New Data: OpenAI Narrows the Gap with Anthropic in the Enterprise Market

In the absence of official financial data for both OpenAI and Anthropic — as neither has gone public yet — reliance on external sources remains the only way to estimate each company's performance in the enterprise AI market. New data from Ramp, the company specializing in corporate credit cards and expense management, has revealed a notable shift: OpenAI has begun to regain ground against Anthropic among companies in the United States.

A Shift in the Balance of Power

OpenAI was previously the undisputed leader among both enterprises and consumers alike. But it lost this lead among paying Ramp customers this past May, when Anthropic's market share reached about 41% compared to 39% for OpenAI. Since then, the developer of ChatGPT has not been able to reclaim its top position.

By July, Anthropic's share reached nearly 44% compared to about 40% for OpenAI. However, a deeper look at the latest figures shows that OpenAI is currently growing at a faster pace within this segment during the third quarter, indicating that the competition has not yet been settled.

What Do These Numbers Mean?

Ramp's data covers more than 70,000 American companies that spend billions of dollars through the company's bill payment products and corporate cards. These companies span diverse sectors, but they clearly lean toward the tech sector, as Ramp is a popular corporate credit card in Silicon Valley.

It's important to clarify that these numbers do not reflect the entire market; they exclude large corporations that rely on expense management tools from other providers such as American Express instead of Ramp. The company also only shared percentages without disclosing the actual dollar amounts. Nevertheless, this data is sufficient to provide accurate indicators of market trends.

Fluctuating Loyalty Worries Investors

The most prominent message these numbers carry is that Anthropic's superiority is not final. Companies are willing to switch between the two providers with every new model release, and this volatility could push investors in both companies to reconsider how "stable" enterprise spending on AI truly is.

According to an analysis by Ramp economist Ara Kharazian, the strength of OpenAI's new models makes it an increasingly popular choice among developers, while some of Anthropic's advanced models faced difficulties in adoption due to their high price and the data retention requirements imposed by regulatory bodies.

But this explanation may be simplistic; Anthropic's advanced tier of models, despite its high cost, is designed for specific and more specialized use cases compared to a general chatbot. Nevertheless, the company sparked some controversy when it warned users of this tier that it would retain their data for 30 days.

The Market Is Expanding for Everyone

Alongside the competition for market share, Ramp's data indicates that both companies should achieve growth in their enterprise revenues, because the market itself is steadily expanding. The proportion of companies paying for AI services among Ramp's customers has gradually increased:

• It exceeded 50% in March.
• It reached about 56% by July.

This rising growth means that the competition between OpenAI and Anthropic is not about splitting a fixed pie, but rather a pie that keeps growing. And while a full month remaining in the current quarter is capable of flipping the equation once again — in a market where conditions change at record speed — what remains certain is that the enterprise AI battle is open to all possibilities.

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