OpenAI is attracting customers from competitor Anthropic by offering significant discounts.
According to a report by IT media outlet The Information on October 24, the coding software company Rippling saw a shift in model usage among its engineers. In May, 57% of coding tasks utilized Anthropic's model, while only 16% used OpenAI's. Currently, however, OpenAI's model has surged to 52%, while Anthropic's has dropped to 18%.
Rippling CEO Parker Conrad stated that the switch to OpenAI's model was made to reduce costs, noting, "People familiar with the field significantly reduced their use of Anthropic's model last summer and switched to alternatives."
Similarly, coding app company Replit has transitioned its primary model to OpenAI's in recent months, influenced by OpenAI's offer of over 30% discounts on contracts exceeding $100 million annually. In contrast, Anthropic did not provide additional discounts to existing customers unless they increased their total contract size.
Atomicwork, an AI-based service management company, also began incorporating OpenAI's model after initially using only Anthropic's.
OpenAI has established dedicated messaging channels for customer support, involving engineers, sales staff, and representatives from investor Andreessen Horowitz to address issues with coding tools.
By applying large-scale discounts or offering free access to enterprise AI models, including its coding tool Codex, OpenAI is targeting Anthropic's customer base. Discounts range from 20% to 30% off the standard price, with some companies receiving even larger reductions.
Jonathan Cornelis, CEO of data training company DataCamp, reported receiving a 40% discount from OpenAI, stating, "We expect our costs to decrease by about 80-90%. That's a significant amount."
For customer companies, the burden of switching models is minimal. In fact, Replit found that transitioning from Anthropic's model to OpenAI's required only a few hours for code adjustments and a few days for product implementation.
With its initial public offering (IPO) approaching next month, Anthropic must contend not only with OpenAI but also with free open-source models that are encroaching on its market share. Despite a slight slowdown in growth, Anthropic's third-quarter growth rate remains around 45%.
However, major clients of Anthropic, including Cognition, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, are seeking to lower costs associated with using the Claude model by developing proprietary technologies or securing alternatives.
Anthropic has maintained a higher gross profit margin compared to OpenAI. In the second quarter, its computing costs, including expenses for new model development, reached $5.6 billion, while revenue was $11.5 billion. In contrast, OpenAI's computing expenses are expected to significantly exceed its total revenue this year.
The Information noted that OpenAI's aggressive discounting strategy is aimed at capturing market share, even at the cost of worsening its already negative margin structure.
Meanwhile, fintech company Ramp, which analyzes corporate payment data from over 30,000 major U.S. companies, reported that as of April, Anthropic's payment share reached 34.4%, surpassing OpenAI's 32.3% for the first time. By September, the share of companies paying for Anthropic had risen to 43.8%, while OpenAI's share was 40.6%, widening the gap.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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