Anthropic's Claude has seen paid subscriptions more than double this year, driven by a high-profile dispute with the US Department of Defense, a viral Super Bowl advertising campaign, and the growing popularity of its developer tools, according to TechCrunch.
An analysis of billions of anonymised credit card transactions from around 28 million US consumers, conducted for TechCrunch by Indagari, a consumer transaction analysis company, showed Claude gaining paid subscribers in record numbers between January and February, with previous users also returning to the platform in record numbers in February.
TechCrunch reported that the majority of new subscribers are signing up at the entry-level Pro tier, priced at $20 a month.
The surge coincided with Anthropic's public refusal to allow the DoD to use its AI models for lethal autonomous operations or mass surveillance of American citizens, a dispute that escalated in late January and culminated in chief executive Dario Amodei issuing a public statement on 26 February after the department threatened to designate Anthropic a supply risk.
Super Bowl advertisements mocking ChatGPT's decision to show adverts to its users, which Anthropic pledged never to do, also raised consumer awareness of the brand during the period, TechCrunch said.
The launch of developer tool Claude Code and productivity assistant Claude Cowork in January were additional drivers of subscriber growth, along with a new Computer Use feature released this week that allows Claude to navigate a computer independently.
Claude nonetheless remains well behind ChatGPT in total paid consumer subscribers, TechCrunch noted.