Anthropic’s Rising Influence and the Trump Administration’s Challenge
Anthropic has a month.
Anthropic’s Remarkable Market Performance
In an unprecedented development, Ramp recently reported that its AI lab has surpassed OpenAI’s market share in business spending for the first time in May. This milestone was achieved shortly after the company raised an impressive $65 billion at a staggering $965 billion valuation in late May. Furthermore, Anthropic filed confidential documents for an IPO in June, following its first-ever profitable quarter.
Government Intervention: A Double-Edged Sword
On Friday, the Trump administration reignited tensions with Anthropic by issuing a directive to ban non-Americans, including Anthropic’s own employees, from accessing its cutting-edge models: the limited-edition Mythos 5 and its more advanced counterpart, Fable 5, which was released to the public just three days prior. This forced Anthropic to withdraw its innovative models from the market.
The White House cited a relatively obscure export control policy as the basis for this action, but the underlying reasons remain ambiguous. There are rumors that hackers found ways to bypass Fable 5’s security measures, originally designed to restrict access to Mythos features. Notably, Anthropic itself marketed this model as potentially dangerous due to its exceptional ability to identify vulnerabilities in software code, leading to a restricted public release.
The Impact of Government Relations on Anthropic’s Business
This conflict follows Anthropic’s refusal to allow government use of its models for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, resulting in the Trump administration labeling the company a supply chain risk in March. Despite this, Anthropic’s sales to businesses have not only remained unaffected but have thrived, as evidenced by Ramp’s data.
Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s senior economist, suggests that the controversy may actually bolster Anthropic’s reputation. “If anything, it will probably strengthen them,” Kharazian told TechCrunch. “Anthropic’s best month ever in terms of business adoption was the month the Department of Defense designated them as a supply chain risk. There’s a lot of aura to your model being specifically called too dangerous to use.”
Business Adoption and Market Dynamics
Ramp’s data cannot precisely determine the financial impact on Anthropic if Mythos and Fable 5 are withdrawn. Nevertheless, insights from over 70,000 companies using the platform indicate that Anthropic’s Opus models are in high demand, with business usage on the rise.
In May, Anthropic’s share of enterprise-paid AI subscriptions rose by 2.5 percentage points to 41%, surpassing OpenAI’s 39.5%. While OpenAI remains ahead in overall consumer usage, according to Sensor Tower, Anthropic’s growth in business subscriptions is notable.
Beyond subscriptions, companies invest heavily in model API calls, covering token usage for activities like coding. Anthropic’s Claude Code is highly regarded as a robust AI coding tool. Ramp’s spending data shows that when model details are visible—about a third of transactions—companies primarily invest in various Claude Opus versions, particularly the latest ones. Opus, the predecessor of Mythos, is still freely available, with a new version, Opus 4.8, released at the end of May.
Future Prospects Amidst Controversy
Mythos’ market presence is relatively recent, having been released to limited users in April, and Fable 5 was shut down shortly after its debut. While the impact of the ongoing dispute with the White House on Anthropic’s IPO prospects remains uncertain, the data suggests that the company’s available models are increasingly popular with businesses.
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