Anthropic tops OpenAI on Ramp index

Anthropic moved ahead of OpenAI in Ramp’s latest business AI adoption index, giving Claude the top spot in a closely watched measure of which model vendors companies are actually paying for. Ramp said on May 13 that 34.4% of businesses in its April sample paid for Anthropic services, compared with 32.3% for OpenAI. The data comes from expense records across more than 50,000 companies that use Ramp, making it a spending-based snapshot of enterprise purchasing rather than a poll of preferences. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian said the result was the first time Anthropic had passed OpenAI in the index. ### What exactly did Ramp measure? Ramp’s index tracks whether businesses in its customer base are paying for AI vendors, using corporate card and bill-pay data rather than survey responses. TechCrunch reported that the sample covers more than 50,000 companies, and Ramp’s May release said overall AI adoption across that group rose to 50.6% in April. That means the headline is not about consumer usage or model quality in the abstract; it is about which vendors are winning paid seats and subscriptions inside businesses. (ramp.com) Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s lead economist, wrote that Anthropic’s adoption rose 3.8% in April to 34.4% while OpenAI’s fell 2.9% to 32.3%. He also wrote that Anthropic had quadrupled business adoption over the past year, while OpenAI’s business adoption grew only 0.3% over the same period. ### How broad is Anthropic’s lead? TechCrunch reported that Kharazian said Anthropic was already ahead among “high adoption groups like finance, tech, professional services.” He added that OpenAI still led in other parts of the market, but that lead had been shrinking over recent months. (ramp.com) That suggests the crossover did not come from a single industry abruptly changing course, but from a broader narrowing across business categories. Ramp also cautioned against reading the result as permanent. Kharazian wrote that the software market for AI models has been unusually fluid, with newcomers able to displace leaders “in a matter of months” because development speed has outweighed normal vendor stickiness. ### Why are companies switching vendors so quickly? Ramp’s own explanation focused on enterprise deployment conditions, not a single benchmark test. (techcrunch.com) Kharazian wrote that the market has been unusually dynamic and that the pace of model development has overridden the “typical forces of vendor stickiness.” In practice, that means companies are willing to change providers when price, reliability, task fit or integration needs shift. (ramp.com) CNBC reported on May 4 that Anthropic had teamed with Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and others on a $1.5 billion venture to deploy Claude inside portfolio companies and other mid-sized firms. Marc Nachmann, Goldman’s global head of asset and wealth management, said there was “a big shortage of people who know how to apply these tools into businesses and then transform them.” He said the venture would embed engineers inside companies to redesign workflows around agents. (ramp.com) ### Why are deployment engineers suddenly central to the competition? OpenAI said on May 11 that it launched the OpenAI Deployment Company to help organizations build and deploy AI systems “they can rely on every day” in core operations. The company said the new unit would embed Forward Deployed Engineers inside customer organizations to identify use cases, redesign workflows and build production systems around frontier AI. (cnbc.com) Google is building a similar function inside Google Cloud. A current Google careers posting for a “Forward Deployed Engineer, Applied AI” says the role is the “primary delivery arm” for customers’ critical AI initiatives and lists locations including New York, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle and San Francisco. The posting asks for experience with enterprise IT systems such as ERP, CRM and legacy databases, a sign that vendors are competing on integration work as much as on model performance. (openai.com) ### Does this settle the OpenAI-versus-Anthropic race? Ramp’s May 13 note said no. Kharazian wrote that the results “should not be construed” as proof Anthropic is the definitive leader in business adoption, and he listed cost, compute and product risks that could affect future share. TechCrunch also noted that Ramp’s dataset reflects only businesses that use Ramp, even if the sample is large enough to be widely watched. (google.com) May 2026 has already produced the next round of moves. Anthropic’s new $1.5 billion deployment venture was announced on May 4, OpenAI launched its deployment company on May 11, and Google’s forward-deployed engineering roles remain posted as of this week. (cnbc.com) (ramp.com)