Anthropic Customers Switch to Cheaper Models Ahead of IPO

Anthropic customers are reportedly using lower-cost alternatives to its most powerful artificial intelligence model.

That’s according to a report Sunday (Aug. 23) by the Financial Times (FT), which contends that this development among the startup’s U.S. customers raises questions about Anthropic’s aggressive spending ahead of what is expected to be the largest public offering on record.

Spending on the company’s Fable 5 model has yet to surpass roughly 11% of overall expenditures on Anthropic’s tools, the report said, citing data from 70,000 companies collected by payments firm Ramp.

The FT said this goes against a pattern of corporate customers gravitating toward the most powerful AI models. Analysts and Anthropic investors say the trend is fueled mainly by Fable’s high price and the fact that older models can handle the majority of business demands.

“Most people don’t need to operate at the frontier,” said Miles Clements, a partner at Accel, which has invested nearly $1 billion in Anthropic. The period in which customers tended to opt for only the frontier models “was not a durable era,” he added.

PYMNTS has contacted Anthropic but has not yet gotten a reply. The company declined to comment when reached by the FT.

As the report noted, Fable 5’s debut in June was interrupted when the White House forced the company to withdraw the model due to national security concerns.

Since then, the Trump administration has allowed Anthropic to relaunch the model. However, the FT added, analysts and investors say price and performance remain a larger concern in determining customers’ choice of models.

The FT report also pointed out that the lower demand for Fable adds to the uncertainty facing Anthropic before its initial public offering (IPO), which could arrive in the weeks ahead and value the company at at least $2 trillion.

That would be the largest IPO on record, surpassing that of SpaceX. That company achieved the biggest-ever first-time sale when it raised $75 billion at the outset, and later upped that figure to $86.2 billion with an overallotment option.

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote last week about new research showing that Gen Z workers made up 69% of new hires for two of the highest-paying individual roles in AI last year, forward-deployed engineers and AI engineers.

At the same time, 91% of AI workers hold at least a bachelor’s degree, a share that surpasses 95% in many of the highest-paying AI jobs.

“What emerges is a labor market splitting in two directions. A narrow group of young, technically fluent workers is being promoted faster and paid more than any previous generation at the same career stage,” the report said.

“Everyone else, including many young workers without a technical degree or specific AI skills, is competing for a shrinking supply of the entry-level roles that used to be everyone’s way in.”

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