Anthropic tops OpenAI in adoption

Anthropic moved ahead of OpenAI in Ramp’s latest AI Index, a closely watched measure of which AI vendors U.S. businesses are paying. Ramp said on May 13 that 34.4% of businesses in its sample paid for Anthropic services in April, compared with 32.3% for OpenAI. (ramp.com) The result was the first time Anthropic ranked ahead of OpenAI in the index. Ramp’s dataset covers more than 50,000 American businesses using its corporate card and bill-pay products. The number is narrow, and the measure is specific. Ramp tracks paid transactions, not total usage, and it says the index likely understates adoption because free tools and employee purchases on personal accounts do not appear in the data. (ramp.com) That makes the index less a census of AI use than a record of which vendors companies are formally expensing through finance systems. ### What exactly did Ramp measure? Ramp said its AI Index measures the share of businesses with a positive paid transaction for an AI product or service in a given month. The company builds the dataset from receipt and bill data uploaded through its platform, using merchant names and line-item details to identify AI vendors. (ramp.com) More than 50,000 U.S. businesses are included in the sample, according to Ramp. The company said the index is based on billions of dollars in corporate spend, but it does not measure how much any business spent with a provider or how heavily employees used a model after purchase. (ramp.com) ### How fast did Anthropic close the gap? Ramp’s May 13 update said Anthropic’s adoption rose 3.8 percentage points in April to 34.4%, while OpenAI’s fell 2.9 percentage points to 32.3%. Overall AI adoption across businesses in the sample rose 0.2 percentage points to 50.6%, meaning just over half of companies in the dataset paid for some AI product in April. (ramp.com) Over the last year, Anthropic quadrupled its business adoption rate in Ramp’s index, while OpenAI’s business adoption grew by 0.3%, Ramp economist Ara Kharazian wrote. (ramp.com) Kharazian said the latest figures should not be read as proof of permanent leadership because the market remains volatile and newer vendors can gain or lose share quickly. ### Why are finance teams watching paid adoption instead of chatbot popularity? Ramp’s methodology captures a later step in enterprise buying. A paid transaction routed through a company’s card or accounts-payable workflow usually reflects procurement, budgeting or departmental approval, rather than casual experimentation by individual workers. (ramp.com) Ramp does not present that as a quality ranking, but the index does show where finance departments are authorizing spend. Ara Kharazian framed the latest reading as a factual snapshot of business purchasing rather than a declaration of a long-term winner. (ramp.com) In the same note, he listed cost pressure, compute constraints and user dissatisfaction as risks that could erode Anthropic’s lead in later months. ### What does the index leave out? Ramp said free AI tools are a major blind spot in the data. A company whose employees use unpaid versions of ChatGPT, Claude or another model would not count as an adopter unless a paid transaction appeared in Ramp’s records. (ramp.com) Employees who expense nothing because they use personal accounts also fall outside the measure. The sample is also U.S.-based. Ramp describes the index as a monthly measurement of AI adoption by American businesses, so the figures do not represent global enterprise demand or consumer usage. (ramp.com) ### What are Anthropic and OpenAI doing in enterprise right now? Anthropic has been pushing deeper into workplace and developer products. In February, the company said Claude Opus 4.6 would be available on its API and major cloud platforms, and it highlighted coding, tool use and long-context tasks as key strengths. Anthropic also markets Claude Code as an agentic coding product that can work in terminals, IDEs and desktop workflows. (ramp.com) OpenAI said on April 21 that it was expanding partnerships with major consulting firms and launching Codex Labs to place specialists inside customer organizations. (ramp.com) Reuters reported the move was aimed at speeding enterprise adoption of OpenAI’s Codex tools as competition intensified. ### What should readers watch next month? Ramp publishes the AI Index monthly through its Economics Lab and data pages. The next release will show whether Anthropic’s April lead holds, widens or reverses among the more than 50,000 U.S. businesses in Ramp’s sample. (anthropic.com) May and June product changes could also affect the next reading. Kharazian wrote that Anthropic reset usage limits in April and signed a SpaceX compute deal, while OpenAI is pressing its consulting-channel expansion, leaving the next monthly index as the nearest public checkpoint for both companies’ paid enterprise traction. (money.usnews.com) (ramp.com 1) (ramp.com 2)