> Anthropic is way more focused. That helps in a way that builds upon another: their product tends to be better and the people's perception of it as well.

But they are still not likely to be investment-grade at IPO.

I disagree with this, most normies will never use Claude code... but they WILL use ChatGPTs various modes and apps that handle a lot of things for them.

Their recent "intelligent ui" (forget what they call it), which turns the chat almost into a magazine is amazing for people when they start doing measuring or responses comeback as little graphs or diagrams showing this or that.

Claude is still not able to generate pixel images.

I agree Claude is better for the likes of you and I, but I see the opposite in non-technical people which is most people

What if I asserted that the MCP economy could be worth 5x more than LLM market since tools usually end up just being a fraction of the opportunity compared to market domination.

>OpenAI is a bit more scattered brained and spread across multiple products.

I wonder what came of the Jony Ive acquisition that was supposed to yield a physical product

This would by my question. Why do they need money at all after just raising 9 months ago?

But none of these numbers are real. Softbank and MGX are re-arranging the deck chairs between OpenAI and Stargate so the actual new outside money here indicates very weak demand.

This is a press release to try to anchor the valuation but it doesn't seem like a lot of people are buying that.

I do expect them to IPO in ~6 months - they were planning to IPO in 2026Q4 but they torpedoed those plans, and Sam Altman said it's off the table for the rest of 2026. The implication is that it's on the table for 2027Q1.

Interest rates are the big wildcard. If this is the start of a significant rising cycle, akin to 2022/2023, then the AI bubble is toast and all these companies are dead. If the Fed pauses in December/January there may be a window of opportunity in early 2027 and we'll see both OpenAI and Anthropic IPO and possibly jump.

Rising interest rates are a triple whammy to AI companies: 1) risk capital always flees first when rates go up, so the available capital dries up 2) they and their suppliers have borrowed significantly to fund datacenter expansion, so rising rates will directly increase their expenses and 3) AI is considered an investment for their customers, and corporate finance always pulls back on more speculative investments when rates go up, and so their customers will likely pull back and directly shrink their revenue.

Developer sentiment seems to be awarding Anthropic on quality and efficiency with more usage (plus Claude Code CLI being earlier to market), although maybe OpenAI is in bed with enough non-coding enterprises that it has an edge there.

But Anthropic might not actually be worth more that much more than OpenAI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50394906

Anthropic has had a laser focus on Enterprise features whereas Chatgpt is much more consumer focus.

For me OpenAI doesn't have any stickiness/moat. I only use it because Sol 6.1 tokens are cheaper for similar quality for typical tasks. I also find it can be hit-or-miss more so than others when designing a system interactively.

Coding agents are the most profitable application of AI at the moment, and Anthropic has the most widely used one

I use openai models for math, but that's an infinitesimal market

Opus 5.5 came out more than a month and a half ago and is the clear favorite amongst developers, and OpenAI has yet to release something that can match or exceed it. That means they don't have their ducks in a row, and the internal models they do have take too long to prepare for general release.

Yes that is all interesting but the only thing that matters for company valuations is how much money they make, how quickly the amount of money they make is growing, and how much the assets they own are worth.

Anthropic better at turning whatever it is they have into higher revenue than OpenAI

At the end of the day that’s all that matters

Weird, I've been told repeatedly that inference is wildly profitable for both of these companies and waves hands training costs are irrelevant for some reason.

Prediction markets may say that — investors and analysts appear to be saying that $1.2T is a reach.

Prediction markets are famously never wrong.

Less sarcastically though the bet on how much AI company IPO at attracts a certain type of people. People who may have a certain believe about AI companies which will bias their assumptions quite a bit.