Claude AI has been making a lot of headlines lately, and that attention is now translating into growing popularity of its products among AI chatbot users. The company entered wider public discussion after its feud with the United States Department of Defense, when it refused to allow the use of its AI models for lethal autonomous operations and mass surveillance of American citizens.
A recent report by TechCrunch showed that Anthropic’s Claude AI model is seeing record growth in paid subscribers. According to the data, users jumped from about 34,000 in December to around 42,000 in January. Growth accelerated further between January and February 2026, when users spiked from 42,000 to nearly 60,000. This marked the largest single-month increase of roughly 17,000 users.
The report is based on billions of anonymised credit card transactions from about 28 million US consumers. However, the dataset does not include Claude’s enterprise business or its free-tier users. TechCrunch, citing a company spokesperson, said that Claude’s paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year.
Despite this surge, ChatGPT by OpenAI still leads by a large margin. Data comparing weekly new subscribers for ChatGPT and Claude between early January and early March shows that ChatGPT continues to attract around 13,500 to 21,000 new subscribers per week.
Claude, however, is growing rapidly. Weekly new subscribers climbed steadily to more than 9,000 by early March, indicating strong momentum even though the platform remains far behind ChatGPT in total scale.
New features helping drive adoption
Anthropic has also rolled out new features aimed at attracting more users. With tools like Claude Code and Claude Cowork, the company has tried to demonstrate what AI can do even at this early stage. These agentic AI capabilities can independently write, debug, test, and modernise older code and IT systems. The company also recently released Claude Sonnet 4.6, which brings similar long-context capabilities along with improved performance for coding and workflow automation.
At the same time, Anthropic expanded Claude Code Security, a tool designed to review entire codebases using reasoning rather than simple pattern matching. In short, the company not only offered one of its most capable coding models, but also introduced a system that can scan and analyse code to detect bugs, vulnerabilities, or errors developers might miss.
The latest Claude Dispatch feature also bridges the gap between mobile and desktop use. It allows users to send a command from their phone while on the move, and Claude can execute that task on their home or office computer.
According to TechCrunch, Claude Code and Claude Cowork, developer and productivity tools released in January, have been key drivers of new subscriptions. The Computer Use feature has also sparked another surge in sign-ups, Anthropic told the publication. Even with this momentum, however, Claude still remains a long way behind ChatGPT.
