OpenAI is considering significant reductions to token prices, The Wall Street Journal reported on June 10, 2026. The move comes as rival Anthropic has seen revenue explode — hitting an annualized run rate of $30 billion by April 2026, outstripping internal forecasts by a factor of eight, according to CEO Dario Amodei. OpenAI reported a revenue run rate of roughly $13 billion in 2025 and doesn't expect to turn a profit or generate positive free cash flow until 2030.
The pricing dilemma ahead of an IPO
Both companies are weighing public listings. OpenAI is in discussions for a funding round that would value it at $750 billion. Anthropic closed a $30 billion Series G in February 2026 at a $380 billion post-money valuation. Deliberately cutting core product prices before an IPO could hurt a company's valuation, but the counterargument is that lower prices can drive volume and revenue. Analysts estimate Anthropic's annualized revenue may have crossed $47 billion by May 2026 — far ahead of internal projections.
Claude Code's explosive growth
Anthropic's AI coding agent Claude Code generated $1 billion in annualized revenue within six months of its public launch in May 2025. That figure surpassed $2.5 billion by February 2026. Business subscriptions quadrupled in Q1 2026 alone. The rapid adoption of code-generation tools has become a major revenue driver for the company.
The cost of staying competitive
Training and serving frontier AI models is extremely expensive. OpenAI's leadership has acknowledged costs approaching or exceeding $1 billion per competitive model. That financial pressure could explain why the company is considering cutting prices — to attract more users and spread fixed costs, even if it delays profitability. Anthropic projects it will turn free cash flow positive by 2028, while OpenAI doesn't expect positive free cash flow before 2030. By 2029, Anthropic forecasts higher revenue than OpenAI.
OpenAI hasn't announced final pricing changes, and the company declined to comment on the reported discussions. With both companies targeting public listings, the clock is ticking on pricing strategies that balance growth against the expectations of future shareholders.
