The battle for AI supremacy is becoming more competitive by the day, with companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and Anthropic all racing to build increasingly capable models.
Amid that competition, Elon Musk has made a surprising admission.
Instead of backing his own AI company, xAI, or rivals like OpenAI or Google, the billionaire said Anthropic is currently leading the industry.
Here’s everything you need to know.
Elon Musk Says Anthropic Is Ahead Of Everyone Else
Responding to a discussion on X about the latest AI models, Musk openly admitted that his earlier assessment of Anthropic had been wrong.
“I was clearly wrong about Anthropic.
They are obviously currently the leader in AI.
No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon,” Musk wrote.
He also dismissed the idea of trying to undermine a competitor simply because they were ahead.
“And I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor.
That’s not my style,” he added.
To support his point, Musk pointed to decisions made across his other businesses.
“Tesla open sourced its patents and we made the Supercharger network available to all competitors, even though we could have made it a walled garden.
SpaceX launches competing satellite systems with no increase in price or use of unfair terms.
Even my worst enemies can attack me on this platform,” Musk said.
Why Anthropic Is Getting So Much Attention
The OpenAI rival has strengthened its position over the past year, particularly among software developers and AI researchers.
Its momentum accelerated after the launch of Claude Opus 4.5, which earned widespread praise for coding and software development tasks.
Many developers have shifted from competing AI assistants to Anthropic’s Claude models, with the term “Claude-pilled” becoming increasingly common within developer communities to describe those who now prefer Claude for programming work.
According to Reuters, Anthropic also confidentially filed for a US initial public offering (IPO) in June, shortly after securing a funding round that reportedly valued the company at around $965 billion.
If it proceeds, the listing could become one of the largest IPOs in the AI industry.
