The balance of power within the AI industry has subtly shifted over the past year. OpenAI, once the dominant force in investment circles, now faces a comprehensive challenge from Anthropic. From enterprise market share to secondary market valuation, and from reputation among venture capitalists to public sentiment on social platforms, Anthropic is eroding OpenAI's lead across nearly every dimension. This shift in sentiment was amplified at the HumanX AI conference held this week in San Francisco. According to reports, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in attendance reached a near-unanimous consensus: Anthropic is the new favored entity in Silicon Valley. Roseanne Wincek of Renegade Partners stated, "Last year in Las Vegas, OpenAI felt like the clear winner, but now Anthropic seems to be several steps ahead." Concurrently, Anthropic announced its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) has surpassed $300 billion, exceeding OpenAI's previously reported $250 billion, making it the AI unicorn with the highest global revenue. The flow of market capital is even more telling. Reports indicate that Anthropic's valuation on the secondary market has now overtaken OpenAI's. Data circulating on social platforms suggests Anthropic's private market valuation is approximately $8.636 trillion, compared to OpenAI's $8.461 trillion. Furthermore, while buyers are queuing to acquire shares in Anthropic, existing shares of OpenAI are experiencing unprecedented lack of interest on the secondary market.
The theme of this year's HumanX conference was double the size of last year's, with approximately 6,700 attendees paying over $4,000 per ticket. However, in stark contrast to last year's atmosphere in Las Vegas where bets were placed on OpenAI, the conversation at San Francisco's Moscone Center this year revolved squarely around Anthropic. Jared Quincy Davis, Founder and CEO of AI cloud platform Mithril, commented, "They [Anthropic] have strong momentum. Their focus on the enterprise market, frontier capabilities, code generation, and deliberate avoidance of certain consumer scenarios are clearly the right decisions." Midway through the conference, Anthropic released its latest model, Mythos, describing it as so powerful that public release is delayed due to cybersecurity risks. It is being offered exclusively to a select group of enterprises through a new initiative called "Project Glasswing." Tomasz Tunguz, Founder and General Partner at Theory Ventures, noted, "The Mythos model is significant; there is tremendous excitement in the market." In contrast, finding public supporters for OpenAI at the conference was difficult. Attendee skepticism focused on two points: the perplexing acquisition of the internet talk show TBPN, and controversial dealings between CEO Sam Altman and the Pentagon. A former partner from Coatue and Kleiner Perkins stated, "A significant number of people take issue with Altman and his actions," predicting a potential talent exodus from OpenAI.
Signals from the capital markets are more direct. Reports indicate that in early April, six institutional shareholders of OpenAI—including hedge funds and prominent venture capital firms—attempted to sell approximately $6 billion worth of OpenAI stock via the secondary market platform Next Round Capital. The platform contacted hundreds of potential institutional buyers, yet found no takers. Ken Smythe, Founder of Next Round Capital, stated plainly, "We simply could not find a single institutional investor willing to take on these shares, despite having a network of hundreds of institutions." He also revealed that buyers told him they had $20 billion in cash ready, but only for purchasing Anthropic stock. This scenario is playing out on other trading platforms as well. On platforms like Augment and Hiive, the trend of investors favoring Anthropic over OpenAI is starkly evident. Adam Crawley, Co-founder of Augment, mentioned that the prevailing belief is Anthropic's valuation will catch up to OpenAI's, driving demand to buy in quickly. Valuation data confirms this assessment. Reports suggest OpenAI shares are trading on the secondary market at a valuation of approximately $7.65 trillion, a discount of about 10% compared to its last funding round. Conversely, Anthropic's secondary market valuation has reached $6 trillion, representing a premium of over 50% to its last round. The latest circulating data shows Anthropic's private market valuation has slightly surpassed that of OpenAI. The actions of Wall Street banks are also telling. Reports indicate that several banks, including Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, have begun offering OpenAI shares to high-net-worth clients without charging performance fees. In contrast, Goldman Sachs continues to charge its standard 15-20% performance fee for clients investing in Anthropic.
Behind the revenue figures, a deeper structural shift is occurring in the enterprise market. In the critical enterprise sector of code generation, Anthropic's Claude model now commands between 42% and 54% of the global market share, while OpenAI holds only 21%. In the enterprise agent market, Anthropic's share is 40%, compared to OpenAI's 27%. Growth metrics are even more indicative of the trend. Data from Ramp shows that among enterprises newly procuring AI services in March 2026, a significant 65% chose Anthropic, versus only 32% selecting OpenAI. By April 2026, Anthropic had over 1,000 enterprise customers each spending more than $1 million annually—a figure that doubled in the preceding two months. API calls and enterprise customization services now constitute over 80% of its total revenue. The disparity in cost efficiency is equally striking. Estimates suggest OpenAI's annual training costs could reach $1.25 trillion by 2030, whereas Anthropic's are projected to be only around $300 billion—a difference of over four times. With its rapid revenue growth, Anthropic could achieve cash flow breakeven by 2027, while OpenAI's path to profitability remains uncertain. In contrast, OpenAI's sole area of overwhelming dominance remains the consumer sector—ChatGPT boasts over 900 million weekly active users. However, more than 98% of these are free users, consuming substantial computing resources while generating minimal revenue. An attempt to introduce advertising into ChatGPT in February 2026 sparked widespread controversy. On social media, a user highlighted that OpenAI/ChatGPT has begun placing search ads targeting keywords related to Claude, remarking on the reversal of fortunes—a post that quickly gained significant traction.
In response to external criticism, OpenAI circulated a confidential memo to shareholders this week, which was subsequently leaked. The memo characterized Anthropic as its primary competitive threat while heavily emphasizing OpenAI's own leading advantage in compute infrastructure. According to the memo, OpenAI possessed 1.9 gigawatts (GW) of compute capacity in 2025, expects this to grow to the low double-digits next year, and reach approximately 30 GW by 2030. In comparison, OpenAI estimates Anthropic had only 1.4 GW at the end of 2025, projecting it to reach 7-8 GW next year. The memo claimed, "Even on the highest estimates, our expansion pace is substantively leading and the gap continues to widen." For its part, Anthropic has secured agreements with Google and Broadcom to access 5 GW of next-generation TPU compute power starting in 2027. Nevertheless, the very act of the memo's leak exposes a defensive posture. The fact that a company once seen as the absolute industry leader now feels the need to specifically justify its competitiveness to shareholders is itself a significant signal.
Despite Anthropic's strong momentum, several conference participants cautioned against drawing premature conclusions. "Things change so fast," noted Roseanne Wincek, "OpenAI could come back." Tomasz Tunguz also pointed out, "Every day you wake up, something has substantively changed." OpenAI's fundraising capability remains formidable. In its latest $12.2 trillion funding round, Amazon contributed $5 trillion and NVIDIA $3 trillion. Both are not purely financial investors but have secured strategic returns through compute supply and cloud service contracts. However, a structural shift in market judgment has occurred. The logic determining the winner of the AI race is evolving from "who raises the most capital and has the grandest narrative" to "who can create value for users with the lowest cost, highest efficiency, and most precise market positioning." Under this new paradigm, Anthropic currently holds the advantage.
Comments