While OpenAI is likely the biggest name in AI right now, Anthropic might actually be beating them in one very important way. A new report shows how the maker of Claude has become a fierce competitor to OpenAI when it comes to turning a profit.
While both of these companies are some of the biggest and best-known in the world right now, they both take very different approaches when it comes to the emerging technology, and therefore, how they make money.
On one side is OpenAI. It has become the face of chatbots, with ChatGPT dominating the market. It is the AI equivalent of a Jacuzzi to the world of hot tubs, and has continued its dominance by launching AI image and video generators, its own web browser, and, if reports are correct, soon a music generator.
Anthropic, on the other hand, has kept a low profile. While it also has its own chatbot known as Claude, it hasn’t spent much time on the bells and whistles. There is no AI image or video generation, and no involvement in the world of AI trends.
It focuses on more serious sides of AI, like vibe coding (the ability to write code with AI prompts), logical understanding, and helping you perfect your academic writing.
Different approach to the same problem
But it's not just the marketing approach that sets these two giants apart; they also approach business differently. As part of its immense popularity, OpenAI has leaned into its consumer side, focusing on getting people subscribed to its paid plans.
According to the Wall Street Journal's report, it currently has roughly 800 million weekly users and an annual revenue of around $13 billion. Around 30% of this comes from businesses, making OpenAI very much a company relying on the public.
Anthropic, on the other hand, has leaned fully into the corporate side of AI. It has a much smaller market appeal and has stated that roughly 80% of its revenue comes from corporate partners.
A big part of this success for Anthropic is its focus on coding ability. A report on the current state of AI by Menlo Ventures stated that “Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 on many reasoning and factuality benchmarks, making it a preferred choice for enterprises”.
The report goes on to survey that Anthropic has a 42% market share for coding, compared to OpenAI’s 21%.
This success with businesses has meant that, despite being much less popular, Anthropic isn’t far behind OpenAI when it comes to profits. It currently has an expected annual run rate of $7 billion, compared to OpenAI’s $9 billion by the end of this year.
While both also see success from big partnerships with tech companies — Microsoft supporting OpenAI and Google and Amazon supporting Anthropic — it seems that Anthropic could well be in a better position.
OpenAI is relying heavily on public interest in chatbots. To continue to make money, this requires ChatGPT and its related tools to remain relevant and more popular than the competition.
This involves OpenAI constantly developing new tools, features, and add-ons. Compared to Anthropic, the company is always releasing new features. This is both costly and relies heavily on consistent popularity.
OpenAI is relying heavily on public interest in chatbots. To continue to make money, this requires ChatGPT and its related tools to remain relevant
Anthropic, however, simply needs to consistently improve its tools in more corporate areas, building on coding, logic, and its ability to perform tasks like creating legal documents, billing, and organizing complicated tasks.
This makes the most of a far more consistent means of funding, targeting companies with deep pockets and a reliable yearly need for AI tools.
While OpenAI is continuing to try and market itself as the fun side of AI, especially through Sora 2, its AI video model, which has faced backlash in recent months, it makes it harder to market itself as a serious tool to businesses.
Anthropic’s success in this market has revolved around a clear focus on the business side. While Claude remains a popular tool to the public, it is clear that this is a secondary part for the company.
It might not be a flashy approach, or one that will pull the same attention as OpenAI, but Anthropic might have the answer that many companies are looking for - how do you make money in the world of AI?
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