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Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI in Business AI Spending

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Key insights

  • Ramp data from 70,000+ businesses shows Anthropic at 41% business AI subscription share in May 2026, topping OpenAI's 39.5% for the first time.
  • The Trump administration demanded Anthropic ban non-Americans from Mythos 5 and Fable 5, and designated the company a supply-chain risk in March 2026.
  • Ara Kharazian, Ramp's lead economist, said Anthropic's record enterprise adoption month coincided exactly with the month the DoD assigned the supply-chain risk label.

Why this matters

The market-share reversal shows that government friction and commercial momentum can accelerate in parallel, a dynamic AI companies building government-adjacent products must now plan for. Anthropic's path to a near-trillion-dollar valuation and IPO filing is running alongside an open confrontation with the federal government, positioning the company as a test case for navigating political risk at scale. For technical leaders choosing a production AI vendor, the Ramp data signals that Claude Code and Opus API access have become the practical default for coding workloads, with Anthropic now outpacing OpenAI in business spend share.

Summary

Anthropic claimed 41% of business AI subscription spending in May 2026, edging past OpenAI's 39.5%, according to Ramp data covering more than 70,000 businesses. The milestone arrived while Anthropic was in open conflict with the Trump administration, which sent a letter demanding it ban non-Americans from accessing Mythos 5 and Fable 5, its most advanced models. In March, the administration had already designated the company a supply-chain risk. Essentially: (Anthropic, OpenAI) the government pressure campaign is coinciding with Anthropic's strongest commercial run on record. - Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian noted that Anthropic's best business adoption month was the same month the DoD applied the supply-chain risk label. - Claude Code and Opus API calls for coding tasks are the primary enterprise spending drivers. - Anthropic also filed confidential IPO paperwork and reported its first profitable quarter in the same period. Enterprise adoption is rising in lockstep with political friction, not despite it.

Potential risks and opportunities

Risks

  • If the Trump administration's demand to ban non-Americans from Mythos 5 and Fable 5 is enforced broadly, it could dampen Anthropic's enterprise share growth in the months following the May 2026 record.
  • OpenAI could reclaim the market-share lead if Anthropic's most capable models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, remain restricted or unavailable to a broad enterprise audience beyond May 2026.
  • A supply-chain risk designation converted into federal procurement rules could block Anthropic from government contracts at the moment it is approaching an IPO at a $965 billion valuation.

Opportunities

  • Anthropic's growing enterprise lead creates leverage to expand Claude Code's position in developer toolchains, as businesses with existing Opus API integrations face meaningful switching costs to return to OpenAI.
  • The Trump administration conflict could function as a credibility signal for enterprise security buyers outside the US, reinforcing Anthropic's positioning as an independent actor rather than a government-aligned vendor.
  • Ramp's tracking of AI subscription spending across 70,000+ businesses is establishing a new market-intelligence standard, creating a data product opportunity for other enterprise spend platforms to build similar AI vendor share indices.

What we don't know yet

  • Whether the Trump administration's demand to ban non-Americans extends to Anthropic's API customers broadly, and how Anthropic plans to comply or contest that requirement.
  • Whether the spending split between Anthropic and OpenAI will shift after June, given that Fable 5's public release on June 9, 2026 falls entirely outside the May Ramp dataset.
  • The status of Anthropic's confidential IPO timeline and whether the ongoing government conflict will affect its trajectory toward the $965 billion valuation.

Originally reported by techcrunch.com

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Original headline: Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI in Business AI Spending for the First Time, Ramp Data Shows