Anthropic and OpenAI's 2026 revenue growth raises the question of how long it lasts
AICombined annualized revenue for OpenAI and Anthropic reached $105 billion by August 2026, up 3.5 times from $30 billion at the start of the year. The author argues the key question is whether this growth comes from continued capability progress or from diffusion that will saturate. At the 3 times annual pace, frontier AI revenue would take about six years to reach today's world economy size.
Why it matters: The piece tests whether OpenAI and Anthropic's hypergrowth reflects a temporary coding-agent spike or durable progress, using revenue scale to frame the question.