Original Sin, Redux
OpenAI chose ads. Anthropic wrote a constitution.
LLM capabilities are converging. The companies behind them are not.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman wasn’t at Davos this week. He was in the Middle East meeting investors, seeking “at least $50 billion” to plug the planet-size hole in OpenAI’s finances. This just a week after announcing that ChatGPT would soon be running ads, which in one depressing but predictable stroke wrecked humanity’s chances of avoiding a repetition of the Internet’s original sin…
Meanwhile, arch-rival Anthropic’s Dario Amodei seemed to be everywhere in Davos.
He berated the US for relaxing export controls on advanced chips to China. He doubled down on (at times stark) predictions of AI’s impact on categories of employment. And, while OpenAI was coming up with new ways to enshittify the AI-Net, Anthropic released its mammoth new Constitution for Claude, which is the most extensive, documented, nuanced mission statement ever produced by a corporate entity. (Lots to unpack in that one; stay tuned).
Oh, and Anthropic also released (almost quietly) updates to Claude Code and a new way to use it via Claude Cowork, which have gone viral in tech circles who are effusive about the new tools’ capabilities.
The AI swim lanes are sharpening. Grok has claimed the extremist end (porn and slander bots, if you’re keeping score), which means OpenAI’s base commercial choices get less scrutiny than they deserve. Whatever happened to AGI-to-save-the-world?
Set this alongside what we know about their finances, and Anthropic’s position looks stronger. For both companies, inference costs alone exceed revenue: faster growth means more losses. But Anthropic’s revenue base is 85% enterprise/API, whereas OpenAI relies on fickle consumers for 70% or more of its revenue. Anthropic was earlier, and more consistent, in focusing on long-term contracts, deeper integration, and stickier relationships.
Both companies bleed cash on every query. And both need enterprises to start spending at scale. Satya Nadella put it plainly in Davos: accelerate adoption, or the boom turns to bust.