Anthropic cements its position as the not-OpenAI with no-ads pledge
- Reference: 1770237428
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/04/anthropic_no_advertising_in_claude/
- Source link:
"There are many good places for advertising," the company [1]announced on Wednesday. "A conversation with Claude is not one of them."
Rival OpenAI has taken a different path and is [2]planning to present promotional material to its free and Go tier customers.
[3]
With its abjuration of sponsorship, Anthropic is leaning into [4]its messaging that principles matter, a market position reinforced by recent reports about the company's [5]clash with the Pentagon over safeguards.
[6]
[7]
"We want Claude to act unambiguously in our users' interests," the company said. "So we've made a choice: Claude will remain ad-free. Our users won't see 'sponsored' links adjacent to their conversations with Claude; nor will Claude's responses be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements our users did not ask for."
That choice may follow in part from how Anthropic's customer base, and its path toward possible profitability, differ from rivals.
[8]
Anthropic has focused on business customers. According to [9]The Information , "The vast majority of Anthropic's $4.5 billion in revenue last year stemmed from selling access to its AI models through an application programming interface to coding startups Cursor and Cognition, as well as other companies such as Microsoft and Canva."
For OpenAI, on the other hand, 75 percent of its revenue comes from consumers, according to [10]Bloomberg . And given the rate at which OpenAI has been spending money – an expected $17 billion in cash burn this year, up from $9 billion in 2025, according to [11]The Economist – ad revenue looks like a necessity.
Other major US AI companies – Google, Meta, Microsoft (to the extent its technology can be disentangled from OpenAI), and xAI – all have substantial advertising operations. (xAI, which acquired X last year, absorbed the social media company's ad business, said to have generated about $2.26 billion in 2025, according to [12]eMarketer .)
[13]Rise of AI means companies could pass on SaaS
[14]GitHub ponders kill switch for pull requests to stop AI slop
[15]US Army looks for robots that can clean up chemical and bioweapons messes
[16]'The EU runs on Microsoft' – and Uncle Sam could turn it off, claims MEP
Anthropic's concern is that serving ads in chat sessions would introduce incentives to maximize engagement. And that might get in the way of making the chatbot helpful and might undermine trust – to the extent people trust error-prone models deemed dangerous enough to need guardrails.
"Users shouldn't have to second-guess whether an AI is genuinely helping them or subtly steering the conversation towards something monetizable," the AI biz said.
[17]
The incentive to undermine privacy is what worries the Center for Democracy and Technology.
"Business models based on targeted advertising in chatbot outputs, for example, will create incentives to collect as much user information as possible, including potentially from the highly personal conversations some users have with chatbots, which inexorably will raise risks to user privacy," the advocacy group said in a recent [18]report .
Melissa Anderson, president of [19]Search.com , which offers a free, ad-supported version of ChatGPT for web search, told The Register in a phone interview that she disagrees with Anthropic's premise that an AI service can't be neutral while serving ads.
"They're kind of saying it's one or the other and I don't think that's the case," Anderson said. "And here's a great example: The New York Times sells advertising. The Wall Street Journal sells advertising. And so I think what they're conflating is the concept that maybe advertisers are gonna somehow spoil the editorial content."
At Search.com and at some of the other large LLMs, she said, there's a commitment to the natural, organic LLM answer not being affected by advertisers.
Anthropic's view, she said, is valid but extreme. "The advertising industry for a long time has recognized that having too many ads is definitely a bad thing," she said. "But it's possible in a world where there's the right volume of ads, and those ads are relevant and interesting and helpful to the consumer, then it's a positive thing."
Iesha White, director of intelligence for [20]Check My Ads , a non-profit ad watchdog group, took the opposite view, telling The Register in an email, "We applaud Anthropic's decision to forgo an ad-supported monetization model.
"Anthropic's recognition of the importance of its role as a true agent of its users is both refreshing and innovative. It puts Anthropic's trust-centered approach in stark contrast to its peers and incumbents."
Other AI companies, she said, pointing to Meta, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, have chosen to adopt an ad monetization model that, by design, depends upon user data extraction.
"This data - including people's deepest thoughts, hopes, and fears - is then packaged to sell ads to the highest bidders," said White. "Anthropic has recognized that an ad-supported model would create incentives that undermine user trust as well as the company's own broader vision. Anthropic's choice reminds one of Google's original but now jettisoned motto, 'Don't be evil.' Let's hope that Anthropic's resolve to do right by its customers is stronger than Google's was." ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-is-a-space-to-think
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/17/openai_chatgpt_ads/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aYPPkgwdZtmUakr258eR2AAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.anthropic.com/company
[5] https://www.reuters.com/business/pentagon-clashes-with-anthropic-over-military-ai-use-2026-01-29/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYPPkgwdZtmUakr258eR2AAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aYPPkgwdZtmUakr258eR2AAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aYPPkgwdZtmUakr258eR2AAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropic-hikes-2026-revenue-forecast-20-delays-will-go-cash-flow-positive
[10] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-28/openai-cfo-says-75-of-its-revenue-comes-from-paying-consumers
[11] https://www.economist.com/business/2025/12/29/openai-faces-a-make-or-break-year-in-2026
[12] https://www.emarketer.com/topics/category/xai
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/04/ai_replace_saas/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/03/github_kill_switch_pull_requests_ai/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/04/army_bots_cleanup_ai_biological_chemical/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/04/eu_foss_fears/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aYPPkgwdZtmUakr258eR2AAAAEk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://cdt.org/insights/risky-business-advanced-ai-companies-race-for-revenue/
[19] http://search.com/
[20] http://www.checkmyads.org/
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Issues.
Without the ad-supported model, many people on the planet would have no access to many of the internet services we can all enjoy. In the UK, the only TV and Radio channels would be BBC ones. Most newspapers and magazines would vanish, as would much content online. Ad-supported has its place in the ecosystem, and to say it doesn't is arrogant, ignorant and elitist.
You can operate services that are ad-blind. It is a conscious decision. There is the danger that media outlets will not run stories that will see lucrative advertisers drop out, but that is where entities choose the level of credibility that they have, whilst running ads.
You can have too much advertising, and there often is on TV and radio (and that irritating pop up thing at the bottom of El Reg pages). And you can have inappropriate adverts, such as video forcibly streamed to people with capped accounts or low bandwidth.
But you can use advertising in a mutually beneficial way. Many TV adverts are now classics. People need to know that stuff is available. And it is a channel for discounts and coupons.
You can do social media, if you want, even distributed social media, monetising with elective ads, only served to those who want them, giving people a chance to choose content and lifestyle categories, rather than having them second-guessed by spytech. The latter is actually a really bad option as it cannot discriminate on data trawls. If I buy something for my mother on a site she is not a member of, it doesn't mean I want dozens of adverts for Cliiff Richard mechandise.
Anthropic are not taking a moral stance at the expense of their income. They are in a position that the other AI companies are not, and they can exploit that to leverage their brand. It makes sense, and I'm sure they will make the most of it in PR terms, as any company would.
Note, the global economy is heading in the wrong direction. Money will become tighter. Advertisers do not have endless sacks of cash. There is a limit to how much advertising revenue there is out there.
All of which may be moot for AI when the bubble bursts. I doubt there is enough money available from advertisers and paying users together to make a profit off AI.
With a straight face
> Anthropic's view, she said, is valid but extreme. "The advertising industry for a long time has recognized that having too many ads is definitely a bad thing,"
Laugh, I nearly shat. I havn't laughed so hard since Grandma died, or Aunt Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle.