For OpenAI and Anthropic, the Competition Is Deeply Personal

Credit...Nick Little

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By Mike Isaac

Mike Isaac has covered the knock-down, drag-out battles of the tech industry since 2010.

It was not that long ago that Sam Altman’s OpenAI appeared to be enjoying a comfortable lead in the corporate race to bring artificial intelligence to the masses.

OpenAI created the fastest-growing consumer app in tech history, held more than $100 billion in the bank and teamed up with the world’s most powerful computing giants.

But companies are always rising and falling in Silicon Valley.

In just a few months, Anthropic, OpenAI’s smaller rival, has added thousands of big businesses as customers. It has more than doubled the revenue it expects to see this year to $19 billion, up from $9 billion last year. And its technology is being trumpeted in some tech circles as the best among its peers.

Even an ugly fallout with the Pentagon over a contract has helped Anthropic — at least in the court of public opinion. Anthropic’s smartphone app soared to the No. 1 spot in Apple’s App Store downloads after OpenAI jumped in with its own Pentagon deal.

The contract controversy involving the Defense Department, OpenAI and Anthropic was the latest round in a long-running and deeply personal feud between the tech industry’s two most important A.I. start-ups and two executives with differing views of how A.I. should be created. It also showed how quickly fortunes are changing in the world of A.I., where tens of billions of dollars are being spent in the hope that the winner will hold the reins to the future of the tech industry.

“It took years for the story to emerge on any one company,” said Siri Srinivas, a venture capitalist who invests in the A.I. sector. “Now, narratives flip in months.”

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