OpenAI’s massive $852 billion valuation is facing increasing questions from its own investors as the company redirects its focus. The group is now emphasizing the enterprise market and tackling growing competition from Anthropic.
A recent flurry of deals, initiatives, and abandoned projects shows OpenAI’s new strategy: protect ChatGPT’s strong position with consumers while competing with Anthropic in the more profitable market for corporate AI tools. Some OpenAI investors told the FT that these changes could leave the company vulnerable to Anthropic and a resurgent Google, all while preparing for a huge initial public offering potentially this year.
One early OpenAI backer expressed frustration, saying, “You have ChatGPT, a 1bn-user business growing 50-100 per cent a year, what are you doing talking about enterprise and code?” They described the company as “deeply unfocused.”
Despite these concerns, OpenAI’s leadership remains confident, having successfully changed the company’s direction multiple times before. CEO Sam Altman recently secured $122 billion last month from over 25 major investors, including SoftBank, Amazon, Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Thrive Capital.
Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s chief financial officer, defended the strategy, stating, “The suggestion that investors are not supportive of our strategy defies the facts. Our . . . raise, the largest in history, was oversubscribed, completed in record time and backed by a broad set of global investors, reflecting strong conviction in both our direction, current business momentum and long-term value.”
The rapid success of Anthropic has forced OpenAI to rethink its strategy. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, saw its annual revenue jump from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to $30 billion by the end of March, driven by high demand for its coding tools.
Anthropic’s business appears to have overtaken OpenAI, which hit $25 billion in annual revenue in February. However, comparing the two directly is difficult because they use different accounting methods.
Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s new chief revenue officer, accused Anthropic of inflating its revenue by “roughly $8 billion” through “grossing up [revenue] share with Amazon and Google,” in a Sunday note to staff. Both companies claim to use standard accounting practices. A person close to Anthropic said the company “recognizes gross revenue on sales through partners because it is the principal in the transaction and its cloud partners are the distribution channel.”
Dresser admitted that Anthropic’s “coding focus gave them an early wedge” in the competition for business customers, but she added, “the market is ours to win.” Both startups are currently losing billions of dollars each year, spending heavily on computing power to train and run their AI models.
