Anthropic Sees 'Historic Surge' in Users
Following its ban from U.S. federal agencies, Anthropic is experiencing an "historic surge in subscribers" as it becomes seen as the "ethical choice" for consumers. The company is reportedly gaining two new users for every one leaving OpenAI, setting up a market split between OpenAI as the "industrial military AI" and Anthropic as the consumer-focused alternative.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by seven former senior members of OpenAI, including siblings Dario Amodei (OpenAI's former VP of Research) and Daniela Amodei. The split was reportedly driven by fundamental disagreements over AI safety and the direction of research. The recent ban stems from Anthropic's refusal to remove safeguards on its AI model, Claude, that prevent its use for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. On February 27, 2026, the Trump administration ordered all federal agencies to cease using the company's technology and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk," a label historically reserved for foreign adversaries. Anthropic's "ethical" positioning is built on a framework called Constitutional AI, where models are trained to align with a set of principles laid out in a formal document. This "constitution" guides the AI to be helpful and harmless, and even to act as a "conscientious objector" by refusing requests from its own creators that violate its core values. The company has seen massive financial growth, raising $30 billion in February 2026 at a $380 billion valuation. Its annualized revenue run-rate hit an estimated $14 billion the same month, a figure that has grown more than tenfold each of the last three years. Major tech giants are heavily invested in Anthropic's success. Amazon has committed a total of $4 billion, and Google has invested $2 billion. These deals also establish Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud as primary cloud providers for Anthropic's demanding computing needs. While OpenAI leads in consumer adoption, Anthropic has focused on the enterprise market, which accounts for approximately 85% of its revenue. Its coding assistant, Claude Code, has seen rapid adoption, reaching 29 million daily installs on the VS Code editor and accounting for roughly 4% of all public commits on GitHub.
