Anthropic finally beat OpenAI in business AI adoption — but 3 big threats could erase its lead

For the first time since the AI race began, more American businesses are paying for Anthropic's Claude than for OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Adoption of Anthropic rose 3.8% in April to 34.4% of businesses, according to the May 2026 release of the Ramp AI Index. OpenAI's adoption fell 2.9% to 32.3%. Overall AI adoption among businesses rose 0.2 percentage points to 50.6%.

The crossover — published Tuesday by Ramp, the corporate card and finance automation platform that tracks spending patterns across more than 50,000 U.S. businesses — marks the culmination of a yearlong surge by Anthropic that few in the industry predicted. Anthropic has quadrupled its business adoption over the past year, while OpenAI grew its business adoption by only 0.3%.

But the same report that crowns a new market leader also warns that Anthropic's position may be more fragile than it appears — threatened by escalating costs, compute constraints, and the very token-based pricing model that has fueled the company's extraordinary revenue growth.

Anthropic's share of U.S. business adoption surpassed OpenAI's for the first time in April, capping a rapid ascent from less than 1 percent in mid-2023 to 34.4 percent. Overall AI adoption among businesses crossed 50 percent the same month. (Source: Ramp AI Index)