OpenAI narrows gap with Anthropic among US business customers as enterprise AI market shows volatility

Aug 20, 2026

OpenAI is narrowing Anthropic's lead in the U.S. enterprise AI market, posting an 82% quarter-over-quarter growth rate in mid-August 2026 compared to Anthropic's 76%. While Anthropic led in overall adoption with 43.5% of Ramp's corporate users in July, OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model captured 25% of total tokens and 23% of spend. Anthropic's growth has been slowed by Fable 5's high pricing and a regulatory 30-day data retention policy, which Anthropic plans to modify later this year.

OpenAI enterprise market share recovery

▪OpenAI recorded a quarter-over-quarter enterprise growth rate of 82 in mid-August 2026, compared to Anthropic's growth rate of 76.
▪OpenAI began growing faster than Anthropic among corporate clients at the start of the third quarter of 2026, narrowing the gap between the two artificial intelligence providers.

Anthropic business adoption lead

▪Anthropic held a 43.5% share of paid corporate users on the Ramp platform in July 2026, while OpenAI held a 39.7% share
▪Anthropic expanded its share of United States business adoption from approximately 9% in May 2025 to over 34% by April 2026.
▪Anthropic overtook OpenAI in corporate adoption on the Ramp platform in May 2026, reaching a 41% market share compared to OpenAI's 39%.

GPT-5.6 Sol token consumption

▪Ramp economist Ara Kharazian stated that interest in GPT-5.6 Sol is supporting demand for OpenAI products among software developers
▪OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model accounted for 25% of corporate tokens and 23% of corporate spend on the Ramp platform in July 2026

Fable 5 regulatory constraints

▪OpenAI announced a safety system in August 2026 that identifies potential technology misuse without retaining customer data.
▪Anthropic's Fable 5 adoption has been slowed by its higher pricing and a regulatory requirement to retain user data for 30 days.
▪Anthropic plans to alter its policy later in 2026 to allow enterprise customers to store their 30-day retained data on their own cloud infrastructure.
▪Anthropic has coordinated with over 100 customers, including Salesforce, to develop its upcoming enterprise data retention safety system.
▪Anthropic's Fable 5 model represented 6% of corporate tokens and 11.4% of corporate spend on the Ramp platform in July 2026.

Ramp AI Index methodology

▪Ramp's transaction data excludes large enterprises that utilize alternative expense-control solutions such as American Express.
▪The Ramp AI Index tracks corporate AI spending using anonymized payment transactions from corporate cards and expense management tools across more than 70,000 United States businesses.

Enterprise AI spending growth

▪The share of Ramp corporate customers paying for artificial intelligence tools rose from over 50% in March 2026 to nearly 56% in July 2026.
▪Ramp transaction data indicates that corporate AI spending is fluid, with businesses quickly shifting budgets between providers as new models are released.