Anthropic’s latest feud with the Trump admin may actually help it, sales data suggests
Anthropic's popularity with business users is growing so well that the latest beef with the government might actually boost it, data from Ramp suggests.
The AI lab finished May by surpassing OpenAI in market share of business spending for the first time, Ramp just revealed . It raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation (also besting OpenAI) at the end of May, then waltzed into June by filing confidential paperwork for an IPO , reportedly on the strength of its first-ever profitable quarter .
Then on Friday, the Trump administration renewed its war on the model maker by sending a letter demanding it ban non-Americans, including Anthropic’s employees, from accessing its state-of-the-art models: the limited-release Mythos 5 and the more guarded version of Mythos released to the public three days earlier, called Fable 5 .
This essentially forced Anthropic to pull its latest all-powerful model from the market altogether.
Although the White House invoked an obscure export control directive when ordering the ban, the exact cause remains unclear. The chatter was that hackers easily bypassed Fable 5’s guardrails , which were intended to prevent access to Mythos’ capabilities. That model is so good at finding security flaws in software code that Anthropic itself marketed it as dangerous and restricted its public release.
This new drama comes after Anthropic famously refused to allow the government to use its models for mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. As a result, in March, the Trump administration declared the company a supply-chain risk .
That didn’t deter Anthropic’s sales to businesses. Quite the opposite, Ramp’s data shows. Ironically, this latest feud with the Trump administration, which also appears to validate the hubbub over Mythos’ mythological power, may help rather than hurt Anthropic, according to Ramp’s lead economist, Ara Kharazian. Kharazian is the person who compiled the business-spending AI data.
“If anything, it’ll probably boost them,” Kharazian told TechCrunch. “Anthropic’s best month on record, as far as business adoption, was the month that the Department of Defense labeled them a supply-chain risk. There’s a lot of aura that comes with your model specifically being named too dangerous to use.”
Ramp’s data isn’t granular enough for us to see how much of a financial hit the company will take by pulling Mythos and Fable 5 off the market.
Still the data, from more than 70,000 businesses that use its platform, shows that customers heavily use Anthropic’s Opus models and that business use has been growing.
For instance, Ramp reported that Anthropic’s share of AI subscriptions paid for by businesses rose 2.5 percentage points in May to 41%. This compares to OpenAI, which commanded 39.5% of AI subscriptions by its customers, essentially flat from the prior month. (OpenAI still greatly leads Anthropic in overall consumer usage, according to new data from Sensor Tower .)
Beyond subscriptions, the vast majority of what companies spend money on is API calls to the model, which cover token use for activities like coding. Anthropic’s Claude Code has a strong reputation as a powerful AI coding tool.
Ramp can’t always see from the spending data which models most businesses are using. When it can see the model details — in about one-third of transactions — businesses are mostly spending on various flavors of Claude Opus, particularly the later versions. Opus is the model that preceded Mythos and is still openly available.
In fact, in late May, Anthropic released a new version, Opus 4.8.
Mythos had not been on the market for that long, having been released to limited users as of April. And Fable 5 was shut down after a few days.
While we can’t predict how this latest drama with the White House will impact Anthropic’s ability to go public as it hoped to (public-market investors tend to be wary of companies embroiled in controversies with the government), the numbers indicate that Anthropic’s available models are more popular with businesses than ever before.
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Key takeaways
- The feud with the Trump administration may reinforce Anthropic's image as an ethical company, attracting more clients.
- The growing adoption of ethical AI models may inspire Brazilian startups to prioritize responsibility in their innovations.
- The narrative around the 'dangerousness' of AI models may increase their commercial appeal, impacting how companies communicate their innovations.
Editorial analysis
The feud between Anthropic and the Trump administration highlights the complexity of the regulatory environment that AI companies face, especially in a global context. For the Brazilian tech sector, this situation can serve as a warning about the risks and opportunities that arise amid government regulations. Anthropic's resistance to allowing its models to be used for mass surveillance and autonomous weaponry may inspire Brazilian companies to adopt similar stances, prioritizing ethics in their innovations.
Moreover, the growing adoption of Anthropic's models by businesses, even in the face of adversity, suggests that the demand for AI solutions that respect ethical and security principles is on the rise. This could encourage Brazilian startups to develop technologies that not only meet market needs but also align with ethical values, thereby enhancing their competitiveness.
Another point to watch is how the narrative around the "dangerousness" of AI models can impact public perception and acceptance of emerging technologies. The idea that a model is so advanced that it is considered risky may, paradoxically, increase its commercial appeal. For Brazil, this means that companies should be mindful of how they communicate their innovations, emphasizing not only effectiveness but also responsibility.
Finally, Anthropic's situation may indicate that AI regulation is becoming a central issue in various parts of the world, including Brazil. Local companies must prepare for a scenario where regulatory compliance is not just an obligation but a competitive advantage. What follows will be the need for deeper dialogue between the private sector and regulators to ensure that innovation is not stifled by excessive regulations while also not compromising safety and ethics.
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