Anthropic still leads on business AI spending. For the first time since May, the gap is closing rather than widening.
Ramp, which handles corporate cards and expenses for a large slice of American companies, publishes a monthly count of how many of its customers pay for each AI provider. Its August index, reported on 20 August, puts Anthropic at close to 44 percent of businesses for July and OpenAI at close to 40 percent. Anthropic first took the lead in May at 41 percent to 39 and OpenAI has not been in front since, but the direction of travel has now changed: after months of Anthropic extending its margin, OpenAI is the one gaining. The caveat matters as much as the figures. Ramp is counting the share of its own customers paying for a subscription or tokens, and its customer base leans toward American mid-market and growth-stage firms. This is not global market share and it is not revenue — a company paying twenty dollars counts the same as one paying twenty million.
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