OpenAI and Anthropic Compete for Enterprise Clients

Artificial intelligence startups OpenAI and Anthropic will be competing for enterprise clients this year, CNBC reported Wednesday (Jan. 21).

Both companies are looking to increase their market share in this segment, the report said, citing interviews with company executives.

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC in an interview that she expects the share of OpenAI’s business that is made up of enterprise customers to increase from the current 40% to 50% by the end of the year, according to the report.

“As we look forward, for us, it’s eyes on the prize of, ‘How do we add value to the consumer? How do we add value to enterprises? And how do we close this capability gap?’ You’re going to hear us talk about this over and over again,” Friar said, per the report.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CNBC in a separate interview that enterprises account for 80% of Anthropic’s business and that the company finds them to be a relatively stable source of income, according to the report.

“Since the beginning, Anthropic has thought in terms of safety and reliability of AI systems, and one of the things we realized is that that was very synergistic with working with enterprises as compared to consumers,” Amodei said, per the report.

OpenAI said in November that it had gained more than 1 million business customers, which made it “the fastest-growing business platform in history.”

“Our enterprise momentum is fueled in part by consumer adoption,” the company said at the time in a blog post. “With more than 800 million weekly users already familiar with ChatGPT, adoption and ROI within businesses is realized more rapidly—pilots are shorter, and rollouts face less friction.”

OpenAI released a report in December that said there was broader adoption and deeper integration of AI across business functions.

The company’s report said enterprise workers attributed 40 minutes to 60 minutes of daily time savings to AI use, with data science, engineering and communications roles reporting the highest gains at 60 minutes to 80 minutes per active day.

Anthropic Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger said in March that Anthropic was focusing on enterprise customers and concentrating on how its technology could “help with knowledge work” for “people who spend all day in meetings or in Excel or Google Docs.”

In December, Anthropic said it teamed up with consulting firm Accenture to help companies scale AI projects and to “help enterprise clients use our smartest AI models to make major productivity gains.”

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