September 19, 2026, (Inside AI) — Anthropic is weighing the release of a new AI model to blunt OpenAI's enterprise momentum, according to three people familiar with the matter. The deliberations come as the company prepares for an initial public offering and after its chief executive publicly urged the industry to slow down.
The timing puts Anthropic in an awkward spot. CEO Dario Amodei spent years positioning the company as the safety-first alternative to OpenAI. Now the company may accelerate a launch to defend its turf.
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on September 3. The model has drawn strong interest from businesses and developers, according to sources. That has prompted some Anthropic IPO investors to reassess whether OpenAI can start taking enterprise share from a company long viewed as the market leader.
Anthropic is still evaluating the safety of its next model as part of its release discussions, one person familiar with the matter said. The company declined to comment.
Read: AI Spending Slowdown Fears Rattle Investors After Industry Warnings
Safety Pledge Meets Market Pressure
Amodei's public stance has been unambiguous. In a 3,800-word essay published on September 12, he warned about the risks of rapid capability gains.
"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models," Amodei wrote.
The essay described swarms of AI agents overtaking the internet and outpacing human control. It drew support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
That message now sits beside internal talks about how to balance investment in new models with efforts to strengthen profitability. Rising interest rates have made investors more focused on when AI companies will actually produce profits, said people familiar with the company's thinking.
The spending debate reflects broader pressure on AI firms to generate sustainable cash flows sooner. Open-source providers, especially in China, add another layer of competition.
Revenue Lead Still Shields Anthropic
The competitive picture is more nuanced than a single model launch suggests. Anthropic's annualised revenue run rate topped $65 billion by the end of July, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. The company projects 2028 revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion.
OpenAI's annualised run rate passed $40 billion in July. Astra accounted for about 13% of enterprise AI spending tracked by corporate expense platform Ramp, compared with about 8% for Anthropic's Claude Fable.
Astra also pulled ahead on OpenRouter, a platform that routes developer traffic across AI models. OpenRouter said its users spent more on OpenAI models than on Anthropic models last week. It was the first time OpenAI led on that measure in more than two and a half years.
Some existing investors and those expecting to invest in both IPOs said they do not see Astra as a major threat. They point to Anthropic's lead in enterprise tools and the time it takes to displace incumbent vendors inside large companies.
Investors also expect leadership among Anthropic, OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and other major developers to shift repeatedly as new model generations arrive.
A bigger challenge may come from open-source and open-weight models. These can lower token costs and let companies build more of their own AI infrastructure instead of relying on providers like Anthropic and OpenAI. That could pressure the economics of the entire industry.
Meta Platforms has been among Anthropic's largest customers but is looking to reduce its use of Anthropic's models as it builds more AI capabilities internally, people familiar with the matter said. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI has eased some pressure on the race to public markets. Altman confirmed on Saturday that the company would not go public in 2026, saying AI safety concerns made a listing ill-advised.
Anthropic could push its IPO to after the November US midterm elections, according to two people familiar with the matter. The elections are not expected to have a major impact on the offering. The IPO has already been delayed from earlier plans, with marketing expected to begin in mid-October at the earliest.
