Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI in Quarterly Revenue Race

For the first time, Anthropic's quarterly sales have exceeded those of OpenAI, according to figures obtained by The Wall Street Journal from sources familiar with the matter.

The ChatGPT-maker reported $6.7 billion in second-quarter revenue, representing 18% sequential growth from Q1. However, the company also saw its losses deepen during the period.

Anthropic, meanwhile, more than doubled its revenue quarter-over-quarter, reaching $11.6 billion in Q2 while posting a small operating profit. The company's performance marks a dramatic shift in the competitive landscape between the two AI leaders.

The diverging fortunes of the two companies stem largely from product adoption patterns. ChatGPT experienced a slowdown in user growth during the quarter, while Anthropic's Claude Code coding assistant continued gaining traction with enterprise customers.

Anthropic's Q2 figure represents a staggering increase from the same period in 2025, when the company recorded just $787 million in revenue — a greater than 14-fold jump year-over-year.

The company has been competing aggressively with OpenAI for corporate clients, particularly in developer-focused use cases. What was once an underdog position has transformed into a wave of enterprise adoption, especially for coding applications that enable smaller teams to accomplish tasks previously requiring larger engineering departments.

OpenAI has informed investors that its growth rate picked up during the current quarter following the July launch of new AI models, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The company has also filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering, with its annualized revenue run rate reportedly exceeding $40 billion as it prepares for the market debut.

The competition extends beyond Anthropic and OpenAI. Several major tech companies have been working to expand their AI coding offerings:

• Meta released a coding agent in beta
• Google has enhanced its developer tools
• DeepSeek recently targeted the agentic coding market with new capabilities

AI coding assistants have become attractive to businesses because they reduce development time and allow companies to bring products to market faster without expanding engineering headcount — a compelling value proposition for cost-conscious enterprises.

Both companies have submitted confidential filings to go public. Anthropic could reach the market as soon as this fall, Bloomberg reported, while OpenAI's offering timeline remains less defined.

Anthropic shared preliminary Q2 figures with prospective investors showing more than $11.5 billion in revenue and positive adjusted operating income, positioning the company favorably ahead of its expected public debut.