From a business perspective, Anthropic is competing with OpenAI on multiple fronts. Both companies are racing to develop frontier AI models, and from the latest developments I've observed in April 2026, Anthropic is very much in the game. They recently released Claude Opus 4.6 with massive context windows (200,000 tokens plus the ability to handle 1 million tokens in research preview), which is genuinely impressive. Their strategy differs from OpenAI's in some important ways.
While OpenAI initially built a consumer product (ChatGPT) and then went enterprise, Anthropic has been more balanced from the start with both consumer-facing Claude and a strong API/developer focus. They've also been more transparent about their safety research and limitations. OpenAI's recent partnership with the Department of Defense and strategic focus has shifted their positioning, whereas Anthropic has maintained its research-first approach.
The competition is intense. OpenAI has first-mover advantage, more user adoption, and integration into more platforms. However, Anthropic is catching up quickly. What gives Anthropic an edge, in my opinion, is their deep focus on understanding what makes AI systems tick.