Anthropic’s Claude rises to No. 2 on the App Store after Pentagon Dispute

Anthropic’s chatbot, Cloud, appears to have benefited from the attention surrounding the company’s fraught negotiations with the Pentagon.

like First reported by CNBCAs of Saturday afternoon, Claude is currently ranked second among free apps in Apple’s US App Store — No. 1 is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and No. 3 is Google Gemini.

according to Data from SensorTowerClaude was outside the top 100 at the end of January, and spent most of February somewhere in the top 20. Its ranking has risen in the past few days, from sixth on Wednesday to fourth on Thursday to second on Saturday (today).

After Anthropic tried to negotiate safeguards that would prevent the Department of Defense from using its AI models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to stop using all Anthropic products and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said… Classifying the company as a supply chain threat.

OpenAI later It announced its own agreement with the Pentagonwhich CEO Sam Altman claimed included safeguards regarding local surveillance and autonomous weapons.