Anthropic Cloud’s popularity with paying consumers is skyrocketing

Whatever Anthropic’s ultimate outcome from its dispute with the Department of Defense, the attention it has generated — coupled with the company’s hilarious Super Bowl ads targeting OpenAI and the growing popularity of Claude Code — has made Anthropic more popular with consumers than ever before.

An examination of billions of anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S. consumers, conducted by Indagari, a consumer transaction analysis firm, for TechCrunch, shows that Cloud acquired paid subscribers in record numbers.

Now, as with all big data analytics, there are caveats. Although this data is substantial, it does not include all consumers. This means that Indagari cannot calculate the total numbers of existing or new Anthropic users. It also doesn’t include the work of the Claude Foundation (which is its bread and butter) or free tier users (those who don’t pay Anthropic at all). Estimates of Claude’s total consumer users are all over the map (we’ve seen numbers ranging from 18 million to 30 million) but Anthropic doesn’t disclose that data. However, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that paid Cloud subscriptions have doubled this year.

What’s striking is that consumers pulled out their wallets in record numbers for Cloud between January and February. Interestingly enough, previous users returned to Cloud in record numbers in February as well, Indagari told TechCrunch.

Indagari tells us that the majority of new subscribers are at the lower tier, i.e. “professional” users ($20 per month, compared to $100 or $200 per month).

Data through early March confirms that subscriber growth continues. (Data are available after a two-week delay.)

To summarize why consumers have become more aware of Claude since January: Anthropic released several Super Bowl commercials that mocked ChatGPT’s decision to show ads to its users — and promised Claude it would never do the same. The footage was funny and effective (and also got under OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s skin).

But the biggest buzz began in late January when multiple media sites, including The Wall Street Journal and Axios, began reporting on a deepening dispute between Anthropic and the Department of Defense. At its core, the dispute was over what the military could and could not do with Anthropic’s AI.

Anthropic has refused to allow the Department of Defense to use its AI models for autonomous lethal operations (the AI ​​would likely kill people) or mass surveillance of American citizens. This beef has become increasingly public, with Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, issuing a firm public statement on February 26 amid DoD threats to hurt Anthropic’s business by calling the company a supply risk. This is what the Ministry of Defense did. Lawsuits are now being filed, though a federal judge this week temporarily blocked the department’s designation.

New user growth rose sharply during this period. This increase is particularly evident between those media reports issued in late January and Amodei’s statement on February 26.

Drama aside, CloudCode and CloudCork — developers of productivity tools released in January — have been drivers of subscriptions. The PC feature, released this week, has also sparked a boom, Anthropic tells TechCrunch. This feature allows Claude to navigate through the computer independently, by clicking, scrolling, and taking actions on his own. It works with Dispatch, which lets users assign tasks from their phone. These features are not available to free tier users.

However, for all of Anthropic’s growth among US consumers willing to pay for AI, Cloud remains far behind ChatGPT.

While OpenAI uninstalls spiked immediately after it announced its deal with the Department of Defense — a move that contradicts Anthropic’s safety stance — Indagari data shows that OpenAI is still gaining new paid subscribers at a rapid rate and remains the largest consumer AI platform ever.