Replit Ends Anthropic Partnership as OpenAI Becomes Default Model Provider, CEO Says

Replit, the AI coding platform favored by startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic, according to CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad, who made the announcement Thursday onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026.

Cost, Partnership, and Performance Drive the Decision

Masad cited multiple factors behind the split, including cost. Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, though the company had given no prior indication that its relationship with Anthropic was ending.

"I think ChatGPT is better now," Masad said, noting that Replit uses an internal benchmark to assess metrics such as performance. "We publish a public benchmark as well, and consistently, Sol and Astra perform better on building vibe-coded applications from scratch. It was a decision based on both cost, partnership, and performance. And for all these reasons, we just felt like they were a better partner for now."

Anthropic Models Still Available, but No Longer Default

Anthropic has not been entirely cut out of Replit, which sells a cloud-based software development platform where users can build and deploy apps directly from a browser. After Disrupt, Masad clarified that customers can still access Anthropic models on the platform, but OpenAI's ChatGPT is now the default. That shift could significantly reduce Replit's spending with Anthropic, since most customers stick with the default rather than selecting a model manually.

Before striking the OpenAI deal, Replit relied on Anthropic's Claude models to run its platform. That partnership was credited with helping the company grow revenue significantly, and Masad noted onstage that Replit had, until recently, been a top-five customer of 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."

Insiders Push Back on Partnership Claims

Masad's onstage remarks were disputed by insiders familiar with the Anthropic–Replit relationship. One person, who asked not to be named, said the partnership was still in place.

Evidence on Replit's website, blog posts, and social media shows the company was promoting Anthropic products as recently as a few weeks ago. A late-September blog post cited Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 as models running in Replit Agent's production environment. Around the same time, a Replit product employee posted on X about using Anthropic's flagship Opus 5.5 model and promoting its capabilities.

Enterprise and B2B Revenue Accelerate

Masad also shared growth insights onstage at Disrupt, noting that enterprise is beginning to account for a larger share of revenue.

"We're not sharing ARR numbers just yet, but in terms of growth, like, I would say, 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 expects more than half of Replit's revenue to continue coming from business customers going forward.

via TechCrunch AI