Lesson 1 of 6
Who's who
6 min read
OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, a wave of Chinese labs — the names fly past in every headline. Who actually builds this stuff, and what's each one known for?
A handful of labs, one race
Almost every AI you've heard of comes from a short list of labs, each with its own model family — a lineage that keeps getting new versions. OpenAI makes the GPT family (ChatGPT); Google DeepMind makes Gemini; Anthropic makes Claude; Meta releases Llama as open weights. Alongside them, Europe's Mistral and fast-rising Chinese labs round out the field.
It's a handful of families racing each other — not a hundred separate products.
Families, not version numbers
New versions land constantly, and the 'best' one shifts month to month. Chasing decimals is a losing game. What lasts is the family: which lab made it, what it's good at, and whether it's open or closed. Learn the families and every new release slots neatly into a map you already have.
Track the lab and the family — the version number will have changed by next month.
When a headline names a shiny new model, ask which lab and family it belongs to. That places it instantly — and tells you more than the version number does.
The short version
- —A short list of labs builds almost all of today's AI.
- —Each has a model family: GPT, Gemini, Claude, Llama, and more.
- —Track families, not version decimals — those change constantly.
What's the most useful way to keep track of AI models?
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