Artificial intelligence developer Anthropic has reportedly outpaced rival OpenAI in market share for business spending, according to new data, even as it navigates renewed tensions with the US Trump administration. Figures from financial technology firm Ramp indicate that Anthropic's popularity among corporate users is growing, with some analysts suggesting that government scrutiny may be inadvertently boosting its profile.
The company, which recently completed a significant funding round and filed confidential paperwork for a potential Initial Public Offering (IPO), reportedly saw its share of AI subscriptions paid for by businesses increase by 2.5 percentage points in May, reaching 41%. This figure places it ahead of OpenAI, which held 39.5% of the market share, remaining largely flat over the same period. This growth occurred despite Anthropic's earlier designation as a supply chain risk by the Trump administration in March, following its refusal to allow government use of its models for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons.
The latest dispute unfolded last Friday when the Trump administration issued a directive demanding that Anthropic restrict access to its cutting-edge models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, to non-Americans, including its own employees. This order, citing an obscure export control directive, effectively compelled Anthropic to withdraw these advanced models from the market. While the precise reasons for the ban remain unclear, speculation suggested that the guardrails on Fable 5, intended to prevent access to Mythos's powerful capabilities in identifying software security flaws, had been easily bypassed by hackers.
Ara Kharazian, lead economist at Ramp, who compiled the business spending data, noted that previous government opposition seemed to correlate with increased business adoption for Anthropic. Kharazian suggested that the heightened attention surrounding the models' perceived power, even if negative, could contribute to their allure. Ramp's data, drawn from over 70,000 businesses, indicates that while the financial impact of withdrawing Mythos and Fable 5 is not yet fully quantifiable, business usage of Anthropic's existing Opus models, particularly later versions like Opus 4.8, remains robust and continues to grow.
While the long-term implications of this ongoing governmental friction on Anthropic's IPO aspirations are uncertain, the current data suggests that the company's publicly available AI models are more popular with businesses than ever. The controversy appears to have created an 'aura' around Anthropic's technology, validating its advanced capabilities in the eyes of some corporate clients despite the regulatory challenges.