In one of the boldest competitive moves in the AI industry this year, OpenAI has secured a landmark deal with coding platform Replit, offering more than 30% off a contract valued at over $100 million per year — successfully poaching one of Anthropic’s top enterprise clients.
The deal was first reported by The Information and has sent shockwaves through the AI business community. Replit CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad announced at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on October 17 that Replit is making OpenAI its preferred partner, citing cost, performance, and the strength of the new partnership. OpenAI is now the default model provider for Replit Agent, meaning the vast majority of Replit’s users are automatically routed to OpenAI without any manual selection.
The shift underscores a fierce pricing war between the two AI giants. According to reports, Rippling CEO Parker Conrad confirmed his company boosted OpenAI’s share of its coding workload from 16% to 52%, while Anthropic’s fell from 57% to 18%. DataCamp CEO Jonathan Cornelissen said OpenAI’s pricing slashed his company’s AI costs by 80–90%. Anthropic’s growth has reportedly slowed from Q2 to Q3, raising questions about its margin resilience as OpenAI trades short-term profits for dominant market share.
Source: The Decoder – OpenAI offers discounts up to 90% to poach Anthropic’s biggest customers