đ The 3 charts that explain the AI race
Ramp data, $19B run rates, and the metric nobody is watching
đ Iâm Ivan. I study how top 1% startups raise and grow.
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Hello there!
This has been another week filled with OpenAI drama.
And following the news of a 295% uninstall spike after they swooped-in to fill Anthropicâs U.S. Department of War deal, it prompted me to ask:
Who is actually winning the AI race?
Rampâs latest AI Index data came in handy to showcase a few insights on this following a couple viral tweets on the topic. One claimed Claude hit ~70% market share while another said OpenAI still dominates, and both cited the same data source.
Both were kind of right, but also both kind of wrong.
Todayâs tl;dr:
đ Whoâs winning the AI race (it depends which chart you read).
đ Top 10 research reports this week.
đ 43 European startups that raised âŹ10M+ in February.
đ Quick note on methodology: Ramp tracks 50K+ US businesses via corporate card and bill pay. It skews US, mid-market, tech-forward. The index measures three things separately (adoption, chat spend, API spend) and most viral takes conflated them into one âmarket shareâ number. Treat all numbers as directional.
1. OpenAI leads adoption (36%) but Anthropic leads spend (>50% chat, ~80% API).
Everyone is sharing the same data and reaching opposite conclusions.
The details
Rampâs latest drop tracks 3 different things, and people keep confusing them:
Adoption rate (who has more paying customers): OpenAI leads at 35.9% of businesses vs Anthropic at 19.5%. Google trails at 4.5%.
Chat subscription spend (where seat revenue goes): Anthropic leads with >50% of enterprise AI chat spend. Claude Team, Max, and Enterprise seats cost more than ChatGPT Plus.
API spend (what developers build on): Anthropic dominates at ~80%. In July 2025, OpenAI had ~95% of this market. Eight months later, it completely flipped!! Claude 4.5 Sonnet and Opus have eaten the developer stack. Thereâs a fantastic interview on Lenny Rachitsky âs podcast with Claude Codeâs creator well worth your time.
So what
OpenAI wins breadth, Anthropic wins value and the developer API market has picked a side (and if you have been playing with Opus 4.6 you probably have experienced why). The race looks very different depending on which metric you read, which is why âwhoâs winningâ is kind of the wrong question altogether, but still fun to explore.
2. 16% of US businesses now pay for both ChatGPT and Claude. Double from a year ago.
The overlap is the metric nobody is watching.
The details
This is what I think is the most interesting number in the whole Ramp report:
79% of businesses paying for Anthropic also pay for OpenAI.
Churn rates are nearly identical at ~4% per month for both. If businesses were replacing one with the other, youâd see it in cancellations, but you donât (so far).
The share of businesses paying for both doubled from 8% to 16% in 12 months
Anthropic went from 1 in 25 to 1 in 5 businesses in a year (4x growth) while OpenAI stayed roughly flat around 36%.
Total AI adoption hit 46.8%, an all-time high. Nearly half of US businesses now pay for AI, whereas two years ago this was close to zero.
So what
Businesses are actually stacking providers, where different teams with different use cases at same company use different models at different times. If youâre building, designing for a multi-model world likely makes sense since customers seem to already be doing it.
3. Anthropic's run rate: $9B (Dec) â $14B (Feb) â $19B (Mar).
The revenue growth story is unprecedented.
The details
Bloomberg reported this week that Anthropicâs annualised revenue run rate just hit $19 billion:
$9B at end of 2025
$14B in February 2026
$19B in early March 2026
So what
This rate of adoption is driven mostly by Claude Code and enterprise API adoption. Thereâs also a good question (for another time) to dig on here which is the speed at which people switch models (for the same use-case) and how enterprise sales cycles will affect their stickiness (and vice-versa).
4. 295% spike in ChatGPT uninstalls. Claude #1 on App Store for the first time.
In a multi-model world, trust becomes a product feature.
The details
OpenAI signed a deal with the Department of War while Anthropic walked away from the same deal, citing concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. And as youâd expect the consumer reaction was pretty brutal:
ChatGPT mobile uninstalls spiked 295% in a single day.
Claude downloads jumped 51% day-over-day
For the first time ever, Claude daily downloads in the US surpassed ChatGPT
One-star reviews for ChatGPT surged 775%
Claude hit #1 on the US App Store, jumping over 20 ranks
So what
These are emotional spikes and they wonât all stick but the signal is real which is that in a multi-model world where every provider does roughly the same thing, the one that stands for something gets picked (especially when you had committed to do so).
5. What this means if youâre building
2 things I keep coming back to for builders:
Architect for multiple providers. Your customers will use Claude for coding, ChatGPT for content, Gemini for search, maybe all three in the same workflow, and maybe they switch it up in a matter of weeks (as weâve all been experimenting). If your stack is locked to one model youâre likely building in risk. Although worth noting, the API chart suggests developers have already picked sides (for now).
Trust scales. In a market where switching costs approach zero your stance on things like safety, privacy, and government use becomes part of your product (or at least as a biased consumer myself, it is definitely an influence).
đ Top 10 Reports This Week
Link list
đ Series A Wave Tracker
A list of 43 European startups that raised $10M+ in February 2026.
+ a bonus list on Spanish companies that raised capital in February 2026.
đ Building something? We invest âŹ100Kâ3M at pre-seed and seed. If youâre raising or know someone who is - please send me your deck via LinkedIn DM.
Thatâs it for this week folks.
Cheers,
Ivan