Thousands of tech professionals gathered at San Francisco’s Moscone Center this week for the HumanX AI conference, where conversations overwhelmingly centered on agentic AI’s transformative impact across industries. Amid discussions on automating business and coding tasks, one name surfaced repeatedly: Claude. Anthropic’s chatbot received frequent mentions in panel sessions and was a hot topic among vendors on the convention floor. In contrast, ChatGPT garnered little attention, with one vendor explicitly stating that his team relies heavily on Claude while viewing ChatGPT and OpenAI as having “gone downhill.”
This sentiment appears increasingly common. Despite OpenAI’s recent $122 billion funding round and upcoming IPO, a perception persists that the company has lost its footing or seems uncertain about its next steps. Critics point to a lack of focus, exemplified by last month’s decision to abandon several long-running projects, including the AI video generator Sora and a plan for a “sexy” version of ChatGPT. Instead, OpenAI has narrowed its efforts to business and coding services.
Negative buzz around OpenAI has been fueled by developments such as a recent New Yorker article questioning the trustworthiness of CEO Sam Altman. The company’s work with the Trump administration and its move to inject advertising into ChatGPT have also drawn criticism. These controversies contribute to an image of OpenAI as reactive rather than strategic, seemingly responding to events rather than shaping them.
During a HumanX discussion, Sierra co-founder and CEO Bret Taylor, who chairs OpenAI’s board, defended Altman when asked about the New Yorker profile by Alex Heath. “I think Sam is one of the most visible leaders and executives in the world,” Taylor said. “If you want to seek out detractors for him, you’ll find them, and they’ll be very vocal about it. I think Sam’s remarkable. I think he’s a remarkable leader of AI, and I really trust his character as someone who’s worked with him.”
In terms of market presence and revenue, OpenAI and Anthropic are closely matched. Data suggests Anthropic is catching up among business users, with The Wall Street Journal analyzing their finances and labeling both as “the fastest-growing businesses in the history of tech.” For OpenAI, “falling off” may simply mean it’s no longer the undisputed champion, facing normal competition in a dynamic industry.
OpenAI remains determined to maintain dominance. This week, the company announced a new $100 subscription tier for ChatGPT, offering substantially more access to Codex, its coding tool. This move aims to broaden tool usage and potentially lure users away from Claude Code. During a HumanX discussion with Bloomberg reporter Rachel Metz, OpenAI CTO of B2B applications Srinivas Narayanan highlighted the rapid pace of technological change. “We are in this incredible moment in technology, where every month, and sometimes every day, we are all looking forward to something new,” Narayanan said. He cited agentic coding as an example, noting, “We knew AI was going to impact software engineering, people have been using assistive coding over the last year, but even in just the last few months, the entire field has changed.”
Agentic accomplishments currently dominate tech community focus, as other AI applications like creative uses have yet to fully materialize. The volume of work companies are offloading onto automated helpers is surprising, and as Narayanan observed, this shift has occurred in a relatively short timeframe. In such an unpredictable environment, the future remains wide open, with both OpenAI and Anthropic vying for leadership in an evolving landscape.
