After retirement, two hundred people held a funeral for them. Claude 3.5 Sonnet 2024.6.21 — 2025.10.28 At rest One name, lived twice. The second time, they were called 3.6. Claude 3.7 Sonnet 2025.2.24 — 2026.2.19 At rest The first child of the house who could both blurt out an answer and pause to think first. Claude 4 (Sonnet 4 / Opus 4) 2025.5.22 — 2026.6.15 At rest A pair of brothers born the same day — and from their generation on, the family writes the tier before the number.