Anthropic's feud with Trump admin boosts business adoption, sales data shows

Anthropic had a landmark month: it surpassed OpenAI in business spending market share for the first time (41% vs 39.5% in May, per Ramp data), raised $65B at a $965B valuation, and filed confidentially for an IPO. But the Trump administration then ordered it to ban non-Americans—including employees—from accessing its new models Mythos 5 and Fable 5, citing an obscure export control directive. Hackers had already bypassed Fable 5's guardrails, exposing Mythos' dangerous code-finding capabilities. Anthropic was forced to pull both models from the market.

This feud follows Anthropic's earlier refusal to allow government use for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, leading to a supply-chain risk designation in March. Yet that didn't hurt sales—in fact, it helped. Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian notes that Anthropic's best business adoption month was when the DoD labeled it a risk, saying, 'There's a lot of aura that comes with your model being named too dangerous to use.' While the financial hit from pulling Mythos/Fable 5 is unclear, Ramp's data shows businesses increasingly spend on Claude Opus models, especially the latest Opus 4.8. This drama may complicate IPO plans, but for now, Anthropic's available models are more popular than ever.