Just three years ago, Anthropic was the quieter AI lab that had been spun out of OpenAI by researchers worried about AI safety. Today, it appears to have overtaken its former parent.
A new chart from The Information shows Anthropic at a staggering $45 billion annualized revenue run-rate, compared to OpenAI’s $30 billion. That means Anthropic is now generating roughly 35% more revenue than OpenAI — a company that until recently seemed untouchable in the AI race.
The numbers are remarkable not only because of the crossover, but because of the speed. Anthropic has gone from near-zero revenues in 2023 to what is likely the fastest scaling software business in history. Anthropic’s revenue run-rate had previously touched $30 billion and the company was already closing in on OpenAI’s revenues.
Anthropic’s rise has largely been driven by enterprise adoption. While OpenAI dominated the consumer AI wave through ChatGPT, Anthropic quietly built a reputation among developers and businesses. Its coding product Claude Code appears to have become a breakout success, helping the company capture significant API and enterprise market share. OfficeChai had earlier reported that Anthropic had surpassed OpenAI in U.S. business adoption, with sophisticated businesses increasingly preferring Claude over ChatGPT.
The irony is hard to miss. Anthropic itself was founded by former OpenAI researchers, including CEO Dario Amodei, after disagreements over OpenAI’s direction. OpenAI has since gone on to spawn multiple major AI startups — from Anthropic to SSI to Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines.
But Anthropic is different from the others. It isn’t merely another ex-OpenAI startup — it now appears to be the commercial leader of the AI industry.
The divergence between the two companies is also philosophical. OpenAI aggressively pursued consumer virality with ChatGPT, image generation and multimodal products. Anthropic stayed focused on enterprise workflows, coding and reliability. That strategy increasingly looks prescient. Anthropic also seems on track to profitability much faster than OpenAI, largely because of its enterprise-heavy business model.
There are caveats to the comparison. Different companies calculate “run-rate” differently, and some analysts believe Anthropic reports more gross marketplace revenues than OpenAI does. There is also debate around whether Anthropic had truly passed OpenAI in revenues and concluded that accounting differences complicate direct comparisons.
But regardless of accounting nuances, the broader trend is undeniable: Anthropic is growing at a speed that even OpenAI hasn’t matched.
And perhaps the most significant signal is this — OpenAI now increasingly appears to be reacting to Anthropic, not the other way around. Whether in coding models, cybersecurity products, or enterprise AI, the momentum in the AI race seems to have decisively shifted.