Anthropic Moves to Cut Off Discounts When Customers Hit Their Cap

Kevin McLaughlin (Exclusive; Laura Bratton contrib.): Anthropic ends enterprise discounts once customers hit contractual usage/token caps—customers must renegotiate or face higher/list prices—per managers at three software firms that buy from both Anthropic and OpenAI. Hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) typically keep discounts in force for overages during the term (NPI Financial’s Jeff Muscarella). OpenAI is softer: after a commitment is reached, customers get the rest of the calendar month plus an extra month to renegotiate before public list prices (person close to OpenAI). Anthropic discounts ~15% off list for big buyers; >100 firms spent >$10M and >1,000 spent >$1M with Anthropic in the 12 months to June; named large users include Meta and Cursor; Claude Code/Cowork pricing has risen; Anthropic told at least one partner ~75% gross margin on existing models. OpenAI cutting new-model prices ~50% via OpenRouter/Vercel and Altman’s “half the price per token” framing; CodeRabbit (CEO Harjot Gill) flipped from Anthropic-majority to OpenAI as main supplier amid tens-of-millions annual AI spend. OpenAI enterprise org churn: enterprise push lead left in August; pre-/post-sale roles merging so demos and customer-success sit with the same people. Both labs adding symbolic “share of wallet” majority-spend clauses they cannot verify. OpenRouter says discounting shifted more customers to OpenAI models, yet Anthropic still widened its revenue lead May–Aug. Caveats: Anthropic no comment; paranoia over IP leading Palantir, Nvidia, Booz Allen to demand guarantees or cut use of most advanced models.