At the HumanX AI conference held this week at San Francisco's Moscone Center, thousands of tech professionals descended on the city to discuss the ways agentic AI is transforming business. Agents — AI systems that automate complex business and coding workflows — have rapidly moved from concept to deployment across industries, and the conference served as a live pulse-check on where the industry stands today.
With so many AI chatbots competing for enterprise attention, one question loomed large on the convention floor: which AI assistant are people actually using?
One Name Kept Coming Up: Claude
The answer, it turned out, was pretty consistent. TechCrunch reporter Lucas Ropek noted that in panel after panel, and in conversations with vendors across the convention floor, one name kept surfacing above all others — Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant.
Notably absent from many of those conversations was ChatGPT. One vendor made a point of telling Ropek that he and his team relied heavily on Claude, while expressing the view that ChatGPT and OpenAI had "gone downhill" — or, as internet culture puts it, "fell off."
That sentiment, once considered a fringe opinion, is beginning to feel mainstream.
OpenAI's Perception Problem
It's not entirely clear what will fix the growing perception that OpenAI, despite a recent $122 billion funding round and an upcoming IPO, has lost its footing or at least seems increasingly unsure about its next move.
Part of the issue appears to be a lack of focus. Last month, OpenAI quietly abandoned several long-running side projects, including its AI video generator Sora and a controversial plan to launch an "erotic" version of ChatGPT, choosing instead to refocus on business and coding services.
The optics haven't helped either. A recent New Yorker profile questioning whether CEO Sam Altman could be trusted generated significant negative buzz, and the company's close ties to the Trump administration and its decision to introduce advertising into ChatGPT have not won it many admirers.
All of this has made OpenAI appear reactive rather than strategic — responding to events instead of shaping them.
Altman's Defenders Speak Up
Not everyone is ready to write off OpenAI's leadership. During a HumanX panel, Sierra co-founder and CEO Bret Taylor — who also serves as OpenAI's board chairman — came to Altman's defense when questioned about the New Yorker profile.
"I think Sam is one of the most visible leaders and executives in the world," Taylor said. "If you want to seek out detractors for him, you'll find them, and they'll be very vocal about it. I think Sam's remarkable — a remarkable leader of AI — and I really trust his character as someone who's worked with him."
Whether those words reassured the skeptics in the room remains another question entirely.
The Numbers Tell a Different Story
Despite the shifting perception on the ground, the financial reality is more nuanced. Data suggests Anthropic is catching up among business users, and a Wall Street Journal analysis recently described both OpenAI and Anthropic as "the fastest-growing businesses in the history of tech."
In that context, "falling off" for OpenAI may simply mean it's no longer the uncontested king of the space. It now has real competition — which, in most industries, is entirely normal.
OpenAI Fights Back With Codex
OpenAI is clearly not sitting still. This week, the company announced a new $100-per-month subscription tier for ChatGPT that offers substantially expanded access to Codex its coding tool a move widely seen as an attempt to win back users from Claude Code.
The battlefield has clearly shifted to agentic coding, and both companies are going all in.
The Bigger Picture: Agentic AI Is Moving Fast
Even amid the rivalry, one thing both camps agree on is the sheer speed of change. OpenAI's CTO of B2B applications, Srinivas Narayanan, speaking at HumanX, noted: "We are in this incredible moment in technology, where every month, and sometimes every day, we are all looking forward to something new."
Pointing to agentic coding specifically, Narayanan added that while everyone knew AI would impact software engineering, "even in just the last few months, the entire field has changed."
Agentic accomplishments have become a major focus of the tech community, in part because other anticipated AI applications — in creative and scientific domains — haven't fully materialized yet. The automation wave, however, is very real, and it's arriving faster than most predicted.
