Anthropic could have misplaced out on doing enterprise with the US authorities, nevertheless it’s gained sufficient recognition to earn the primary spot on the App Retailer’s High Free Apps leaderboard. On the prime, Claude beat out each ChatGPT and Google Gemini, which respectively sit on the second and third spots on Apple’s free apps charts.
The sudden surge in consumer downloads is not random. It follows information that President Trump has barred any federal company from utilizing Anthropic’s Claude or different AI instruments after the AI firm refused to concede on sure guardrails. After declining to have its AI fashions be used for mass home surveillance and absolutely autonomous weapons, Anthropic was additionally threatened with a “supply-chain threat” label by the Division of Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth. The very public spat led to a wave of consumer assist that lastly allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI’s ChatGPT on the App Retailer as probably the most downloaded free app.
Whereas OpenAI has stepped into Anthropic’s sneakers after agreeing to a take care of the Division of Protection, the CEO nonetheless supplied up some ideas concerning the debacle throughout an AMA on X. Despite the fact that Claude is a competing mannequin, Sam Altman mentioned that Anthropic’s supply-chain threat designation was “a really unhealthy resolution” that he is hoping will get reversed. On prime of that, OpenAI’s CEO known as Anthropic’s blacklisting “a particularly scary precedent,” however he is “nonetheless looking forward to a significantly better decision.”
