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

Feud with White House Appears to Fuel Enterprise Adoption

Anthropic has just overtaken OpenAI in business AI spending for the first time, according to new data from fintech platform Ramp. This milestone arrives even as the company faces intense pressure from the Trump administration, which recently forced it to pull its most advanced models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, from the market. The move, intended to restrict a powerful AI, ironically appears to be validating the models' capabilities and accelerating Anthropic's momentum in the enterprise sector.

A Month of Milestones and Mayhem

The government's action centers on an obscure export control directive demanding Anthropic ban non-Americans from its state-of-the-art models. The intervention followed speculation that Fable 5's safeguards were easily compromised, exposing the core power of Mythos 5—a model so effective at identifying software security flaws that Anthropic had already restricted its release. This clash follows a previous incident in March when the administration declared the company a “supply-chain risk” after it refused to allow its models to be used for mass surveillance. Despite the political heat, Anthropic's business has soared.

• Market Share: Reached 41% of business AI subscription spending in May, surpassing OpenAI's 39.5%.
• Corporate Actions: Filed confidential paperwork for an IPO at the end of May, reportedly on the strength of its first profitable quarter.
• Model Withdrawal: Pulled both the limited-release Mythos 5 and the public-facing Fable 5 after government pressure.
• Underlying Growth: Enterprise spending is primarily on the widely available Claude Opus series, which continues to see strong adoption.

Despite the withdrawal of its newest models, analysis of spending from over 70,000 businesses by Ramp shows that enterprise adoption is actually accelerating. According to Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s lead economist, the government’s actions create an “aura” by labeling the models as “too dangerous to use,” which paradoxically enhances their appeal to business customers. In fact, Anthropic’s strongest month for business adoption on record was March, the same month the Department of Defense first labeled it a supply-chain risk.

The White House's attempts to restrict Anthropic are functioning as an unintended, high-stakes marketing campaign, validating the models' advanced capabilities in the eyes of enterprise customers and proving that in the AI arms race, being labeled 'dangerous' can be a powerful competitive advantage.