cd /news/artificial-intelligence/the-different-games-openai-and-anthr… · home topics artificial-intelligence article
[ARTICLE · art-97314] src=danielmiessler.com ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=· neutral

The Different Games OpenAI and Anthropic Are Playing

OpenAI and Anthropic are pursuing divergent market strategies, with Anthropic focusing on enterprise workflows and operational efficiency akin to Palantir, while OpenAI targets consumer personal assistants and hardware, as evidenced by its integration with Apple Health and the hiring of Jony Ive. Both companies are positioned to become multi-trillion dollar businesses, with Anthropic replacing business operations layers and OpenAI aiming to become the universal personal agent.

read2 min views1 publishedAug 14, 2026
The Different Games OpenAI and Anthropic Are Playing
Image: Danielmiessler (auto-discovered)

So one thing I find really interesting right now is the difference in how it seems OpenAI and Anthropic are approaching the market. I see Anthropic as primarily, this is an oversimplification, but I think Anthropic is primarily going after the enterprise and trying to be all the internal workflows, all the unified entity context.

Kind of almost like a Palantir-type situation of understanding the business and helping the business actually perform operationally. I feel like that is the massive force of what they're pushing into. Obviously, they care about consumer as well, so both are doing both. But I feel like OpenAI is largely focusing on the bigger consumer vision.

So, I opened ChatGPT the other day, and I noticed it said, "Hey, connect your Apple Health." So I feel like OpenAI is going after all the personal stuff, and they hired Jony Ive just as another piece of sort of evidence here. They hired Jony Ive to build a piece of hardware, which I think, and kind of the interpretation is basically that's meant to replace the iPhone or the phone in general.

Like, to have an AI device where you're talking to your AI. And Sam has been talking about this massively. Dario seems to talk more about the future and work and the enterprise. Again, with some exceptions. And Sam seems to talk more about the future of like the personal ecosystem, having an agent always available.

And obviously, given what I talk about and my sort of orientation, I really find that OpenAI thing quite compelling. Obviously, I like both. I'm really interested in both. But I feel like OpenAI is more aligned in this particular case with the way I've seen AI going, which is you have your personal assistant, that is who you're talking to.

The personal assistant is then doing all the different things for you in all these different places, and basically operating on your behalf. And with the merging of ChatGPT and Codex into the single app, and the more and more connectors that OpenAI is bringing in, it really does feel like they are definitely heading in this consumer sort of orientation.

And what I find interesting about this is both are multi-trillion dollar businesses, right? Replacing the operations layer of all these businesses is just extremely lucrative, right? And that's where Anthropic is sort of heading. But also just becoming the single agent, becoming Her or becoming Jarvis for all of humans, right, is kind of the TAM for OpenAI here, in this particular lens.

And that is also a multi-trillion dollar market, right? So I feel like both are doing something extraordinary, really huge, that the other is kind of not touching as much, and I just find that really interesting. Curious to hear if you see it differently, or if you kind of agree with this approach.

── more in #artificial-intelligence 4 stories · sorted by recency
── more on @openai 3 stories trending now
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/the-different-games-…] indexed:0 read:2min 2026-08-14 ·