Blasé Capital chat with claude
Anthropic, the San Francisco-based AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, moved from being discussed as a “model builder” to being treated as a potential challenger to the economics of established enterprise software. This came after releases aimed at automating professional workflows, alongside a high-profile campaign that positioned Claude as an “ad-free” tool. Founded in 2021, and structured as a public benefit corporation, it built the Claude family of large language models, and marketed them for work use-cases such as writing, coding and document-heavy tasks. It was highly successful.
Recently, Claude and Anthropic came into the limelight when it dramatically and caustically opposed its rival, Sam Altman’s ChatGPT’s move to experiment with advertisements. In addition, on February 3, media reports talked about a “significant selloff” of tech shares in the US and Europe due to the newly-launched plug-ins for Claude. The plug-ins were pitched as ones that can automate tasks across legal, sales, marketing, and data analysis. Thomson Reuters, the owner of Westlaw legal database, was down nearly 18 per cent. In Europe, RELX and Wolters Kluwer fell 14 per cent and about 13 per cent, respectively.
The following day the S&P 500 software and services index fell nearly four per cent, and the sector wiped out $830 billion in market value since January 28, over six straight sessions. Media reports attributed the latest acceleration of the selloff to Claude’s new legal tool, and framed it as part of a push by the frontier models into the “application layer” of enterprise software. At the same time, experts saw a broader risk factor to interpret the market reaction. Major US tech stocks were down, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both ending lower. This makes it difficult to treat the Anthropic release as the only driver.
For many, the fame of Anthropic spread when it took on ChatGPT on the advertising issue. In a post (February 4) titled “Claude is a space to think,” the company wrote: “There are many good places for advertising. A conversation with Claude is not one of them,” and added that “Claude will remain ad-free,” with no “sponsored” links adjacent to conversations, and no advertiser influence on responses. Ironically, it ran a campaign during the Super Bowl to emphasise that Claude does not carry advertising or sponsored responses. The campaign ran shortly after rival platforms stated that they were experimenting with advertising formats inside conversational AI products.
The campaign prompted a response from OpenAI, whose chief executive criticised the messaging as misleading. Altman pushed back, and called the Anthropic ad as “deceptive.” In an interview, he said, “We’re not stupid… We respect our users… if we did something like what those ads depict, people will rightfully stop using our product.” Anthropic outlined its opposition to advertising inside AI assistants, and stated that it could create conflicts in professional and enterprise use cases. It disclosed that if it revisited the issue, it would be transparent.
For business readers, the significance is not the tone of the feud but the clarity of the split. Anthropic is committed, at present, to subscription- and contract-driven economics, while competing products are testing revenue strategies, including advertising. Anthropic is cautious because it feels that AI assistant conversations are “sensitive or deeply personal,” and the world has “much to learn” about the impact of AI models on users. Hence, its ad-free commitment is a part of trust and product-design claim, and not only a pricing decision.
On the adoption front, Axios reported that the share of US companies paying for Anthropic AI tools rose to 20 per cent, from 17 per cent, as per Ramp’s spend-based tracking across 50,000 companies. The same dataset showed OpenAI at 36 per cent, down a tad from 37 per cent. Axios included the constraints around interpretation. The Ramp data does not capture corporate workers using free tools (which would tilt the picture toward consumer leaders), and skews toward tech-forward early adopters rather than representing the full business sector.
On February 10, a foreign news agency reported that Blackstone wished to increase its investment in Anthropic, with an overall valuation of roughly $350 billion. The report characterised Anthropic as “Amazon and Alphabet-backed,” and noted that the report came amid heavy funding for AI startups driven by expectations. IN March 2024, Amazon stated that it completed an additional $2.75 billion investment in Anthropic, bringing the total to $4 billion. The market response to the Anthropic legal-focused tools drew attention to cost structures.
Legal research and compliance platforms are among the highest-margin segments within enterprise SaaS. Recent releases expanded the use beyond research assistance to task execution. Existing data does not show large-scale abandonment of legacy platforms. Law firms and legal departments operate under regulatory and liability constraints that limit automation. Anthropic has acknowledged the risks associated with its models. It noted that the advanced versions of Claude may produce harmful or misleading outputs under certain conditions. The developments when multiple AI firms are accelerating enterprise rollouts. Advertising, subscriptions, and usage-based pricing are being tested, with no single model yet established as dominant.
Market reactions to recent product announcements suggest that the investors are watching how quickly AI tools move from assistance to substitution, particularly in sectors built on information, analysis, and professional judgement. What remains open is pace and permanence.
