Anthropic’s Claude climbs to No. 1 in the App Store following the Pentagon debate

Anthropic’s chatbot Claude appears to have benefited from the interest surrounding the company’s talks with the Pentagon.

Like the first was reported by CNBCClaude has been climbing to the top of the free app rankings in Apple’s US App Store. On Saturday evening, it overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT to take first place, a position it still held on Sunday morning.

According to More from SensorTowerClaude was out of the top 100 at the end of January, and has spent most of February somewhere above 20. It is rising rapidly in the last few days, from the sixth on Wednesday, to the fourth on Thursday, then the first on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the company said that daily signups have broken all-time records every day this week, free users have increased more than 60% since January, and paid subscribers have doubled this year.

After Anthropic tried to negotiate a waiver to prevent the Department of Defense from using its AI models for mass surveillance at home or autonomous devices, President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using all Anthropic products and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said making the company a supplychain risk.

OpenAI later announced his partnership with the Pentagonwhich CEO Sam Altman said includes security related to home monitoring and autonomous devices.

This post was originally published on February 28, 2026. It has been updated to reflect Anthropic reaching No. 1, and including growth figures from the company.