Anthropic, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI employees, is experiencing a paradoxical moment. Despite an intense conflict with the Trump administration that led to the withdrawal of its most advanced models from the market, business spending data suggests the company may emerge stronger. According to an analysis by Ramp, a corporate spend management platform, Anthropic surpassed OpenAI for the first time in business subscription market share, reaching 41% in May, compared to OpenAI's 39.5%. The company closed May with a valuation of $965 billion after a $65 billion funding round, also surpassing OpenAI in valuation. In June, it filed confidential paperwork for an IPO, reportedly driven by its first profitable quarter.
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The controversy's context is layered. The Trump administration sent a letter demanding Anthropic restrict access to its most powerful models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, to non-US citizens, including its own employees. The demand cited an obscure export control directive. Consequently, Anthropic pulled both models from the market entirely. Mythos 5 was a limited-release model renowned for its ability to find vulnerabilities in software code, so much so that Anthropic itself marketed it as dangerous. Fable 5 was the public version with guardrails that hackers easily bypassed, leading to its removal after just three days.
This episode follows a previous tension in March, when the administration declared Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company refused to allow its models to be used for mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Despite these tensions, business adoption continues to grow. Ara Kharazian, Ramp's lead economist, stated that the feud likely boosts Anthropic, noting that their best month for business adoption was the same month the Department of Defense labeled them a supply-chain risk. Ramp's data, covering over 70,000 businesses, shows that most spending is on subscriptions and API calls, particularly for the Claude Opus model. In late May, Anthropic released a new version, Opus 4.8.
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While the controversy could complicate the IPO journey, the perception that Anthropic's models are too powerful seems to fuel demand. Companies seek cutting-edge AI for tasks like coding, and Claude Code has a strong reputation. As highlighted in our previous guide, Redis and Caching Strategies are essential for application performance, but generative AI is becoming central to enterprise workflows. Database optimization, as covered in the Definitive Guide to PostgreSQL, can also benefit from AI integration for advanced analytics.
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This situation shows that in the AI world, the perception of danger can turn into a competitive advantage. For more background, refer to the Anthropic Wikipedia page.
