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Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, CEO says

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Replit, the AI coding platform, has reportedly ceased its partnership with Anthropic, according to CEO Amjad Masad at TechCrunch Disrupt. Masad cited cost and stated that "ChatGPT is better now." This announcement comes despite recent evidence, including a late September blog post, indicating Replit's use of Anthropic's Claude Fable 5, Claude Fable 5.1, and Opus 5.5 models in its production environment and for promotional purposes.

Why this one

This report is the first to detail Replit's CEO citing cost and ChatGPT's superior performance as reasons for ending the Anthropic partnership, unlike earlier reports.

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PublishedOffset at this time: UTC+0Oct 16, 2026, 21:22 UTC

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Oct 16, 2026, 21:22
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Replit, the AI coding platform that has become a favorite of startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic, the company’s CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad said Thursday while onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Masad said the decision was made for a number of different reasons, including cost. Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, but there was never any indication that it was no longer with Anthropic.

“I think ChatGPT is better now,” Masad said, adding that the company uses an internal benchmark to help assess metrics like 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.”

Replit sells a cloud-based software development platform where users can develop and deploy apps directly from inside their browser. Under its partnership with Anthropic, Replit used the AI lab’s Claude models to run its platform. That partnership was said to have helped the company grow its revenue significantly.

Masad’s comments were rejected by insiders familiar with the partnership between the Anthropic and Replit, however. One person familiar, who asked not to be named, said the partnership was still in place.

There is evidence on the company’s website, blog posts, and social media posts that Replit was using Anthropic products as recently as a few weeks ago. For instance, a blog post in late September cites Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 as models running in Replit Agent’s production environment. Around the same time, one of Replit’s product employees posted on X about using Anthropic’s flagship model Opus 5.5 and promoting its capabilities.

TechCrunch reached back out to Replit for clarification and will update this story if we hear back.

Masad shared insights about the company’s growth while onstage at Disrupt, noting that enterprise is starting to provide a larger slice 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.”

Masad also commented on the necessity for good AI safety measures.

“In the same way that us humans need a certain environment to work — you need a nice office, maybe nice good food in the office, air-conditioning, computer — agents need a habitat for them to exist and do good work,” he said. “So that habitat has good orchestration, good error recovery, good safety and security and sandboxing, good networking, good identity and authorization. And once you figure all of that out, then you can deploy AI safely.”

This article was updated to article to include more context on Replit using Anthropic’s models.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Lucas is a senior writer at TechCrunch, where he covers artificial intelligence, consumer tech, and startups. He previously covered AI and cybersecurity at Gizmodo.

You can contact Lucas by emailing [email protected].

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TechCrunch:

CEO Amjad Masad says Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, citing cost and saying “ChatGPT is better now”; source: the partnership is still in place — Replit, the AI coding platform that has become a favorite of startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic …

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Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, CEO says
techcrunch.com · Media

Replit, the AI coding platform that has become a favorite of startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic, the company’s CEO and co-founder Amjad Masad said Thursday while onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. Masad said the decision was made for a number of different reasons, including cost. Replit announced a partnership with OpenAI in August, but there was never any indication that it was no longer with Anthropic. “I think ChatGPT is better now,” Masad said, adding that the company uses an internal benchmark to help assess metrics like 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.” Replit sells a cloud-based software development platform where users can develop and deploy apps directly from inside their browser. Under its partnership with Anthropic, Replit used the AI lab’s Claude models to run its platform. That partnership was said to have helped the company grow its revenue significantly. Masad’s comments were rejected by insiders familiar with the partnership between the Anthropic and Replit, however. One person familiar, who asked not to be named, said the partnership was still in place. There is evidence on the company’s website, blog posts, and social media posts that Replit was using Anthropic products as recently as a few weeks ago. For instance, a blog post in late September cites Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Claude Fable 5.1 as models running in Replit Agent’s production environment. Around the same time, one of Replit’s product employees posted on X about using Anthropic’s flagship model Opus 5.5 and promoting its capabilities. TechCrunch reached back out to Replit for clarification and will update this story if we hear back. Masad shared insights about the company’s growth while onstage at Disrupt, noting that enterprise is starting to provide a larger slice 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.” Masad also commented on the necessity for good AI safety measures. “In the same way that us humans need a certain environment to work — you need a nice office, maybe nice good food in the office, air-conditioning, computer — agents need a habitat for them to exist and do good work,” he said. “So that habitat has good orchestration, good error recovery, good safety and security and sandboxing, good networking, good identity and authorization. And once you figure all of that out, then you can deploy AI safely.” This article was updated to article to include more context on Replit using Anthropic’s models. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lucas is a senior writer at TechCrunch, where he covers artificial intelligence, consumer tech, and startups. He previously covered AI and cybersecurity at Gizmodo. You can contact Lucas by emailing [email protected]. View Bio

10/16, 21:22
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CEO Amjad Masad says Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, citing cost and saying "ChatGPT is better now"; source: the partnership is still in place (TechCrunch)
techmeme.com · Media

TechCrunch: **CEO Amjad Masad says Replit is no longer working with Anthropic, citing cost and saying “ChatGPT is better now”; source: the partnership is still in place** — Replit, the AI coding platform that has become a favorite of startup founders and developers, is no longer working with Anthropic …

10/16, 22:45
Original