Anthropic has seen its adoption surge in February this year as AI business adoption soars 47.6% last month overall, according to the Ramp AI Index.

However, not every AI company is benefiting over this boost, with OpenAI’s adoption rating falling by 1.5%.

Anthropic, the maker of Claude AI, however, has seen their business adoption grow 4.9% month over month, and now accounts for about a quarter (24.4%) of businesses using AI.

This is a major improvement from a year ago, when just one in 25 businesses on Ramp was paying to use Anthropic.

Google also saw a 4.7% month on month adoption hike, though it accounts for a modest amount of overall business use.

While OpenAI is still in the lead when it comes to business adoption, at 34.4%, Anthropic is slowly edging towards this lead, as other competing chatbots trail. xAI, for instance, is being used by less than 2% of businesses, according to Ramp.

The data also reveals a shift in Anthropic’s market position. The AI firm’s models were popular with early adopters, and is now leveraging that early adoption in continual business priorities.

Put head to head with OpenAI, Anthropic was chosen 70% of the time by first time buyers of AI services, Ramp found.

This is challenging the initial adoption dominance of OpenAI, but why?

Anthropic and OpenAI’s business offerings are largely comparable, Ramp AI points out, while OpenAI’s Codex is actually less expensive. So what is driving the rise of Anthropic’s adoption?

For the answer, it might be worthwhile to look beyond model ability and price, and to the shifting political alignment of AI companies.

Anthropic’s recent ousting by the US Department of War has garnered the AI company a new reputation, one as a company more aligned with ethics, one willing to step up to an increasingly volatile US government.

It lost its US contract for disobeying demands to remove some safeguards from its models that would allow for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons – that is, after its technology was used in operations targeting Venezuela, and even though its technology was reportedly used in the US’s recent military operations in Iran.

Whether it’s new ethical reputation is suitable or not, OpenAI’s recent dealings with the US government – its contract that CEO Sam Altman said was handled poorly by the company – has more people questioning AI firms’ allegiances.

OpenAI’s announcement of the deal aligned with mass removals of ChatGPT, research found, as well as an uptick in Claude use and downloads.

Recommended reading

• OpenAI Backtracks on “Opportunistic and Sloppy” US Government Deal
• Anthropic Seeks Weapons Expert Amid Growing AI Safety Concerns
• Anthropic Out, OpenAI In | The US AI Power Struggles

“Anthropic positioned itself differently, and a certain class of user noticed,” economist for Ramp, Ara Kharazian, said in a blog post.

This class includes Katy Perry – not necessarily known for her tech acumen, but she did go to space – and US senator Brian Schatz, a strong voice on tech policy in the country, Ramp noted. Both announced their switches to Claude following the US military contract fallout.

Is Anthropic’s spat with the US government a true signal of virtue or the canary in the coal mine of ethical conundrums associated with AI’s radical adoption? Is the company set to benefit from a moral argument AI adopters don’t seem terribly keen to investigate deeply? Perhaps!

“There might be a world in which choosing between OpenAI and Anthropic becomes less like an enterprise procurement decision and more like the green bubble/blue bubble distinction in iMessage: a signal of identity as much as a choice of technology,” Kharazian posited.

Claude Logo in image sourced from Anthropic