The rise of the new king of AI: Anthropic deeply cultivates enterprise customers, with revenue per user surpassing OpenAI.

At OpenAI, while investing billions of dollars in building data centers and chips to consolidate its dominant position in the field of artificial intelligence, a competitor supported by Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) and Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US), Anthropic, is quietly rising as a more competitive commercial force. Both companies have developed large language models to support chatbots and other AI tools. However, their revenue strategies differ: OpenAI targets individual customers through ChatGPT, while Anthropic primarily builds its business around enterprise customers. Approximately 80% of Anthropic's revenue comes from enterprises, while OpenAI's is around 30%. This strategy is proving effective. Anthropic, which has about 300,000 enterprise customers, is estimated to generate around $7 billion in annual revenue, expected to reach nearly $9 billion by the end of the year, equivalent to OpenAI's $13 billion annual revenue, but with much higher revenue per user. Their Claude series models have shown outstanding reliability in areas such as code writing, legal drafting, and financial analysis, where measurable cost savings are crucial. A survey by Menlo Ventures found that among AI developers, Anthropic holds a 42% market share in the code market, while OpenAI's share is 21%. Even OpenAI's largest partner, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US), announced in September that it would integrate Anthropic's Claude model into its Copilot software suite. Although OpenAI attracts a lot of public attention with ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users, its consumer business still struggles to be profitable, aside from monthly subscription plans ranging from $20 to $200. Advertising could be a potential source of revenue, but integrating ads into chatbot conversations poses significant challenges, and would directly pit OpenAI against leading players in the global online advertising sector, such as Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US). OpenAI's broad appeal may also disappoint enterprise buyers who prefer AI systems focused on accuracy and compliance rather than entertainment features. For example, the recent move to allow adult conversations on ChatGPT further reinforces its image as a platform for the mass market rather than a business tool. Meanwhile, Anthropic's rigorous strategy seems to be gaining recognition from enterprise users. Independent evaluations from institutions like Vals AI show that Claude performs better than OpenAI's latest models in business metrics testing that cover finance, law, and programming tasks. Reports suggest that OpenAI may still attract attention, but Anthropic's more robust strategic positioning and its support from two of the biggest cloud service providers in the technology industry indicate that it may be building a more sustainable artificial intelligence business.