Replit is no longer partnering with Anthropic, according to CEO Amjad Masad speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt on Thursday. The company has switched its default model to OpenAI, though Anthropic remains available for users who choose it.
The switch
Masad said the move was driven by cost, partnership terms, and performance. He noted that ChatGPT has improved since Replit announced its deal with OpenAI in August. The company uses internal benchmarks to measure performance and publishes public data as well. Their results show Sol and Astra outperforming other models when building vibe-coded applications from scratch.
OpenAI is now the preferred partner for powering Replit Agent, based on economics and the strength of the relationship. Masad told TechCrunch over the weekend that the platform remains model agnostic. Users can still select Claude or other supported models if they wish.
Contradictory claims
Insiders familiar with the relationship say the partnership with Anthropic is still active. A person who asked not to be named told us the deal remains in place.
There is proof on the company website and social media that Replit promoted Anthropic products recently. A blog post from late September cited Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 as running in Replit Agent’s production environment. Around the same time, a product employee posted on X about using the flagship model Opus 5.5.
Before the OpenAI deal, Replit relied on Anthropic’s Claude models. That arrangement helped grow revenue significantly. Masad noted on stage that Replit was a top-five customer of Anthropic until recently.
After Disrupt, Masad clarified that customers can still access Anthropic models. However, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is the default setting. This change could lower Replit’s spend with Anthropic since most users stick with the default rather than selecting a model themselves.
Business growth
Masad shared insights on growth while onstage, noting that enterprise clients are providing a larger slice of revenue. He said the company is not sharing ARR numbers yet.
“We’re not sharing ARR numbers just yet, but in terms of growth, like, I would say, enterprise was like 2% of revenue last year,” Masad said. “This year, I would say like 15% of our revenue is enterprise contracts, and more than 50% of our revenue is B2B.”
Backstage, Masad told TechCrunch he expects more than half of Replit’s revenue to come from enterprise and government customers in 2027.
AI safety
Masad also commented on the necessity for good AI safety measures.
“In the same way that us humans need a certain environment to work — you need a nice office, maybe nice good food in the office, air-conditioning, computer — agents need a habitat for them to exist and do good work,” he said. “So that habitat has good orchestration, good error recovery, good safety and security and sandboxing, good networking, good identity and authorization. And once you figure all of that out, then you can deploy AI safely.”
What it means
Developers using Replit will now see OpenAI models as the standard option. This reduces the friction of setting up projects, as the platform handles the configuration automatically. Users who prefer Claude can still access it, but they must opt in. The shift suggests Replit is prioritising cost efficiency and performance metrics over maintaining an equal status with all major providers.
