Anthropic’s Claude chatbot climbs to no.1 on Apple’s US App Store amid Pentagon contract row

Anthropic’s chatbot Claude has surged to the number one spot in the free app rankings on the US Apple App Store. On Saturday evening, it moved ahead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to take the position, where it remains.

Figures from digital market intelligence platform Sensor Tower show that at the end of January, Claude was just outside the top 100. However, by mid-February, the company’s Super Bowl advertisement, which mocked ads in ChatGPT, helped lift it into the top 10 on the US store. It continued to climb, eventually securing first place on Saturday.

According to news site TechCrunch, daily registrations have reached record levels every day this week. The number of free users has risen by more than 60% since January, while paid subscriptions have more than doubled since the start of the year.


India has also become a major market for Claude. Peter McCrory, Anthropic’s head of economics, told ET that India now ranks second worldwide in overall usage of Claude.ai. Nearly half of the activity there is linked to work-related tasks, underlining the platform’s growing professional appeal.

The company’s success comes against a tense political backdrop. After Anthropic sought safeguards to prevent the US Department of Defense from using its AI systems for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth went further, designating the firm a supply-chain risk.

Trump and Hegseth accused Anthropic and its chief executive, Dario Amodei, of putting national security at risk after he refused to soften his stance on the potential misuse of AI for surveillance and autonomous weaponry. The Pentagon’s decision to classify the company as a defence supply-chain concern will terminate its contract, reportedly worth up to $200 million, and block other defence contractors from working with it.

Meanwhile, seizing the opportunity, OpenAI revealed its own deal with the Pentagon. Chief executive Sam Altman claimed the agreement contains protections relating to domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.

However, during an Ask Me Anything session on X on Saturday, Altman described the government’s treatment of Anthropic as a dangerous precedent for the AI industry and the country.