Anthropic has been aggressive in 2025, expanding enterprise capabilities and challenging OpenAI’s dominance. For organisations evaluating AI partners, this competition has important implications.

The Anthropic Enterprise Play

Anthropic’s enterprise push in 2025 has included:

Claude Enterprise launch. A dedicated enterprise tier with enhanced security, admin controls, and compliance features. This addresses gaps that made Claude less attractive than ChatGPT Enterprise for many organisations.

API capability expansion. Claude’s API has gained features enterprises need: longer context windows, improved function calling, and better reliability at scale.

Partnership expansion. Anthropic has partnered with major cloud providers and systems integrators, making Claude more accessible through existing enterprise relationships.

Safety positioning. Anthropic continues to position on safety, which resonates with regulated industries and risk-conscious organisations.

How This Compares to OpenAI

The enterprise AI market is no longer a single-player game:

Capability	OpenAI	Anthropic
Model capability	GPT-4 series, strong	Claude 3 series, competitive
Enterprise features	Mature (ChatGPT Enterprise)	Catching up (Claude Enterprise)
API reliability	Improved from 2024 issues	Generally strong
Safety positioning	Moderate emphasis	Core differentiator
Cloud partnerships	Strong (Azure especially)	Growing (AWS, GCP)
Pricing	Premium but competitive	Similar range

The capability gap has narrowed significantly. For many use cases, either provider delivers adequate performance.

What This Means for Vendor Selection

Competition benefits buyers. Several implications:

Price Pressure

With viable alternatives, OpenAI can’t maintain premium pricing without justification. Expect:

• More aggressive discounting for volume commitments
• Competitive matching when alternatives are considered
• Innovation in pricing models

Organisations should use competition in negotiations. Even if you prefer one provider, having alternatives improves your position.

Feature Acceleration

Competition drives innovation. Both providers are accelerating feature development:

• Enterprise security and compliance features
• API capabilities and developer experience
• Integration with enterprise systems
• Industry-specific solutions

Features that were “roadmap” items become available faster when competitors are delivering.

Redundancy Options

Smart organisations are building multi-model architectures:

• Primary provider for core use cases
• Secondary provider for backup and comparison
• Abstraction layers that enable provider switching

This reduces vendor lock-in risk and provides negotiating leverage.

Technical Considerations

For technical teams evaluating providers:

API differences. While both offer similar capabilities, APIs differ in structure, parameters, and behaviour. Code written for one doesn’t trivially port to the other.

Model personality. Claude and GPT have different “personalities” in responses. Testing with your actual use cases matters more than benchmarks.

Fine-tuning options. Both offer customisation, but approaches differ. Evaluate based on your specific needs.

Context windows. Claude offers longer context windows, which matters for document-heavy applications.

Reliability patterns. Both have had outages. Understand their incident history and response patterns.

Australian Considerations

For Australian organisations specifically:

Data residency. Neither provider offers Australian data centres for API processing. Data flows to US facilities. Understand implications for sensitive data.

Support hours. US-based providers mean support is most responsive during US business hours. Australian organisations may experience delays.

Local partners. Both providers work through local partners and integrators. Understanding local support ecosystem matters.

Regulatory positioning. As Australian AI regulation develops, provider compliance positioning will matter. Anthropic’s safety emphasis may appeal to regulated industries.

Making the Choice

The “best” provider depends on your context:

Consider OpenAI when:

• You’re heavily invested in Microsoft ecosystem (Azure OpenAI)
• Your use cases need specific GPT-4 capabilities
• You value ecosystem breadth (plugins, integrations)

Consider Anthropic when:

• Safety and constitutional AI positioning matters
• You need longer context windows
• You want alternative to dominant provider
• AWS is your primary cloud

Consider both when:

• You want negotiating leverage
• Redundancy matters for your use case
• You’re building abstraction layers anyway

Strategic Implications

Broader implications for enterprise AI strategy:

Don’t bet everything on one provider. The AI landscape is evolving rapidly. Building flexibility protects against provider-specific risks.

Watch the open-source gap. While closed-source providers compete, open-source models improve. The competitive landscape may shift again.

Focus on outcomes, not providers. The model is a component. Business outcomes come from how you apply it. Over-focusing on provider selection distracts from more important work.

Build switching capability. Even if you don’t switch providers, the ability to switch improves your position. Design systems accordingly.

The Bigger Picture

The Anthropic enterprise push is part of AI market maturation. Competition, feature parity, and price pressure are normal market evolution.

For enterprises, this is good news. The vendor landscape is healthier with multiple strong competitors than with a single dominant player.

Take advantage of competition. Evaluate alternatives, negotiate harder, and build flexibility. That’s how mature enterprises handle vendor markets.

Final Thought

Anthropic’s enterprise push changes the conversation from “OpenAI or nothing” to genuine vendor selection. This is healthy market development.

Use competition to your advantage. Don’t become captive to any single provider’s roadmap or pricing. In technology markets, alternatives are leverage. Use them.