A long-simmering rivalry between two of the world’s biggest AI companies was on public display this week as Anthropic and OpenAI took swings at one another online.
But the tensions run deeper than a social media spat. The public drama underscored what’s at stake in the fast-moving artificial intelligence race: how AI is regulated, the job market, the economy and massive amounts of money.
A series of new Super Bowl ads from Anthropic on Wednesday set off a chain of events. The ads sent a clear message: The company won’t put advertisements in its Claude chatbot, a declaration that came shortly after OpenAI said ads were coming to ChatGPT. OpenAI executives, including Sam Altman, quickly hit back and accused Anthropic’s ads of being misleading and criticized their competitor’s business model. (OpenAI plans to run its own SuperBowl ad this weekend. )
The rivalry runs deep. Anthropic’s founders are former OpenAI employees who left over disagreements about the ChatGPT maker’s direction, approach to safety and pace of AI development. While ChatGPT has become a household name, Anthropic’s Claude is a favorite among software engineers, who say Claude Code and Claude Cowork have completely changed their industry. OpenAI launched its own coding tool, called Codex, and this week announced more business tools, including a new platform to manage AI agents called Frontier.
Experts say AI could change the way people live and work; the tiff between two of the industry’s biggest players shows how different visions for those changes can be.
‘Betrayal’ and ‘Violation’
Anthropic on Wednesday unveiled a series of ads, two of which will air during the Super Bowl, titled ‘Betrayal,’ ‘Deception,’ ‘Treachery’ and ‘Violation.’ In one ad , a man asks an older woman how he can communicate better with his mother. In the soothing yet robotic tone and cadence of an AI chatbot, the woman starts giving advice before seamlessly launching into an advertisement for a “mature dating site that connects sensitive cubs with roaring cougars.”
The spots, which ends with a message about how ‘Ads are coming to AI, but not to Claude” are a clear swipe at OpenAI’s decision to bring ads to its popular chatbot.
Altman took note, calling the ads “dishonest” and “deceptive” in a post on X, adding that the ads didn’t accurately portray how ads will work on ChatGPT. Then he took a swipe at Anthropic’s business model, saying they serve “an expensive product to rich people.” Unlike that company, Altman wrote, “we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”
Anthropic has defended its business model before. Speaking at the World Economic Forum last month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company doesn’t “need to maximize engagement for a billion free users because we’re in some death race with some other large player.” That’s because Anthropic makes money from large business contracts and paid subscriptions.
At its core, the rivalry is also about who will shape the future of AI. Amodei, known for writing lengthy essays about AI’s nature and direction, has portrayed Anthropic as being the AI company focused on safety. But Altman on Wednesday framed that focus as one about control.
“[T]hey block companies they don’t like from using their coding product (including us), they want to write the rules themselves for what people can and can’t use AI for, and now they also want to tell other companies what their business models can be,” Altman wrote. “We care a great deal about safe, broadly beneficial AGI (artificial generative intelligence), and we know the only way to get there is to work with the world to prepare.”
In an interview, OpenAI’s Vice President of Global Affairs Chris Lehane said the company is taking such a public stance on Anthropic’s ad because “there’s a really important underlying principle at stake here.”
OpenAI’s logic: Computing is expensive, and advertising helps keep products free for consumers. It’s a business model that’s propelled companies like Meta and Alphabet to become tech behemoths.
“We actually are using advertising to make sure we’re expanding the democratic access to (ChatGPT),” Lehane said. “And so sure, if you want to question advertising, fine, but you’re effectively questioning democratic access.”
Anthropic, which also offers a free version of Claude declined to comment. It directed CNN to a blog post about its decision not to put ads in Claude.
“Being genuinely helpful is one of the core principles of Claude’s Constitution, the document that describes our vision for Claude’s character and guides how we train the model,” the post reads. “An advertising-based business model would introduce incentives that could work against this principle.”
Amodei regularly warns about the risks posed by AI and those in charge of it – including CEOs like himself.
AI companies “could, for example, use their AI products to brainwash their massive consumer user base, and the public should be alert to the risk this represents,” he wrote in January. “I think the governance of AI companies deserves a lot of scrutiny.”
And, of course, there’s also the money.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that OpenAI is racing toward a public listing in the fourth quarter of 2026, Anthropic is also said to be planning an IPO by the end of 2026.
Both companies are worth, collectively, hundreds of billions of dollars. Amodei, Altman and many of the workers at both companies are estimated to be billionaires by Bloomberg and others. An IPO could make both men considerably wealthier – and could move the US stock market and, by extension, markets around the world.
OpenAI will air its own Super Bowl spot this Sunday, Altman wrote in his X post: “As for our Super Bowl ad: it’s about builders, and how anyone can now build anything.”