Some investors who put money into OpenAI are now having second thoughts and looking at its competitor Anthropic instead. The reason? OpenAI might be getting too expensive, even for deep-pocketed investors.
This shift shows how quickly things change in the AI world. Just months ago, OpenAI was the hottest investment in tech. Now some of the same people who funded it are wondering if they made the right choice.
The Numbers Tell the Story
One investor who backed both companies revealed the eye-watering math behind OpenAI’s latest funding round. To make their investment worthwhile, they’d need OpenAI to go public at a valuation of $1.2 trillion or more. That’s bigger than most countries’ entire economies.
Meanwhile, Anthropic – the company behind Claude AI – sits at a $380 billion valuation. Still enormous, but it looks like a bargain compared to OpenAI’s sky-high expectations.
This investor buyer’s remorse reflects broader questions about AI company valuations. Both companies make chatbots that feel pretty similar to regular users. Yet the market treats them very differently.
What’s Next
Expect more investors to shop around as AI companies multiply. OpenAI built the early lead with ChatGPT, but competitors like Anthropic are proving they can build comparable technology for less money. For investors, that’s starting to matter more than being first.
