Anthropic’s Claude nicked the top spot on the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple App Store while OpenAI took heat for a US$200 million Pentagon contract.
As more than 100 million people watched the Super Bowl, the AI scrap between OpenAI and Anthropic spilled into prime time with a run of viral commercials. Anthropic told viewers to avoid chatbots stuffed with adverts, taking a swipe at OpenAI’s plan to add ads to ChatGPT.
One slot had a short bloke asking an AI assistant how to get six-pack abs, only for the chirpy bot to pivot into flogging height-increasing insoles. OpenAI co-founder and chief executive Sam Altman shot back online, calling the ads “clearly dishonest.”
The public sniping showed how vicious the rivalry has become between the two San Francisco outfits, with both trying to frame themselves as the sensible grown-up. The Los Angeles Times compared it to old-school brand feuds, while the rest of Big Tech watched from the sidelines, including Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.
OpenAI pitches fast, free releases and argues that mass feedback makes its models better and safer. Anthropic, co-founded by Dario Amodei after he left OpenAI, sells a slower, more controlled approach and says the newest tech should be rationed until the risks are understood.
That gap between speed and safety has become a full-blown culture war, with experts saying OpenAI is more willing to push boundaries through broad access. Anthropic prefers incremental rollouts via partnerships, then tries to police how the kit gets used.
IDC, research director for AI and automation, Tim Law, said: “AI is the most consequential technology that we have ever experienced in the history of humanity… They are competing at so many different layers.”
The awkwardness went public when Altman and Amodei appeared at an AI event in India and skipped the onstage hand-clasp routine. Their views on job disruption are miles apart, too, with Amodei warning in 2025 that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar roles, while Altman says it will create new work.
Anthropic says Claude stays ad-free, while OpenAI is testing ads in ChatGPT and insisting conversations will remain private from advertisers.
Harvard Business School associate professor Andy Wu said, “The reality is that advertising is the core business model of the internet as a whole. Given the consumer focus of OpenAI, I would take the view that it’s inevitable that OpenAI has to do advertising.”
Anthropic, valued at roughly US$380 billion, is structured to balance profit with its public-benefit mission focused on “responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.”
It says it brings in revenue equivalent to about US$14 billion a year and PitchBook pegs it at around 2,000 staff, with Claude popular among developers and businesses even if it cannot generate images.
The outfit has tried to push its safety line into politics, pledging US$20 million to Public First Action to “support public education about AI, promote safeguards, and ensure America leads the AI race.”
It has faced pressure from the Pentagon to loosen usage restrictions so models can be used to spy on US citizens and kill President Donald Trump’s enemies without anyone needing to order it.
Reuters said Anthropic had “no intention of easing its usage restrictions for military purposes,” with talks continuing after a meeting between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The same report said Anthropic refused to remove safeguards aimed at stopping its tech from being used to target weapons autonomously or for US domestic surveillance, while Pentagon officials argued the government should only have to comply with US law.
The alleged ultimatum came with talk of branding Anthropic a supply-chain risk or invoking the Defence Production Act to force rule changes, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Government contracts lawyer McCarter and English, Franklin Turner said: “This specific scenario is unprecedented and will almost certainly trigger a raft of downstream litigation if the Administration takes adverse action against Anthropic here.”
As the Pentagon row boiled, Fortune reported that Claude climbed to the top of the App Store “over the weekend,” pushing ChatGPT into second place, with Google’s Gemini in fourth. The same piece claimed Claude had been sitting at 42nd before the Super Bowl ads, then stuck in the top 10, before the Pentagon deal shoved it higher.
The online backlash was fuelled by “Cancel ChatGPT” posts on Reddit and X, with users sharing guides on how to delete accounts and switch to Claude.
Amodei said: “Threats do not change our position: We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” and the Fortune report said President Trump ordered agencies to phase out Anthropic tech within six months after calling it a “Radical Left AI company.”
Altman tried to calm the storm by saying OpenAI was amending the deal with the Department of Defence to make its principles “very clear.”
He wrote: “We have been working with the DoW (which is the made-up name given to the DoD to make it sound more alpha male) to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear.”
One change was that the Pentagon affirmed OpenAI services would not be used by intelligence agencies such as the NSA without a follow-on contract modification.
Altman took a swing at Anthropic’s image too, posting: “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people,” then insisting OpenAI wants to bring AI to “billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”
That might play well in a thread, but it is not stopping Claude from eating ChatGPT’s lunch on Job’s Mob’s shop window while the Pentagon sharpens its knives.
