OpenAI is rethinking its entire strategy. The company’s CEO of applications, Fidji Simo, held an all-hands meeting last week where she told staff that the “do everything all at once” approach had run its course—and that coding and enterprise were the new north star. “We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by side quests,” Simo said, according to remarks reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. “We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front.”The shift is significant. OpenAI spent much of last year launching a video generator, a web browser called Atlas, a hardware device, and e-commerce features for ChatGPT. CEO Sam Altman had likened the approach to “betting on a series of startups” inside the company.
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That bet, it turns out, may have cost OpenAI its lead.
Anthropic’s rise is OpenAI’s wake-up call, Simo tells staff
Simo was direct about who OpenAI is chasing. She called Anthropic’s success a “wake-up call” and said the company needed to win back software developers and enterprise customers. WSJ reports that Altman and chief research officer Mark Chen are now actively reviewing which areas to deprioritize, with staff expected to be notified in the coming weeks.The numbers tell the story. Anthropic holds a 40% share of the enterprise AI market, per a December report from VC firm Menlo Ventures. OpenAI’s share has dropped from 50% in 2023 to 27% at the end of 2025. On the coding front, Anthropic’s Claude Code accounts for nearly a fifth of its total business—more than $2.5 billion in annualised revenue—while OpenAI’s Codex was generating just over $1 billion by the end of January, according to Wired.Claude Code’s dominance is not just a revenue story. The product triggered a $1 trillion tech stock sell-off last month, as investors worried that AI was about to make software development largely obsolete. A later announcement that Claude Code could modernise COBOL-based legacy systems sent IBM’s stock to its worst single-day drop in 25 years.
OpenAI’s Sora was a hit—until it wasn’t
The Sora story captures exactly what went wrong. The standalone app briefly hit No. 1 on Apple’s App Store after launch in September, but usage flatlined shortly after. OpenAI is now looking to fold its video-generation features back into ChatGPT rather than maintain a separate product.Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Codex is making up ground. Simo tweeted that it now has over two million weekly active users—nearly four times the figure at the start of the year.
OpenAI eyes enterprise deals, PE partnerships to close the gap
The company is not relying on product pivots alone. Reuters reported that OpenAI is in advanced talks with private equity firms including TPG, Bain Capital, Advent International, and Brookfield Asset Management to form a joint venture that would distribute its enterprise tools across their portfolio companies. The proposed deal is valued at around $10 billion pre-money, with the PE firms expected to commit roughly $4 billion.“We are very much acting as if it’s a code red,” Simo told staff—while also adding that she didn’t think “declaring codes for everything makes a ton of sense.”Whether OpenAI can reclaim lost ground before both companies race to go public remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the company that once set the pace is now watching someone else’s playbook very carefully.
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