Anthropic overtakes OpenAI in business customers for the first time

In a significant shift in the AI landscape, Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI in business customer adoption for the first time. According to TechCrunch, new data from fintech firm Ramp shows 34.4% of participating businesses now pay for Anthropic services, edging out OpenAI’s 32.3%.

This milestone represents a dramatic turnaround in the enterprise AI market. Just 12 months ago, only 9% of businesses in Ramp’s survey were using Anthropic’s services. The Claude maker has grown its business customer base by 26 percentage points while OpenAI’s share actually declined by 1% over the same period.

The data comes from Ramp’s monthly AI Index, which tracks expense data from over 50,000 companies that use the corporate card platform. While this sample doesn’t represent the entire market, its size and diversity make it a meaningful indicator of business AI adoption trends. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian notes that Anthropic “has already been in the lead amongst the high adoption groups like finance, tech, professional services,” with OpenAI maintaining its edge primarily in other sectors.

This shift reflects broader changes in how businesses choose AI providers. Companies increasingly prioritize factors beyond just being first to market – they want reliability, safety features, and tools designed for professional use cases. Anthropic’s strategy of starting with technical customers and focusing on their specific needs before expanding to broader markets appears to be paying off.

The trend isn’t limited to Ramp’s data. On OpenRouter’s leaderboard, which samples different users, OpenAI last ranked above Anthropic in December 2025. This suggests the competitive dynamics are shifting across multiple segments of the AI market.

Kharazian credits Anthropic’s success to a focused approach: “What Anthropic did worked really well, which was – start with a very technical customer base, focus on their needs, really succeed in execution and then start broadening out through tools like Cowork.” However, he remains skeptical about whether this advantage will persist as competition intensifies.

The data also shows the overall AI market is still expanding rapidly. The share of businesses using some form of AI product increased by 9% over the past year, indicating there’s room for multiple players to grow. This suggests the Anthropic-OpenAI competition reflects market maturation rather than a zero-sum battle.

For businesses evaluating AI providers, this shift highlights the importance of looking beyond brand recognition to actual performance and fit for specific use cases. As the market evolves, customer preferences are clearly weighing factors like reliability and specialized features more heavily than simply being first to market.