Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude is attracting paying subscribers at record rates. Julie Bort reports for TechCrunch that new paid sign-ups surged between January and February, with returning users also hitting record numbers in that period. A spokesperson for Anthropic confirmed that paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year.
The findings come from an analysis of billions of anonymized credit card transactions from roughly 28 million U.S. consumers, conducted by data firm Indagari. The data covers only consumer subscribers and excludes enterprise clients and free-tier users.
Several factors appear to be driving growth. Anthropic aired Super Bowl commercials mocking OpenAI’s decision to show ads to users, promising Claude would never do the same. The spots drew wide attention and reportedly irritated OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. A public dispute with the U.S. Department of Defense also brought significant media coverage. Anthropic refused to allow the DOD to use its models for lethal autonomous operations or mass surveillance. CEO Dario Amodei issued a public statement on the matter, and a federal judge has since temporarily blocked the DOD’s attempt to label Anthropic a supply risk.
New developer and productivity tools, including Claude Code, have also contributed to subscriber growth. A newly released Computer Use feature, which allows Claude to control a computer independently, has sparked additional sign-ups.
Despite the gains, Claude still trails ChatGPT significantly in total paying users.
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