OpenAI wins back business customers from Anthropic

Where this data comes from

A company called Ramp makes corporate credit cards and expense management software, used by tens of thousands of American businesses. Because Ramp can see what its business customers are actually paying for, it can track, in rough percentages, which AI companies are capturing a larger share of that spending over time. It's not a perfect measure of the entire market, but it is a useful real-world signal.

The seesaw between OpenAI and Anthropic

In May, Anthropic (the company behind the Claude chatbot) had actually overtaken OpenAI among these business customers, and by July that lead had grown even further. Now that trend appears to be reversing — OpenAI is winning back market share heading into the second half of the year.

Why the swing happened

According to an economist at Ramp, OpenAI's newest model performed strongly with business users. Meanwhile, Anthropic's latest release apparently disappointed — partly because of price, and partly because of a new rule requiring Anthropic to retain certain customer data for a fixed period, which raised privacy concerns for some businesses.

The bigger takeaway

Despite the back and forth, both companies are essentially just growing overall — the share of Ramp's business customers paying for any AI service rose from around half in March to well over half by July. In other words, this isn't really a story about AI losing ground; it's a story about how quickly customer loyalty can swing between two competing giants when a single new product launch or a single policy change lands the wrong way.