OpenAI just lost its enterprise AI crown to Anthropic

3 hours ago 7

Attendees at Anthropic's developer conference in San Francisco

Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI in business AI adoption, according to Ramp's AI Index.
Anthropic's rise has been driven by surging Claude Code adoption.
AI market competition remains volatile, Ramp's economist said.

Anthropic has crossed a symbolic threshold in the AI race: businesses are now spending more on Anthropic than OpenAI for the first time, according to one closely watched measure.

New data from Ramp's AI Index shows Anthropic reached 34.4% business adoption in April, overtaking OpenAI at 32.3%, a dramatic reversal in a market OpenAI once dominated.

Ramp helps companies pay their bills. It analyzes corporate card and bill-paying activity on its platform from more than 50,000 US businesses to track billions of dollars spent on AI services each month. The index doesn't capture all corporate spending on AI, but it's a popular way to track how this key part of the AI market is trending.

Anthropic's milestone marks one of the most significant shifts in the generative AI era. Not so long ago, OpenAI was the clear leader in enterprise AI. In January, Ramp data showed OpenAI far ahead of rivals, with adoption surging across software development, research, finance, and customer support. Now, the company that ignited the modern AI boom has been overtaken by its biggest challenger.

Anthropic has steadily gained momentum with corporate customers over the past year. Then, in late 2025 and early 2026, adoption surged as companies embraced Claude Code for software development. Anthropic is trying to extend that success into other enterprise workflows, such as legal operations, finance, and research.

Still, the victory may prove fragile. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian warned that AI competition remains unusually volatile, with businesses rapidly switching models based on factors including cost, performance, and reliability. Rising token costs, compute shortages, and growing interest in cheaper open-source alternatives could reshape the market again within months.

"We have never seen a software industry as dynamic, where newcomers can disrupt market leaders in a matter of months, and where the pace of development overrides the typical forces of vendor stickiness," Kharazian said. "So these results should not be construed to suggest Anthropic is the definitive leader in business adoption."

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