Anthropic's Claude overtakes ChatGPT as #1 in App Store

In the battle for AI supremacy, Anthropic’s Claude has just managed to dethrone OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Apple’s App Store, claiming the #1 spot as the most-downloaded free app in the United States, leaving ChatGPT in second and Google’s Gemini a distant fourth.

This sudden surge in the rankings is almost certainly due to public backlash at a recent announcement by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, released on X, that they would work with the Department of Defense (unofficially titled the Department of War) to deploy artificial intelligence through its classified networks.

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This announcement comes on the heels of a public stand by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei against the unrestricted use of AI by governments, in which he specifically highlighted the dangers of both "mass domestic surveillance" and "fully autonomous weapons" powered by AI.

While much of the general public, nervous about the speed and scope of AI’s sudden prominence, viewed this as a principled stand, President Donald Trump saw it as a rebuke of government policy: "The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," he wrote in a Truth Social post.  

The Trump administration, acting through Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has since sought to designate Anthropic as a "supply-chain risk to national security," an unprecedented label for an American company and a move that would make it impossible for them to secure government contracts in the future.

In a cross-company show of support for Anthropic’s stance, more than 700 employees of both Google and OpenAI have signed an open letter, "We Will Not Be Divided," that concludes forcefully:

"We hope our leaders will put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse the Department of War's current demands for permission to use our models for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight."

More recently, and as proof that the average person is sensitive to these ethical issues, the general public is weighing in as well, shifting their loyalty from ChatGPT to Claude. To put this shift into perspective, an Anthropic spokesperson told Mashable over email that free users up 60%+ since January, daily signups tripled since November (breaking the all-time record every day this week), and paid subscribers more than doubled this year." Per the spokesperson, Anthropic ranked #42 before Super Bowl LX and has since ranked in the top 10 in the US app charts.

With the AI revolution still in full swing, the battle for its soul is still being fought, and this latest flare-up proves that the average person still has leverage.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.