Masad attributed the decision to several factors, prominently including cost. While Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, there was no prior indication that its collaboration with Anthropic had concluded.
"I think ChatGPT is better now," Masad stated, explaining that the company utilizes an internal benchmark to evaluate performance metrics. He added that they publish a public benchmark showing that Sol and Astra consistently outperform OpenAI's models when building applications from scratch. Ultimately, the decision weighed cost, partnership quality, and performance. "For all these reasons, we just felt like they were a better partner for now."
However, it appears Anthropic has not been entirely severed from Replit, which operates a cloud-based software development platform allowing users to build and deploy applications directly within their browser.
Following the Disrupt conference, Masad clarified that customers can still access Anthropic models on the platform, although OpenAI's ChatGPT has become the default setting. This change is expected to substantially decrease Replit's expenditures with Anthropic, as most users tend to stick with the default selection rather than manually choosing a model.
Before striking its deal with OpenAI, Replit relied on Anthropic's Claude models to power its platform. This partnership was instrumental in driving significant revenue growth, with Masad noting on stage that Replit was, until recently, a top-five customer for Anthropic.
"Replit remains model agnostic," Masad told TechCrunch over the weekend. "Our users can choose Anthropic's Claude or other supported models... OpenAI is now our preferred partner for powering Replit Agent, based on performance, economics, and the strength of our partnership."
Masad's comments on stage were contradicted by insiders familiar with the relationship between Anthropic and Replit. A source who requested anonymity stated that the partnership was still active.
Evidence on the company’s website, blog posts, and social media indicates that Replit was actively promoting Anthropic products as recently as a few weeks ago. For example, a late September blog post cites Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 as models running in Replit Agent's production environment. Simultaneously, a Replit product employee posted on X about utilizing Anthropic's flagship Opus 5.5 model and promoting its capabilities.
During the Disrupt presentation, Masad also provided insights into the company's growth trajectory, highlighting that enterprise revenue is representing an increasingly larger portion of the total.
"We're not sharing ARR numbers just yet, but in terms of growth, enterprise was like 2% of revenue last year," Masad said. "This year, I would say like 15% of our revenue is enterprise contracts, and more than 50% of our revenue is B2B."
Backstage, Masad told TechCrunch that he anticipates more than half of Replit's revenue will come from enterprise and government customers by 2027.
Masad also elaborated on the necessity of robust AI safety measures.
"In the same way that humans need a certain environment to work—such as an office with good food, air conditioning, and computers—agents need a habitat to exist and perform effectively," he stated. "That habitat requires good orchestration, error recovery, safety and security, sandboxing, networking, and identity and authorization. Once these elements are in place, AI can be deployed safely."
This article was originally published on October 16 at 2:22 pm PT and has been updated to include additional context regarding Replit's partnerships with both Anthropic and OpenAI.
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