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

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Anthropic has had an extraordinary month blending commercial breakout with regulatory confrontation. For the first time, the company surpassed OpenAI in business AI spending share: Ramp data from 70,000+ companies shows Anthropic captured 41% of business AI subscriptions in May — up 2.5 percentage points — while OpenAI sat essentially flat at 39.5%. The same period saw Anthropic close a $65B fundraise at a $965B valuation and file confidential IPO paperwork, reportedly off the back of its first-ever profitable quarter. The political subplot is stark. The Trump administration sent a letter demanding Anthropic ban all non-American access — including its own employees — to Mythos 5 and Fable 5. Mythos 5 is an advanced model Anthropic had already flagged as dangerous due to its ability to find software security vulnerabilities; Fable 5 was the limited public variant released just three days earlier. Anthropic pulled both from market. The White House invoked export control authority, though the exact legal basis is unclear; reports suggest hackers had bypassed Fable 5's guardrails to access Mythos-level capabilities. Ramp's lead economist Ara Kharazian argues the conflict is net-positive for brand: "Anthropic's best month on record for business adoption was the month the DoD labeled them a supply chain risk." That label came in March after Anthropic refused to allow its models to be used for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. The repeat pattern — government friction followed by enterprise adoption surge — suggests Anthropic's safety-first positioning is commercially advantageous.