OpenAI slams Anthropic in memo to shareholders as rival gains momentum
Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a speaking session with SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son at the “Transforming Business through Artificial Intelligence” event in Tokyo on February 3, 2025.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images
As Anthropic gains momentum in the emerging AI market, OpenAI sent a note to investors this week criticizing its chief rival for “operating on a significantly smaller curve” and calling the company compute-constrained.
According to the memo seen by CNBC, OpenAI states that it plans to have 30 gigawatts of compute by 2030, while Anthropic expects to have around 7 to 8 gigawatts of compute by the end of 2027.
“Even at the high end of this range, our on-ramp is materially ahead and expanding,” OpenAI said. Bloomberg he was the first to report the note.
OpenAI’s interest in Anthropic is growing as companies struggle to position themselves in the rapidly evolving market for large language models and AI services. The two companies are worth more than $1 trillion combined, and both are potentially preparing for initial public offerings this year while trying to convince investors that they have sustainable business models that can withstand the pressure of taking on cash-rich companies. Google And Meta.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by CEO Dario Amodei and a group of researchers and executives who left OpenAI. Earlier this week, enterprise market winner Anthropic announced a powerful new model that will be available to a select group of companies as part of a new cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing.
In its investor note, OpenAI wrote that its own approach was “different,” noting Amodei’s comments about its deliberately conservative computing strategy.
“Each new generation of infrastructure allows us to train more capable models, making each token smarter than the last,” OpenAI wrote. “At the same time, algorithmic gains and hardware improvements reduce the cost of servicing each token, lowering the cost per unit of intelligence.”
OpenAI, which launched its generative AI offensive with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, said it was benefiting from the “combined advantage” of better infrastructure and models lowering costs and superior products driving higher revenue.
“This advantage also enables OpenAI to continue democratizing AI by making our tools available for free to hundreds of millions of people and being more generous to builders, transferring that capacity to the people who create and solve problems with our tools,” the company said.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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