Anthropic subscription surge cuts into OpenAI's lead
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The share of U.S. companies paying for Anthropic's AI tools and services jumped in January, per new data.
Why it matters: It was Anthropic's breakthrough month, writes Ara Kharazian, an economist at Ramp, which has been tracking business spending on AI.
By the numbers: The share of companies paying for Anthropic increased to 20% from 17%, per Ramp, a company that offers corporate credit cards and expense-management tools to roughly 50,000 companies nationwide.
- OpenAI dropped slightly from 37% to 36%.
- 1 in 5 businesses that use Ramp now pay for Anthropic, up from 1 in 25 last year.
The big picture: The competition between Anthropic and OpenAI is shaping up to be the Kendrick vs. Drake tech battle of our time.
- It's not a zero-sum game in either realm. You can enjoy listening to "Not Like Us" and "God's Plan." Similarly, companies appear willing to pay for both companies' tools.
- Anthropic isn't gaining users at OpenAI's expense — at least so far, per the report. According to Ramp, about 79% of OpenAI users also pay for Anthropic.
Between the lines: Anthropic's new software coding product, which went viral earlier this year, helped drive adoption.
Yes, but: The Ramp data doesn't take into account workers inside companies who are using free AI tools — which would skew the numbers more in OpenAI's favor, as ChatGPT remains the leader for consumers overall.
- And Ramp's data skews toward more tech-forward early adopter type companies; not the full breadth of the business sector.
- A December 2025 report from Menlo Ventures found that Anthropic captures 40% of enterprise LLM spend — up from 24%, while OpenAI's share fell to 27%, down from 50%. But the data looked only at API usage (not chatbot sessions or consumer subscriptions).
- Zoom out: Adoption is happening crazy fast: Nearly 47% of businesses paid for AI in January, a new high. In 2023, that number was less than 7%.
The bottom line: "The race isn't zero-sum," says Ramp's Kharazian in a release Wednesday. "At least not yet."
