Anthropic surpasses OpenAI in business customers, per Ramp data
▼ Summary
– Anthropic has more verified business customers than OpenAI for the first time, with 34.4% of Ramp’s surveyed businesses paying for Anthropic services versus 32.3% for OpenAI.
– Anthropic leads among high-adoption groups like finance and tech, while OpenAI’s lead among other firms has been shrinking over recent months.
– The Ramp index includes over 50,000 companies, making it a broad sample, though it only represents Ramp users and is not a perfect market proxy.
– Over the past 12 months, Anthropic’s paying business share rose from 9% to 26%, while OpenAI’s share declined by 1% and overall AI adoption increased by 9%.
– An economist noted Anthropic’s successful strategy of starting with a technical customer base, focusing on execution, and then broadening out with tools like Cowork.
For the first time, Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI in verified business customers, according to the latest AI Index from fintech firm Ramp. This marks a significant shift in the competitive landscape of enterprise AI services.
The data, drawn from Ramp’s client expense records and released this month, reveals that 34.4% of participating businesses now pay for Anthropic services, while OpenAI trails at 32.3%. This is the inaugural instance of Anthropic claiming the top spot in this metric.
Ramp economist Ara Kharazian explained the dynamics behind the shift. “Anthropic has already been in the lead amongst the high adoption groups like finance, tech, professional services,” he told TechCrunch. “It’s across the other firms where OpenAI still has a lead, but that has been shrinking over the past couple of months.”
While the index is limited to companies using Ramp’s platform, the sample of over 50,000 businesses is both broad and diverse enough to be meaningful. The trend is also reflected in other industry data. On OpenRouter’s leaderboard, which tracks a different user base, OpenAI last held the lead over Anthropic in December 2025.
The past 12 months have been particularly transformative for Anthropic. In May 2025, only 9% of businesses were paying for its products. That figure has since climbed 26 percentage points, reaching 34.4% today. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s share declined by 1% over the same period, and the overall share of businesses using any AI product increased by 9%.
Despite this momentum, Kharazian expressed skepticism about whether Anthropic can maintain its advantage long-term, noting his concerns in a blog post. Still, he acknowledged that the company’s trajectory over the past year validates its chosen strategy.
“What Anthropic did worked really well,” Kharazian said. “Start with a very technical customer base, focus on their needs, really succeed in execution and then start broadening out through tools like Cowork.”
(Source: TechCrunch)
