Competition in the enterprise AI market is escalating rapidly. OpenAI CFO Denise Dresser sent an internal memo to the company's employees on Sunday, outlining a clear strategic course: OpenAI must build stronger barriers around its products and intensify its focus on the enterprise market. The memo, reviewed by The Verge, describes a concern that users can too easily switch between different AI models.
Anthropic Gains Market Share at Record Speed
The reason for some of the internal unrest at OpenAI is easy to understand when looking at the numbers. According to available market data, Anthropic has sharply increased its share of US enterprise AI spending and is now at levels that challenge OpenAI's historical dominance.
According to data reported by industry sources, Anthropic has nearly quadrupled its presence among enterprise customers on the Ramp platform: from one in 25 companies a year ago to almost one in four today. The company's annualized revenue surpassed $14 billion in February 2026, according to Reuters.
How Anthropic Builds User Lock-in
A central part of Anthropic's strategy involves making it costly and demanding for companies to switch providers — what is known in the industry as «vendor lock-in». The company uses several concrete mechanisms to achieve this.
Claude Code is one of the most important tools in this strategy. The product allows Claude models to integrate deeply into developers' workflows by handling context, memory, and the structuring of code processes. According to industry analysts, this integration is so tight that it becomes practically challenging for businesses to migrate to competing solutions.
Anthropic has also begun to restrict the use of third-party tools like OpenCode and ClaudeBot against the company's own user subscriptions. Only Anthropic's own tools, such as Claude Code, can be used with Pro and Max plans. Holger Mueller, VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, comments according to available analyses that «lock-in is real for any platform, but it's nothing new».
Trust as a Competitive Advantage
Anthropic's positioning is not just about technical binding mechanisms. The company actively differentiates itself in areas such as AI governance, auditability, and enterprise-level reliability — qualities highly valued in regulated sectors like banking and healthcare. This trust-based approach contributes to long-term customer relationships and complements the more technical binding strategies.
The internal message from Dresser points out that OpenAI must respond to a competitor that has managed to turn model quality into deep workflow integration. The memo repeatedly emphasizes, according to The Verge, that the company needs to build a «moat» — a defensive wall — around its own products.
The Battle for Enterprise Customers Escalates
The race for the enterprise market is no longer just a question of who has the best model. It's about who can weave AI most deeply into existing business processes, which partnerships secure distribution, and not least — who can make it painful enough to leave the platform.
The internal strategic message from OpenAI, combined with Anthropic's impressive growth in the enterprise segment, suggests that 2026 will be a decisive year for defining who dominates the enterprise AI market. The sources reviewed by 24AI provide a clear picture: competition is tougher than ever, and none of the players take their position for granted.
Sources: The Verge, Constellation Research, Reuters