The Pulse
Replit Makes OpenAI Its Default, Keeps Anthropic’s Claude as an Option
Replit CEO Amjad Masad said onstage that the company had stopped working with Anthropic, then clarified that OpenAI is now Replit’s default and that users can still choose Anthropic’s Claude. Replit’s production data places Fable 5 in Augus
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
“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.”
Amjad Masad, Replit CEO and co-founder, speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt, as quoted by TechCrunch
Masad cites cost, partnership and performance
Replit CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad said on Thursday, October 15, that the company is no longer working with Anthropic. He made the statement onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt; TechCrunch published its account on October 16. Masad described the decision as a mix of cost, partnership and model performance, rather than attributing it to a single change. After Disrupt, he clarified that customers can still use Anthropic models on the platform and that OpenAI is now Replit’s default, TechCrunch reported on October 17.
“Replit remains model agnostic. 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.”
Amjad Masad, Replit CEO, to TechCrunch
Masad said Replit evaluates performance with an internal benchmark and publishes a public benchmark, adding that the models he referred to as Sol and Astra performed better at building applications from scratch. His remarks described the decision as a matter of cost, partnership and performance.
Replit’s public record complicates the break
Masad’s statement conflicts with recent signs that Replit still used Anthropic models. In a September 29 engineering post, Replit described Claude Fable 5 and Fable 5.1 among models running in Replit Agent’s production environment. The post specifies a production sample of Fable 5 in August 2026 and Fable 5.1 in September. It does not establish whether Replit continued using them after those periods.
Replit’s subprocessor list, last updated in August 2026, also names Anthropic as a provider of AI models. Because the list predates Masad’s remarks by weeks, it cannot settle the current status of the relationship. TechCrunch also reported that an unnamed person familiar with the partnership said it remained in place, adding another account that conflicts with the CEO’s statement.
OpenAI partnership does not settle Anthropic’s status
Replit announced an OpenAI partnership in August, but that announcement did not say the company had ended its work with Anthropic. Replit’s August product post introduced Free Mode powered by an OpenAI model, while the September engineering post discussed both OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic’s Fable models. The public materials therefore describe a multi-model setup before Masad’s October remarks, not a clear public notice of when or how Replit ended any Anthropic arrangement.
Replit sells a browser-based platform for building and deploying software, and its choice of model providers affects the systems available to users and the company’s costs. Masad framed Anthropic’s departure as a decision about economics, partnership and results, but the public record leaves the timing unresolved: Replit described Claude models in production in August and September, and its CEO said the company had stopped working with Anthropic in October.
Enterprise sales rise as Replit shifts providers
At the same Disrupt appearance, Masad said enterprise contracts had grown from about 2% of Replit’s revenue the previous year to 15% that year, and that business-to-business sales made up more than half of revenue. He declined to share annual recurring revenue. Those figures put the model-provider decision alongside Replit’s effort to expand beyond individual developers, but do not explain whether the reported provider change applies across every product or customer arrangement.
Masad’s later statement settles what his remark on stage left open: Anthropic is no longer Replit’s default, but its Claude models remain available to Replit’s users, and OpenAI is the company’s preferred partner for Replit Agent.