The Big AI Companies Compared: Who Makes What in AI

A handful of AI companies make most of the models people use every day: Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google DeepMind (Gemini), Meta (Llama) and Mistral AI (Le Chat). They differ less in what their assistants can do and more in how they share their models, what they focus on, and which tools they build around them. This guide maps who makes what, so the names stop blurring together.

There are no rankings here. Each company is good at different things, and the right choice depends on what you are trying to do.

Why it helps to know who makes what

When you use an AI assistant or an AI agent, there are usually three layers involved:

• The model, the trained system that actually reads and writes text, such as Claude, GPT or Gemini.
• The app, the chat window or product you use, such as ChatGPT, the Claude app or Le Chat.
• The tools around it, such as coding agents, developer APIs and integrations.

The same company often makes all three, but not always. An open-weight model like Llama can run inside apps that Meta never built. Knowing the layers makes it much easier to compare offers and to understand why one tool can switch between several models.

The comparison at a glance

Company	Flagship assistant	Models	Open or closed approach	Coding tool
Anthropic	Claude	Claude	Closed models, available through apps and an API	Claude Code
OpenAI	ChatGPT	GPT family	Mostly closed, with some open-weight releases	Codex
Google DeepMind	Gemini	Gemini, plus the open Gemma family	Both: closed Gemini, open-weight Gemma	Gemini CLI (open source)
Meta	Meta AI	Llama	Open-weight models under Meta’s own license	No flagship agent; Llama runs in many open tools
Mistral AI	Le Chat	Mistral models	Both: open-weight and commercial models	Coding-focused models usable in open tools

“Closed” here means you use the model through the company’s apps or API, but you can’t download the model itself. “Open-weight” means the trained model files are published so anyone can download and run them, usually under a license with its own terms.

Anthropic

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company. It makes the Claude family of models and the Claude apps for web, desktop and mobile, plus a developer API.

It is also behind Claude Code, an agentic coding tool that works in your terminal on your codebase. Anthropic introduced MCP (Model Context Protocol), an open standard for connecting AI apps to tools and data, and Agent Skills, a simple folder format for giving agents reusable instructions. Its research is known for a strong safety focus, including work such as Constitutional AI.

Read more in what is Anthropic.

OpenAI

OpenAI makes ChatGPT, its general-purpose AI assistant, and the GPT family of models behind it. It also offers image and video generation tools, a developer API used by many other products, and Codex, its coding agent.

OpenAI’s main models are closed: you use them through ChatGPT or the API. It has also released some open-weight models, so its approach is not purely one or the other.

Google DeepMind

Google DeepMind is Google’s AI research lab. It builds the Gemini models, which power the Gemini app and show up across many Google products. For developers, Google offers Gemini through an API and through Gemini CLI, an open-source command-line agent.

The lab is also known for landmark research such as AlphaGo, which learned to play the board game Go at a world-class level, and AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures. Google also publishes Gemma, a family of open-weight models that you can run yourself.

Meta

Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is best known in AI for Llama, a family of open-weight models. Developers can download Llama, run it on their own hardware and build on top of it, within the terms of Meta’s license.

For everyday users, Meta’s assistant is Meta AI, which appears inside Meta’s apps. Meta’s open-weight approach has had a big influence on the wider ecosystem of models that people run locally.

Mistral AI

Mistral AI is a Paris-based company that makes both open-weight and commercial models. Its assistant is called Le Chat.

Mistral is often mentioned as a strong European option, and its open-weight models are popular for running locally and for building custom products. Its commercial models are available through its own platform and API.

The open model ecosystem

Beyond these five, there is a large world of openly shared models. Hugging Face acts as the main hub where companies and researchers publish models. Families such as Qwen (from Alibaba), DeepSeek, Gemma and Llama are widely used, and tools like Ollama let you run many of them on your own computer.

For a tour of this world, see the open model ecosystem, and for hands-on setup, how to run AI models locally with Ollama.

How the differences show up in practice

On paper, every major assistant can chat, summarize, write, analyze images and help with code. The differences you notice day to day tend to be about:

• Style and judgment. Each model family has its own tone, its own strengths and its own blind spots.
• Ecosystem. Gemini fits naturally if you live in Google’s tools; ChatGPT has a huge range of features; Claude is popular with developers for careful, long tasks.
• Access. Closed models need an account or API key. Open-weight models can run on your own machine, with no data leaving it.
• Cost and limits. Plans and usage limits change often, so check each company’s own pricing pages.

None of these is a permanent ranking. Models improve frequently, and a model that struggles with one task today may excel at it after an update.

Choosing between them for AI agents

If you use AI agents, especially coding agents, the company question becomes very practical. Each major lab has its own agent: Claude Code from Anthropic, Codex from OpenAI and Gemini CLI from Google. Open-source agents such as OpenCode can work with many providers, and Ollama brings local open-weight models into the mix.

A few simple guidelines:

1. Start with the account you already have. If you pay for ChatGPT, try Codex; if you have a Claude plan, try Claude Code.
2. Test with your own work. Give two agents the same small, real task and compare the results.
3. Use local models for simple or private tasks. They are slower on modest hardware but keep everything on your machine.
4. Consider mixing. A reviewer built on a different model is less likely to share the same mistakes as the author.

For a deeper look at the three big coding agents, read Claude Code vs Codex vs Gemini CLI.

Mixing models is exactly the idea behind BotQuarters: a team of AI coding agents on your Mac where each teammate can use Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode or a local model through Ollama, all in the same team, with your own AI accounts.

FAQ

What are the main AI companies?

The companies most people encounter are Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google DeepMind (Gemini), Meta (Llama and Meta AI) and Mistral AI (Le Chat). Alongside them, many companies and research groups publish open-weight models, such as Alibaba’s Qwen family and DeepSeek.

Which AI company makes open-source models?

Meta’s Llama, Google’s Gemma, Mistral AI’s open-weight models, Qwen and DeepSeek are all published so you can download and run them. Strictly speaking, most are “open-weight” rather than fully open source, because the training data and code are usually not released and the licenses vary.

Is ChatGPT made by Google?

No. ChatGPT is made by OpenAI. Google’s assistant is Gemini, built by Google DeepMind, and Anthropic’s assistant is Claude.

Which AI company is best for coding?

There is no single winner. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google each offer a capable coding agent, and the best fit depends on your account, your project and how you like to work. Trying two of them on the same real task is the quickest way to decide.