Claude AI climbs to No. 1 on the App Store after Pentagon dispute with Anthropic

Anthropic’s chatbot Claude appears to have gained momentum from the attention surrounding the company’s tense negotiations with the Pentagon.

As CNBC first reported, Claude has been rising in the free app rankings on Apple’s U.S. App Store. By Saturday evening, it had surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT to take the No. 1 position, and it was still holding that spot on Sunday morning.

Data from Sensor Tower shows that Claude was just outside the top 100 at the end of January and spent most of February somewhere within the top 20. Over the past few days, however, its rise accelerated sharply, moving from sixth place on Wednesday to fourth on Thursday and then to first on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the company said daily sign-ups have set a new record every day this week, the number of free users has risen by more than 60% since January, and paid subscribers have more than doubled so far this year.

After Anthropic sought to negotiate safeguards to prevent the Department of Defence from using its AI models for mass domestic surveillance or for fully autonomous weapons, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using all Anthropic products. At the same time, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said he would designate the company as a supply-chain threat.

OpenAI later announced its own agreement with the Pentagon, which CEO Sam Altman said includes safeguards connected to domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.