Anthropic vs. OpenAI IPO Filings
Anthropic feels like the better business
Both companies will file for an IPO this year.
Here is what the filings will show:
The vast majority of Anthropic’s revenue is generated from Enterprise customers (80-85%) who primarily use Claude for coding. OpenAI’s revenue in contrast primarily come from the Consumer (70-75%).
Anthropic should have better dollar renewal rates given its Enterprise focus. I would expect churn to be quite high among all LLM providers on the Consumer side. I tend to keep a subscription until somewhere in the coding process the LLM has such a large brain fart or consecutive brain farts that I lose patience and kill the subscription. I’ve heard of many other people, particularly those that use for coding, who take the same approach. There is a mental breaking point where it is time for a model change.
Anthropic has better profit margins due to its Enterprise focus. Perhaps post-IPO Anthropic will have enough capital to deliver consistent performance on the Consumer-side, particularly at the low-end.
Anthropic will have a superior organic revenue growth rate on the Enterprise side vs. OpenAI. I am thinking more about the future when I make this comment. Claude Opus is so superior to GPT on the coding side that the uptake by Software developers of Claude will provide Anthropic with enormous runway.
Google will ultimately have no choice but to acquire Anthropic if it truly cares about automating the coding function. I’m not confident that Google’s spend will necessarily ever make Gemini better at coding than Claude. Gemini feels more like a general purpose app given it is integrated into Gmail, Photos, Google Travel, Genie, Nano Banana, etc. However, the coding opportunity is so attractive that Google would be foolish to not pursue an acquisition of Anthropic.
I doubt that Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO and founder) wants to be part of Microsoft or Amazon. Whereas Dario has kindred spirits at Google, particularly at DeepMind (Dario used to work at Google and is friendly with DeepMind founder and CEO Demis Hassabis).