Polymarket odds favour Anthropic for best AI model in 2026
The prediction market gives Anthropic a 74% chance to own the top-ranked model at year's end, based on a specific leaderboard.
Prediction market Polymarket is offering contracts on which company will own the best artificial intelligence model at the end of 2026, with current odds heavily favouring Anthropic.
The market for the best AI model in 2026 has a trading volume above $1.4 million.
It will be resolved based on the "Style Control Off" view of the Chatbot (Text) Arena LLM Leaderboard, with a snapshot taken at 12:00 PM ET on December 31, 2026.
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The odds imply an 84% combined probability that either Anthropic or OpenAI will hold the top spot.
Anthropic is the overwhelming favorite and has a 74% chance of winning.
Anthropic's Claude models currently occupy the top six rankings on the relevant leaderboard and account for seven of the current top 10 models.
These models, such as Claude Fable 5.1, have a relatively low Confidence Interval, meaning their score or ranking is unlikely to change markedly in the near-term.
The company's Claude 3.5 and 4.0 model lineages hold a significant advantage over competitors in coding capability, which could prove crucial to the market's settlement.
OpenAI is a distant underdog with a current probability of just 9% on Polymarket and other US prediction markets.
Some analysis suggests OpenAI may be significantly underpriced at just 9¢, considering its ability to scale new models and push updates quickly.
This could trigger a rapid takeover of the LLM leaderboard and send OpenAI’s “Yes” price soaring beyond 30¢ in the short-term.
The use of the "Style Control Off" view may offer OpenAI an advantage, as its flagship models are highly conversational and tend to perform better according to raw human bias, especially when compared with more clinical testing and analysis.
Polymarket also offers monthly contracts, such as for the best AI model in October 2026, which will settle on October 31, 2026 at 12:00 PM ET using the same leaderboard view.
Google is seen as a potential value pick for the October market, with an anticipated launch of an experimental version of its Gemini 4.0 model before the settlement date.
Google's current "Yes" price for October is 8¢, and a successful model launch could cause that price to surge into the 30¢, 40¢ range.
Like OpenAI, Google also benefits from the use of the unadjusted "Style Control Off" view, as its major updates tend to be well-received by humans thanks to their conversational style.
For the annual 2026 market, ties will be broken first by using the overall Arena score, then by the alphabetical order of the company names.
The AI industry is valued at around $617 billion in 2026, and cumulative AI investments are expected to exceed $1 trillion this year, according to Goldman Sachs.
Monthly AI model markets are typically less volatile than annual alternatives and offer a much shorter trading timeframe.