Several prominent artificial intelligence companies based in California are set to air commercials during the highly anticipated Super Bowl broadcast this year. The move reflects the growing prominence and mainstream appeal of AI technology, as these firms seek to showcase their capabilities to a massive national audience. The Super Bowl, one of the most-watched television events annually, provides a unique platform for these California AI firms to reach millions of potential customers and investors.
The AI Rivalry Heats Up
The two artificial intelligence startups behind rival chatbots ChatGPT and Claude are bracing for an existential showdown this year as both need to prove they can grow a business that will make more money than they’re losing. The fiercest competition between the two AI developers, along with bigger companies like Google, is a race to win over corporate leaders looking to adopt AI tools to boost workplace productivity.
The rivalry is also spilling into other realms, including the Super Bowl. Anthropic is airing a pair of TV commercials during Sunday’s game that ridicule OpenAI for the digital advertising it’s beginning to place on free and cheaper versions of ChatGPT. While Anthropic has centered its revenue model on selling Claude to other businesses, OpenAI has opened the doors to ads as a way of making money from the hundreds of millions of consumers who get ChatGPT for free.
The rivalry has existed ever since a group of OpenAI leaders quit the AI research laboratory and formed Anthropic in 2021, promising a clearer focus on the safety of the better-than-human technology called artificial general intelligence that both San Francisco firms wanted to build. That was before OpenAI first released ChatGPT in late 2022, revealing the huge commercial potential of large language models that could help write emails, homework or computer code.
The Race to Become the AI Platform of Choice
The competition ramped up this week as both companies launched product updates. OpenAI on Thursday launched a new platform called Frontier, designed to be a one-stop shop for businesses adopting a variety of AI tools that can work in tandem, particularly AI agents that work autonomously as “AI co-workers” on someone’s behalf. Anthropic earlier in the week said it was adding new functionality to its Cowork assistant to help automate legal research and drafting work.
“Both OpenAI and Anthropic are really trying to position themselves as a platform company,” said Gartner analyst Arun Chandrasekaran. “The models are important, but the models aren’t a means to an end.” The two startups aren’t just competing with each other. They also face competition from Google, which is both a leading developer of a powerful AI model, Gemini, and has its own cloud computing infrastructure backed by revenue from its legacy digital advertising business.
The Challenges of Monetizing AI
Unlike SpaceX, which has its rocket business to fall back on, or established tech giants — like Amazon, Google and Microsoft — both Anthropic and OpenAI must find a way to make enough from selling AI products to pay for the huge costs in computer chips and data centers to run their energy-hungry AI systems.
It’s not that Anthropic and OpenAI aren’t making money or growing their product lines. The private firms don’t publicly disclose sales but both have signaled they are making billions of dollars in revenue on their existing products, including paid chatbot subscriptions for individual users.
But it costs a lot more money to fund the computing infrastructure needed to build these powerful AI models and respond to the millions of prompts they get each day. OpenAI, in particular, has said it owes more than $1 trillion in financial obligations to backers — including Oracle, Microsoft and Nvidia — that are essentially fronting the compute costs on the expectation of future payoffs.
“Profitability matters, but not as a near‑term decision factor for investors who remain focused on scale, differentiation and infrastructure leverage,” said Forrester analyst Charlie Dai.
The Pursuit of AI Dominance
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are among the world’s most valuable privately held firms and Wall Street investors expect any, or all of them, could become publicly traded within the next year or so. Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s newly hired chief revenue officer, told reporters this week that the company’s priority is “building the best enterprise platform for all industries, all segments.” “I don’t think we’re thinking about it from a revenue standpoint, but truly from a customer outcome standpoint,” she said, in part reflecting the “sense of urgency” she’s heard from CEOs who want a smoother way of applying AI.
“There’s a recognition that AI is becoming a core operating advantage,” Dresser said. “They don’t want to be on the wrong side of that shift.” The competition between OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as the broader AI landscape, is only set to intensify as these companies race to become the dominant AI platform for businesses and consumers alike.
※ This article summarizes publicly available reporting and is provided for general information only. It is not legal, medical, or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional for decisions.