OpenAI Is Winning Back Enterprise Customers from Anthropic

Until OpenAI and Anthropic get close to an IPO and disclose their financials, the health of their businesses has to be judged from indirect sources. One such source is Ramp, a company that issues corporate cards and manages its clients' spending. Its latest data suggests that OpenAI has begun to close the gap with Anthropic among American businesses.

OpenAI once led unchallenged among both businesses and individual users, but in May it lost the top spot: Anthropic pulled ahead with 41% against 39% for the maker of ChatGPT. OpenAI has been unable to reclaim the lead since. By July, Anthropic's share had grown to nearly 44%, with OpenAI at around 40%.

The sample covers more than 70,000 American companies that spend billions of dollars through Ramp's services. The clients span a range of industries, but with a skew toward the tech sector — Ramp is popular first and foremost in Silicon Valley.

The trend could reverse

According to Ramp economist Ara Kharazian, OpenAI is so far growing faster than its rival in this segment in the third quarter. That said, there's still a month left in the quarter, and by the standards of the AI industry that's an eternity, so the picture could yet change. Ramp doesn't disclose specific figures, limiting itself to percentages.

The estimate doesn't reflect the entire market: it leaves out large corporations that manage their spending through American Express and similar services. But even the available data is enough to see the main point — Anthropic's victory isn't final. Companies happily bounce between labs as new models come out, and this fickleness should give investors pause about how “sticky” corporate AI spending really turns out to be.

Kharazian explained the shift on his X account: the GPT-5.6 Sol model, he says, is “genuinely good” and is increasingly becoming developers' choice. Fable 5, meanwhile, Anthropic's top-tier plan, has disappointed both in adoption pace and in practical payoff — a result of its high price and regulators' data-retention requirements.

The assessment may be an oversimplification: Fable is more expensive, but it's also tuned for a narrower range of tasks than a general-purpose chatbot. Even so, Anthropic drew criticism after warning Fable users that it was obligated to store their data for 30 days.

The market as a whole is growing

At the same time, as Ramp notes, revenue at both companies should grow even amid the fight for market share, because the market itself is expanding. The share of companies paying for AI services among Ramp's clients is steadily rising: in March it topped 50%, and by July it approached 56%.

Source: TechCrunch