Market & RegulationInvestment · $1.25T
AI spending stalls as Anthropic valuation drops to $1.3T
TechCrunch AIhigh confidence
Why it matters
- →AI revenue growth is decoupling from usage volume due to aggressive price cuts.
- →Anthropic and OpenAI valuations have dropped significantly ahead of IPOs.
- →Enterprise customers are optimizing costs, reducing per-token spend despite higher adoption.
New data from Ramp indicates that AI spending has stalled despite rising token volumes, a trend driven by intense price competition between OpenAI and Anthropic. As both companies slash API prices to secure enterprise contracts, revenue growth is being capped, leading to significant valuation downgrades ahead of anticipated IPOs; Anthropic’s potential valuation has dropped to $1.2–$1.3 trillion, while OpenAI lowered its fundraising target to $1.25 trillion. Ramp’s lead economist Ara Kharazian notes that customers are increasingly optimizing costs by using cheaper models and routers, effectively decoupling usage from spend. This shift challenges the prevailing investor assumption that AI adoption will continue to drive exponential revenue growth for model providers.
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TopicOpenAI Initial Public Offering
Earlier coverage that leads up to this article, and what followed. Lines connect each piece to the closest one after it, converging here.
How we got here
- 1Anthropic Introduces Usage-Based Fees for Claude Fable 5
WIRED AI · July 9, 2026 · Related
- 2AMD invests up to $5B in Anthropic
The Verge AI · July 22, 2026 · Related
- 3OpenAI Gains Ground on Anthropic with Business Users
TechCrunch AI · August 20, 2026 · Same story
- 4Anthropic Proposes $30 Trillion AI Market
The AI Daily Brief · August 29, 2026 · Related
- 5Anthropic and OpenAI duel on price and performance
The Rundown AI · September 23, 2026 · Related
- 6Anthropic IPO filing reveals $42B loss and AI risk warnings
The Verge AI · September 29, 2026 · Related
- 7Oura delays IPO; Anthropic reveals massive AI infrastructure costs
Crunchbase News · September 29, 2026 · Same story
- 8Anthropic Delays IPO Amid Valuation and Safety Concerns
Crunchbase News · October 22, 2026 · Same story
What happened next
- 9Open Chinese AI Models Match Frontier Labs in Hacking
WIRED AI · November 6, 2026 · Related
- 10OpenAI raises $11B at $1.25T valuation
TechCrunch AI · November 6, 2026 · Same story
Follow this story
Open the full story →Anthropic IPO filing reveals enterprise stickiness strategy
4 developments
- Oct 26 · TechCrunch AI
Anthropic IPO filing reveals enterprise stickiness strategy - Oct 29 · The Verge AI
Anthropic files S-1 for $1.5T-$2T IPO↳ Anthropic reveals $70 billion annualized recurring revenue with gross margins rivaling traditional software giants. - Nov 3 · TechCrunch AI
Anthropic's Q3 compute costs eat 58% of revenue↳ Q3 compute costs rose to 58% of revenue from 48%, driven by expensive short-term contracts with neocloud providers like SpaceX and Nscale. - Nov 6 · TechCrunch AI
AI spending stalls as Anthropic valuation drops to $1.3T (This article)↳ Anthropic's valuation drops from $2T to $1.3T as AI spending stalls despite rising token volumes due to aggressive price cuts.
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