Claude hits one million daily signups after Pentagon deal fallout, surpassing ChatGPT in app stores

Claude's consumer growth surge continues after Pentagon deal debacle | TechCrunch

Claude's daily active users are on the rise on mobile devices, as are its new app installs, following the company's fallout with the Pentagon. After Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow the government to use its AI systems for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons, the AI model provider behind Claude was marked as a supply-chain risk. However, Anthropic's stance led many consumers to favor the model, data suggests. App intelligence provider Appfigures reports that the U.S. downloads of Claude's mobile app continue to surpass those of ChatGPT. The most recent figures from March 2 show Claude with 149,000 daily downloads, compared with 124,000 for ChatGPT, the company's estimates indicate. While download figures offer a window into how many new users are installing the app for the first time, active users offer insight into how many people are actually using it. On that front, another market intelligence provider, Similarweb, found that Claude's app on iOS and Android devices saw 11.3 million daily active users on March 2, up 183% from the start of the year when usage was around 4 million, and up from 5 million daily active users at the beginning of February. Claude's growth put it ahead of other AI apps by daily active users, like Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, but not other top rivals like ChatGPT. This is partially due to the fact that Claude's jump in usage began later in the month, timed around the news of Anthropic's tense negotiations with the Pentagon. If these trends continue throughout March, it could rank higher. Of course, ChatGPT still dominates the market by a significant factor, as its daily active users on March 2 were 250.5 million across iOS and Android. Similarweb also reports that Claude's web traffic has been growing. While it's still far behind other top AI providers in terms of web traffic, Claude's web traffic was up 43% month-over-month in February, and up 297.7% year-over-year. At least some of this growth could be at the expense of ChatGPT, whose web traffic dropped 6.5% month-over-month during the same time period. Gemini also saw a slight bump of 2.1%, which is slower growth than in previous months. Anthropic itself has been touting Claude's progress, noting that its AI chatbot is now seeing more than 1 million sign-ups per day after becoming the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store over the past weekend -- a position it still holds. The app is also No. 1 in 15 other countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.K. The company noted, too, that Claude has broken its own signup record every day since early last week, in every country where Claude is available. ChatGPT's app uninstalls, meanwhile, have been growing, an earlier report found. Anthropic was asked for comment, but one was not available at the time of publication.

Claude hits one million daily signups, passing ChatGPT in Google Play Store

Claude is gaining significant traction, with a new report stating that the company is seeing in excess of one million user signups on a daily basis. If that trend continues, it could surpass other AI firms like OpenAI. A new shift is becoming apparent, as users seem to be on a search for better AI models for their own, varying use cases. According to a new report from Anthropic, the company is seeing a massive surge of users creating Claude AI accounts to use its generational and conversational models. Anthropic doesn't get too specific with the signup numbers, but it notes "more than a million people are now signing up every day." That number refers to global signups, as current data suggests the Claude AI app has become the number one free app on both the Google Play Store and App Store in the US and other regions. That puts it right above ChatGPT, according to AppFigures at the time of writing. This comes as OpenAI has been hit with some controversy as it officially entered a partnership with the US Department of War to deploy AI for classified applications - something, it seems, Anthropic and Google employees were unwilling to do without heavy guardrails in place. OpenAI claims its safety measures are satisfactory, noting that ChatGPT or internal models can not be used to deploy autonomous weapons or be used for mass surveillance. It says that since initially turning down the opportunity because of lackluster safety measures, the company says it has "been working hard to ensure that a classified deployment can happen with safeguards to ensure that red lines are not crossed." Anthropic has since been designated a "supply chain risk" by the DoD, which it plans to challenge in court. The company stated that it or any other company has no role in operational decision-making with regard to mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The fallout seems to be taking the form of increased user activity for Claude over ChatGPT as signups hit record numbers for Anthropic. As of the end of February 2026, OpenAI reported 900 million active users per week, with over 50 million consumer subscribers.