Anthropic’s share of enterprise LLM API spend rose from 40% to 55% in a year, OpenAI’s from 27% to 31%, and Google’s fell from 21% to 9%, Menlo Ventures said in 2026: The State of Enterprise AI, published on 3 November. By our arithmetic, Anthropic’s share is now about 6.1 times Google’s, up from 1.9 times a year earlier.
Menlo says the report draws on a survey of nearly 400 U.S. enterprise decision-makers responsible for more than $4 billion in AI spending, fielded by Morning Consult from September 8 to 26, 2026. Menlo Ventures is an investor in Anthropic, which the report discloses.
Business Pill · Concentration
A short explainer on concentration: when a few big pieces make most of a total. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Menlo’s report or any lab.
The key insight: By our arithmetic, Anthropic’s 55% share of enterprise LLM API spend is about 6.1 times Google’s 9%, up from 1.9 times (40% to 21%) a year earlier, on the shares Menlo Ventures published on 3 November.
The report’s headline line on the model market reads: “In the race to win AI builders, Anthropic and OpenAI now account for 86% of enterprise LLM API spend, up from 67% last year. As the market consolidates around the frontier leaders, model capability—not price—is proving to be the decisive competitive advantage”.
On Google, the report says: “Google fell furthest, from 21% to 9%. Gemini 3 Pro put the lab at the frontier in November 2025, but Google hasn’t matched Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s flagship models since, and its API spend now skews toward cheaper Flash models”.
It puts xAI’s Grok 4.7 and open-source models from Moonshot, DeepSeek and Z AI together at “just under 5% of LLM API spend”. Menlo defines the shares as “estimated dollars spent based on proportion of production API usage”, with respondents reporting the share of their AI workloads on each model, weighted by AI spend.
Share of enterprise LLM API spend for Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, 2025 and 2026, as estimated by Menlo Ventures in its 2026 State of Enterprise AI report. The 6.1x and 1.9x ratios are our arithmetic. Menlo Ventures is an Anthropic investor. Chart: FourWeekMBA.
What Was Posted on X
“In the race to win AI builders, Anthropic and OpenAI now account for 86% of enterprise LLM API spend, up from 67% last year. As the market consolidates around the frontier leaders, model capability—not price—is proving to be the decisive competitive advantage.” – Menlo Ventures
Meanwhile, Google’s market share crumbled – down more than 50%! Data below:
On 3 November at 14:52 UTC, Tae Kim (@firstadopter) posted the 86% passage from Menlo Ventures’ report and wrote that Google’s share was down more than 50%. The post pointed us to the report, which is the source for every share in this piece; the 57% fall is our arithmetic on the report’s 21% and 9%.
Google’s Fall in Menlo’s Own Numbers
By our arithmetic on the report’s figures, Google lost 12 points of share, or 57% of the 21% it held a year earlier. Anthropic gained 15 points and OpenAI 4, and the two together went from 67% to 86%.
Tae Kim, who posted the passage on X at 14:52 UTC, wrote that Google’s share was “down more than 50%”; the report’s 21% and 9% support that, by our arithmetic. Kim’s earlier post quoted Menlo’s Deedy Das: “That’s how quickly the competitive landscape can change”.
How the Shares Moved Across Menlo’s Reports
Menlo’s December 2025 report said Anthropic earned 40% of enterprise LLM spend, “up from 24% last year and 12% in 2023”, while OpenAI fell “to 27% from 50% in 2023” and Google rose “from 7% in 2023 to 21% in 2025”. That report surveyed 495 U.S. enterprise AI decision-makers.
Its mid-2025 update, from 150 technical decision-makers, measured usage rather than spend and put Anthropic at 32%, OpenAI at 25% and Google at 20%. The 2024 report had OpenAI at 34% and Anthropic at 24%. Sample sizes and definitions differ across the four reports, so the series is a set of snapshots, not one measurement.
Menlo estimates that Anthropic, OpenAI and Google “command $122.7B of enterprise spend—69% of all deployment dollars, up from 50% last year”, out of $177 billion in enterprise AI deployment spending by September 2026.
The report says open-source models handle 19% of tokens but take 4% of spend, while the average open-source token fell 3.3x in price to $0.13 per million. It adds that “buyers continue to prioritize capability over cost in model selection”.
As we read the report, the shift is a gap opening at the top rather than a new entrant: Anthropic and OpenAI went from 67% to 86% together, while near-frontier models from xAI and open-source labs hold just under 5% of LLM API spend, per Menlo.
As we read Menlo’s numbers, price and spend moved apart: open-source models handle 19% of tokens but take 4% of spend, and Menlo says buyers continue to prioritize capability over cost in model selection.
Menlo Ventures, 2026: The State of Enterprise AI
“Google fell furthest, from 21% to 9%. Gemini 3 Pro put the lab at the frontier in November 2025, but Google hasn’t matched Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s flagship models since, and its API spend now skews toward cheaper Flash models”
Three Implications
FOR GOOGLE By our arithmetic, Google lost 12 points of enterprise API share, or 57% of the 21% it held in Menlo’s 2025 report.
FOR ANTHROPIC AND OPENAI Menlo puts the two at 86% of enterprise LLM API spend, up from 67%; Anthropic gained 15 points and OpenAI 4, by our arithmetic.
FOR OPEN-SOURCE MODELS Menlo says open-source models handle 19% of tokens but 4% of spend, while the average open-source token fell 3.3x in price to $0.13 per million.
The framework argues: “Every technology stack has layers. Some are scarce, some are abundant.”
As we read it, Menlo’s numbers show where that line sits in enterprise AI spend today: tokens from open-source models are plentiful, while spend sits with the frontier labs. The framework is the owner’s argument and does not discuss Menlo’s report.
The shares are Menlo’s estimates from a survey weighted by AI spend, not company-reported revenue. Menlo says prior-year figures were reclassified to this year’s taxonomy. We did not find a dollar total for LLM API spend in the report, so we do not convert the shares into dollars.
Menlo invests in Anthropic, the lab that leads the ranking. Menlo describes its dollar figures as estimates from “a bottoms-up model informed by survey responses, public filings, and third-party reports”; the shares are Menlo’s figures, not the labs’.
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Menlo Ventures’ 2026 report puts Anthropic at 55% of enterprise LLM API spend, OpenAI at 31% and Google at 9%. By our arithmetic, Anthropic’s share is about 6.1 times Google’s, up from 1.9 times in Menlo’s 2025 report.
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A note on sourcing. The shares, survey details and quotes come from Menlo Ventures’ 2026 State of Enterprise AI report, published on 3 November 2026, and its earlier reports from December 2025, July 2025 and 2024. Menlo Ventures is an investor in Anthropic and OpenRouter. The ratios and point changes are our arithmetic on Menlo’s figures. Tae Kim’s X posts are cited as posted. We did not contact Menlo, Anthropic, OpenAI or Google.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
