Anthropic’s chatbot Claude appears to have benefited from the eye across the firm’s fraught negotiations with the Pentagon.
As first reported by CNBC, Claude has been rising to the highest of the free app rankings in Apple’s US App Retailer. On Saturday night, it overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to say the primary spot, a place that it nonetheless held on Sunday morning.
In keeping with information from SensorTower, Claude was simply exterior the highest 100 on the finish of January, and has spent most of February someplace within the prime 20. It’s climbed quickly up to now few days, from sixth on Wednesday, then fourth on Thursday, then first on Saturday.
An organization spokesperson mentioned that each day signups have damaged the all-time report day-after-day this week, free customers have elevated greater than 60% since January, and paid subscribers have greater than doubled this yr.
After Anthropic tried to barter for safeguards stopping the Division of Protection from utilizing its AI fashions for mass home surveillance or totally autonomous weapons, President Donald Trump directed federal companies to cease utilizing all Anthropic merchandise and Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth mentioned he’s designating the corporate a supply-chain menace.
OpenAI subsequently introduced its personal settlement with the Pentagon, which CEO Sam Altman claimed contains safeguards associated to home surveillance and autonomous weapons.
This submit was first printed on February 28, 2026. It has been up to date to mirror Anthropic reaching No. 1, and to incorporate progress numbers from the corporate.
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