Following a series of revelations about anti-competitive practices, Anthropic has now formally terminated OpenAI’s access to its Claude family of AI models. The decision comes amidst reports that OpenAI was integrating Claude into its internal tools to evaluate its performance against its own models. The move has raised important questions about ethical competition and the limits of collaboration in today’s quickly shifting world of AI.
One includes a statement of resistance from executives at Anthropic, including Chief Science Officer Jared Kaplan, against providing access to competitors. Kaplan justified the company’s decision by stating, “I think it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.” In fact, AI companies are doing this more to step away from competitors. Their goal is to stop competitors from using their technology to gain an unfair advantage.
What made this controversy blow up further was when rumors began circulating that OpenAI was indeed looking to acquire Windsurf, which had just been acquired by Cognition. In light of these developments, Anthropic felt compelled to protect its proprietary technology and ensure that OpenAI could not utilize Claude for comparative analysis. According to the news, OpenAI had been hooking Claude up to its proprietary tools. This allows for evaluations in multiple areas, including code compliance, literary efforts, and public safety.
As for the market, an Anthropic spokesperson pointed to the importance of OpenAI’s move. They disclosed, “OpenAI’s own technical staff were using our coding tools before the launch of GPT-5.” This revelation raised further concerns about a potential “direct violation of our terms of service.”
In response to the revocation of access, an OpenAI spokesperson expressed disappointment: “While we respect Anthropic’s decision to cut off our API access, it’s disappointing considering our API remains available to them.” This underscores the deep nuance of relationships between companies in an industry riddled with development race and cut-throat competition.
