Anthropic is prioritizing business growth over generating "flashy headlines, " according to its commercial chief, in a subtle critique of rival OpenAI amid their ongoing public rivalry. Anthropic aired ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl that mocked OpenAI's decision to test ads on ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman labeled Anthropic's ads as "deceptive, " highlighting the fierce competition among leading AI companies to attract business users. In a detailed interview with CNBC, Anthropic's commercial chief, Smith, dismissed the market sell-off in software stocks triggered by Anthropic’s Claude Cowork tool as "a lot of hyperbole. " Anthropic invested millions in Super Bowl commercials—a 60-second pregame and 30-second in-game spot—emphasizing: "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude. " Smith stated this was a deliberate choice to exclude ads from Claude, as advertising would divert the company’s focus toward "optimizing for the wrong things. " Without ads, Anthropic can concentrate on making AI models smarter, "genuinely helpful, safe, and trusted. " Unlike OpenAI, which centers heavily on consumer markets with ChatGPT, Anthropic targets AI sales to businesses. Smith explained Anthropic’s "unconflicted" stance on avoiding ads allows it to focus on model quality, efficacy, and enterprise integration without competing for eyeballs or ad revenue. Altman countered that Anthropic’s ads were amusing but "clearly dishonest, " insisting OpenAI would never run ads as portrayed. On infrastructure spending—a major investor focus post-Big Tech earnings season—Anthropic has pledged $50 billion toward U. S. data centers and purchases compute power from Microsoft and Google. In comparison, OpenAI has committed over $1 trillion for future infrastructure with partners including Nvidia, Oracle, and Broadcom.

Smith emphasized that Anthropic prefers steady revenue growth over making headline-grabbing, large-scale compute deals. OpenAI recently announced partnerships such as Nvidia’s $100 billion commitment to support OpenAI with 10 gigawatts of systems, and a $10 billion deal with chipmaker Cerebras for 750 megawatts of AI chips, alongside collaborations with AMD and Broadcom. Contrastingly, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei advocates a "do more with less" approach, focusing on disciplined spending. Smith said leadership reviews compute spending daily and is "comfortable" with current investments because demand is strong, fueled by "incredible growth" in Claude Code and Cowork products for enterprises. He stressed the company seeks to align purchases closely with demand to maintain its rapid growth trajectory while avoiding excess or shortfall, with more infrastructure updates forthcoming. Recently, Anthropic partnered with investment firm Man Group to supply AI products and jointly develop new tools. This comes as software stocks suffered last week amid fears that AI, particularly Claude Cowork, might replace traditional software, threatening revenues of multiple vendors. Smith noted adoption varies: some enterprises continue investing in established software, while others explore Anthropic’s AI solutions. He argued that market reactions were exaggerated, pointing out many existing software applications deliver critical tasks with specialized data models and workflows that will remain valuable for a long time.