OpenAI and Anthropic are trying to out-freebie each other

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OpenAI and Anthropic are locked in a freebie war.
Both companies announced free usage perks for Codex and Claude Code on Wednesday.
Money is pouring into AI companies, which need to hook users — especially companies.

OpenAI and Anthropic gave their tokenmaxxing fans a midweek pick-me-up.

In posts on X published less than an hour apart on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Claude's developer account both announced expanded access to their coding tools.

"Codex is the best AI coding product and we want to make it easy to try," Altman posted on X. He wrote that OpenAI would give companies two months of free Codex usage if they signed up within the next 30 days.

Less than an hour later, Anthropic posted that it was increasing Claude Code's weekly limits by 50% until July 13.

"Live now for all Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise users," Anthropic wrote in the post.

"We're excited to see what everyone builds!" the company added.

Anthropic's post comes less than a month after it released Opus 4.7, a model the company said improved Claude's coding and reasoning capabilities. It faced early backlash from users who said the model makes simple mistakes and is combative.

Social media users' biggest qualm — and perhaps the reason for Wednesday's free usage offer — was that Opus 4.7 burns through tokens much faster than earlier models.

With sky-high valuations — Anthropic received offers to invest at an $800 billion valuation, and OpenAI is sitting at an $840 billion valuation — the companies need to lock in customers, especially high-spending corporate accounts.