[Weekend Money] OpenAI vs Anthropic: The Real Beneficiary in the 'Money War'

Rising Data Center Rental Rates Amid Supply Shortage

Samsung SDS and NAVER Expected to Benefit

Yonhap News

As OpenAI adopts a strategy that prioritizes capturing the artificial intelligence (AI) agent market over profitability, expectations are rising that the value of AI data centers (AIDC) will continue to grow. In South Korea, it is expected that Samsung SDS and NAVER will benefit from this trend.

Haechang Jeong, a researcher at Daishin Securities, stated, "During the process of expanding the agent market, AI data center suppliers will continue to have the upper hand," presenting Samsung SDS and NAVER as listed beneficiaries. He maintained a 'buy' rating for both companies, setting target prices at 3.7 million won for Samsung SDS and 3.2 million won for NAVER.

According to the Daishin Securities report, OpenAI and Anthropic recorded vastly different results in the second quarter of this year. OpenAI's quarterly revenue reached approximately $6.7 billion, an 18% increase from the first quarter's $5.7 billion, but its losses also grew. In contrast, Anthropic's revenue surged from $4.7 billion to over $11.5 billion during the same period, and its adjusted operating profit turned slightly positive.

Researcher Jeong interpreted this not simply as the result of a competition in earnings but rather as a reflection of the strategic differences between the two companies. Anthropic improved its profitability by converting usage of Claude codes by developers and businesses into premium subscriptions and enterprise contracts. Enterprise subscriptions grew by 400% compared to the beginning of this year, making Anthropic the first among global AI companies to turn a quarterly profit.

On the other hand, OpenAI chose to focus on increasing user market share over short-term profitability. The company is actively expanding usage of Codex and ChatGPT Work to secure a dominant position in the market. As of April this year, the number of monthly active users of Codex and Work increased from 3 million to 15 million in just four months, while ChatGPT's global monthly active user base has reached 1 billion.

The report notes that it is important to recognize that the agent market remains in its early stages. The user numbers for AI agent services by OpenAI and Anthropic still account for only 1–2% of the total monthly active users of all AI services. However, the subscription fee per user for agent services is five to ten times higher than that for general AI chat services, indicating the likelihood of intensifying competition to capture the market going forward.

The core driver enabling this competition is ultimately computing power. Daishin Securities estimates that OpenAI's current AI data center capacity is between 2.5 and 3 gigawatts (GW), while Anthropic's is between 1 and 2 GW. The report explains that OpenAI can aggressively expand its usage based on its relatively abundant computing resources.

Researcher Jeong commented, "OpenAI's strategy to expand user market share makes savvy use of its superiority in AI computing power," adding, "Agent AI requires at least 30 times more token usage compared to general AI chat, so access to computing resources can directly determine the speed of service expansion."

As the competition among AI companies for computing resources intensifies, data center rental prices are also rising. According to the report, a representative case is Anthropic's contract for a 300-megawatt (MW) data center from xAI at a monthly price of $1.25 billion. NeoCloud company Navius, in its Q2 earnings announcement this year, disclosed that monthly rental prices for contracts between one and three years were $20 to $25 million per megawatt, while for short-term contracts of less than six months, prices were $40 to $50 million per megawatt.

Daishin Securities predicts that the shortage of infrastructure, such as data centers, relative to AI computing demand will continue until at least 2029. In particular, because physical proximity to users is crucial for AI inference infrastructure, the negotiating power of AIDC suppliers is expected to remain high in South Korea, where the proportion of AI usage is significant.

In South Korea, NAVER and Samsung SDS are working to expand into this market. NAVER is doing so via its AI Factory, while Samsung SDS is expanding its existing infrastructure-as-a-service business to focus on GPU-based services. Daishin Securities forecasts that the two companies will increase the size of their AI data centers by an additional 200 MW and 120 MW, respectively, before 2029, thereby securing an early lead in the market and benefitting from rising data center prices.

Researcher Jeong emphasized, "The supplier advantage vis-à-vis infrastructure demand is expected to continue until 2029," and highlighted the need to pay attention to the race for dominance and growth in the AI agent market.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.