Replit Switches Default AI Model from Anthropic to OpenAI

While the platform remains technically model-agnostic, the transition establishes OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the default engine for Replit Agent. This change carries significant weight for Anthropic, as Masad previously identified Replit as one of their top five customers. By defaulting to OpenAI, Replit expects to drastically shift its infrastructure spend, though users retain the ability to manually select Claude or other supported models within the development environment.

The public announcement sparked some internal friction, as sources familiar with the relationship have disputed the characterization of the partnership as severed. Replit’s own recent documentation and social media activity continued to highlight the use of Claude 3.5 models in production environments through late September. Despite the conflicting signals, Masad remains focused on scaling the company’s enterprise footprint, which has surged from 2% to 15% of total revenue over the past year. He projects that enterprise and government contracts will account for more than half of the company’s total revenue by 2027.