Anthropic Prioritizes Business Growth Over “Flashy Headlines,” Commercial Chief Tells CNBC in Apparent Jab at OpenAI
Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, is deliberately steering clear of generating “flashy headlines,” instead focusing on robust business expansion, according to its Chief Commercial Officer, Jack Smith. This strategic positioning comes amidst an escalating public discourse and competitive rivalry with fellow AI giant, OpenAI.
The company recently launched a series of advertisements during the Super Bowl, which included a pointed remark about OpenAI’s decision to integrate advertising into its ChatGPT platform. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman subsequently characterized Anthropic’s ad as “deceptive.” This exchange highlights the intensifying competition between major AI players as they vie to secure enterprise clients for their cutting-edge AI solutions.
In a comprehensive interview with CNBC, Smith also addressed the recent market volatility in software stocks, which he attributed to what he described as “a lot of hyperbole,” particularly following the introduction of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork tool.
**Super Bowl Ad Standoff**
Anthropic reportedly invested millions in its Super Bowl advertising campaign, featuring both a pre-game and an in-game spot. The commercials prominently featured the message: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”
Smith elaborated on this strategy, explaining that the decision to exclude advertisements from Claude was a “conscious choice.” He believes that incorporating ads would steer Anthropic towards optimizing for “the wrong things,” diverting focus from its core mission. Instead, the company aims to concentrate on enhancing the intelligence of its AI models and ensuring they are “genuinely helpful, safe, and trusted.”
While OpenAI has cultivated a strong consumer presence with ChatGPT, Anthropic’s business model is firmly centered on offering its AI capabilities to enterprises. Smith affirmed that this focus on business clients leaves Anthropic “unconflicted” by its ad-free approach.
“We’re not fighting another partner for eyeballs or for ad revenue or anything,” Smith stated. “Our focus is on model quality, model efficacy, how it can integrate across the wider enterprise, which comes back to all of the investments that we’re really focused on… we are exclusively focused on a different set of things. Our attention is not split.”
In response to Anthropic’s advertisements, Altman acknowledged their humor but labeled them “clearly dishonest,” asserting that OpenAI would “obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them.” OpenAI did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment at the time of this report.
**Beyond the Headlines: Strategic Infrastructure Investment**
Investor attention has recently been drawn to infrastructure spending, particularly following the latest Big Tech earnings season, which saw companies like Alphabet and Amazon signal substantial increases in their capital expenditure plans for the upcoming year.
Anthropic has committed $50 billion to the development of data centers within the United States. Concurrently, the company invests in acquiring computing power from prominent providers such as Microsoft and Google. In contrast, OpenAI has reportedly earmarked more than $1 trillion for future infrastructure development, collaborating with partners that include Nvidia, Oracle, and Broadcom.
When questioned about Anthropic’s approach to infrastructure compared to its competitors, Smith remarked, “We’ve made less flashy headlines than some, and we’ve been focused on growing revenue and winning business, rather than spending money and announcing the biggest compute deals that we possibly could.”
OpenAI has announced a series of significant partnerships in recent months. Notably, Nvidia committed $100 billion to support OpenAI in building and deploying at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems. More recently, OpenAI entered into a $10 billion agreement with chipmaker Cerebras to deploy 750 megawatts of its AI chips, with additional agreements in place with AMD and Broadcom.
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has consistently emphasized a “do more with less” philosophy, advocating for a more disciplined approach to spending compared to industry peers.
Smith indicated that Anthropic’s leadership is actively engaged in discussions regarding daily compute expenditure. However, he expressed confidence in the company’s spending levels, citing sustained strong demand.
“This isn’t us buying ahead of demand,” Smith asserted, highlighting the “incredible growth” observed in Claude Code and Cowork, two of Anthropic’s flagship enterprise products. He added that there has been “incredible growth in enterprise business overall, that we absolutely need to satisfy.”
Smith further noted that the company continuously evaluates its spending commitments. “We are looking at buying as close to the right amount of compute to keep us on that very, very significant acceleration curve, and not go too much, not go too little, because too little would be bad for our customers,” he explained, hinting at upcoming infrastructure announcements.
This discussion follows Anthropic’s recent partnership with Man Group, an investment management firm that will leverage Anthropic’s AI products and collaborate on the development of new tools.
**Navigating the Software Market Shift**
The software sector experienced a significant downturn last week, partly fueled by concerns that AI, exemplified by Anthropic’s Claude Cowork tool gaining traction, could automate processes traditionally handled by multiple software vendors.
Addressing the potential for enterprises to transition from existing software to Anthropic’s offerings, Smith suggested that the adoption rate varies by organization. Some companies are “doubling down” on their current software investments, while others are actively exploring tools like those developed by Anthropic.
“There was a lot of hyperbole in the market last week,” Smith commented. “As a lot of folks pointed out, those applications performed some very important tasks in an enterprise. They have some very specific data models. They have some very specific workflows that organizations are going to get a lot of value from for a very long time.”
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