Anthropic closes in on OpenAI as Claude dominates enterprise AI and HumanX conference buzz

Anthropic Surges as Claude Captures Enterprise Attention at HumanX AI Conference

At the HumanX AI conference in San Francisco this week, thousands of tech professionals gathered at the Moscone Center to discuss how agentic AI is transforming business operations. Among the chatbots automating coding tasks and business workflows, one name dominated the conversation: Claude 1

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. Anthropic received consistent praise throughout panel discussions and from vendors on the convention floor, while ChatGPT notably faded from the spotlight. One vendor told TechCrunch that his team relied heavily on Claude, expressing the view that ChatGPT and OpenAI had "gone downhill" or, in internet parlance, "fell off" 1

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Claude Chatbot Reaches 30% US Business Adoption as OpenAI Growth Stalls

The conference buzz reflects a broader shift in the AI competition landscape. Nearly one in three US businesses paid for Anthropic's tools in March, marking a rise of more than 6 percentage points from the previous month, according to data from payments group Ramp based on $100 billion in annual card and invoice spending from 50,000 customers 2

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. Meanwhile, OpenAI retained its early lead but business adoption remained flat at 35 percent 2

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. This divergence signals Anthropic is gaining market share rapidly, driven by strong interest in its Claude Code products and automation plug-ins designed for white-collar jobs.

Global downloads of the Claude chatbot tripled to 21 million in the month leading to March, while ChatGPT downloads rose just 5 percent, according to Sensor Tower data 2

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. Even more striking, ChatGPT's weekly active users fell month-on-month in the US for the first time since early 2024, per Apptopia figures 2

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. Anthropic announced it reached $30 billion in annualized revenue, up sharply from $9 billion at the end of 2025 2

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. By April 2026, more than 1,000 businesses were spending over $1 million per year on Anthropic services on an annualized basis, up from roughly 500 two months earlier, with enterprise customers now representing approximately 80 percent of revenue 3

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Anthropic Pursues $200M Private Equity Venture to Accelerate Enterprise Adoption

Targeting big businesses more aggressively, Anthropic is in talks to invest roughly $200 million in a new private equity-backed joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Permira, according to the Wall Street Journal 3

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. The proposed structure would see buyout firms take equity stakes totaling approximately $1 billion in a venture designed to embed Claude across their portfolio companies 3

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. This distribution channel strategy takes Palantir's forward-deployed engineer model as its template, bundling model access with consulting and implementation services to drive sticky, recurring revenue 3

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Blackstone already holds approximately $1 billion in Anthropic equity after investing $200 million at a $350 billion valuation in February 2026 as part of the Series G funding round 3

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. The private equity approach gives Anthropic access to thousands of portfolio companies through a single negotiation, with each buyout firm becoming a channel partner with both financial incentive and operational influence. Anthropic also introduced new enterprise-grade controls for Claude Cowork, including role-based access controls, group spend limits, and enhanced OpenTelemetry support for monitoring within security pipelines 4

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OpenAI Faces Perception Challenges Despite $122 Billion Funding Round and Upcoming IPO

Despite a recent $122 billion funding round and plans for an IPO, OpenAI appears increasingly unsure of its next strategic steps 1

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. The company recently abandoned several projects, including its AI video generator Sora and a troubled plan for a "sexy" version of ChatGPT, refocusing instead on business and coding services 1

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. A New Yorker piece questioning whether CEO Sam Altman was trustworthy, combined with the company's work with the Trump administration and its decision to inject advertising into ChatGPT, has generated negative buzz 1

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At HumanX, Sierra co-founder and CEO Bret Taylor, who chairs OpenAI's board, defended Sam Altman when asked about the profile. "I think Sam is one of the most visible leaders and executives in the world," Taylor said. "If you want to seek out detractors for him, you'll find them, and they'll be very vocal about it. I think Sam's remarkable" 5

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. These controversies make OpenAI seem reactive rather than strategic, as if responding to events rather than shaping them.

OpenAI Introduces $100 Subscription Tier to Compete with Claude Code

To maintain its position, OpenAI announced a new $100 subscription tier for ChatGPT with substantially more access to Codex, its coding tool, effectively slashing premium pricing in half 1

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. The new tier offers five times as much usage as the existing $20 pricing tier and dramatically undercuts rivals, as top-tier subscriptions for Claude Code and Google's Gemini Code Assist both start at $200 per month 4

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. Pro Codex users will also access experimental preview features enabled by GPT-5.4 Pro 4

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. The move appears designed to peel business users away from Claude Code and boost adoption among professional developers.

OpenAI is also pursuing parallel discussions with Advent International, Bain Capital, Brookfield Asset Management, and TPG for a comparable enterprise AI venture, with total fundraising reportedly targeting approximately $4 billion 3

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. OpenAI is offering private equity firms a guaranteed minimum return of 17.5 percent, while Anthropic offers ordinary equity with no floor on returns 3

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. OpenAI said its AI coding agent Codex hit 3 million weekly users, up from 2 million last month, and that its APIs now process more than 15 billion tokens per minute 2

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Software Engineering Transformation Drives Focus on Agentic AI Capabilities

During a HumanX discussion, OpenAI CTO of B2B applications Srinivas Narayanan noted the rapid technological changes reshaping software engineering. "We are in this incredible moment in technology, where every month, and sometimes every day, we are all looking forward to something new," Narayanan said, adding that "even in just the last few months, the entire field has changed" 1

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. The amount of work companies have begun offloading onto automated helpers is surprising, happening in a remarkably short period.

Charlie Dai, VP and principal analyst at Forrester, identified a "clear shift in momentum" towards Anthropic, noting that growth continues despite US government supply-chain risk concerns 2

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. "For many companies, factors like how well the models perform, how easy they are to work with, and how well they fit enterprise needs matter more than short-term political or regulatory concerns," Dai said 2

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. The Wall Street Journal classified both companies as "the fastest-growing businesses in the history of tech," suggesting that for OpenAI, "falling off" simply means no longer being the undisputed champion in an increasingly competitive market 1

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