Days after Anthropic filed to go public, ahead of OpenAI in a closely watched IPO race between AI giants, Daniela Amodei, the company’s founder and president, sought to make a sharp distinction between the two rivals. Anthropic is currently valued at $965 billion, with expectations that it could rise past $3 trillion in the public markets, compared to OpenAI’s estimated value of $900 billion. But since Amodei is a framework, the competition is not just about numbers, but about how the technology itself is built and used.
“The whole reason we started Anthropic is to be able to build and develop this technology in an ethical, responsible, fair way, and I think it’s the responsibility of everyone in the company, but especially the leadership, to say, all these numbers, in fact, are not the point,” said Amodei at this year’s Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco yesterday (June 4).
Anthropic was founded by seven former OpenAI employees, including Daniela and her brother, Dario, the company’s CEO, with the aim of creating a transparent and security-focused AI firm. Its differences with OpenAI extend beyond the establishment of how it plans to grow.
The company has emphasized securing computing capacity, including a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX (which hosted xAI earlier this year) to access its data centers in Memphis for $1.25 billion a month. But Amodei said Anthropic deliberately avoids the aggressive spending levels seen elsewhere. OpenAI predicts $600 billion in computing revenue by 2030; Anthropic expects to spend about one-third of that.
“The structure of these agreements is that you have to commit to a certain amount of calculation in advance, too [we don’t want to] we have expanded so much that we are buying more computers than we could profitably use,” Amodei explained.
Although Anthropic has also expressed interest in speculative infrastructure, such as SpaceX’s proposed data centers, Amodei said there are “no immediate plans to partner with astronauts to pursue space data centers.” “But you never know,” he added.
Brand strategy marks another key segmentation. Anthropic has prioritized business and code use cases over mass market consumer engagement. That’s in contrast to OpenAI, where more than 70 percent of ChatGPT usage is tied to personal tasks like search, tutoring and life advice.
“We have always felt that business and entrepreneurship are spiritual things that are very appropriate for Anthropic and our values,” Amodei said. “The difference in our consumer product compared to competitors is that it’s not a tool for entertainment. It’s for productive activities, whether that’s at work or at home.”
Both companies, however, are investing heavily in advanced cybersecurity. AI Anthropic’s Claude Mythos has raised concerns about its ability to exploit vulnerabilities. OpenAI’s Daybreak targets similar vulnerabilities but takes a different approach to deployment.
Daybreak is integrated with existing GPT workflows and is provided with tiered access based on user authentication. Mythos operates as a closed corporation limited to audited organizations in approximately 15 countries, including the US government, NATO, ENISA, Samsung and Okta.
“You have to start the defenders,” said Amodei. “AI models will continue to evolve. [to the public]some AI company will. “
Anthropic has also taken a cautious stance on government work. The company withdrew from a Pentagon contract involving home surveillance and autonomous weapons, which OpenAI later took over. However, Amodei described the extensive cooperation with the US government as positive.
“Each company will have its own principles of what the red lines and principles are,” he said. “It is important that, regardless of those values that are specific to you as a company, be true to them, feel as if you can explain yourself to the employees and the world in general.”
