The Information reports OpenAI is winning Anthropic coding customers such as Replit, Rippling and DataCamp with steep discounts
OpenAI is winning over Anthropic customers with steep discounts, gaining coding workloads at companies like Rippling and Replit while potentially deepening its own losses. But Anthropic’s renewed lead on OpenRouter suggests better models can quickly win users back. At least this explains why consumer sub plans were halved I guess...
Context
Coding is the biggest paid use of AI models, and Anthropic has led it. If price now decides who wins, margins across the industry could shrink just as both labs prepare for public markets. The figures come from The Information's sources and customer executives, not from either lab.
Replit CEO Amjad Masad said on October 17 that Replit had moved to OpenAI as its default model provider, citing cost and performance. The lead post by Chubby, a widely followed AI commentator, summarizes a report from The Information and was published at 2:50 PM Eastern on October 24.
Deep dive
Chubby posted at 2:50 PM Eastern on October 24 that OpenAI is winning over Anthropic customers with steep discounts, gaining coding workloads at companies like Rippling and Replit, while noting that Anthropic's renewed lead on OpenRouter suggests better models can win users back. The post summarizes reporting by The Information, so this is a secondhand account.
The excerpt attached to the post quotes Rippling CEO Parker Conrad. In May, Anthropic models handled 57% of the coding work done by Rippling's engineers and OpenAI models 16%. That has since flipped to 52% on OpenAI and 18% on Anthropic, which Conrad attributed to cost.
Follow up coverage of the same report adds more detail. According to The Decoder, Replit moved most of its AI spending to OpenAI after being offered more than 30% off a contract worth over $100 million a year, after Anthropic declined to extend an earlier discount. DataCamp's CEO said OpenAI's pricing cut his costs by 80% to 90%, and DataCamp's discount was reportedly tied to using Codex. A US bank reportedly had its ChatGPT seats doubled at no extra charge. Coverage also says OpenAI is partly buying share at the expense of its own margins, while cheaper models have lowered its real costs.
Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic has confirmed the terms, and the deal figures come from unnamed sources and the customers themselves.
What to expect next
Watch Anthropic's response, whether through its own discounts, new cheaper models or bundling with Claude Code, and whether more large customers publicly switch. Anthropic's expected IPO filing would show how much enterprise growth has slowed, which the coverage says an investor memo already hinted at. For buyers, the episode suggests frontier models are becoming easier to swap, which gives them more leverage at renewal time.