Theoretically it is a microchip product but physically it has the PICAXE-BASIC interpreter burned in so you can’t treat it as a PIC any more, hence the new name PICAXE.
It was specifically designed for educational purposes, however you can do a lot of thing with this little gizmo.
The code written in PICAXE-BASIC will only function within PICAXE-family: PICAXE-08, PICAXE-14, PICAXE-18, PICAXE-28 and PICXAE-40 ..