Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has reached approximately $3 billion in annualized revenue, according to two sources familiar with the figures—marking a strong early signal of business adoption of generative AI.
This revenue milestone, which estimates the company’s current monthly earnings projected over a year, represents a dramatic leap from $1 billion in December 2024. The figure rose to $2 billion by the end of March and hit $3 billion by the end of May, one source noted.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT has seen widespread consumer interest, many enterprises remain in the experimental phase of AI implementation despite growing executive enthusiasm. Anthropic’s sharp revenue growth—driven largely by selling its AI models as services to other businesses—signals increasing commercial demand, one of the sources said.
A major contributor to this growth is code generation, a domain where Anthropic’s models are especially strong. The San Francisco-based startup, backed by Alphabet and Amazon, has gained recognition for its AI’s superior programming abilities. Tools in the codegen space have seen a surge in adoption recently, frequently powered by Anthropic’s technology.
Thanks to this rising demand, Anthropic is distinguishing itself from other SaaS providers. In fact, one venture capitalist noted that the company’s quarterly revenue growth makes it one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies they’ve ever seen.
“We’ve looked at the IPOs of over 200 public software companies, and this growth rate has never happened,” said Meritech General Partner Alex Clayton, who is not an Anthropic investor and has no inside knowledge of its sales.
He noted, however, that the comparison isn’t entirely apples-to-apples, as Anthropic also generates consumer revenue through subscriptions to its Claude chatbot. Still, the contrast is striking. Snowflake, a publicly traded SaaS company, needed six quarters to grow its annualized revenue from $1 billion to $2 billion, Clayton pointed out.
OpenAI, a key rival of Anthropic, is reportedly on track to generate over $12 billion in total revenue by the end of 2025, up from $3.7 billion in 2024, according to three people familiar with the matter. Unlike Anthropic’s reported annualized revenue, OpenAI’s figure represents total revenue for the calendar year.
The two AI powerhouses appear to be carving out distinct market positions. While both offer enterprise and consumer-facing AI products, OpenAI is increasingly seen as a consumer-centric company. A significant portion of its revenue comes from ChatGPT subscriptions, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said in an interview.
Though OpenAI hasn’t disclosed specific enterprise revenue, the company reported in May that ChatGPT Enterprise now has 3 million paid seats, up from 2 million in February. Notable customers include T-Mobile and Morgan Stanley.
In the consumer AI space, Anthropic’s Claude lags behind ChatGPT in popularity. According to analytics firm Similarweb, Claude’s web traffic in April represented just 2% of ChatGPT’s, signaling much lower user engagement.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers with a different vision for AI development, the company recently closed a $3.5 billion funding round, bringing its valuation to $61.4 billion. By comparison, OpenAI is currently valued at around $300 billion.
The race between Anthropic and OpenAI highlights the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI. While OpenAI dominates the consumer market with ChatGPT, Anthropic is emerging as a major force in enterprise adoption—bolstered by surging demand for its coding-focused models and a steep rise in annualized revenue. As both companies expand their offerings and valuations soar, the generative AI sector is proving to be one of the most competitive and high-growth areas in tech today.
