A shake-up in the world of top model builders
Ever since artificial intelligence (AI) burst into the public consciousness, ChatGPT – much like Google did with the internet – has become synonymous with AI.
Two years ago, OpenAI, the company behind it, was undeniably leading the AI race by a comfortable margin. In recent months, however, a new AI king has been crowned: rival AI firm Anthropic’s annualized revenue exceeded $40 billion, surpassing OpenAI’s latest figures of $25 billion. In secondary market trading, Anthropic’s valuation has reached $1 trillion, while OpenAI hovers around $880 billion. Anthropic is also reportedly working on a $50 billion funding round, which, with a $900 billion valuation, would officially put the company ahead of its rival. It’s worth examining how OpenAI might lose its dominant position and what this reveals about the future of AI.
The answer lies not in a single brilliant product or technological breakthrough, but in the fact that the two companies are following radically different paths. With ChatGPT, OpenAI has created the fastest-growing consumer application in history: by March 2026, it had reached 900 million weekly active users, with more than 50 million paying subscribers. These are impressive numbers, but consumer subscriptions are in a lower price bracket and are more prone to churn. Currently, about 60% of OpenAI’s revenue comes from consumers (ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Go subscriptions), and only 40% from enterprise customers. Anthropic, by contrast, has essentially skipped the consumer phase. The Claude chatbot exists, but it has never been positioned as a competitor to ChatGPT; rather, it is marketed as a developer tool and an enterprise solution. According to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, roughly 80% of revenue comes from enterprise clients, with over 1,000 companies spending at least $1 million annually on Claude’s services. That number has doubled in less than two months. This is a significant departure from OpenAI’s model, as enterprise contracts are higher-value, harder to cancel, and represent a much more predictable source of revenue.
Annualized revenue (USD) of AI companies (2023-2026)
The economic reality of AI services is that revenue scales linearly in proportion to the number of tokens used. A company that initially uses Anthropic Claude only for code review will eventually expand its use to internal documentation, customer service, and legal text analysis, and then, with the spread of agentic models, to its entire workflow, exponentially increasing the number of tokens used over time. The classic “land and expand” dynamic (entering with a narrow use case and then naturally expanding within the organization) is one of the strongest in the AI services market and can provide a lasting competitive advantage to the player that penetrates enterprises more quickly.
However, the competition between consumer dominance and enterprise focus has not yet been decided. OpenAI’s 900 million users represent the world’s largest AI distribution channel. In contrast, Anthropic’s 80% enterprise share and the Claude Code-driven growth spiral represent a higher-value, stickier business model. The market currently prices in the view that Anthropic’s approach is more effective, but the AI market may be large enough for both models to succeed. The coming months will be decisive, as both companies are preparing for an IPO, so the IPO filings will ultimately reveal what lies behind the numbers.
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