Anthropic Pulls Ahead of OpenAI on Revenue

The pecking order at the top of the AI industry has shifted. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, has moved ahead of OpenAI on revenue, according to figures reported by Fortune on July 2. Anthropic is on course for a $47 billion annualised run-rate and expects to turn a profit in 2029, a year before OpenAI. OpenAI, in its most recent disclosure, put its own annualised revenue at $25 billion to $33 billion.

For a company that was the clear number two for most of the past three years, that is a notable reversal, and it is showing up in more than one measure.

The enterprise market moved first

The shift began with businesses. Adrian Cox of the Deutsche Bank Research Institute, citing data from the corporate spending platform Ramp, said Anthropic overtook OpenAI on business subscriptions in May. Around the same time, monthly visits to ChatGPT fell below half of the generative AI market for the first time, a sign that users are more willing than they once were to move between models rather than defaulting to the best-known name.

Anthropic has leaned hard into that enterprise demand. Its Claude models have become a fixture in coding and agent workloads, the areas where companies are most willing to pay, and its recent releases have been priced to keep that business. The pattern fits a wider trend on show earlier this year, when Anthropic and OpenAI together absorbed 43 percent of all startup venture funding in the first half of 2026.

Valuation followed

The revenue picture tracks a change in how investors value the two firms. In late May, CNBC reported that Anthropic had passed OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup, approaching a $1 trillion valuation in its latest funding round. Revenue leadership and valuation leadership now point the same way, which was not true a year ago.

What the numbers do and do not settle

A few caveats are worth keeping in view. These are self-reported run-rates, not audited annual results, and both companies have every reason to present their momentum in the best light. OpenAI still commands the larger consumer brand, and a single strong quarter or a major model launch could move these lines again. Sam Altman has spent recent weeks arguing for new global rules of the road for AI, a posture that reads differently now that his company is defending a lead rather than extending one.

Still, the direction of travel is hard to miss. The company many people first met as the safety-focused underdog is now, by its own accounting, the one bringing in the most money.