Excerpt:
The IPO Math Forces the Issue
Both OpenAI and Anthropic are on IPO timelines for the second half of 2026. OpenAI completed the largest private funding round in history in April, $122 billion at an $852 billion post-money valuation. Anthropic has reportedly surpassed $30 billion in annualized revenue. Massive numbers, both of them. Also both attached to companies that are still burning cash at extraordinary rates.
Public markets will not tolerate the gap between subscription revenue and compute cost that has defined the past three years. The moment either company files, analysts will demand unit economics that show a path to margin. Usage-based billing is the fastest way to demonstrate that path.
None of this contradicts the repricing thesis. The pricing war is the last land grab before the gate closes. Both companies are spending aggressively now to lock in users whose switching costs will make them sticky when prices rise. OpenAI offers two months free. Anthropic offers 50% more capacity. Both expire in July. What comes after July is the real pricing.
Honestly: those who based a business model on this are probably bad business people.
Yup. And vendor lock in? As soon as prices go up, people will realize they can use Zed, Continue.dev, OpenWebUI, or any other FOSS system and point them at Claude or OpenAI or whatever APIs, lock in won’t matter.
I feel for the employees whose lives will be tumulted by their moronic management who went “all in”
If you think this will stop at just harming the employees of those companies, youre wrong
Well everyone graduates with their CS degree and thinks that not only will they be making $150k - $200k in their first job, they will save up so much money and be so in demand that it won’t matter that they get laid off.