The AI race has a new frontrunner but no clear winner
Claude’s crossover moment… For the first time, Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI in adoption by U.S. businesses. According to the Ramp AI Index, Anthropic adoption rose 3.8% in April to 34.4% of businesses while OpenAI adoption fell 2.9% to 32.3%. We’ll see if the launch of GPT-5.5, praised in tech circles, and Codex freebies will turn the tide for OpenAI. In this nascent space with low switching costs, there’s no entrenched winner, and the playing field changes fast:
- Of customers that use Anthropic or OpenAI, 52% use both, according to Ramp data. This suggests many customers are still free agents.
- 43% of Anthropic's customers switched from another GenAI vendor, according to a new report from Ramp.
AI’s low-loyalty era is partly a result of low lock-in. For one thing, it’s way less of a headache to switch AI models than it is to switch, say, your CRM, ERP, or HRIS software. Meanwhile, the pace of innovation creates ever-shifting competitive advantages that can sway customers. We’ve seen this back-and-forth of customers turning on either OpenAI or Anthropic due to policy stances, product updates, or changes to billing models (most recently with Claude subscriptions no longer covering third-party usage).
- Low friction + OpenAI and Anthropic’s attempts to outdo each other + volatile AI billing models = businesses hesitant to marry themselves to any one provider.
- The playing field shifts fast. Anthropic has nearly 4x’d its rate of business adoption over the last year, which spiked over 6% in March alone. OpenAI peaked at 36.8% adoption in December. Four months later, it’s down over 4%.
“We have never seen a software industry as dynamic, where newcomers can disrupt market leaders in a matter of months,” wrote Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s lead economist.
The AI providers with lock-in are not pure AI companies. Diversified players like Google and Microsoft have indirect lock-in though their entrenched enterprise products (e.g. Google bundling Gemini into Workspace, Microsoft’s Copilot integration). Ramp data likely undercounts Google adoption (now at 4.5%) because many businesses have Gemini rolled into their Workspace plans rather than paying for it separately.
The bottom line:
Without lock-in, leadership is a fling… In traditional software, enterprise adoption often creates long-term commitment. AI model providers have minimal switching costs. That can be good, allowing for surging adoption in a short time span, but it’s also a liability. With two dominant players, this creates a race to the top (offer the most advanced models), but also a race to the bottom, where labs may compete to offer the most freebies. The lack of loyalty also allows for a dark horse scenario, where a lower-priced underdog rises fast.
