OpenAI plans to significantly reduce prices to fight against Anthropic, a price war for AI large models could be imminent.

According to foreign media reports citing sources familiar with the matter on Wednesday, in response to continued pressure from competitor Anthropic, leading artificial intelligence company OpenAI is considering a significant reduction in its pricing system for its products, aimed at attracting more users to its platform. The pricing strategy may undergo a major adjustment. The report pointed out that OpenAI is evaluating a significant price reduction for its billing method based on Tokens. Tokens are currently the common unit of measurement for product usage in the AI industry. Sources familiar with the matter stated that this move is partly due to their own market expansion considerations, and also to "preemptively address the possibility of Anthropic adopting a similar price reduction strategy." Currently, OpenAI offers users three tiers of subscription services, at $8, $20, and over $100 per month, allowing users to use their flagship model GPT-5.5. In comparison, Anthropic's Claude Pro annual subscription is equivalent to $17 per month, and their high-end product Claude Max also costs over $100 per month. The news of this price reduction comes at a time when the competition between the two companies is heating up. OpenAI secretly filed for its initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday (EST), following closely behind Anthropic's IPO application. In terms of funding, Anthropic completed a Series H financing on May 28th, with a valuation of $96.5 billion, slightly higher than OpenAI's valuation of $85.2 billion in March of this year. The valuation gap between the two companies is minimal, and the capital race is intensifying. Despite tightening price competition, OpenAI maintains a significant lead on the user end. According to market intelligence agency Sensor Tower, ChatGPT became the first app to surpass one billion monthly active users in May of this year. It took approximately three years from its launch in November 2022 to reach this milestone, breaking the previous record held by Google Maps, which took nearly five years to reach the same user scale after its launch. This user base provides OpenAI with potential room for price reductions, as well as stronger economies of scale and pricing power when facing competitors like Anthropic. Analysts believe that if OpenAI and Anthropic both lower their Token billing standards, it will directly reduce the barrier for businesses and individuals to use high-end large models, potentially leading to a restructuring of the pricing system for the entire AI service platform. For the AI industry, which is still in its early commercialization stage, price wars may be beneficial for user expansion but will also test each company's cost control capabilities and financial reserves. OpenAI has not yet made an official response to the rumors of price reductions. Wall Street is closely watching their next pricing strategy and whether the competition between the two leading companies will further escalate before and after the IPO.