AI Price War: OpenAI Gains Ground on Anthropic
The AI price war is intensifying, with OpenAI gaining significant ground on Anthropic among business customers. According to a Wall Street Journal report, spending on OpenAI and Anthropic models via the OpenRouter platform was nearly evenly split in September among roughly 120,000 companies using both, a shift from January when Anthropic held about 75% of that spending. OpenAI's aggressive price cuts on its GPT-5.6 lineup, including an 80% reduction on its smallest model Luna and 20% on Terra, are driving this change. Companies are increasingly prioritizing cost, combining multiple providers and using cheaper models for simpler tasks. Anthropic faces its own challenges, including capacity issues with Claude Code and data retention criticism. Both companies are preparing for IPOs, needing to demonstrate sustainable revenue to justify valuations exceeding $1 trillion.
- •OpenRouter data shows OpenAI and Anthropic nearly split business spending in September, vs Anthropic holding ~75% in January.
- •OpenAI cut prices on its GPT-5.6 models by up to 80% for Luna and 20% for Terra.
- •Anthropic faces capacity shortages for Claude Code and introduced a 30-day data retention policy.
