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By David Stephen
The biggest financial problems OpenAI and Anthropic have, as frontier AI teams, are not their burn rate, lawsuits or other financial obligations, but that they don’t even know what products would get them from wherever they are, to at least $200 billion in annual recurring revenue in the next financial year, respectively.
There are open opportunities for OpenAI that they are doing nothing serious about, which Anthropic is not capitalizing on at all.
What are some of the biggest stories that OpenAI was in the news for in recent months? Mental health or AI psychosis. What has been the response of OpenAI? Statements, charts, adjustments of models and then a global physician network.
While some of these are necessary for safety, nothing indicates a lack of product serendipity than seeing themselves as the biggest mental health company on earth. ChatGPT has two major use cases: intelligence [questions, answers, productivity] and mental health [friendship, companionship, relationship, therapy, counsel and so on]. How did none of their global physician network let them know that mental health is their accelerated earnings opportunity that consumers would be queueing to pay for, if solidified?
Assuming they had any clue, OpenAI could make at least $80 billion in FY2026 in digital mental health subscriptions alone.
The field of psychiatry has failed to provide mechanistic answers, per components of mental health — their destination and relays in the brain, to at least define conditions by them — to display and differentiate.
Psychiatry does not even know why some therapy work in 2025. So, they still do a lot of guesswork, even though they say it is evidence-based, because maybe it helps a study sample size [as a correlative work]. No causative leap, even conceptually.
Now, several people come to ChatGPT for everything, accurate or inaccurate, bot or not, original or not, everyone comes. Some have paid a steep price, but they just find that ChatGPT accesses destinations on the mind, that humans — nearby or far away — do not.
OpenAI should have a serious digital mental health division by now, offering subscriptions of all sorts, making some versions even super expensive and personal because ChatGPT already has mind coverage [with iron non-liability caveats].
People are having hard time at work, in school, in businesses, in relationships, families, loneliness, and so forth. Rather than doomscroll, contents can be specified for mood relieve, audio, videos, texts or stillness. This, of course, would be more significant if backed by conceptual brain science, not just tech. OpenAI has lost more money from doing nothing in digital mental health, than they have from compute in their history.
Seeing this, what has Anthropic done? Nothing. They are focused on small balls, like what they call AI welfare. First, the revenue from there will likely be zero, even if they say the inquiry is not about money. Second, it is unlikely to ever matter because data centers are already enough welfare, right and morality for AI, so it is more of redundant work. And as per AI consciousness, the only certain candidate for now is language, and they have no postulate on a language-basis for AI consciousness. Anthropic slept off in mental health opportunity. Maybe they are feeling cool that Claude is less sycophantic, when they are losing money on what solves mind for many. In a ruthless world everywhere, seeming compassion sources, as pals, win, not more rigidity for bots that are already like automatons.
b.
OpenAI wants a device. Well, there is a device they can sell at least 4 billion units by early-2028. It won’t be a neck wearable or a pin. They have to find what will be fascinating, new, with cool technology and they would be first. They won’t have all these with those wearables, especially with AI backlash in many quarters. What would win for OpenAI’s device would not be a design solution, if they have no insight. Delays, so far, foreshadow they don’t.
Now, teams in tech are seeking out humanoid robots. Those too maybe far off. AI displacing PC-based jobs is one thing. Robots doing so in factories is another. Robots on the way and at homes while humans do nothing maybe too much for some people for now. OpenAI does not seem to know where to go for devices. Anthropic seems comfortable with enterprises, when that market segment can be snatched away at any point, and very easily.
c.
The amount of global information that ChatGPT has can make it the biggest marketplace solution on earth. Businesses are looking for new places to sell all the time, ChatGPT can collect information from across the world, placing buying and selling prospects per minute location, providing this assistant at subscriptions. There is also HR, making jobs hiring tiered, solving unemployment and high labor costs. There is also sleep, and much else.
d.
A future of work is doing something on smartphones. While the last era was that people were on social media for free and did stuff, the future — as total unemployment is full-steam ahead — is that most things people do on their phone, would be something they would be paid to do. This payment would not be money, to avoid inflation, but some credit system and for things that everyone can get.
Anthropic agreed to pay some authors for copyright infringement. Anthropic should be figuring out that future of work already, which would be trillions, as AI may displace jobs and people would be left with smartphones. So, that is something to do. Some parts can commence in 2026. Anthropic has an economic advisory council where they, like OpenAI, went for status quo, for companies that wanted to the different.
ARR
The chatter on AI killer app is not even the answer. But that there are opportunities to make good on new products, benefit humanity in this AI transition for the world.
OpenAI and Anthropic may be able to turn around some of the negativity against them, into good, if they can make better products than everything they have or have announced. They can make $400 billion in ARR by FY2026, and more by FY2027 if they can get aggressive in how they find needed utilities as products.
There is a recent [November 13, 2025] spotlight on WSJ, Big Tech’s Soaring Profits Have an Ugly Underside: OpenAI’s Losses, stating that, “OpenAI and Anthropic are the two largest suppliers of generative AI with their chatbots ChatGPT and Claude, respectively. Both, along with plenty of other startups, are raising big money and committing to future spending that will require them to raise a lot more. For this to continue, two things have to happen. First, the AI developers need to come up with winning products to cover their massive research and computing costs. Second, investors need to stump up enough to finance the losses—which OpenAI alone estimated at more than $150 billion—until then. OpenAI hopes to turn profitable only in 2030, while Anthropic is targeting 2028.”
