Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI in Business AI Spending
The balance of power in enterprise AI adoption has quietly shifted. Expense platform Ramp reports that Anthropic now accounts for 34.4% of tracked business AI spending, edging past OpenAI’s 32.3% share based on actual corporate card transactions from more than 50,000 companies. This marks the first time Claude has overtaken ChatGPT in real-world business purchasing behavior. The swing is dramatic: Anthropic’s share jumped from roughly 9% to the mid-30s in about a year, while OpenAI’s share declined, including its steepest one-month drop in February. Because Ramp focuses on discrete SaaS-style AI subscriptions rather than bundled cloud contracts, these numbers highlight what happens when companies consciously choose a standalone AI vendor. In those head-to-head decisions, businesses are increasingly opting for Anthropic’s Claude over ChatGPT—an early but significant signal in the broader enterprise AI adoption race.
From Hypergrowth to Anthropic Profitability
Behind Anthropic’s adoption surge is a revenue trajectory that is outpacing many past tech darlings. Investor materials indicate the company generated USD 4.8 billion (approx. RM22.1 billion) in revenue in the first quarter and is projecting USD 10.9 billion (approx. RM50.1 billion) for the second quarter. Crucially, Anthropic expects to post its first operating profit—USD 559 million (approx. RM2.6 billion)—in that same quarter, years before OpenAI plans to break even. The company’s growth has been so rapid that CEO Dario Amodei described revenue expansion as “too hard to handle,” noting that Anthropic prepared for tenfold growth but experienced the equivalent of 80-fold annualized growth instead. While compute spending remains heavy, management expects costs to decline from 71 cents to 56 cents per dollar of revenue, providing the leverage needed for Anthropic profitability even as infrastructure investments continue to rise.
Claude vs ChatGPT: Different Revenue Curves, Shifting Competitive Dynamics
OpenAI still leads on absolute revenue, generating USD 5.7 billion (approx. RM26.2 billion) last quarter versus Anthropic’s USD 4.8 billion (approx. RM22.1 billion). That gap—about USD 1 billion (approx. RM4.6 billion)—matters, but Anthropic’s forecast is altering investor and customer perceptions of AI market competition. OpenAI’s income today is driven by a mix of its Codex coding assistant, rapidly growing enterprise sales, and experimental advertising on ChatGPT, supported by 55 million paying subscribers and hundreds of millions of weekly users. Anthropic, by contrast, is signaling that it can reach sustained scale while turning a profit far earlier, even as its overall revenue base remains smaller. The projected profitability highlights divergent strategies: OpenAI prioritizing expansive platform reach and feature breadth, and Anthropic focusing on efficiency, price-performance, and targeted enterprise AI adoption to convert growth into operating margins.
Why Enterprise AI Adoption Is Tilting Toward Claude
Anthropic’s strategy has been to win over the most demanding technical users first, then expand more broadly across the organization. According to Ramp’s analysis, Claude already dominates spending in finance, technology, and professional services, and wins about 70% of direct vendor comparisons against OpenAI among first-time AI buyers. By focusing on quality for power users and then layering on tools like Claude-based “Cowork” assistants, Anthropic is leveraging word-of-mouth within teams that heavily influence software choices. This approach appears to be paying off even as compute costs rise. Revenue growth from enterprise customers using Claude for business workflows is more than offsetting infrastructure expenses, enabling Anthropic’s path to profitability. For corporate technology leaders, these trends suggest a more balanced Claude vs ChatGPT landscape ahead, where reliability, safety posture, and integration depth may matter as much as brand recognition.
What Anthropic’s Profitability Means for AI Market Competition
Anthropic’s projected operating profit is reshaping expectations for the economics of large-scale AI models. Investor materials suggest the company’s quarterly growth now outpaces Zoom during its pandemic surge and even exceeds early pre-IPO trajectories of giants like Google and Facebook. At the same time, Anthropic is warning that profitability may be uneven as it ramps up long-term infrastructure, including a multibillion-dollar compute agreement with SpaceX’s Colossus data centers. OpenAI, meanwhile, is forecast to remain unprofitable for several more years and is preparing for an eventual public listing alongside Anthropic. For enterprises, this emerging divergence matters: a more financially disciplined Anthropic could offer sharper pricing and longer-term stability, while OpenAI may continue to push aggressive innovation funded by outside capital. The next phase of AI market competition will likely be defined not just by model capabilities, but by which provider can sustain growth without burning unsustainable amounts of cash.