OpenAI has hit a major unexpected crisis, with its revenue significantly surpassed by Anthropic.
OpenAI's growth momentum is facing severe tests. The ChatGPT developer recorded a sequential revenue increase of only 18% in the second quarter, which not only disappointed some investors but also paled in comparison with its rival Anthropic — the latter's revenue in the same period not only surpassed OpenAI but also grew far faster than industry expectations.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal cited people familiar with the matter as reporting that OpenAI's second-quarter revenue reached 6.7 billion US dollars, up 18% from 5.7 billion US dollars in the first quarter, while its operating loss further expanded, casting a shadow over the company's highly anticipated IPO prospects.
In contrast, Anthropic's revenue in the same period exceeded 11.5 billion US dollars, with a sequential growth rate of more than 140%, marking the first time it surpassed the longer-established rival in quarterly revenue and posted a slight operating profit.
The performance divergence between the two companies reflects the profound changes in the competitive landscape of the AI industry since the beginning of this year.
The slowdown in ChatGPT's growth and the huge success of Anthropic's programming tool Claude Code are forcing OpenAI to re-examine its business strategy and restructure its management team.
OpenAI told investors that the company's growth rate has picked up in the third quarter with the launch of a batch of new models in July.
OpenAI's Growth Stalls, Losses Continue to Expand
OpenAI's second-quarter revenue rose 18% quarter-on-quarter to 6.7 billion US dollars, but its operating margin further deteriorated, moving the company further away from its profitability goal.
This performance disappointed some shareholders, who had expected OpenAI to show stronger catch-up momentum.
At the same time, OpenAI's management has recently gone through a series of upheavals.
Last week, Denise Dresser, the company's Chief Revenue Officer, left her post after less than a year in the role. Previously, Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap and Fidji Simo, who was once seen as the successor to CEO Sam Altman, also left the company one after another.
Frequent executive changes have exacerbated external concerns about OpenAI's internal stability.
In terms of revenue structure, OpenAI expects that revenue from enterprise customers will account for more than half of its total revenue by the end of this year, indicating that it is accelerating its transformation to the enterprise market.
According to Axios, information shared internally last week by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman shows that the company's latest annualized revenue run rate has reached 40 billion US dollars.
Anthropic Rises Strongly, Surpasses OpenAI in Revenue for the First Time
Anthropic's performance stands in sharp contrast.
The company's preliminary second-quarter revenue exceeded 11.5 billion US dollars, more than 14 times that of the same period last year, and up more than 140% from 4.73 billion US dollars in the first quarter. This is also the first time that Anthropic's quarterly revenue has surpassed OpenAI's.
More notably, while achieving explosive growth, Anthropic also posted a slight operating profit, showing that its business model is gradually moving towards sustainability. By the end of July, Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate had exceeded 65 billion US dollars, an approximately sevenfold increase from the end of last year.
One of the core engines driving Anthropic's growth is its programming tool for developers, Claude Code.
Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at Pitchbook, told Axios that although the cost per call of Anthropic's flagship model is relatively high, its higher accuracy means users do not need to run queries repeatedly or rely on manual review, making the overall cost per task more competitive in practice.
IPO Race: Anthropic May Go Public Earlier
At the capital market level, both companies are preparing for IPOs, but Anthropic appears to be further ahead in the process.
According to Axios, Anthropic is meeting with potential new investors and plans to go public in September or October this year, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase assisting in the offering.
The strategic significance of going public first cannot be ignored. The funds raised from the IPO will help the company expand the computing power resources required for model inference, and taking the lead in landing in the capital market may give Anthropic an extra edge in its competition with OpenAI.
In terms of efficiency, Gavin Baker, Managing Partner of Atreides Management, told Axios that "Anthropic used to be far better than OpenAI in token efficiency, but OpenAI has narrowed part of the gap." Both companies have reached cooperation with major inference service providers and laid out self-developed chips respectively, in a bid to reduce the service cost of AI queries in the future.
It is worth noting that the revenue statistical calibers of the two companies may be different, so caution is needed when making direct comparisons.
In addition, the competitive landscape of the AI industry is changing rapidly, and the leading edge of any single indicator is difficult to last. But it is certain that the revenue growth strategy centered on enterprise customers has been proven to be a winning path at the current stage.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Wall Street CN", author: Zhao Ying, published with authorization from 36Kr.