Artificial intelligence leaders Anthropic PBC and OpenAI Group PBC are stepping up their efforts to compete for the enterprise, making their most advanced agentic tools more accessible to the largest organizations.
In its update today, Anthropic revealed new “organization-wide controls” to help corporate teams deploy its autonomous Claude Cowork service. Meanwhile, OpenAI took a different path, slashing the cost of the “Pro” subscription to access its popular Codex programming tools.
Claude Cowork now ‘enterprise-ready’
Anthropic said Claude Cowork is getting a variety of new administrative tools designed to help organizations manage its rollout. Claude Cowork, announced in January, is an autonomous AI agent that can handle complex, multistep tasks on employees’ computers. Unlike standard chatbots that just answer questions, it’s more like a proactive teammate, capable of organizing files, creating reports and documents and running browser tasks, rather than just talking about them.
Though Claude Cowork is every bit as good as Claude Code at writing software, most early adopters can be found in non-engineering departments such as marketing, financial and legal teams, where they’re using it to help with project updates and research tasks.
To facilitate this reality, Anthropic has introduced role-based access controls for Enterprise subscribers, which enable administrators to choose exactly which Cowork capabilities employees can access. There are also new group spend limits to support per-team budgeting, delivering the cost predictability that financial teams need.
On the technical side, the company is enhancing observability by expanding Cowork’s OpenTelemetry support. This means companies can now monitor Claude events such as tool calls and file modifications directly within their security information and event management pipelines. In addition, the company announced a new Zoom Model Context Protocol connector that allows Claude Cowork to pull meeting summaries and action items into its workflows, and more precise controls for other MCP connectors.
OpenAI slashes Codex pricing
Not to be outdone, OpenAI is pushing to entice the heaviest enterprise users to engage with Codex, its rival to Claude Code. The company is lowering the barrier to entry with the availability of a new $100-per-month Pro plan, effectively slashing the cost of its most premium subscription in half.
The new tier is aimed at Codex power users, offering five times as much usage as the existing $20 pricing tier. It’s aimed at professional developers who keep finding themselves hitting limits during intensive coding sessions, and it dramatically undercuts the cost of rival coding services. For instance, the top-tier subscriptions of Claude Code and Google LLC’s Gemini Code Assist both start at $200 per month.
In addition to the lower costs, Pro Codex users will also be able to access experimental preview features enabled by OpenAI’s latest frontier models, including GPT-5.4 Pro.
Today’s updates underline the strategic shift as AI’s top model makers scramble to sign up more enterprises in the belief that businesses will ultimately become a major source of revenue in the years to come. They’re fighting tooth and nail to win over customers, and that means they cannot only compete on model performance, but also in areas such as utility and integration.
“Anthropic and OpenAI have both woken up to the realization that they need to win in the enterprise, and it’s forcing them to compete with one another,” said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research. “OpenAI is trying to erode Claude Code’s margins with a 50% price cut, while Anthropic is pushing the envelope for agent monitoring and controls, especially with its OpenTelemetry observability functionality. This raises the bar for OpenAI’s OpenClaw automations.”
Both Anthropic and OpenAI have woken up to the enterprise – and are competing with each other… OpenAI is trying to erode Claude Code margins with a 50% off, and Anthropic is pushing the envelope for agent monitoring with an observability functionality – raising the bar for OpenAI’s automation based on OpenClaw. When vendors compete – enterprises win – as they get more capabilities at lower costs – both news items are perfect showcase for this.
The biggest beneficiaries are enterprises themselves, the analyst added. With Anthropic helping to solve the logistical headaches and OpenAI perhaps kicking off a deflationary trend in AI compute, it becomes easier for big businesses to adopt the most powerful AI agents and start accelerating automation. “When vendors compete, enterprises win, as they get better capabilities at lower costs, and today’s updates are the perfect showcase of this,” Mueller said.
Image: News/Gemini
Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.
- 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
- 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About News Media
Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, News Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.
