The rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic intensified this week as both companies unveiled new AI models on the same day, marking a pivotal moment in their ongoing competition. On Thursday, Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.6, an enhanced version of its flagship model designed to excel in office productivity and coding tasks. The update features a significantly expanded context window, enabling the model to process longer documents and manage more complex, multi-step projects in a single session. In response, OpenAI introduced GPT-5.3-Codex, a specialized coding model that delivers faster performance, reduced computational demands, and the ability to generate and manage intricate software systems from plain English instructions. The release also includes a standalone Codex desktop application, aimed at developers seeking a more integrated coding environment. The two companies took center stage in back-to-back appearances on the "TBPN" podcast, hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, discussed the future of AI workflows, predicting a shift where users will interact with teams of AI agents operating at increasingly higher levels of abstraction. “I think we will be heading towards a workflow where a lot of people just feel like they're managing a team of agents,” Altman said. Sholto Douglas, a senior researcher at Anthropic, followed in the next segment and offered a candid comparison between the two companies’ models. He noted that while OpenAI models tend to push harder on difficult problems, Anthropic’s systems have focused on speed and efficiency. “The OpenAI models were a bit better at trying really, really, really hard on tough problems, but the Anthropic models were much faster and so forth,” Douglas explained. “And so they worked on speed while we worked on making the models much, much better at really, really tough problems.” This latest round of releases is the latest chapter in a rivalry that began in 2021, when several OpenAI researchers departed to found Anthropic, with the mission of building AI systems that are safer, more transparent, and more aligned with human values. Anthropic also had a busy week beyond the model launch. The company introduced industry-specific plugins, sparking a sell-off in software stocks as investors reacted to concerns about AI’s potential to disrupt traditional software markets. In a pointed move, Anthropic ran a series of new advertisements, including one set to air during the Super Bowl. The ad features a humanized AI offering advice, only to suddenly insert an ad—before reassuring viewers that Claude remains ad-free. OpenAI’s announcement that it would begin showing ads in the free version of ChatGPT prompted a swift response from Altman, who accused Anthropic of being “dishonest” and defended the company’s approach. He emphasized that OpenAI’s ads will be clearly labeled and will not be embedded within the AI’s responses. “We are not stupid. We respect our users. We understand that if we did something like what those ads depict, people would rightfully stop using the product,” Altman said. “Our first principle with ads is that we're not going to put stuff into the LLM stream. That would feel crazy dystopic, like a bad sci-fi movie.”