OpenAI Investor Questions Valuation, Anthropic Annual Revenue Surpasses Former by End of March

According to 1M AI News monitoring, The Financial Times interviewed multiple OpenAI investors, revealing financial details in the current competitive landscape between the two companies. Anthropic's annualized revenue has risen from $90 billion at the end of 2025 to $300 billion as of the end of March this year, primarily driven by demand for programming tools, seemingly surpassing OpenAI's $250 billion recorded in February. However, the two companies use different accounting methods: OpenAI's newly appointed Chief Revenue Officer, Denise Dresser, alleged in an internal memo sent to employees on Sunday that Anthropic fully books distribution revenue from Amazon and Google, "artificially inflating by about $80 billion." Anthropic's response is that the company is the transacting party, and the cloud partners are merely distribution channels, so fully recording revenue aligns with standard accounting principles.

Secondary market data reflects a more direct assessment: buyer demand for Anthropic's stock has surpassed OpenAI for the first time, willing to pay a premium for Anthropic over OpenAI for the first time. Roy Luo, a partner at Iconiq Capital, bluntly stated, "The winner takes it all between the top two players, and we made a choice and invested heavily in Anthropic." Iconiq's total investment in Anthropic exceeds $1 billion, while also holding a small amount of OpenAI shares. Another investor holding positions in both companies stated that to endorse participation in OpenAI's last funding round (valued at $852 billion), one must assume an IPO valuation of over $1.2 trillion, while Anthropic's current valuation is only $380 billion, making it "cheaper" by comparison. An early supporter of OpenAI described it as a "company in extreme disarray," questioning why a consumer-facing business with 1 billion users and 50-100% annual growth would compete in the enterprise software market.

OpenAI's CFO, Sarah Friar, denied claims that the company had lost investor support, stating that the just completed $122 billion funding round was oversubscribed, setting a record. At the infrastructure level, OpenAI disclosed last week to investors that it has secured 8 gigawatts of computing power and claimed that Anthropic will not reach this scale until the end of 2027. OpenAI's AI programming tool, Codex, has been designated as the core battleground for the enterprise market, with insiders revealing that its long-term priority may surpass ChatGPT's.

Jai Das, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures, who does not hold equity in either company, likened OpenAI to the "Netscape of the AI era," the internet pioneer that once dominated the browser market, was eventually surpassed by Microsoft, and acquired by AOL.