Anthropic said Wednesday that its chatbot Claude will not run ads; no banners, no sponsored replies, nothing. This came right after OpenAI announced it would begin showing ads in ChatGPT, starting with free and Go users in the U.S.
In a blog post, Anthropic said users won’t see sponsored links or any kind of product promotion near their conversations. They also said answers from Claude will not be influenced by outside companies.
According to them, ads would feel “incongruous” and “in many cases, inappropriate” because of how personal these chats can get.
Anthropic defends its choice while launching ad-free campaign
The company was started in 2021 by ex-OpenAI staff, including CEO Dario Amodei. Their main product, Claude, has grown fast, and their AI coding tool, Claude Code, is also gaining serious traction.
Instead of making money from ads, Anthropic said they run on enterprise contracts and subscriptions, then reinvest that money into making Claude better.
“Our business model is straightforward: we generate revenue through enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions, and we reinvest that revenue into improving Claude for our users,” the company said. “This is a choice with tradeoffs, and we respect that other AI companies might reasonably reach different conclusions.”
OpenAI, on the other hand, is now experimenting with ads in ChatGPT. The company said the ads will appear at the bottom of responses, clearly marked, and won’t affect the chatbot’s answers.
This comes after OpenAI locked in over $1.4 trillion in infrastructure deals in 2025. So ad revenue could help cover those massive bills. It also puts them in line with big tech ad machines like Google and Meta.
Still, Anthropic isn’t backing down. They’re going loud with their stance. On the same day as the blog post, they launched a Super Bowl campaign focused on this exact decision. One ad will run pregame for 60 seconds, and another will air during the game for 30 seconds. Both will include the same message: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”
Skipping ads could cost Anthropic a lot of money in the long run, but it seems that’s not stopping them.
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