For the first time, Anthropic has more verified business customers than OpenAI, according to this month’s AI Index from the fintech firm Ramp.
For the first time, Anthropic has more verified business customers than OpenAI, according to this month’s AI Index from the fintech firm Ramp.
The survey, compiled from Ramp’s clients’ expense data, shows 34.4% of participating businesses are paying for Anthropic services, more than any other AI lab, while only 32.3% pay for OpenAI.
It is the first time Anthropic has held the top position.
“Anthropic has already been in the lead amongst the high adoption groups like finance, tech, professional services,” Ramp economist Ara Kharazian told TechCrunch. “It’s across the other firms where OpenAI still has a lead, but that has been shrinking over the past couple of months.” Because the index only represents companies that use Ramp, it’s not a perfect proxy for the marketplace at large. Still, the sample includes more than 50,000 companies, making it both broad and diverse enough to carry weight.
More importantly, the general trend can be seen across the industry. On OpenRouter’s leaderboard , which samples a different portion of users, OpenAI last ranked above Anthropic in December 2025.
According to Ramp’s figures, the past 12 months have been particularly transformative for Anthropic. In May 2025, a mere 9% of businesses were paying for Anthropic products, a figure that climbed 26% in the following 12 months. Over the same period, OpenAI’s share declined by 1%, and the overall share of businesses using some kind of AI product increased by 9%.
Kharazian is skeptical about whether this advantage will last, for reasons he explained in a blog post, but said the success of the past year was proof that Anthropic had chosen a good strategy.
“What Anthropic did worked really well,” Kharazian told TechCrunch, “which was — start with a very technical customer base, focus on their needs, really succeed in execution and then start broadening out through tools like Cowork.” Topics AI , Anthropic , OpenAI , Ramp When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Russell Brandom AI Editor Russell Brandom has been covering the tech industry since 2012, with a focus on platform policy and emerging technologies. He previously worked at The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review.
He can be reached at russell.brandom@techcrunch.com or on Signal at 412-401-5489.
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