Observed Signal · May 13, 2026 · Market Report · Source: techcrunch · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI in Business Customers, Ramp Says
Ramp’s May 2026 AI Index, compiled from expense data across the fintech firm’s clients, shows Anthropic is now the most-used AI lab among surveyed businesses: 34.4% of participating companies pay for Anthropic services versus 32.3% for OpenAI. The report covers a sample of more than 50,000 companies. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian noted Anthropic’s strong adoption among high‑usage sectors (finance, tech, professional services) and attributed the company’s growth to a focused technical-first strategy and tools such as Cowork. Ramp data show Anthropic’s business-customer share rose from 9% in May 2025 to 34.4% a year later, while OpenAI’s share declined slightly. The article cautions the index reflects Ramp customers only, but similar trends appear on other trackers such as OpenRouter.
The data indicate a notable shift in enterprise adoption among foundation-model providers, which may influence procurement and competitive dynamics; however, the finding is based on Ramp’s customer sample (not a universal market census) and is not itself a platform policy or technical release.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Ramp’s AI Index (May 2026) reports 34.4% of participating businesses pay for Anthropic services.
- Ramp’s index reports 32.3% of participating businesses pay for OpenAI services.
- The Ramp sample includes expense data from more than 50,000 companies.
- Anthropic’s share among Ramp customers rose from 9% in May 2025 to 34.4% in May 2026 (an increase of ~26 percentage points).
- OpenRouter’s leaderboard last showed OpenAI above Anthropic in December 2025, indicating similar market-shift signals from a different dataset.
Connected Companies & Entities
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OpenAI Gains Ground on Anthropic Among Businesses
Ramp, a corporate credit card and expense management provider, released data showing Anthropic led Ramp’s paying US business users earlier in the year but that OpenAI is narrowing the gap. As of July, Ramp’s dataset covering more than 70,000 American businesses showed Anthropic with nearly 44% share versus OpenAI’s nearly 40%. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian said OpenAI is growing faster in Q3 to date, though Ramp shared only percentage metrics (not dollars) and its sample skews toward tech companies. Ramp’s data also indicates overall enterprise AI adoption among its customers rose from over 50% in March to nearly 56% by July.
Anthropic vs OpenAI: Pre‑IPO BigAI Showdown
The article analyzes the pre‑IPO competition between Anthropic and OpenAI, highlighting major funding rounds, growth trajectories and product cadence. It reports Anthropic closed a $30 billion round while OpenAI is nearing a reported $100 billion round; Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI at a $730–$850 billion pre‑money valuation. Revenue projections and customer metrics from third parties (Epoch AI, Ramp) suggest Anthropic may outpace OpenAI in ARR by late 2026, supported by faster historical growth and recent model releases (Anthropic Sonnet 4.6, Google Gemini 3.1 Pro). The piece cites Ramp data showing high customer overlap (79% of Anthropic customers were already OpenAI customers), low churn (~4%), and growing dual adoption (16% of businesses pay for both). It also discusses agentic AI, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and profitability timelines (Anthropic possibly profitable by 2028; OpenAI possibly by 2031).
Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI as Hottest AI Upstart
Anthropic has accelerated ahead of OpenAI in the frontier AI model race, more than doubling its revenue from Q1 to Q2 while OpenAI’s revenue rose about 18% and its operating margins worsened, the Wall Street Journal reported. Reuters reported that Anthropic projects as much as $200 billion in 2028 revenue versus OpenAI’s $47 billion run rate disclosed in May. Analysts say the shift could reshape partner and supplier dynamics: companies tied to OpenAI (Oracle, CoreWeave, Broadcom, SoftBank) may face downside while cloud and chip providers tied to Anthropic (Google/Alphabet, Amazon) could benefit because Anthropic sources most compute from Google and Amazon. Market observers note interoperability via open-weight models and the potential for commoditization of frontier AI, but most do not expect OpenAI to disappear. The story is framed as market analysis with implications for stocks and industry supply chains.
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