Anthropic Gains Enterprise AI Market Share as UAE Exits OPEC Reshaping Global Markets

Two tectonic shifts are reshaping global markets, according to Arnab Das, a Global Market Strategist, the intensifying battle for AI dominance and the unravelling of OPEC's decades-old grip on oil prices.

OpenAI loses ground as Anthropic surges

Speaking to ET Now, Das acknowledged that OpenAI is losing ground to rivals. "There is an intense competition going on among the main players in the AI space," he said, pointing to Anthropic's Claude and other challengers as forces that are "making some challenging strides."

The numbers back him up. Anthropic now holds 32% of enterprise LLM market share by usage — a sharp reversal from just two years ago when OpenAI commanded 50%. In the high-value coding segment, Anthropic's advantage is even more pronounced, with 42% enterprise market share against OpenAI's 21%.

But Das raised a deeper concern beyond competitive positioning. The real question, he argued, is whether AI is being monetised efficiently enough by downstream businesses — and whether that threatens the massive capital being poured into data centres and hyperscaler infrastructure.

"You only really know that a bubble has burst in retrospect," he cautioned, while remaining confident that "over time there will be major changes in the US economy and other global economies through the use of artificial intelligence."

The strategic divergence is stark: Anthropic consistently targets enterprise customers, while OpenAI has traditionally focused on consumers through ChatGPT. For now, both approaches are generating enormous scale, though the enterprise race is clearly tilting toward Anthropic.

The second major development Das addressed is the UAE's exit from OPEC. The UAE announced it would exit OPEC and OPEC+, effective May 1, in what could be a significant blow to Saudi Arabia's control over prices. Das described the move as "a kind of a victory for President Trump" and for market forces more broadly, arguing it signals that GCC members are increasingly "going to have to go their own way."

He pointed to the US-Israeli conflict with Iran and Iranian retaliation against GCC allies as a key driver fracturing the bloc's unity. The UAE's departure removes one of OPEC's core pillars for managing the market, since Saudi Arabia and the UAE together control a majority of the world's spare production capacity of more than 4 million barrels per day.

Analysts warn there is now significant risk of higher oil price volatility as a result. Das noted that Saudi Arabia's role as swing producer becomes more burdensome without UAE participation, and that Riyadh's geopolitical alignments are subtly shifting — maintaining its US relationship, but edging closer to Pakistan and, by extension, China.

Das sees both stories as structural rather than cyclical. In AI, expect continued disruption and near-term volatility before the technology's full economic impact becomes visible. In energy, OPEC's ability to act as a reliable global price floor has materially weakened. Both trends, he suggests, will define the investment landscape well into the next decade.