The AI race has heated up in the last couple of weeks. Since the competition is heating up even more between the major players like Anthropic, which developed Claude, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5.
Ever since the fallout of Anthropic with the Pentagon over the latter’s demand for unrestricted use of its Claude models. Following which the deal was bagged by OpenAI. However, this partnership between the Pentagon and OpenAI faced a lot of backlash from US users.
Importantly, this partnership has increased Claude users in the US, which was seen as a smaller competitor to ChatGPT, but now more people are starting to use it.
Paid users are increasingly quick
Claude’s number of paid users has grown very fast in early 2026. Reports suggest that the number has more than doubled in just a few months. This means more people are willing to pay to use the chatbot.
It’s not just subscriptions; overall usage has also gone up. More people are using Claude regularly, and some are returning to it more often. This growth is likely because the product has improved and people are curious to try alternatives to ChatGPT.
A recent report by TechCrunch showed that Anthropic’s Claude AI model is seeing record growth in paid subscribers. According to the data, users jumped from about 34,000 in December to around 42,000 in January. Growth accelerated further between January and February 2026, when users spiked from 42,000 to nearly 60,000. This marked the largest single-month increase of roughly 17,000 users.
The report is based on billions of anonymised credit card transactions from about 28 million US consumers. However, the dataset does not include Claude’s enterprise business or its free-tier users. TechCrunch, citing a company spokesperson, said that Claude’s paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year.
Despite this surge, ChatGPT by OpenAI still leads by a large margin. Data comparing weekly new subscribers for ChatGPT and Claude between early January and early March shows that ChatGPT continues to attract around 13,500 to 21,000 new subscribers per week.
Pentagon dispute brought in more users
One major reason behind Claude’s popularity is Anthropic’s disagreement with the US government. The company refused to let its AI be used for things like weapons or mass surveillance.
This led to a conflict with the United States Department of Defense, and the issue even reached the courts. In the end, the court did not support claims that Anthropic was a security threat.
This situation brought a lot of attention to the company. Many people appreciated its strong stand on ethics, which helped build trust among users.
Because of this controversy, some users are starting to rethink which AI platforms they want to use. A few users are not comfortable with companies working closely with the military, and this has pushed them to try Claude instead.
At the same time, Anthropic has also worked on promoting its product better, which has helped increase awareness.
What does this mean for the future?
Claude’s growth shows that people now care about more than just features. They also think about how companies use AI and what values they follow.
Even though ChatGPT is still the most popular AI tool, Claude is quickly catching up. If this trend continues, Anthropic could become a strong competitor in the AI industry.