AI giants are battling for mainstream users in the "Super Bowl"! Anthropic competes with OpenAI, with ChatGPT's monthly growth rate returning to 10%.

Notice that, as the competition from rival Anthropic with improved programming tools brings increasing pressure, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is conveying to employees and investors that his company is also showing strong momentum. Altman told OpenAI employees last Friday that the popular AI chatbot Siasun Robot&Automation ChatGPT under the company's umbrella has seen a "monthly growth rate exceeding 10%". Altman also stated that OpenAI is preparing to launch "an updated chat model" this week. Currently, more than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, but Google and Anthropic are constantly gaining ground. In December, OpenAI announced it was in "red alert" mode to improve ChatGPT and temporarily put several projects on hold to focus on this effort. Altman stated that OpenAI's programming product Codex has grown by about 50% compared to a week ago. Codex directly competes with Anthropic's Claude Code, which has seen explosive growth in the past year. OpenAI launched a new Codex model GPT-5.3-Codex last week and introduced a standalone application for Apple computer users. Altman referred to the growth of Codex as "insane" in an internal message. "This has been a great week," Altman wrote. But it was also a controversial week. Altman and other executives responded to Anthropic's criticisms on social media. Anthropic mocked OpenAI's decision to run ads within ChatGPT in a Super Bowl ad. Altman posted on the X platform stating that these commercial ads are "misleading" and that OpenAI "clearly will never run ads in the way Anthropic portrays." Sources revealed that OpenAI will officially begin testing ads within ChatGPT on Monday. Last month, the company stated that ads will be clearly labeled, appear at the bottom of ChatGPT responses, and not affect the content of the responses. The source stated that in the long term, OpenAI expects advertising revenue to account for less than half of its total revenue. The digital advertising market has long been dominated by Google and Meta, with Amazon becoming an important player in recent years. Sources revealed that Altman and Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar have been pitching OpenAI's growth story to investors as the company seeks to complete a round of financing that could be as high as $100 billion. In private meetings, executives emphasized OpenAI's strength on the consumer side, growing enterprise business, and access to computing power. As part of the discussions, OpenAI presented some charts. One chart showed that, according to internal data, Codex is eating into Claude Code's market share. One source stated that financing negotiations for OpenAI are expected to heat up in the next two weeks. In March, OpenAI completed a funding round of $41 billion, including $30 billion from SoftBank and $11 billion from other investors. The current financing round may be completed in two parts. The first part will include funding from Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon, with Amazon negotiating to contribute up to $50 billion. This will be followed by additional investments from participants such as SoftBank, with discussions about contributing another $30 billion. Details of this round of financing are still evolving and may change. Anthropic surpasses OpenAI in Super Bowl engagement According to data provided by EDO CEO Kevin Krim, Anthropic's Claude outperformed OpenAI's ChatGPT in this year's Super Bowl ad battle. An analysis of consumer engagement after the ads were released showed that the search volume and website traffic generated by Anthropic's two ads exceeded that of the three ads supported by Microsoft for OpenAI, indicating a shift in the way AI companies are competing for mainstream users. The unexpected winner of this AI advertising showdown was ai.com, a domain purchased by Crypto.com founder Chris Marsalek. Krim noted, "He and his creative team played Musk and Altman," adding that, "the website crashed within minutes of the ad airing on TV." This provocative approach proved to be very effective in driving consumer curiosity and engagement. Krim observed the difference in strategies between the two leading AI companies. Anthropic targets consumers directly, while OpenAI seems to focus on enterprise and programmer audiences. A host commented, "If I were the one about to spend all of OpenAI's money at this moment, I would actually appeal to users," questioning whether OpenAI's strategy aligns with the wide consumer audience of the Super Bowl. The tech industry dominated this year's competition, with about 16 companies buying ads, including OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, and Anthropic.