How Elon grew to love Anthropic

The relationship between Elon Musk and Anthropic has shifted dramatically in recent months, with the xAI founder and CEO issuing a series of public endorsements for the AI lab once absent from his social media commentary. The change comes after years of Musk directing sharp criticism at OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, his former co-founder at the non-profit AI research group, while rarely mentioning Anthropic or its co-founder Dario Amodei.

The shift first became public in a May 5, 2026 post on X, where Musk shared a screenshot of Anthropic's latest benchmark results for Claude 3.5 Opus, noting the model outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4o on 7 of 10 industry-standard tests for reasoning, coding, and factual accuracy. He added that Anthropic's rate of harmful outputs in third-party red team tests was 40% lower than OpenAI's, a metric he tied to the lab's Constitutional AI framework. Within hours, Anthropic's private valuation rose 4% in secondary market trading, per data from EquityZen, as investors bet the endorsement would drive enterprise adoption.

Two days prior, Musk appeared on the All-In Podcast, where he was asked about Anthropic's decision to delay the consumer launch of Claude 3.5 Sonnet to conduct additional safety audits. "Most labs would rush that to market to chase revenue," Musk said. "Anthropic is taking the same approach we take at xAI, prioritizing long-term safety over short-term growth. That is rare in this industry right now."

Dario Amodei, Anthropic's co-founder and CEO, declined to comment directly on Musk's remarks, but noted in a May 3 blog post that the lab "welcomes alignment with any group that prioritizes rigorous safety standards over unchecked scaling." Amodei, a former OpenAI vice president of research, left the lab in 2021 to found Anthropic alongside his sister Daniela Amodei, citing disagreements over OpenAI's shift toward commercial products.

Market context for the shift lies in the current structure of the AI development industry. The AI software market is currently dominated by OpenAI, which held 62% of the enterprise AI chatbot market share in Q1 2026, per research firm Gartner. Anthropic held 22% of the market, up from 14% in Q1 2025, while xAI held 8%, mostly tied to integrations with Musk's X platform. OpenAI's valuation reached $90 billion in its most recent funding round, while Anthropic's valuation sat at $18 billion after a $2 billion investment from Google in Q4 2025. xAI raised $6 billion in 2025, valuing the firm at $24 billion.

Musk's criticism of OpenAI dates to his 2018 departure from the lab, which he co-founded in 2015 as a non-profit research group. He sued OpenAI and Altman in 2024, alleging the defendants had abandoned the non-profit mission to "benefit humanity" in favor of commercial profit, a case that remains pending in California state court. He has repeatedly called OpenAI's rapid deployment of consumer features, including real-time voice mode and custom GPT stores, reckless and unsafe.

Anthropic has positioned itself as the safety-first alternative to OpenAI since its founding, developing Constitutional AI, a framework that trains models to follow a set of written principles rather than relying on human feedback alone. The lab's revenue reached $1.2 billion in 2025, up 300% year-over-year, driven by enterprise contracts with banks, healthcare providers, and government agencies that require stricter safety guarantees. OpenAI's 2025 revenue was $3.5 billion, up 150% year-over-year, but the lab has faced multiple regulatory inquiries over harmful outputs from its ChatGPT tool.

The alignment between Musk and Anthropic carries significant implications for the industry, markets, and policy. It creates a clear split in the AI sector between two competing camps. The first, led by OpenAI and its close partner Alphabet (which invested $3 billion in OpenAI in 2023), prioritizes rapid scaling and consumer adoption. The second, comprising xAI and Anthropic, emphasizes safety-first development and external regulation.

For Anthropic, the endorsement removes a major source of potential criticism. Musk has previously attacked AI labs that he viewed as cutting corners on safety, and his support validates the lab's positioning to enterprise clients. "We have seen a 15% increase in inbound enterprise leads since Musk's post," said an Anthropic sales executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Clients who were on the fence about Claude now see it as a safer alternative to OpenAI, with Musk's backing as proof."

For xAI, the shift signals a strategic departure from Musk's earlier approach of positioning xAI as the only safety-focused lab on the market. By aligning with Anthropic, Musk gains a partner with a larger enterprise footprint, which could help xAI grow its revenue beyond X integrations. The two firms have not announced formal partnerships, but sources familiar with the matter say they are in talks to share safety research and benchmark data.

Regulatory implications are also significant. Both Musk and Anthropic have advocated for the AI Safety Act of 2025, a bill that would require labs to submit safety audit results to the federal government before launching new models. OpenAI has lobbied against the bill, arguing it would slow innovation. A united front between xAI and Anthropic could give the bill enough support to pass the Senate, where it currently lacks 5 votes to reach a majority.

The shift also deepens the rift between Musk and Altman, who have traded public barbs for years. Altman responded to Musk's May 5 post with a single X comment: "Safety is not a competition, but we welcome all efforts to improve standards." Musk replied hours later: "It is a competition when one lab cuts corners to beat others to market."

The change in Musk's stance toward Anthropic is not a sudden reversal, but a gradual shift tied to the lab's consistent adherence to safety principles that mirror his own public statements. As the AI industry matures, these alliances will shape which firms dominate the market, and how strictly the technology is regulated.