Anthropic's Clash with the White House Is Actually Driving Business Growth

Anthropic is having a moment. The AI lab ended May by overtaking OpenAI in business spending market share for the first time, according to new data from Ramp. It closed a $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion valuation - also besting OpenAI - then filed confidential IPO paperwork in early June, buoyed by its first profitable quarter. But last Friday, the Trump administration escalated its campaign against the company, demanding it block non-Americans - including its own employees - from accessing its cutting-edge models: the limited-release Mythos 5 and the more guarded Fable 5, which launched just three days earlier.

The move forced Anthropic to pull both models from the market entirely. The White House cited an obscure export control directive, but speculation points to hackers easily bypassing Fable 5's guardrails to reach Mythos' capabilities - a model so adept at finding software security flaws that Anthropic itself warned it was dangerous. This latest clash follows Anthropic's refusal to let the government use its models for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, leading the administration to declare it a supply-chain risk in March. Yet that didn't slow business adoption.

In fact, Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian notes that Anthropic's best month for business spending was the month it was labeled a supply-chain risk. "There's a lot of aura that comes with your model specifically being named too dangerous to use," he said. Ramp's data from over 70,000 businesses shows Anthropic's share of AI subscriptions rose 2. 5 points to 41% in May, while OpenAI's held flat at 39.

5%. Most spending goes to API calls for coding - particularly Claude Opus, the predecessor to Mythos, which remains available. A new version, Opus 4. 8, launched in late May.

While the IPO's fate remains uncertain given public-market wariness of government controversies, the numbers suggest Anthropic's available models are more popular with businesses than ever.

Source: TechCrunch