Anthropic reported higher quarterly revenue than OpenAI for the first time in their commercial history. The Wall Street Journal notes that OpenAI revenue increased by 18 per cent to $6.7 billion in the quarter ending June, yet Anthropic doubled its income over the same period. This performance gap disappointed some investors, even though Anthropic posted a small operating profit while OpenAI remains unprofitable ahead of an expected initial public offering. Year over year, Anthropic claims its annualised revenue rate has grown sevenfold to $65 billion. Slower growth associated with ChatGPT and the strong uptake of the coding tool Claude Code are putting financial pressure on the US company. Additionally, Vercel data suggests Anthropic earns significantly more per use from its Claude models compared to OpenAI’s offerings. OpenAI states that growth picked up again after GPT-5.6 launched in July.
The shift highlights a divergence in unit economics and operational efficiency between the two firms. OpenAI continues to burn cash to fund future development, whereas Anthropic has achieved profitability with a smaller user base. This financial discipline could influence how each company approaches future pricing and product expansion strategies.
- OpenAI revenue: $6.7 billion
- Anthropic revenue: $11.6 billion
- OpenAI operating margin: negative
