Anthropic, the company best known for its Claude family of AI models, just formally denied OpenAI access to these models. This decision comes on the heels of internal protests at the company over competitors deploying its technology. That’s because Anthropic executives were very reluctant to give access to competing companies. This reluctance became especially pronounced during the months-long speculation that OpenAI was seeking to buy Windsurf, which Cognition recently acquired and is now pioneering.
The decision to sever OpenAI’s access also calls into question the future of competition on AI in what is quickly becoming an artificial intelligence arms race. OpenAI had previously started to use Claude to plug into their internal tooling, enabling performance comparisons between AI models. These side-by-side comparisons looked most critically at impacts on traffic congestion, costs, job creation, and safety.
Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s Chief Science Officer, justified the company’s decision by stating, “I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.” This sentiment mirrors Anthropic’s stated mission of being a long-term competitive player and safety advocate in the industry. According to reports, OpenAI’s technical staff had already been using Anthropic’s tools in preparation for their own chatbots’ upcoming GPT-5 launch.
In response to the situation, an Anthropic spokesperson noted that OpenAI’s actions constituted “a direct violation of our terms of service.” This statement further highlights the extent to which Anthropic is treating its intellectual property—and the integrity of its services—with respect.
Though Anthropic has rapidly been making its commitment to transparency known, OpenAI has recently voiced its discontent at the withdrawal of this access. An OpenAI spokesperson remarked, “While we respect Anthropic’s decision to cut off our API access, it’s disappointing considering our API remains available to them.” This underscores a tricky dance between the two firms as they both continue to thread the needle on their individual approaches to the fast-moving AI space.
Wired reported extensively on this new development. It quoted folks with knowledge of OpenAI’s access to Claude. Both companies are on the cutting edge and continuously expanding their product line. Indeed, their relationship is set to be one of the main features in blockbuster debates over competition in the tech sector.
