OpenAI made more money than Anthropic, but ChatGPT growth has stalled
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For a company which has made its name synonymous with the AI boom, the figures of OpenAI for the first quarter reveal two drastically different stories. The revenue earned by OpenAI for the first quarter stands at approximately $5.7 billion, leaving Anthropic behind by almost a billion dollars. But scratch beneath the surface, and the situation becomes much clearer.
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Anthropic generated revenues worth $4.8 billion in the same time period, but the direction in which both these companies were heading could not have been more different. Anthropic was expected to double its revenues to reach an estimated total of $10.9 billion in Q2. This means that OpenAI’s earnings in Q1 can be looked upon as nothing but a fleeting lead which Anthropic is likely to snatch back soon. Indeed, according to projections, by April 2026, Anthropic would have already tripled its annualized revenue to reach a mark of $30 billion as compared to OpenAI’s $24-25 billion annualized revenue.
This is not how things were meant to go down. According to the modelling conducted by Epoch AI, both companies had forecasted much slower revenue growth for 2026, with OpenAI at 2.2 times and Anthropic 4 times or below. It looks like Anthropic has already surpassed its initial estimates.
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The situation with the user base of OpenAI is what makes things rather awkward. The average number of weekly active users of ChatGPT has amounted to 905 million users in Q1, failing to reach the previous estimate of one billion users. The failure is actually more impressive considering the fact that one billion has been considered a done deal by many analysts and the people within OpenAI. Competing with Claude has become even fiercer, as the percentage of daily active users for the Anthropic app has surged from under 2% to 10% in just three months. Despite being ahead in terms of usage, ChatGPT continues to lose its leading position much faster than anyone could have predicted.
Finally, the margin pressure cannot be overlooked. Although OpenAI has earned $5.7 billion in revenues in a quarter, the adjusted operating profit margin came out negative at -122%.
OpenAI has also been gearing itself for a potential stock offering that could have it valued at $1 trillion, aiming to file as early as the latter half of 2026. Anthropic is following not far behind. The firm’s ongoing fundraising effort to raise $30 billion to $50 billion is valued at a maximum of $950 billion. This compares favorably to the $850 billion valuation of OpenAI as of Q1.
The key difference between Anthropic and OpenAI, however, lies in the area of strategy. Anthropic has always focused on enterprise, whereas OpenAI created its own name by focusing on consumers through its ChatGPT technology. So far, the move by Anthropic is paying dividends where revenue in the first quarter was concerned. OpenAI remains more famous for now, but that might not be the case soon.
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