Anthropic cuts prices 90% as OpenAI's token share nears 50% ahead of a $2 trillion IPO ask
OpenRouter data seen by the WSJ shows OpenAI nearly doubling its token share to about 50% while Anthropic responds with 90% price cuts and subscriber credits, six weeks before a roadshow asking for $2 trillion.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
Anthropic$350B — Anthropic, private, latest valuation $350B cut its cheapest model's list price by 90% 2 the same week a routing dataset showed OpenAI$1.18T — OpenAI, private, latest valuation $1.18T rising from under 25% of tokens at the start of 2026 to nearly 50% last month 13. The company confidentially filed for an IPO targeting more than $2 trillion, with formal marketing possibly starting the week of November 9 and investor meetings at its San Francisco headquarters on October 14 45. The price sheet just moved under the roadshow.
OpenAI roughly doubled its OpenRouter token share in nine months
- Share of OpenRouter tokens
- Estimate
Data
| Share of OpenRouter tokens | |
|---|---|
| OpenAI, start of 2026 (estimate) | ~25% |
| OpenAI, September 2026 (estimate) | ~50% |
| All other providers, September 2026 (estimate) | ~50% |
The share data says the crown moved in nine months
OpenRouter, a service that routes AI compute by price and performance, showed OpenAI below 25% of tokens at the start of 2026 and nearly 50% last month, according to data seen by the Wall Street Journal 13. That is the coding and productivity traffic Anthropic owned. OpenAI's own answer was focus: CEO of applications Fidji Simo told staff in March, "We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front" 1. One caveat travels with the number: OpenRouter's volume comes largely from AI-native startups, with some legacy tech mixed in 1.
The price sheet is doing the defending
Anthropic's counterattack landed October 7 2. Haiku 5.5 lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output, down from $1 and $5 on Haiku 4.5, a cut the company says averages roughly 75% in real workloads 2. Sonnet 5.5 cache reads were halved to $0.10 per million tokens, which Anthropic estimates trims about 20% off most agentic workloads 2. Then the credits: $100 a month for Max 5x subscribers, $200 for Max 20x, up to $500 pooled for Teams, usable on any model 2. Economically, credits are discounts; because 83% of 2025 revenue was metered by usage 4, the giveaway still lands on the revenue line.
Haiku's list price fell 90% on input and output tokens
- Input price per million tokens
- Output price per million tokens
Data
| Input price per million tokens | Output price per million tokens | |
|---|---|---|
| Haiku 4.5 | $1/M tokens | $5/M tokens |
| Haiku 5.5 | $0.1/M tokens | $0.5/M tokens |
The math the IPO is marketed on just got thinner
The prospectus shows revenue of $4.6 billion in 2025 against an operating loss of $8.06 billion and a net loss near $42 billion, with the run rate topping $65 billion by July 4. Investors are being asked to value that at up to $2 trillion, when some prospective buyers peg fair value at $1.8 to $2 trillion 5 and independent research firm New Constructs, calling it the "most ridiculous IPO of 2026," values the business at $150 billion 6. Usage-based revenue means every price cut feeds straight into the margin story the listing rests on.
The analyst call sits at $150 billion against a $2 trillion ask
Data
| Valuation | |
|---|---|
| New Constructs estimate | $0.15T |
| Buyers' low end | $1.8T |
| IPO ask | $2T |
What to watch
OpenRouter's next monthly share read, and whether Anthropic's third-quarter numbers show the run rate holding above $100 billion despite the cuts 45. If formal marketing begins the week of November 9 as reported, underwriters will be selling a margin story the company spent October discounting: a $2 trillion ask in November, against price cuts of 75 to 90% in October 245.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
