Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot is seeing a surge in downloads and mobile usage, according to new data from market intelligence firms, following the company’s recent conflict with the U.S. Department of Defense over how its technology could be used.
Data from Appfigures shows that Claude’s mobile app downloads in the U.S. recently surpassed those of ChatGPT. On March 2, Claude recorded about 149,000 daily downloads, compared with 124,000 for ChatGPT, based on Appfigures’ estimates.
User activity is also climbing quickly. According to Similarweb, Claude reached 11.3 million daily active users on iOS and Android on March 2, up 183% from the start of the year, when the app had around 4 million daily users. Usage was also up from about 5 million daily active users at the beginning of February.
The jump in activity appears to coincide with news surrounding Anthropic’s standoff with the Pentagon. CEO Dario Amodei reportedly declined requests to allow the U.S. government to use Anthropic’s AI systems for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons, a dispute that led to the company being designated a supply-chain risk by the Defense Department.
While Claude’s growth has pushed it ahead of some competitors such as Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot in terms of daily active users, it still trails the largest AI apps overall. ChatGPT remained far ahead on March 2 with about 250.5 million daily active users across iOS and Android.
Anthropic has also highlighted the chatbot’s broader momentum. The company says Claude is now seeing more than 1 million sign-ups per day and recently became the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store, a ranking it still holds. The app has also reached the top spot in 15 other countries, including Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.
Third-party analytics suggest Claude’s growth extends beyond mobile. Similarweb reports that the chatbot’s web traffic rose 43% month over month in February and nearly 298% year over year. During the same period, ChatGPT’s web traffic declined 6.5% month over month, while Google’s Gemini saw a modest 2.1% increase.
Anthropic did not address the third-party analytics directly. However, a spokesperson said the company has seen strong growth internally, with daily usage of Claude increasing more than threefold since early 2026 and its base of paying customers roughly doubling.
Despite the recent momentum, Claude still faces a large gap with the market leader. But the surge in downloads and usage suggests that the chatbot is gaining traction with new users as competition among consumer AI apps intensifies.
This analysis is based on reporting from TechCrunch.
Image courtesy of Anthropic.
This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy and quality.
About this article: This article was generated with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure it follows our editorial standards for accuracy and independence. We maintain strict fact-checking protocols and cite all sources.
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