Claude downloads surge in US after Pentagon dispute
What's the story
Anthropic's AI model, Claude, has surpassed ChatGPT in terms of app downloads in the US. According to Appfigures, a market intelligence platform, Claude's mobile app was downloaded 149,000 times on March 2. This is higher than ChatGPT's 124,000 downloads during the same period. The surge comes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to let the government use its AI systems for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
User surge
Massive jump in daily active users
Market intelligence firm Similarweb reported a massive jump in daily active users for Claude's app on iOS and Android. On March 2, the app had 11.3 million daily active users, a whopping 183% increase from the start of this year when it had around four million users. This is also an increase from five million daily active users at the beginning of February.
Market position
Claude outpaces other AI apps but still trails ChatGPT
Claude's growth has outpaced other AI apps like Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot in terms of daily active users. However, it still lags behind ChatGPT. The surge in usage started around the time of Anthropic's tense negotiations with the Pentagon. If this trend continues through March, Claude could rank higher among its competitors.
Online presence
Web traffic growth at the expense of ChatGPT
Similarweb also reported a 43% month-on-month increase in Claude's web traffic for February. The growth is even more impressive at 297.7% year-on-year. This could be at the expense of ChatGPT, whose web traffic fell by 6.5% month-on-month during the same period. Gemini also saw a slight bump of 2.1%, which is slower growth than in previous months.
Global success
Claude tops charts in multiple countries
Anthropic has been celebrating Claude's success, noting that the AI chatbot now gets over a million sign-ups per day. The app topped the US App Store over the past weekend and continues to hold that position. It is also number one in 15 other countries including Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland Italy New Zealand Norway Portugal Singapore Switzerland UK.