Anthropic’s Claude rises to number one on the App Store after Pentagon dispute

Anthropic’s chatbot, Cloud, appears to have benefited from the attention surrounding the company’s fraught negotiations with the Pentagon.

As first reported by CNBC, Cloud is rising to the top of the free app rankings in Apple’s US App Store. On Saturday evening, it overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to take first place, a position it held as of Sunday morning.

According to data from SensorTower, Claude was outside the top 100 at the end of January, and spent most of February somewhere in the top 20. It has risen rapidly in the past few days, from sixth place on Wednesday, to fourth place on Thursday, then first place on Saturday.

A company spokesperson said daily subscriptions broke an all-time record every day this week, the number of free users has increased by more than 60% since January, and the number of paid subscribers has doubled this year.

After Anthropic tried to negotiate safeguards that would prevent the Department of Defense from using its AI models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using all Anthropic products and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he classified the company as a supply chain threat.

OpenAI later announced its own agreement with the Pentagon, which CEO Sam Altman claimed included safeguards regarding domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.

This post was first published on February 28, 2026. It has been updated to reflect Anthropy reaching #1, and to include growth numbers from the company.