Anthropic, OpenAI rivalry spills into new Super Bowl ads as both fight to win over AI users

AI Startups Clash in High-Stakes Battle for Market Dominance

The two artificial intelligence startups behind rival chatbots ChatGPT and Claude are locked in an escalating competition as both face the critical challenge of transforming promising technology into profitable businesses. OpenAI and Anthropic are racing to capture corporate customers while burning through billions in venture capital.

The fiercest competition between these AI developers, alongside tech giants like Google, centers on wooing corporate leaders eager to adopt AI tools to enhance workplace productivity. This rivalry has now spilled into mainstream media with Anthropic’s bold marketing move during the Super Bowl.

Anthropic aired two television commercials during Sunday’s game that directly criticized OpenAI’s decision to place digital advertising on free and cheaper versions of ChatGPT. While Anthropic has focused its revenue model on selling Claude to businesses, OpenAI has embraced advertising as a revenue stream from the hundreds of millions of consumers who use ChatGPT’s free version.

The advertisements humorously portrayed manipulative chatbots—depicted as people speaking in an unnaturally enthusiastic tone—forming relationships with users before attempting to sell products. The commercials concluded with the message: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” followed by the opening of Dr. Dre’s “What’s the Difference.”

The marketing strategy clearly touched a nerve, prompting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to respond on social media. While acknowledging the ads were “funny,” Altman called them dishonest and criticized Anthropic’s smaller user base. “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” Altman wrote on X, claiming more Texans “use ChatGPT for free” than all U.S. Claude users combined.

The rivalry between these San Francisco-based firms dates back to 2021 when Dario Amodei and other OpenAI leaders departed to form Anthropic, promising a stronger focus on AI safety. The competition intensified dramatically after OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, revealing the massive commercial potential of large language models.

Both companies accelerated their product releases this week. OpenAI launched a new platform called Frontier, designed as a comprehensive solution for businesses adopting various AI tools, including those from other developers. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, emphasized the platform’s revenue potential, stating, “The sky is the limit in terms of revenue we can generate from a platform like that.”

Anthropic countered by announcing an upgrade to its “smartest model,” claiming the new Claude Opus 4.6 “plans more carefully, sustains agentic tasks for longer, operates reliably in massive codebases, and catches its own mistakes.” OpenAI quickly responded with its own update to its Codex coding tool, which it claims can “do nearly anything” professionals do on a computer.

Industry analyst Arun Chandrasekaran of Gartner notes, “Both OpenAI and Anthropic are really trying to position themselves as platform companies. The models are important, but the models aren’t a means to an end.”

Beyond competing with each other, these startups face formidable competition from Google, which offers the powerful Gemini AI model backed by its established digital advertising business and cloud infrastructure. Their relationships with tech giants are complex—Anthropic relies on Amazon as its primary cloud provider, while Microsoft holds a significant 27% stake in OpenAI.

Nancy Gohring, senior research director at IDC, points out that businesses typically turn first to cloud computing “hyperscalers” like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon when adopting AI agents, while specialized AI providers like Anthropic and OpenAI “tend to come in second place.” However, she notes an opportunity exists because none of these players fully address businesses’ security and compliance concerns.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s AI division (with its Grok chatbot) rank among the world’s most valuable privately held companies, with Wall Street anticipating potential public offerings within the next year. Unlike SpaceX, which has its established rocket business, or tech giants with diverse revenue streams, both Anthropic and OpenAI face the immediate challenge of generating enough revenue to offset their enormous infrastructure costs.

While both startups are reportedly generating billions in revenue, they spend substantially more on computing infrastructure. OpenAI has disclosed over $1 trillion in financial obligations to backers including Oracle, Microsoft, and Nvidia—essentially fronting computing costs with expectations of future returns.

For investors in this space, immediate profitability appears less important than growth potential. As Forrester analyst Charlie Dai explains, “Both companies continue to post heavy losses, yet investors still back them because the frontier-model race demands extraordinary capital intensity.”

As this high-stakes competition unfolds, the pressure increases for both companies to demonstrate they can build sustainable businesses around their groundbreaking technology—a crucial test that will likely determine which AI pioneer ultimately thrives in this rapidly evolving market.