2026-08-23 20:24 UTCOriginal source2 min readUpdated: 2026-08-23 21:15 UTC

Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive

<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5ee49718-c258-4f01-aa32-7e5b76ae5245">Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive</a> A few interesting numbers in this FT story gathered from "people with knowledge of the matter": <ul> <li>Anthropic's "annualized revenue" for July is up to $65bn - it was $47bn in May, and I collected <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/May/29/anthropic/">more historic numbers here</a>.</li> <li>Anthropic expect Q3 to be profitable according to the same model they used to declare Q2 profitable. "It also told investors that it had 6,000 customers that spend $100,000 annually or more."</li> <li>As for OpenAI, "annualised revenue has jumped 35 per cent in the quarter to date and is now over $40bn, with the launch of GPT 5.6 in July jolting the company’s performance after a sluggish start to the year".</li> </ul> This article also introduced me to the <a href="https://ramp.com/data/ai-index">Ramp AI index</a>, which uses billing data from 70,000 Ramp credit card using companies to estimate model adoption. Here's Ramp's breakdown of Anthropic model spend for July 2026, which looks reasonable given that Opus 5 was only released on July 24th, and supports the idea that Fable's cost has made it a less popular model: <ol> <li>Opus 4.8: 28.0%</li> <li>Sonnet 4.6: 8.3%</li> <li>Fable 5: 8.0%</li> <li>Opus 4.6: 6.9%</li> <li>Sonnet 5: 3.6%</li> <li>Opus 5: 3.5%</li> <li>Opus 4.7: 1.7%</li> <li>Sonnet 4.5: 1.3%</li> <li>Haiku 4.5: 1.0%</li> <li>Opus 4.5: 0.7%</li> </ol> Via <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49411102">Hacker News</a> Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai">ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/openai">openai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/generative-ai">generative-ai</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/llms">llms</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/anthropic">anthropic</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude">claude</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/claude-mythos-fable">claude-mythos-fable</a>

SourceSimon Willison's Weblog

Simon Willison’s Weblog

23rd August 2026 - Link Blog

Anthropic’s best AI model struggles to attract users as cheaper tools thrive (via) A few interesting numbers in this FT story gathered from "people with knowledge of the matter":

Anthropic's "annualized revenue" for July is up to $65bn - it was $47bn in May, and I collected more historic numbers here.

Anthropic expect Q3 to be profitable according to the same model they used to declare Q2 profitable. "It also told investors that it had 6,000 customers that spend $100,000 annually or more."

As for OpenAI, "annualised revenue has jumped 35 per cent in the quarter to date and is now over $40bn, with the launch of GPT 5.6 in July jolting the company’s performance after a sluggish start to the year".

This article also introduced me to the Ramp AI index, which uses billing data from 70,000 Ramp credit card using companies to estimate model adoption.

Here's Ramp's breakdown of Anthropic model spend for July 2026, which looks reasonable given that Opus 5 was only released on July 24th, and supports the idea that Fable's cost has made it a less popular model:

Opus 4.8: 28.0%

Sonnet 4.6: 8.3%

Fable 5: 8.0%

Opus 4.6: 6.9%

Sonnet 5: 3.6%

Opus 5: 3.5%

Opus 4.7: 1.7%

Sonnet 4.5: 1.3%

Haiku 4.5: 1.0%

Opus 4.5: 0.7%