Many investors are backing both OpenAI and Anthropic

In short: Even though OpenAI and Anthropic compete head to head, many of the same investors are putting money into both.

What's going on

OpenAI and Anthropic are often described as rivals. They compete for employees, customers, and attention, and they have disagreed publicly on some policy questions.

A WIRED analysis of PitchBook data (a database that tracks startup funding) found that about 90 venture capital firms and other investment managers have invested in both companies. The data suggests OpenAI shares about 42 percent of its investors with Anthropic. It also suggests roughly a third of Anthropic’s investors are also OpenAI backers, including firms like Sequoia Capital and Greylock.

The overlap may be even bigger than it looks. WIRED notes that private investment information can be incomplete, and it identified at least a couple of investors that did not show up correctly in one dataset.

Experts told WIRED this kind of investor overlap is unusual for two close competitors. One reason is that these AI companies have grown extremely large and raised huge sums, so many investors prefer to spread their bets. One researcher compared it to owning shares in both Pepsi and Coke (you win if either brand sells more soda).

What to watch

This matters more as OpenAI and Anthropic move toward possible IPOs, which is when a private company sells shares on the stock market for the first time. If one company struggles and the other does well, investors who backed both may be better protected. At the same time, backing rivals can raise questions about conflicts of interest, since investors sometimes get private updates and give advice.

Source: Wired