Anthropic, the maker of Claude AI, is on track for $9 billion in annualized revenue by 2025 and $20–$26 billion by 2026, potentially surpassing OpenAI’s growth.
Anthropic’s Revenue Surge Positions It to Rival OpenAI by 2026
Anthropic, the fast-growing AI company behind the Claude language models, is witnessing a surge in revenue growth that could soon put it ahead of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. According to a Reuters report, Anthropic is on track to hit an annualized revenue run rate of $9 billion by the end of 2025, with projections of $20–$26 billion by 2026.
In comparison, OpenAI reported an annualized revenue of $13 billion as of August 2025 and is expected to exceed $20 billion by year-end. If Anthropic’s momentum continues, it could overtake OpenAI in 2026 — a major shift in the competitive AI landscape.
Looking ahead, OpenAI’s longer-term projections suggest $125 billion by 2029, and even as high as $200 billion by 2030. There is no publicly available information on the revenue of OpenAI for 2026.
Enterprise Demand Fuels Anthropic’s Growth
A key driver of Anthropic’s rapid rise is its strong focus on enterprise AI solutions. The company serves more than 300,000 business customers, with enterprise clients contributing around 80 percent of total revenue.
Its Claude Code model, tailored for developers and enterprise users, has already achieved an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since launching earlier this year.
In early 2025, OpenAI reported growing from 2 million to 3 million paying business customers over a few months.
Affordable AI Model Haiku 4.5 Expands Market Reach
To further accelerate adoption, Anthropic introduced Haiku 4.5, a cost-effective AI model designed for companies seeking performance without high costs.
Haiku 4.5 is priced at about one-third the cost of Anthropic’s mid-tier Sonnet 4 model while delivering comparable or better performance, especially in coding and enterprise automation tasks. Haiku 4.5, the lower-cost model, is priced at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens. For comparison, the price of OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini is $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens.
This move aims to broaden Anthropic’s market reach among startups and mid-sized enterprises that are price-sensitive but still demand cutting-edge AI tools.
Global Expansion: India in Focus
Anthropic is also expanding internationally. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026, making it Anthropic’s second-largest market after the U.S.
To support its growth, Anthropic intends to triple its global workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold within the next year. This aggressive hiring plan underscores the company’s ambitions to scale its enterprise solutions and maintain a competitive edge.
Anthropic vs. OpenAI: The Next AI Power Shift?
The competition between Anthropic and OpenAI is intensifying as both companies race to dominate the AI enterprise and consumer markets. While OpenAI remains ahead in total revenue as of 2025, Anthropic’s faster growth trajectory and enterprise-first strategy could soon narrow the gap.
If Anthropic achieves its $20–$26 billion revenue goal in 2026, it may surpass OpenAI, marking a major realignment in the global AI hierarchy.
Anthropic’s impressive revenue growth, enterprise dominance, affordable model lineup, and global expansion plans are rapidly transforming it into a formidable rival to OpenAI.
With Claude AI gaining strong adoption and new innovations like Haiku 4.5 appealing to cost-conscious businesses, Anthropic may soon emerge as the new leader in the AI race by 2026.
Rajani Baburajan
