September 19, 2026, (Inside AI) — Anthropic is weighing the release of a new artificial intelligence model to counter OpenAI's recent momentum, according to three sources familiar with the deliberations. The move would come ahead of an expected initial public offering and stands in contrast to a public call for an industrywide slowdown from the company's own chief executive.
The timing of a potential launch, aimed at addressing competitive pressure from a direct rival, follows Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's appeal to the global AI community to slow the pace of releasing new capabilities to address safety concerns, the sources said.
"We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models," Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay on September 12.
The essay, which painted a bleak picture of swarms of AI agents taking over the internet and outpacing human control, drew support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Read: Anthropic CEO's Slowdown Call Triggers Global Tech Stock Selloff
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, released this month, has gained traction among businesses, prompting concerns among some investors who are re-evaluating Anthropic's position as the leading provider of enterprise AI tools.
Anthropic is evaluating the safety of its next model as part of its deliberations over a release, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
Some of the discussions involve how to balance investment in releasing new models with efforts to strengthen the company's profitability as rising interest rates make investors more focused on the timing of expected profits, said people familiar with the company's thinking.
The debate over spending highlights the increasing pressure on the firms at the center of the AI boom to produce sustainable cash flows sooner, thanks both to rising rates and tough competition from open-source AI providers, especially in China.
Anthropic declined to comment for this story.
The potential launch would test how Anthropic can defend its enterprise market position against OpenAI while maintaining the safety-first identity that has distinguished it from competitors.
OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra Gains Enterprise Traction
OpenAI released GPT-6 Astra on September 3, touting gains in computer use, software engineering, cybersecurity and professional work. The model has received a strong response from enterprise users and developers, prompting potential Anthropic IPO investors to scrutinize whether OpenAI could begin taking share from Anthropic, which has been viewed for months as the leader in enterprise AI.
Astra accounted for about 13% of enterprise AI spending tracked by corporate expense platform Ramp, compared with about 8% for Anthropic's Claude Fable, according to the latest data.
Astra has also pulled ahead on OpenRouter, a widely used platform that routes developer traffic across AI models. OpenRouter said its users spent more on OpenAI models than on Anthropic models last week, the first time OpenAI has led on that measure in more than two and a half years.
Some existing investors and those who expect to invest in both Anthropic's and OpenAI's IPOs said they do not believe Astra poses a significant threat to Anthropic, given the size of its lead in the market for enterprise AI tools and the amount of time it takes to unseat incumbent vendors to large companies.
Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate topped $65 billion by the end of July, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. It is also projecting a 2028 revenue of roughly $190 billion to $200 billion. OpenAI's annualized revenue run rate passed $40 billion in July.
Investors also expect leadership among Anthropic, OpenAI, Alphabet's Google and other major AI developers to shift repeatedly as companies release new generations of models, making any advantage potentially short-lived.
Bigger Challenges Loom Beyond the Model Race
A potentially bigger challenge for Anthropic and other leading AI providers is the rise of open-source and open-weight models, which can lower token costs and allow companies to build more of their own AI infrastructure rather than rely on providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI, investors said.
The shift could put pressure on the economics of the AI industry as companies have more options to develop and run models outside the leading commercial providers, broadening the competitive threat beyond the race between Anthropic and OpenAI.
Meta Platforms has been among Anthropic's largest customers, but is looking to reduce its use of Anthropic's models as it develops more AI capabilities internally, people familiar with the matter said. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
OpenAI, meanwhile, has taken some pressure off the race to public markets. Its CEO, Altman, confirmed on Saturday that the company would not go public in 2026, saying concerns around AI safety made this an ill-advised time for a listing.
Anthropic could push its IPO to after the November US midterm elections, with the elections not expected to have a major impact on the offering, according to two people familiar with the matter. The IPO has already been pushed back from earlier plans, with marketing expected to begin in mid-October at the earliest.
