OpenAI Loses Focus and Scrambles to Catch Up with Rival Anthropic

According to The Wall Street Journal, the growth of ChatGPT's user base has slowed, and the forced departure of Fidji Simo, seen as a potential successor to CEO Sam Altman, triggered a leadership reshuffle that will not speed up business processes amid the fast-moving industry. OpenAI is trying to win corporate clients with discounts to compete with rivals like Anthropic. Some investors are unhappy with high spending growth and lack of revenue growth, and some are hedging by investing in Anthropic, which has outgrown OpenAI in revenue and approached a $1 trillion valuation, helped by its AI coding tool Claude Code. Anthropic is preparing for an autumn IPO and tells investors it leads OpenAI in business development. Sam Altman said on X that while the past 12 months were not the best in company history, the next 12 should be, and that the team is preparing many offers for clients. OpenAI's initial focus on consumer ChatGPT did not pay off, as Claude Code showed that "vibe coding" and developer tools are the profitable niche, while OpenAI wasted resources on products like Sora, which it had to shut down. OpenAI is now deciding on pricing for its Codex coding tool to balance attractiveness with profitability before an IPO, which it is willing to postpone to next year. In 2024, OpenAI's model development could have supported coding tools, but the approach wasn't practical, while Anthropic focused pragmatically. After Codex launched, it was slower and less popular than Claude Code; OpenAI also faced staff attrition and deteriorating relations with Microsoft. To catch up, OpenAI partnered with AI chip maker Cerebras. Google Gemini's rise also slowed ChatGPT growth. By spring, many OpenAI employees were worried about Anthropic's advantage. Fidji Simo said OpenAI suffered from spreading resources too thin and lagging in research. OpenAI has since released competitive products like GPT 5.6 Sol for developers, which was popular and forced Anthropic to offer better terms for its Fable model.