AI: Quite the current Anthropic vs OpenAI match. RTZ #998

The Bigger Picture, Sunday, February 15, 2026

The AI World is getting a dramatic bout indeed between OpenAI and Anthropic. And both racing towards gargantuan IPOs this year. Readers may have noticed how I’ve been spending lots more time on Anthropic and its plans vs LLM AI leader OpenAI of late. Even as Google is coming on strong with its Gemini AI vs OpenAI in particular. The Bigger Picture I’d like to discuss today is the current OpenAI vs Anthropic, ‘Coke vs Pepsi’ positioning.

Even as Anthropic and the whole industry step on the gas on AI Compute and Power expenditures to over $700 billion in 2026 alone.

What most observers currently view the sibling rivalry of the two companies as ‘Coke vs Pepsi’, especially in the enterprise space. Anthropic may be poised to be a much closer competitor even at this early point in the AI Tech Wave than generally assumed.

Even to the point of the non-trivial chance that Anthropic may surpass OpenAI with its AI technologies. Kind of like Pepsi becoming Coke. Again, low odds, but the relative momentum is there for Anthropic.

Axios paints the current state of the sibling rivalry in “Anthropic subscription surge cuts into OpenAI’s lead”:

“The share of U.S. companies paying for Anthropic’s AI tools and services jumped in January, per new data.”

“Why it matters: It was Anthropic’s breakthrough month, writes Ara Kharazian, an economist at Ramp, which has been tracking business spending on AI.”

“By the numbers: The share of companies paying for Anthropic increased to 20% from 17%, per Ramp, a company that offers corporate credit cards and expense-management tools to roughly 50,000 companies nationwide.”

• “OpenAI dropped slightly from 37% to 36%.”

• “1 in 5 businesses that use Ramp now pay for Anthropic, up from 1 in 25 last year.”

The piece goes on to use a much cooler comparison than ‘Coke vs Pepsi’ that I use:

“The big picture: The competition between Anthropic and OpenAI is shaping up to be the Kendrick vs. Drake tech battle of our time.”

• “It’s not a zero-sum game in either realm. You can enjoy listening to “Not Like Us” and “God’s Plan.” Similarly, companies appear willing to pay for both companies’ tools.”

• “Anthropic isn’t gaining users at OpenAI’s expense — at least so far, per the report. According to Ramp, about 79% of OpenAI users also pay for Anthropic.”

And the driver of course is all things Claude, including Claude Code, Cowork and much more:

“Between the lines: Anthropic’s new software coding product, which went viral earlier this year, helped drive adoption.”

“Yes, but: The Ramp data doesn’t take into account workers inside companies who are using free AI tools — which would skew the numbers more in OpenAI’s favor, as ChatGPT remains the leader for consumers overall.”

• “And Ramp’s data skews toward more tech-forward early adopter type companies; not the full breadth of the business sector.”

• “A December 2025 report from Menlo Ventures found that Anthropic captures 40% of enterprise LLM spend — up from 24%, while OpenAI’s share fell to 27%, down from 50%. But the data looked only at API usage (not chatbot sessions or consumer subscriptions).”

• “Zoom out: Adoption is happening crazy fast: Nearly 47% of businesses paid for AI in January, a new high. In 2023, that number was less than 7%.”

“The bottom line: “The race isn’t zero-sum,” says Ramp’s Kharazian in a release Wednesday. “At least not yet.”

If one looks at the two companies beyond the consumer/enterprise frame, there is a possibility that the picture potentially shifts beyond the current consensus.

That Anthropic with its equity partners Amazon and Google, along with recent investors Microsoft and Nvidia amongst others, gives Anthropic AI Claude technologies a broad enough distribution at the Cloud/Platform layer (box 3 below). Along with its fast scaling enterprise and developer support in the millions. All creatin AI applications and services in the ‘holy grail’ box 6 of the AI Tech Stack, that surpass all those built on OpenAI and/or Google Gemini AI technologies.

And both founder CEOs Sam Altman and Dario Amodei penning detailed essays on how their companies are poised to do it all responsibly and at Scale before others. You can even watch Dario explain his current plans of attack in this latest discussion with Dwarkesh Patel.

That is a Bigger Picture that is unusual relative to previous tech waves. Anthropic deserves a well-earned closer watch in the months ahead.

All that’s after Anthropic’s catalytic role in the recent ‘Software Apocalypse’, and Superbowl Anti-Ads sagas. Stay tuned.

(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)