On 28 May 2026, Anthropic announced a $65bn funding round — its Series H — that valued the company at $965bn, edging past OpenAI’s $852bn for the first time. In the same announcement it put its revenue run-rate at a staggering $47bn. For a company that was making barely $100m a year at the start of 2024, that is one of the steepest growth curves in corporate history — and it has, on several important measures, flipped the established order of the AI industry.
But “Anthropic beat OpenAI” is a headline that needs unpacking, because it’s true on some metrics and flatly false on others. Here’s an honest, dated look at where the AI race actually stands — and whether the two front-runners are really heading for the stock market.
A note on the numbers: these figures move monthly and several are days old. Everything below is a snapshot as of 29 May 2026, drawn from reporting by Bloomberg, CNBC, TechCrunch and the companies’ own announcements. Treat the chart as a moment in time, not a permanent scoreboard.
The Revenue Hockey Stick
The clearest way to see what’s happened is to plot revenue run-rate over time.
OpenAI’s growth has been remarkable in its own right: from roughly $2bn (2023) to about $6bn (2024), then to a reported $20bn+ run-rate by the end of 2025 and around $25bn by spring 2026. Most companies would kill for that curve.
Anthropic’s, though, is near-vertical. It went from about $1bn at the end of 2024 to roughly $10bn a year later, then $19bn in Q1 2026, and $47bn by late May — overtaking OpenAI’s run-rate during spring 2026. Whatever else you make of it, that is the defining business story of the year so far.
Valuation: The Crossover
The funding numbers tell the same story with a lag. OpenAI completed a monster $122bn raise on 31 March 2026 at an $852bn post-money valuation. Anthropic’s valuation climbed from $61.5bn (March 2025) to $183bn (September 2025) to around $350–380bn early in 2026 — and then the May Series H took it to $965bn, eclipsing OpenAI for the first time, according to Bloomberg and CNBC.
So on the two headline financial measures — run-rate revenue and private valuation — Anthropic is, as of this week, ahead.
But OpenAI Still Owns the Living Room
Here’s the half of the story the “Anthropic wins” headlines skip. OpenAI utterly dominates the consumer market. ChatGPT reported around 900 million weekly active users in early 2026 — a consumer franchise Anthropic simply doesn’t have. Anthropic is enterprise- and developer-first, with 300,000+ business customers and roughly 80% of its revenue from enterprise and API workloads; it doesn’t even publish a comparable consumer figure.
In other words: Anthropic is winning the business, OpenAI is winning the public. Both can be true at once, and both are.
Where Each Actually Leads
| Metric (as of late May 2026) | Leader | Figures |
|---|---|---|
| Private valuation | Anthropic | $965bn vs $852bn |
| Revenue run-rate | Anthropic | ~$47bn vs ~$25bn |
| Enterprise LLM market share | Anthropic | 32% vs 25% (Google 20%) |
| Coding-tool market share | Anthropic | 42% vs 21% |
| Consumer / weekly users | OpenAI | ~900M WAU; Anthropic n/a |
| Brand & consumer mindshare | OpenAI | ChatGPT remains the default |
How Anthropic Did It: Enterprise and Code
Anthropic’s surge wasn’t built on a viral consumer app — it was built on two unglamorous, lucrative beachheads. The first is the enterprise, where Menlo Ventures’ closely-watched survey put Anthropic at 32% of the LLM market versus OpenAI’s 25% (a dramatic reversal from OpenAI’s ~50% in 2023). The second is code: Claude became the default model for AI coding, taking a reported 42% of the coding-tool market to OpenAI’s 21%, with Claude Code alone running at a multi-billion-dollar run-rate. If you’ve read our comparison of Cursor vs GitHub Copilot, you’ll have noticed how many coding tools now lean on Claude under the bonnet — that’s the commercial engine behind these numbers.
Google’s Quiet Third Place
It would be a mistake to treat this as a two-horse race. Google Gemini passed 750 million monthly active users by late 2025, sits third in the enterprise market at around 20%, and — through AI Overviews in Search — reaches over 2 billion people a month, by far the largest AI distribution layer of any company. Google’s challenge has never been reach; it’s converting that reach into the kind of premium enterprise and developer revenue Anthropic is now capturing.
Are They Heading for an IPO?
This is where speculation has to be labelled as such. Both companies are positioned for public markets, but neither has filed an S-1 or confirmed a date.
OpenAI took the key structural step in October 2025, converting its for-profit arm into a public-benefit corporation (OpenAI Group PBC) controlled by its nonprofit foundation. That restructuring removed previous fundraising caps and is widely seen as a legal prerequisite for an eventual listing. Sam Altman has said he expects OpenAI to be public one day while being personally unenthusiastic about it (“zero percent” excited, in his words), and the company’s CFO previously indicated it wouldn’t be ready to IPO in 2026. Reported timelines pointing to late 2026 or 2027 are journalist speculation, not company commitments.
Anthropic has reportedly retained IPO counsel and, per Bloomberg, is weighing a listing as soon as late 2026 — but again, nothing is filed and no date is confirmed. The Series H was repeatedly framed by the press as “ahead of an IPO,” which tells you where the smart money expects this to go, without telling you when.
The honest summary: an IPO from one or both looks likely eventually, the structural groundwork is being laid, but anyone quoting you a firm date is guessing.
What This Means for UK Businesses
Industry league tables are fun, but the practical question for a UK professional is: which tool should I actually use? The standings are a useful signal, not an instruction:
- For coding, complex reasoning and writing quality, Anthropic’s lead is real and earned — Claude is our top pick for those jobs.
- For breadth, consumer features and ecosystem, ChatGPT remains the most versatile all-rounder.
- If your organisation runs on Google Workspace, Gemini is the natural default.
And whichever you choose, the UK data questions don’t change with the league table — see our guide on whether ChatGPT is GDPR compliant and our UK/EU data-residency picks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Has Anthropic really overtaken OpenAI? On private valuation ($965bn vs $852bn), revenue run-rate (~$47bn vs ~$25bn), and enterprise and coding market share — yes, as of late May 2026. On consumer users and overall reach, no: OpenAI’s ChatGPT (~900M weekly users) is far ahead.
Is OpenAI or Anthropic publicly traded? Neither, as of May 2026. Both are privately held. OpenAI has restructured into a public-benefit corporation (a step towards a possible IPO); Anthropic has reportedly engaged IPO advisers. No filing or date is confirmed for either.
Why is Anthropic’s revenue growing so fast? It captured the enterprise and AI-coding markets — where Claude is now the leading model — rather than chasing consumer scale. Those are high-value, high-retention customers.
Where does Google fit in? Third on enterprise share (~20%) but first on raw reach, with 750M+ Gemini users and 2bn+ via Search AI Overviews. It has distribution others can only envy.
Final Thoughts
The 2026 AI race isn’t one company pulling away — it’s a market splitting into territories: Anthropic in the enterprise and the codebase, OpenAI in the living room, Google everywhere and nowhere at once. For a UK business, the lesson isn’t to back a winner; it’s to pick the tool that fits the job and keeps your data compliant, and to revisit that choice often, because — as this week proved — the standings can change overnight.
Want help choosing the right AI tools for your UK organisation? Get in touch — we’re always happy to help.
Last updated: 29 May 2026. Figures are a snapshot and were drawn from reporting by Bloomberg, CNBC, TechCrunch, Fortune, the Menlo Ventures enterprise survey, and OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s own announcements; they change rapidly. See our editorial standards.