Anthropic’s latest feud with the Trump admin may actually help it, sales data suggests

Anthropic is experiencing a remarkable month.

According to Ramp, the AI company surpassed OpenAI in business spending market share for the first time, closing out May with a $65 billion raise at a $965 billion valuation. Shortly after, Anthropic filed confidential paperwork for an IPO, reportedly backed by its first-ever profitable quarter.

On Friday, the Trump administration escalated tensions by demanding Anthropic block non-U.S. users, including its own employees, from accessing its latest models: the restricted Mythos 5 and the recently public Fable 5.

This directive effectively forced Anthropic to withdraw its most advanced models from the market entirely.

While the White House cited an obscure export control directive, the underlying reason remains unclear. Reports suggest hackers easily bypassed Fable 5’s safety guardrails, which were designed to restrict access to Mythos’ capabilities. Anthropic itself had previously flagged the model’s ability to identify software vulnerabilities as a security risk, limiting its public availability.

This conflict follows Anthropic’s refusal to support government mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, leading the Trump administration to label it a supply-chain risk in March.

Despite this, Anthropic’s business sales have not slowed. Ramp’s data indicates that the controversy may actually benefit the company. Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s lead economist, noted that Anthropic’s strongest month for business adoption occurred when the Department of Defense flagged it as a risk.

“If anything, it’ll probably boost them,” Kharazian told TechCrunch. “Anthropic’s best month on record, as far as business adoption, was the month that the Department of Defense labeled them a supply-chain risk. There’s a lot of aura that comes with your model specifically being named too dangerous to use.”

Ramp’s data lacks the granularity to quantify the financial impact of removing Mythos and Fable 5 from the market.

However, data from over 70,000 businesses using its platform shows heavy reliance on Anthropic’s Opus models, with usage continuing to grow.

In May, Anthropic’s share of business-paid AI subscriptions rose 2.5 percentage points to 41%, edging out OpenAI’s 39.5%, which remained flat. (OpenAI still leads in overall consumer usage, according to Sensor Tower.)

Beyond subscriptions, most corporate spending goes toward API calls for tasks like coding. Anthropic’s Claude Code is widely recognized as a powerful AI development tool.

While Ramp cannot always identify which specific models drive spending, transaction data reveals that businesses primarily use various versions of Claude Opus, particularly the latest releases. Opus, which predates Mythos, remains publicly accessible.

In late May, Anthropic launched a new version, Opus 4.8.

Mythos had only been available to select users since April, and Fable 5 was discontinued after just a few days.

Although it is unclear how this dispute with the White House will affect Anthropic’s IPO plans—given that public investors often avoid government-controversial firms—the data shows that Anthropic’s accessible models are more popular with businesses than ever.