OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (center) and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (right), not holding hands, in New Delhi on February 19, 2026. Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty ImagesOpenAI and Anthropic: In the minds of AI watchers, they’re the Hatfields and McCoys, the Montagues and the Capulets, and for readers of a certain age, the Team Anistons and Team Jolies—two warring factions who taste bile and smell blood.
OK, it’s not really that bad. But when your IPO-bound CEOs
refuse to shake hands onstage and spend most of their time stealing talent from each other offstage, you’ve got to wonder, you know?
The latest salvo in this War of Intelligence is an internal memo from OpenAI chief revenue officer Denise Dresser,
who reportedly writes that Anthropic’s annual recurring revenue, or ARR—there’s that term again—is about $8 billion higher than it should be because of the generous way the company counts shared revenue from cloud partnerships.
“Their story is built on fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI,” she added. (No word on whether she described her rivals as
empty-headed animal food trough wipers.)
For now—and that’s an important caveat—both companies’ self-reported revenue is in the ballpark of $2 billion per month. But that matters little as both companies, in pursuit of fresh capital, make their cases to future investors.
—AN