This week, Anthropic and OpenAI battled each other online, bringing the long-simmering rivalry between two of the world’s largest AI companies into public view.
But the tensions run deeper than social media fights. The public drama highlighted what’s at stake in the fast-paced race for artificial intelligence: how it’s regulated, the job market, the economy and big money.
A series of new Super Bowl ads released by Anthropic on Wednesday set off a chain of events. This ad sent a clear message. The company sends a clear message that it will not run ads on the Claude chatbot, a declaration made shortly after OpenAI announced that ads will be served on ChatGPT. OpenAI executives, including Sam Altman, quickly fired back, calling Anthropic’s advertising misleading and criticizing its competitors’ business models. (OpenAI will be running its own Super Bowl ad this weekend.)
The rivalry runs deep. Anthropic’s founders are former OpenAI employees who left disagreements over 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 completely changed the industry. OpenAI launched its own coding tool called Codex and announced further business tools this week, including a new platform for managing AI agents called Frontier.
Experts say AI has the potential to change the way people live and work. TIFF between two of the industry’s largest companies shows how different their visions for these changes are.
“Betrayal” and “Violation”
Anthropic announced Wednesday a series of ads titled “Betrayal,” “Deception,” “Betrayal,” and “Violation,” two of which will air during the Super Bowl. In one ad, a man asks an older woman how he can better communicate with his mother. In the AI chatbot’s gentle yet robotic tone and cadence, the woman begins offering advice, then seamlessly launches into an ad for “a mature dating site that connects sensitive children with barking cougars.”
The spot ends with the message, “AI gets ads, Claude doesn’t,” clearly indicating OpenAI’s decision to introduce ads to its popular chatbot.
Altman took note of this, calling the ads “disingenuous” and “deceptive” in a post on X, adding that the ads do not accurately depict how ads work on ChatGPT. He then dismissed Anthropic’s business model, saying they provide “expensive products to wealthy people.” Unlike that company, Altman wrote, “We feel strongly that we need to bring AI to the billions of people who can’t afford a subscription.”
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 the engagement of its 1 billion free users because it’s in a fight to the death with other big companies.” That’s because Anthropic makes money from large business deals and paid subscriptions.
At the heart of this conflict is also who gets to shape the future of AI. Amodei, known for writing long essays on the nature and direction of AI, portrays Anthropic as an AI company focused on safety. But Altman framed the focus Wednesday as one about control.
“[T]”They want to block companies they don’t like (including ours) from using their coding products, write their own rules for what people can and cannot use AI, and now they want to tell other companies what their business model is. We care deeply about safe and broadly useful AGI (artificial generated intelligence), and we know the only way to get there is to work with the world to prepare,” Altman wrote.
Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, said in an interview that the company is taking this public position on Anthropic’s ads because “there are really important fundamental principles at stake here.”
OpenAI’s logic: Computing is expensive, and advertising helps keep products free for consumers. This is the business model that has made companies like Meta and Alphabet into big technology companies.
“In fact, we are using advertising to ensure that we expand democratic access to (ChatGPT),” Lehane said. “Certainly, if you want to question advertising, that’s fine, but you’re effectively questioning democratic access.”
Anthropic, which also offers a free version of Claude, declined to comment. He directed CNN to a blog post about the decision not to run ads on Claude.
“What is truly useful is one of the core principles of the Claude Constitution, a document that explains our vision for the Claude character and shows how we train our models,” the post reads. “Advertising-based business models can introduce incentives that contradict this principle.”
Amodei regularly warns about the risks posed by AI and those responsible for it, including CEOs like himself.
AI companies “could, for example, use their AI products to brainwash large consumer user bases, and the public should be aware of the risks this presents,” he wrote in January. “I think the governance of AI companies deserves a lot of scrutiny.”
And of course, there’s money.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that OpenAI is racing to go public in the fourth quarter of 2026, and Anthropic is also said to be planning an IPO by the end of 2026.
Together, the companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Mr. Amodei, Mr. Altman, and many of the employees of both companies are estimated by Bloomberg and other sources to be billionaires. If the IPO goes through, both men could become significantly richer and could move the U.S. stock market and, by extension, markets around the world.
OpenAI will air its own Super Bowl spot this Sunday, Altman wrote in a post for X. “For our Super Bowl ad, it’s about builders and how anyone can build something.”
