Davos AI giants debate the "key to profitability"! OpenA, Anthropic reveal their revenue cards, who will win the commercial life-or-death competition?

If the core theme of last year's World Economic Forum in Davos was calling for large-scale investment in artificial intelligence by the public and private sectors, then this year's elite gathering has quietly shifted towards proving that the huge investments are generating tangible returns. It has been revealed that at the popular "AI House" exhibition hall at the forum, co-organizer Merantix's Rasmus Rothe announced that 2026 will be the "AI Investment Return Realization Year". The overwhelming signs on the main channel in Davos demonstrate that technology giants such as Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO.US) and IBM (IBM.US) have found the "key" to AI profits. The senior management team of OpenAI unveiled its new plans in the fields of education, healthcare, and cybersecurity for the first time at this forum, emphasizing that this is intended to drive the global market - not just the United States - to share the technological dividends. The company's COO Brad Littkap quoted sci-fi writer William Gibson in a media interview: "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." He added, "This statement is particularly apt in the field of AI." These remarks reflect deep-seated anxieties in the current AI industry. Faced with staggering capital expenditures and high valuations in this field, many investors are eagerly awaiting to see commercial breakthroughs that can support all of this. OpenAI, which has not yet turned a profit, has promised to invest over $1.4 trillion in building data centers and chips in the coming years. The company's multiple agreements with cloud service providers and chip manufacturers have been questioned as "internal circular funding" (OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar adamantly denied this label at Davos). But there is also an optimistic mood at the Davos venue. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei emphasized the strategic advantage of focusing on enterprise customers: "Enterprise-level businesses are more stable than consumer-facing ones, and we can create value more directly." The company's newly launched Claude Cowork tool has ignited the tech scene with its high intuitiveness and wide task processing capabilities. Although still in the "research preview" stage and limited to paid users, it has already shown enormous potential for AI to enhance productivity in various industries. From healthcare to finance, leading AI developers are fully demonstrating the industrial value of their services. The most significant early breakthroughs are currently in the field of software engineering - AI tools are significantly speeding up the code writing and debugging processes. OpenAI revealed that its developer API business has generated approximately $1 billion in new sales in the "past few weeks" with a 19% weekly growth rate; Anthropic also previously claimed that Claude Code has achieved an annual revenue scale of $1 billion within six months. "This is no longer 'atmospheric programming' in the concept verification stage, but real production practice," said Tarek Shaw, CEO of Sonar, a startup focusing on code quality evaluation. This former Alphabet Inc. Class C cloud sales manager pointed out that large financial deals that used to take a year to finalize are now being actively adopted by banking institutions just months after the release of AI products. He estimates that nearly one-third of the banking industry's code this year will be generated by AI. Another AI startup, Jasper, whose CEO Timothy Yang is also active at Davos, quoted his former employer VMware's motto to explain how programming tools can leverage a broader market: "Value always follows the footsteps of developers." However, the pace of value realization in the AI industry is still perceived as insufficient. In addition to the general concerns about the burning rate in the market, Euro-American technology companies are also facing a potential geopolitical upheaval from GEO Group Inc that could impact global strategies - Trump's return to Davos and confrontation with Europe over the Greenland issue have privately raised concerns among Silicon Valley elites that Europe may counter the threat of US technology exclusion with tariff threats. "I can only sympathize with my former colleagues who are dealing with complex situations," said George Osborne, OpenAI's head of national business and former British official, before Trump's speech.