Inside Silicon Valley’s Love-Hate Relationship With Anthropic

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0:30Today on Forbes, Inside Silicon Valley's Love-Hate Relationship with Anthropic. In 2025, AI startup Spellbook signed a long-term deal with Anthropic to use its models to review legal contracts. At that time, Spellbook CEO Scott Stevenson wasn't worried about the AI giant coming for his lunch. He recalls that Anthropic staffers told him explicitly they didn't see the firm directly competing with Spellbook in the legal space. A year later, he was caught off guard when Anthropic informed him that it was launching Claude for legal. The tool is tailored for law firms. It has dozens of capabilities, ranging from contract review to citation checking to tracking regulatory changes.

1:21Many of these overlap with Spellbook. Stevenson says that made things, quote, a little bit awkward. He decided to be more cautious sharing data and product roadmaps with the AI giant. He says, quote,

1:47Up until recently, Spellbook used Claude to carry out over 500 ,000 monthly contract reviews for its customers, but it's now moved a lot of its spend to open AI. Spellbook is far from the only company navigating a tricky relationship with Anthropic. A large swath of startups relies on the AI behemoth for its top-tier models, widely considered among the best in the industry. But Anthropic's dominance and aggressive expansion has led some of its customers to feel as if they walking a tightrope. At any time, the AI company could train its models to directly compete with their own products. One startup founder compared the dynamic to how Amazon started undercutting its vendors and manufacturing its own competitive products through Amazon Basics.

2:36He says, quote, it's like, yeah, for a while you can sell on Amazon, but then Amazon is going to start selling a version of your product, too. Anthropic declined to comment. This dynamic played out very publicly with design giant Figma, which relies on Anthropic's models, among others, to power its AI features. In April, days after Anthropic's chief product officer Mike Krieger abruptly resigned from Figma's board, Anthropic launched Claude Design, a direct rival of Figma's software that can generate and edit layouts. At a user event a few days after the launch, Figma CEO Dylan Field told attendees Anthropic was not, quote, consistently candid in their communications.

3:23This, according to what Upstarts Media reported, and mirrors the phrase used during the brief high-profile ouster of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. These tensions have only ramped up as Anthropic's market position has become more dominant. Its models have regularly edged out OpenAIs at the tip of the frontier, and the company's growth numbers show it. The company now boasts 300 ,000 business customers and a 900 % net revenue retention rate, which was disclosed in its recently filed S1. More than 11 ,900 customers spend over$100 ,000 annually. It reported$16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026 and$693 million in operating losses.

4:10Reports note that it is targeting a valuation between$1.5 trillion and$2 trillion in its IPO later this month. Because of its power, Anthropic often holds all the cards in negotiations with smaller customers. Although the company has slashed prices recently, its models are wildly expensive. The CEO of an AI security startup says, quote, if we build our business on just Anthropics models, we won't be able to make money ever. Some startup founders tell Forbes that Anthropic is not flexible on pricing and volume discounts, which make it difficult to work with as a vendor. One AI startup that was spending millions on Anthropic models has churned completely because Claude was just too expensive.

4:56Now it's using Chinese DeepSeq models instead. In October, Anthropic expanded its Clawed Startups program, adding perks like a free year of its team plan and up to$45 ,000 worth of discounts from companies building with Clawed. Many companies are starting to reduce their spending on frontier models in favor of cheaper, open-weight AI models. Those models can be freely downloaded and adjusted by developers. George Hu, president of Fireworks, which lets startups build their own AI software using open-weight models, in an interview with Forbes in August said, quote, The pendulum has swung, and now there's a really deep anti-anthropic sentiment out there.

5:39Anthropics' reluctance to negotiate is understandable. As it barrels towards what might be the largest IPO in stock market history, the company has been under intense pressure to prove it can make enough money to justify the towering pile of cash it has raised to date,$130 billion. Not to mention the exorbitant amount it's spending on Compute. For full coverage, check out Rashi Srivastava's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

6:17Thank you.