On August 24, according to the Financial Times, U.S. corporate customers of Anthropic are reducing their use of its most powerful model, Fable5, and opting for lower-cost alternatives, raising concerns about its high-investment business model. Anthropic is currently preparing for an IPO, with the market expecting its valuation to reach $2 trillion or more, possibly as early as September.
Data from Ramp on the spending of 70,000 companies shows that two months after the release of Fable5, company spending on this model accounted for only about 11% of total spending on Anthropic tools, and has recently stabilized. Analysts believe the main reason is that Fable5 is expensive, while older models already meet most enterprises' needs. Meanwhile, Opus5, released at the end of July, although smaller in scale and lower in price, has already seen higher enterprise spending than Fable5.
After its initial release in early June, Fable5 was withdrawn due to intervention by the Trump administration on grounds of national security, and was allowed to be relaunched on July 1st. Although political uncertainties have lessened, its demand and adoption rate remain lower than those of previous cutting-edge models. Anthropic's annualized revenue last month reached $6.5 billion, up from $4.7 billion in May, growing nearly seven times since the beginning of the year; the company achieved its first adjusted operating profit in the second quarter and has over 6,000 clients spending more than $100,000 annually.
At the same time, enterprises are controlling AI costs by choosing more cost-effective models, and open-weight models in China and other regions are further expanding choices. OpenAI, meanwhile, has rebounded, with annualized revenue growth of 35% this quarter following the release of GPT5.6, exceeding $4 billion. The market is shifting from "pursuing the strongest model" to a more comprehensive balance of model capabilities, prices, and actual ROI.
