OpenAI takes aim at Anthropic in leaked memo, pivots to Amazon as Microsoft partnership strains

Read OpenAI's latest internal memo about beating the competition -- including Anthropic

OpenAI's chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, sent a four-page memo to employees on Sunday about the company's strategic direction, emphasizing the need to lock in users and grow its enterprise business. The memo, which was viewed by The Verge, repeatedly underlines the importance of building a moat around its AI products, to combat how easy it is for users to switch between whichever model is topping the charts on any given day or week. Dresser, who recently took over much of former COO Brad Lightcap's duties as he transitions to a new role focused on special projects, also emphasizes the importance of focusing on enterprise clients. It's part of the company's recent strategy to avoid focusing on "side quests" and go all-in on its biggest revenue drivers. CNBC earlier reported on the memo.

OpenAI touts Amazon alliance in memo, says Microsoft has 'limited our ability' to reach clients

OpenAI's newly appointed revenue chief, Denise Dresser, sent a memo to staffers on Sunday, touting the company's alliance with Amazon as a key growth driver for its enterprise business, while noting the constraints of its longstanding tie-up with Microsoft. Dresser's memo lands less than two months after Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership. Microsoft, Amazon's top cloud computing rival, has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, backing the company long before it kicked off the generative AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT. Amazon Web Services, the leader in cloud infrastructure, gives companies access to all of the major AI models, including those from OpenAI, through a platform called Bedrock. "Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are -- for many that's Bedrock," Dresser wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. "Since we announced the partnership at the end of February, inbound demand from our customers for this offering has been frankly staggering." OpenAI is desperate to win market share in the enterprise, where rival Anthropic's Claude model has established itself as the market leader, while Google Gemini is also competing aggressively. Claude's momentum was the hottest topic at AI industry conference HumanX in San Francisco last week, with Arvind Jain, CEO of enterprise AI startup Glean, describing it as "Claude mania." "It has become a religion, that's the level of that mania," Jain said in an interview at the event. OpenAI and Anthropic are both trying to convince investors of their strengthening positions as they gear up for IPOs as soon as this year. The enterprise is critical for them as companies are pouring money into AI, a trend that's slashed the value of public software companies, which are increasingly seen as vulnerable. OpenAI, meanwhile, was valued at over $850 billion in its latest fundraising round in late March, a month after investors valued Anthropic at $380 billion. Dresser told CNBC earlier this month that OpenAI's enterprise business makes up 40% of the company's revenue, and it's "on track to reach parity" with its consumer business by the end of the year. In the Sunday memo, Dresser said the market can be "noisy, volatile and distracting at times," and she encouraged employees to focus on spending time with customers. She added that Anthropic's strategy is built on "fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI," while OpenAI's "positive message" will win over time. Dresser said Anthropic has also made a "strategic misstep to not acquire enough compute," echoing comments OpenAI made in a separate memo to investors on Thursday. The company said Anthropic is "operating on a meaningfully smaller curve," and that its own ramp is "materially ahead and widening." Anthropic announced a deal with Google and Broadcom for "multiple gigawatts" of compute earlier this month. For OpenAI, the relationship with Microsoft is one that both companies continue to describe as core and strategic, but it's shown signs of strain as the partners move onto the other's turf. In mid-2024, Microsoft added OpenAI to the list of competitors in its annual report, a roster that for years has included megacap peers Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta. OpenAI has increasingly turned to other cloud providers, like CoreWeave, Google and Oracle, for capacity, and last year Microsoft started publicly testing a homegrown AI model that could lead to enhancements to its Copilot assistant for consumers. OpenAI hired Dresser, the former CEO of Slack and a longtime Salesforce executive, as chief revenue officer in December. She recently expanded her role to include Brad Lightcap's commercial responsibilities as he transitioned from operating chief to a new position focused on "special projects." Dresser wrote that the company needs to "stay focused, work as one team and operate at the highest level of excellence and row in the same direction." "The market is ours to win, let's execute accordingly," she wrote.

OpenAI Exec Reveals New Strategy in Leaked Memo: Attack Anthropic

Over the weekend, OpenAI’s chief new revenue officer, Denise Dresser, sent a memo to employees meant to detail the company's strategy going forward, but somehow ended up spending a considerable amount of ink on how little the company thinks of Anthropic. The memo, reported on by The Verge, included some direct shots at OpenAI's biggest rival, including claiming that Anthropic has been juicing its revenue figures. Per the memo, Dresser claimed that Anthropic uses "accounting treatment that makes revenue look bigger than it is," and that has given a false impression of how long the company's run rate is. Just last week, Bloomberg reported Anthropic's annualized revenue is trending over $30 billion. OpenAI is throwing cold water on that, claiming that it believes Anthropic is overstating its situation by about $8 billion, dropping it to $22 billion. And wouldn't you know it, that puts Anthropic behind OpenAI, which has a reported run rate of around $24 billion. One of the objections that Dresser took with Anthropic's alleged revenue included "grossing up" revenue-sharing agreements that the company has with Google and Amazon, instead of using net revenue figures. Funnily enough, though, part of the reason for Dresser's memo stems from OpenAI's own arrangement with Amazon. The giant online retailer just recently announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, which has given the firm new life as its status as a leader in the AI space slips away. In the memo, Dresser blamed OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft as a hurdle that "limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are." With all that in mind, Dresser seems to believe that OpenAI still compares favorably in terms of its position in the market compared to rival Anthropic. While she acknowledged that Anthropic has a significant lead among enterprise customers thanks to its advantage in coding, she believes it's a tactical error for Anthropic to make a point of emphasis that its service actually generates revenue. "You do not want to be a single-product company in a platform war," she wrote. She also took shots at the company's leadership, claiming that Anthropic is "built on fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI." That's an interesting narrative to come out of OpenAI, which hasn't exactly been immune to this type of posturing. Back when OpenAI launched, Altman specifically said, "I sleep better knowing I can have some influence now." In recent years, the company has spent much of its lobbying money to fight federal regulations that would put guardrails on its products. Kinda seems like the objection isn't so much about a small group of elites controlling AI and more about who's in the group.

OpenAI sees 'staggering' demand for Amazon offering, says Microsoft partnership held it back

OpenAI's partnership with Microsoft helped launch the generative AI era. Now Amazon is bringing the ChatGPT maker further into the booming market for enterprise AI. That's the takeaway from an internal memo distributed over the weekend by Denise Dresser, OpenAI's chief revenue officer. The memo touted the Amazon Web Services alliance as a key enterprise growth driver for the ChatGPT maker, according to a CNBC report. "Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are -- for many that's Bedrock," Dresser wrote, referring to the AWS AI model platform. "Since we announced the partnership at the end of February, inbound demand from our customers for this offering has been frankly staggering." It's a high-profile endorsement for AWS, the leading cloud platform by market share, and perhaps Amazon's best answer yet to the persistent perception that it was caught flat-footed by the generative AI boom sparked by the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. The OpenAI-Amazon relationship has come full circle. As GeekWire previously reported, AWS was actually OpenAI's first cloud partner, providing computing resources at the lab's founding in 2015, before Microsoft swooped in. A decade later, Amazon and OpenAI in February struck a $50 billion investment and a cloud deal worth more than $100 billion over eight years. Microsoft's deal with OpenAI remains intact. Azure is still the exclusive host for OpenAI's core APIs, and Microsoft retains its intellectual property license and revenue-sharing arrangement, including a share of revenue from OpenAI's partnerships with other cloud providers. Dresser's memo also took aim at Anthropic, whose Claude model has emerged as the popular favorite in enterprise applications and software development. She said Anthropic made a "strategic misstep to not acquire enough compute," echoing a separate OpenAI memo to investors that characterized Anthropic as "operating on a meaningfully smaller curve." Amazon also has a major investment in Anthropic, having committed $8 billion to the Claude maker. Both Seattle-area tech giants now hold stakes in the two leading AI labs, showing how quickly the era of exclusive AI partnerships has given way to a messier set of alliances.

OpenAI rips Anthropic, distances itself from Microsoft

Why it matters: The ChatGPT creator is under pressure to keep pace with its competitors as the AI economy evolves and its potential IPO approaches. Driving the news: OpenAI's recently established cloud partnership with Amazon Web Services has generated "frankly staggering" demand from enterprise customers, OpenAI's new revenue chief, Denise Dresser, said in an internal memo. * "We are firing on all cylinders to establish this as a scaled distribution channel," Dresser said. Friction point: Dresser wrote that OpenAI's Microsoft partnership has been "foundational to our success" but "has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are," which, "for many," is Amazon's less-restrictive Bedrock platform. * Bedrock provides clients access to all major AI models. * The pivot to Amazon enables OpenAI to develop "systems that can operate reliably over time and across complex business processes," she added. * The move comes after Amazon recently announced a $50 billion investment in OpenAI and a deal to become the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, its new agent-management platform. Behind the scenes: Tension between Microsoft and OpenAI has been palpable. * Microsoft, which declined to comment for this story, started describing OpenAI as a competitor in 2024. In the Sunday memo, Dresser also ripped OpenAI rival Anthropic, saying the Claude creator is constructing a narrative "on fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI." * Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has repeatedly aired public warnings about the technology's dangers. * "Our positive message will win over time: build powerful systems, put in the right safeguards, expand access, and help people do more," Dresser said. She also accused Anthropic of an "inflated" run rate, using accounting methods to make its "revenue look bigger than it is." * Anthropic had no immediate comment. The bottom line: AI's biggest alliances are shifting.

OpenAI memo says Microsoft limited work with other clouds

OpenAI's chief revenue officer told staff that the company's longstanding partnership with Microsoft $MSFT had constrained its ability to serve enterprise customers on competing cloud platforms, according to a memo viewed by CNBC. "Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are -- for many that's Bedrock," Denise Dresser wrote in the Sunday memo, referring to Bedrock, a platform run by Amazon $AMZN Web Services through which businesses can access a range of leading AI models. Dresser added that customer demand since the Amazon partnership was announced in late February has been "frankly staggering." Dresser, who joined OpenAI as CRO in December, told CNBC earlier this month that enterprise customers make up 40% of the company's revenue and are expected to match its consumer business by the end of the year. A renegotiated agreement reached in October 2025 addressed the limits Dresser described, with OpenAI gaining the ability to co-develop products alongside third parties and Microsoft relinquishing its right of first refusal over compute resources. As part of that revised arrangement, OpenAI agreed to spend an additional $250 billion on Microsoft's Azure cloud, according to Geekwire. Amazon announced it plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a strategic partnership. In addition to the equity stake, an existing AWS cloud contract worth $38 billion was extended by $100 billion over eight years. OpenAI also agreed to use two gigawatts of power through AWS infrastructure running on Trainium, Amazon's proprietary AI chip, according to Geekwire. Despite the new arrangement, Microsoft retains meaningful positions under the revised partnership. Under the revised terms, stateless OpenAI API traffic continues to flow exclusively through Azure, and Microsoft retains sole licensing rights to OpenAI's underlying intellectual property -- the technology behind its Copilot assistant, Bing search integration, and the Azure OpenAI Service. In a joint statement, Microsoft said it welcomed the deal, noting that arrangements of this kind had been anticipated all along under the terms of its existing agreements. Microsoft did not respond to CNBC's request for comment on Dresser's memo. Tensions have increasingly surfaced in the OpenAI-Microsoft relationship, with each company encroaching on territory the other considers its own. By mid-2024, Microsoft had begun listing OpenAI as a competitor in regulatory filings, even as it continued building out its own AI models and chip capabilities. OpenAI, meanwhile, has turned to cloud providers including Google $GOOGL and Oracle $ORCL for additional capacity. In the memo, Dresser also addressed competition with Anthropic, saying its rival's strategy is built on "fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI." She added that Anthropic made a "strategic misstep to not acquire enough compute." Anthropic did not respond to CNBC's request for comment.

OpenAI Says Microsoft 'Limited' Its Reach, Slams Anthropic For 'Inflated $30B Revenue - Amazon.com (NASDA

OpenAI's new revenue chief just fired shots at both its biggest partner and its biggest rival in the same memo. OpenAI Takes Aim At Anthropic's Numbers Dresser claimed Anthropic's reported $30 billion revenue run rate is "inflated" by roughly $8 billion due to accounting treatment that artificially boost the numbers through its revenue-share with Amazon and Google. She characterized Anthropic's strategy as built on "fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI." A separate OpenAI investor memo sent Thursday said Anthropic is "operating on a meaningfully smaller curve," claiming OpenAI plans 30 gigawatts of compute by 2030 versus Anthropic's estimated 7 to 8 gigawatts by end of 2027. Dresser's offensive comes as Anthropic gains momentum in the enterprise market. At last week's HumanX conference in San Francisco, Glean CEO Arvind Jain said demand for Anthropic's Claude among business customers has reached the level of 'Claude mania,' calling it 'a religion.' Prediction Markets Favor Anthropic Despite OpenAI's Offensive Polymarket bettors also give Anthropic a 66% chance of going public before OpenAI. Amazon now backs both companies, having invested $50 billion in OpenAI and $8 billion in Anthropic. Microsoft, which has poured over $13 billion into OpenAI since 2019, is down 23% year-to-date. Anthropic's recent Mythos model launch, reportedly so powerful the company restricted access over cybersecurity concerns, has only strengthened its positioning ahead of a potential listing. Image: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

OpenAI Touts Amazon Partnership in Shift Away From Microsoft | PYMNTS.com

As CNBC reported Monday (April 13), company revenue chief Denise Dresser praised the collaboration in a memo to staff Sunday (April 12), while also pointing out the limitations of OpenAI's long-running relationship with Microsoft. "Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are -- for many that's Bedrock," Dresser said in the memo, which was seen by CNBC, referencing Amazon Web Services' platform that gives companies access to AI models. "Since we announced the partnership at the end of February, inbound demand from our customers for this offering has been frankly staggering," Dresser added. Under the terms of the deal with Amazon, the eCommerce giant will invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI. Microsoft, Amazon's chief cloud competitor, has invested upwards of $13 billion in OpenAI, a relationship that began years before ChatGPT sparked the generative AI boom. PYMNTS has contacted Microsoft for comment, but has not yet received a reply beyond the company's acknowledgment that it had received our request. The CNBC report characterized OpenAI as "desperate" to capture market share in the enterprise space, where Anthropic has established itself as the leader of late. According to the report, the rise of Anthropic's Claude model was a popular topic at AI industry conference HumanX in San Francisco last week. Arvind Jain, chief executive of enterprise AI startup Glean, described it as "Claude mania" in an interview at the event. "It has become a religion, that's the level of that mania," said Jain. Both OpenAI and Anthropic, the report added, are working to sell investors on their respective strengths as they prepare to go public, possibly later this year. OpenAI was valued at more than $850 billion in a record funding round in late March, while investors valued Anthropic at $380 billion in a February round. In related news, PYMNTS wrote Monday on some of the diverging viewpoints about the role of AI in enterprise settings. For example, a recent BetaNews article said the most valuable role for enterprise agentic AI is in work that combines repeated tasks with decisions that adhere to clear business rules. IBM, meanwhile, contended that the agentic enterprise will be defined less by any one AI model and more by the partnerships connecting models, data, workflows and governance. A blog post last week argued companies will not gain the most value from agents on their own, but from combining different strengths across providers so AI can shift from giving answers "to carrying out work inside real business processes," the report added.

Microsoft is a Constraint, Amazon is Our Growth Driver, Says OpenAI

What prompted this change of heart? Can't be anything specific barring Sam Altman's penchant for shifting goalposts and finding new friends who can help him score. Investors be damned! OpenAI has done what it does better than any tech giant in the United States. It has shifted allegiance yet again, disengaging with old friends and making new ones. Freshly minted chief revenue officer Denise Dresser says its long-standing tie-up with Microsoft is a constraint while the new alliance with Amazon is a key growth driver for enterprise business. Per reports published by CNBC, this was the gist of a memo Dresser set to staffers on Sunday. Those following Sam Altman's career over the years would not be surprised at this sudden shift. In their lead up to an IPO, it is important that OpenAI drums up its fledgling enterprise business (compared to arch rival Anthropic). That it hurts an old friend is just collateral damage. That the note landed barely two months after Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI's latest fundraise as part of a strategic partnership can hardly be a coincidence. The fact that Microsoft, which is Amazon's closest rival in cloud computing space, is hardly relevant. Nor is the fact that the Big Tech giant had invested $13 billion in OpenAI since 2019, being one of its earliest backers long before it took centre stage in the Gen AI ecosystem with ChatGPT. "Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are -- for many that's Bedrock," Dresser said in the note. "Since we announced the partnership at the end of February, inbound demand from our customers for this offering has been frankly staggering." Is the memo's timing related the headlines grabbed by Anthropic's Claude model at last week's HumanX AI industry conference in San Francisco? Possibly so, given that most media headlines highlighted Claude's momentum becoming the hottest topic at the event. Some like Arvind Jain, CEO of AI startup Glean, even claimed that "it has become a religion." OpenAI is desperate to bolster its market share in the enterprise AI space where Anthropic's Claude model has established itself as a market leader. With Google's Gemini picking up pace after having started the AI race slowly, the task is cut out for Altman. Which is possibly why he thought of seeking out Amazon Web Services as a possible ally in pushing his company's fledgling enterprise AI services, given that it provides companies access to all major AI models through their Bedrock platform. OpenAI started late in this journey and it was only recently that they told staffers to dump "side projects" and focus on major ones. OpenAI's CEO of applications Fidji Simo told baffled employees on March 17 that the company has decided to pull out his fingers from every AI pie that it had encountered, as they had become distractions. Barely two weeks later, it killed Sora, the video generating app, as well as a project to deliver adult content via its chatbot. At the same time, Anthropic was quietly scaling enterprise AI heights. As of this month, the company claims an annual run-rate revenue of $30 billion, up from $9 billion in end-2025. The company raised $30 billion in Series C funding while announcing massive enterprise demand for Claude and high-volume API usage, with growth largely driven by B2B adoption. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have to convince investors of their continuously strengthening position in the run-up to their respective IPOs this year. And when your rival gets better vibes at a large AI conference (per CNBC reports), there is no option but to bite the bullet and generate some PR to counter it. Enterprise AI is mission critical for both companies as that's where the revenues come from, to the point that this trend even caused a stock market slide led by dropping value of publicly listed software companies and their SaaS models. In fact, as we had reported, it was a legal plugin from Anthropic that initiated the stock market rout early in February While OpenAI is valued more by those who pumped in money ($853 billion in the latest fundraise), Anthropic with a $380 billion valuation appears a safer bet from a retail investor's perspective, given the higher revenue streams and headroom for growth. Not to mention the public acceptance of their Claude foundational model. In fact, Dresser had stated recently that OpenAI's enterprise business delivers 40% of the company's revenues and would soon "reach parity" with its consumer business by year-end. Maybe, the memo just wants to reinforce this idea. It claimed that markets can be "noisy, volatile and distracting at times, but asked staff to be focused on spending time with customers. And then the punchline! She claimed Anthropic's strategy was built on "fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI," while OpenAI's "positive message" will win over time. She also claimed that Anthropic's ARR was "inflated by around $8 billion. "They use accounting treatment that makes revenue look bigger than it is, including grossing up rev share with Amazon and Google. We report Microsoft rev share net, which is more in line with standards we would be held to as a public company," Dresser says in her memo. Coming from a company that didn't bother sharing its financials for most of its existence, this is priceless. Of course, Anthropic has already recognized the issue Dresser raised claiming that it sees gross revenue on sales through partners because it is the principal in the transactions while cloud partners are distribution channels. The company has maintained that their approach is in line with GAAP accounting practices though each deal depends on the circumstances it was done in. Having taken potshots at Anthropic's accounting practices, Dresser continues on how not acquiring enough compute was a "strategic misstep." In a note to investors last week, the company had said that Anthropic operated on a smaller curve but OpenAI's own ramp up is "materially ahead and widening". That Anthropic secured deals with Broadcom and Google for multiple gigawatts earlier this month is lost on Dresser. It is quite clear that the latest broadside is more on Anthropic and less on Microsoft. More on the fact that OpenAI secured funding from Amazon, which was an earlier investor in Anthropic. The actual tussle between Microsoft and OpenAI is not in focus here. That they aren't on good terms has been quite obvious in recent times. Both describe their relationship as core and strategic, but quite clearly OpenAI is hedging its bets with partnerships with Google, Oracle and CoreWeave. For its part, Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of competitors in the annual report, and also began testing indigenous AI models that could enhance its Copilot AI assistant's prowess. Dresser, formerly CEO of Slack and longtime executive at Salesforce, seems to have her work cut out. As she says in the concluding lines of her memo the company needs to stay focused, work as one team and operate at the highest level of excellence and row in the same direction. "The market is ours to win, let's execute accordingly," she concludes. Taking down competition is indeed the first act of defence and offence, even if the attack is verbal and without the right weapons.

OpenAI touts Amazon alliance in leaked memo, flags limits of Microsoft deal

Dresser also encouraged employees to stay focused despite growing competition in the industry. OpenAI's newly appointed chief revenue officer, Denise Dresser, has highlighted the company's partnership with Amazon as a key way for expanding its enterprise business, while also acknowledging that its long-standing relationship with Microsoft has created certain limitations. In a memo sent to employees on Sunday and viewed by CNBC, Dresser described the Amazon partnership as a key driver for its enterprise business. The memo comes less than two months after Amazon announced plans to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader strategic collaboration. Microsoft has been one of OpenAI's most important backers, investing more than $13 billion in the AI company since 2019. However, Dresser suggested that the partnership has made it harder for OpenAI to serve enterprise customers that rely on Amazon's cloud ecosystem. Also read: OpenAI acquires Hiro Finance: What the AI startup offers 'Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are -- for many that's Bedrock,' Dresser wrote. 'Since we announced the partnership at the end of February, inbound demand from our customers for this offering has been frankly staggering.' Dresser also used the memo to criticise Anthropic's strategy and financial reporting. 'They use accounting treatment that makes revenue look bigger than it is, including grossing up rev share with Amazon and Google,' she wrote. 'We report Microsoft rev share net, which is more inline with standards we would be held to as a public company.' Also read: Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max and iPhone 18 Pro leaks: From India price to specs, here is what we know Anthropic recently said its run-rate revenue has crossed $30 billion, up from about $9 billion at the end of last year. But Dresser claimed the figure may be 'inflated' by around $8 billion. In the memo, Dresser also encouraged employees to stay focused despite growing competition in the industry. She wrote that the market can be 'noisy, volatile and distracting at times,'urging teams to focus on spending time with customers.