OpenAI is looking at slashing token prices, because enterprise customers as part of a cunning plan to take out Anthropic.
According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI expects Anthropic to make price cuts as businesses start to suffer from AI bill shock.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman admitted at a recent event that costs had become “a huge issue… I think we’ll have a lot of ways we can help people get more value for less spend.”
The problem is that cheaper tokens could chew through the already thin economics of both companies. OpenAI and Anthropic are already losing billions because running AI models takes vast amounts of computing power, electricity and cash.
The price war would arrive as OpenAI tries to catch Anthropic in the enterprise market. Anthropic’s revenue has surged after Claude Code went viral among software engineers, while OpenAI has pushed Codex harder in response.
Some corporate punters have already spent so much on Anthropic tools that bosses are trying to put the brakes on. Earlier this year, an Uber executive said the company had maxed out its 2026 budget for agentic AI use.
Another Uber leader said last month that it was hard to link AI coding productivity gains to new customer features. The complaints have kicked off a Silicon Valley argument about “tokenmaxxing,” the practice of burning through as many tokens as possible to goose productivity.
A price war would test both companies’ business models before their expected public listings. OpenAI and Anthropic have grabbed most of the revenue from new AI products, which has fuelled their rise.
Investors, however, have long worried that the products are too interchangeable. If customers can hop from one chatbot peddler to another for a cheaper token bill, loyalty starts to look a bit optional. OpenAI filed for an initial public offering earlier this week, following Anthropic’s move.
In a recent Slack message to employees, Altman said OpenAI plans to go public “within the next year.”
OpenAI said in a confidential filing statement that there were “things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company,” but declined to explain further.
