Hey there,

So I spent yesterday going down a rabbit hole of AI news, and honestly? Most of what I found was just recycled press releases.

But there are a few stories that actually matter for agencies and marketing teams. Let me break down what caught my attention and why you should care.

Anthropic Just Proved Enterprise AI Hit Escape Velocity

Look, everyone’s writing about The Anthropic’s $50 billion infrastructure deal with Google Cloud and FluidStack. The Rundown covered it, The Neuron covered it, every AI newsletter on the planet covered it.

But here’s what nobody’s talking about: the revenue numbers buried in the announcement.

CNBC reported that Anthropic is approaching $7 billion in annual recurring revenue. Their large enterprise accounts (companies paying $100K+ per year) grew 7x in the past year alone.

But wait, it gets better.

Claude Code, their agentic coding assistant, hit $500 million in ARR within just two months of launch. According to their own claims, that makes it the “fastest-growing product in history.”

Here’s the thing: 70-75% of Anthropic’s revenue comes from enterprise API usage, not consumer subscriptions.

And that changes everything for agencies.

Why This Actually Matters For Your Marketing Operations

When I saw these numbers, my first thought was: “Okay, so enterprises are clearly spending real money on AI. What does that mean for mid-market companies and the agencies serving them?”

The answer? Budget allocation is shifting faster than most agencies realize.

If Fortune 500 companies are spending $100K+ annually on AI tools, your mid-market clients are probably getting pressure from leadership to “do something with AI” too. They just don’t know what yet.

That’s where agencies come in. But here’s the catch: most agencies are still selling AI as a nice-to-have. Meanwhile, enterprises are treating it like infrastructure.

The gap between those two approaches? That’s your opportunity.

Practical next step: If you’re pitching AI implementations to clients right now, reframe the conversation. Don’t lead with “AI can help you.” Lead with “Here’s how enterprises are restructuring their marketing operations with AI, and here’s a $15K version of that for your budget.”

We’ve worked with 400+ clients over the years, and I can tell you: the ones who move fast on infrastructure shifts are the ones who survive market changes.

Chinese AI Models Just Changed Your Agency’s Cost Structure (Whether You Like It Or Not)

Alright, this one’s uncomfortable but we need to talk about it.

TechWireAsia reported that Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 Thinking model outperformed GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 on multiple benchmarks. It scored 44.9% on Humanity’s Last Exam versus GPT-5’s 41.7%.

But that’s not the scary part.

The scary part is that according to CNBC sources, it cost approximately $4.6 million to train. And The South China Morning Post calculated that its API pricing runs 6 to 10 times lower than OpenAI and Anthropic.

Let me be blunt: if your agency’s entire value prop is built on having access to Claude or GPT-5, and your clients discover they can get better performance for 10% of the cost... what exactly are they paying you for?

The Marketing Systems Reality Check

Look, I run AI Advantage Agency. We implement marketing systems for manufacturing and logistics companies. And I can tell you right now: cost matters more than capability for most mid-market clients.

When I explain to a VP of Marketing that they can run the same campaign automation with Chinese models at 10% the cost, the conversation changes immediately. They stop caring about which model has the “best” benchmark scores and start asking about ROI.

And honestly? They’re right to ask.

Most marketing automation doesn’t need frontier model capabilities. You’re not solving physics problems. You’re generating email sequences, optimizing ad copy, and personalizing landing pages.

For those use cases, cheaper + good enough wins.

Here’s what to do about it: Start testing Chinese models in non-critical workflows. Not because you need to switch everything tomorrow. But because your clients are going to hear about this, and you need to have an informed opinion when they ask.

My team is allocating budget this quarter to test integration scenarios. I’ll share what we learn.

Upwork Just Proved AI Won’t Kill Your Agency (But You Still Need To Adapt)

Okay, this one’s actually encouraging.

VentureBeat reported on a new Upwork study showing that AI agents excel when paired with humans but fail independently. More importantly: AI-related work on Upwork grew 53% year-over-year in Q3 2025.

Upwork’s CFO literally said: “There was this belief that all work was going to go away. AI was going to take it, and especially work that’s done by people like freelancers, because they are impermanent. Actually, the opposite is true.“

Let that sink in. The platform that would be first to see AI-driven job displacement is instead seeing 53% growth in AI-related freelance work.

Why This Changes How You Price Agency Services

Here’s the thing everyone’s missing: AI isn’t replacing marketing work. It’s changing what kind of work clients are willing to pay for.

Clients don’t want to pay $5K for a blog post anymore because AI can do that. Fair.

But they WILL pay $15K for someone who can design, implement, and optimize an AI-powered content system that generates 100 blog posts per month at their brand voice. Because that’s not just writing. That’s systems architecture.

The Upwork data proves what I’ve been seeing with our clients: demand for AI implementation expertise is exploding. The work isn’t going away. It’s just moving up the value chain.

Reality check for agencies: If your service offerings are still “we’ll write your content” or “we’ll manage your ads,” you’re competing with AI on the wrong battlefield. Reframe to “we’ll build you the system that uses AI to do those things at scale.”

That’s where the 53% growth is happening.

Quick Hit: What People Actually Use AI For (And It’s Not What You Think)

Zain Kahn covered this in Superhuman, and he made a good point: OpenAI analyzed 1.5 million ChatGPT conversations, and the usage patterns are interesting.

But here’s what jumped out to me from Anthropic’s Economic Index data: 36% of Claude usage is coding tasks.

Think about that. More than a third.

And CNBC confirmed that Claude Code hit $500M ARR in two months.

Here’s why this matters for marketing agencies: If a third of AI usage is now coding, and you’re still hiring developers at $150/hour to build out campaign landing pages or custom tracking implementations... you’re leaving margin on the table.

I’m not saying fire your developers. I’m saying your developers should be using Claude Code to work 3x faster. Or you should be pricing based on output, not hours.

The agencies who figure this out first will have a massive cost advantage.

Bottom Line: The Infrastructure Layer Is Set, Now It’s About Implementation

Look, all these stories point to the same thing: the foundation layer of AI is basically done. We have the models. We have the infrastructure. We have the tools.

The question now is: who’s going to help mid-market companies actually implement this stuff?

Because I can tell you from working with 700+ projects: most companies have no idea where to start. They just know their competitors are doing something with AI and they need to catch up.

That’s the opportunity.

Not in selling access to Claude or GPT. Everyone has that. The opportunity is in knowing how to integrate these tools into real marketing operations at companies that don’t have dedicated AI teams.

That’s what we focus on at AI Advantage Agency. That’s where the actual money is.

Looking for a community of like-minded individuals who are interested in AI and Entrepreneurship? Join our free community here to get started:The AI Advantage Community. Thank you for reading! -Shawn.