Anthropic’s Claude AI has been gaining significant attention recently, leading to a surge in the popularity of its AI chatbot offerings. The company came into the spotlight following a dispute with the US Department of Defense over the refusal to allow the use of its AI models for lethal autonomous operations and mass surveillance on US citizens.
A recent TechCrunch report highlighted the remarkable growth in paid subscribers for Anthropic’s Claude AI model. The data revealed a substantial increase in users, rising from approximately 34,000 in December to around 42,000 in January. The user base saw further acceleration from January to February 2026, spiking to nearly 60,000, marking a significant monthly increase of approximately 17,000 users.
The report was based on anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million American consumers, excluding Claude’s enterprise segment and free-tier users. According to a company spokesperson cited by TechCrunch, Claude’s paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year.
Despite this growth, OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains the leader by a significant margin. Data comparing weekly new subscribers for ChatGPT and Claude from early January to early March showed that ChatGPT consistently attracted between 13,500 and 21,000 new subscribers per week.
Nevertheless, Claude’s user base is expanding rapidly. Weekly new subscribers steadily climbed to over 9,000 by early March, indicating strong momentum even though it lags far behind ChatGPT in overall scale.
Anthropic has introduced new features to drive adoption among users. Tools like Claude Code and Claude Cowork showcase the capabilities of AI at an early stage, enabling tasks such as writing, debugging, testing, and modernizing code and IT systems independently. The company also unveiled Claude Sonnet 4.6, enhancing long-context capabilities and performance for coding and workflow automation.
Additionally, Anthropic enhanced Claude Code Security, a tool for comprehensive code review using advanced reasoning techniques. This not only offers advanced coding models but also detects bugs, vulnerabilities, and errors that developers might overlook.
The latest feature, Claude Dispatch, allows users to send commands from their mobile devices for execution on their computers seamlessly, bridging the gap between mobile and desktop usage. According to TechCrunch, tools like Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and the Computer Use feature have been instrumental in driving new subscriptions for Anthropic. Despite this progress, Claude still trails significantly behind ChatGPT.