API

A defined way for one program to use another over the internet; how most developers reach AI models.

An API, an application programming interface, is a published set of rules letting software request a service: send this text, receive that answer. Most companies meet AI models this way, paying per token through the model’s API rather than running the model themselves. Announcements of API access are therefore announcements of who gets to build on a model, and on what terms.

Where it mattered in the record

  1. OpenAI DevDay 2026: the developer launches

    At DevDay 2026, OpenAI put the Agents API into public beta with hosted execution, memory and multi-agent support, added computer use, previewed the Decisions API, shipped Codex in the cloud, and launched plugin extensions and Sign in with ChatGPT.

  2. OpenAI shuts down the Sora video app

    OpenAI closed public access to the Sora video-generation app on 26 April 2026, a month after announcing the shutdown; API access was set to end on 24 September 2026. Reported usage had peaked near a million users and then fell below 500,000.

  3. Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7

    Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7 on 16 April 2026, an upgrade to Opus 4.6 for software engineering. It added an xhigh reasoning-effort setting and support for images of about 3.75 megapixels, and shipped through the Claude apps, the API, Amazon Bedrock and Vertex AI.

  4. OpenAI discontinues Sora and extends its funding round

    OpenAI said on 24 March 2026 that it would discontinue the Sora app and developer API access to its text-to-video model, and that its funding round had been extended by a further $10 billion to $120 billion in committed capital.

  5. Anthropic launches Claude, its first public assistant

    Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI researchers, released Claude on 14 March 2023 through a chat interface and an API, after a closed alpha with partners including Notion, Quora and DuckDuckGo. Two versions shipped: Claude, and the faster and cheaper Claude Instant.

  6. OpenAI releases ChatGPT as a free research preview

    OpenAI published ChatGPT on 30 November 2022: a conversational interface to a model trained with human feedback and described as a sibling of InstructGPT. It was free during the research preview and reached through a web page, with no API key and no waitlist.

  7. Microsoft licenses GPT-3 exclusively from OpenAI

    Microsoft announced a multiyear agreement on 22 September 2020 to license GPT-3 exclusively, letting it embed the model in its own products while OpenAI continued to sell GPT-3 to other customers through its own API. Azure already hosted OpenAI’s training supercomputer.

  8. OpenAI opens GPT-3 to developers through a private API beta

    OpenAI opened a commercial API on 11 June 2020 giving developers access to GPT-3 for what it called virtually any English language task. The private beta included about a dozen partner companies, among them Algolia, Quizlet, and Reddit.

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