Anthropic’s AI model Claude, was met with a surge in popularity earlier this month when it overtook OpenAI’s ChatGPT as No 1 on Apple’s chart of top free apps.
The surge came just a day after the Pentagon chose OpenAI over Anthropic to support classified military networks, a decision made after months of negotiations with the latter and its CEO, Dario Amodei. The Secretary of War Pete Hegseth shared on X that the Department of War would designate Anthropic a “supply chain risk” after they failed to reach an agreement. The breakdown followed Amodei refusing to drop two conditions: that the company’s technology not be used for “mass domestic surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons”.
In a statement from Anthropic, they claimed they “do not believe that today’s frontier AI models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons” and that “mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights”.
High Demand
Despite the public feud, the AI company saw its highest number of Claude sign-ups last week. Demand was so high they briefly suffered outages through what Anthropic described as “unprecedented demand for Claude”, which they resolved the same day.
Although Anthropic only now seems to be getting its time in the spotlight, it has been active for some time, with Claude emerging as a particular favorite among software engineers. While its mainstream appeal hasn’t quite matched that of its top rival, ChatGPT, Claude pulls ahead with its superior coding tools.
Vibe Coding
The steady development of Claude Code, that has both coders and non-coders hooked with its ease of use, is ushering in a renewed era of “vibe coding”. Defined as writing code with natural language, comparisons have been made to Apple in 2004, when GarageBand made producing music more accessible to both beginners and professionals.
With Claude Code, building websites and apps without knowing how to code is easier than ever for non-developers. By describing what you want, through vibe coding, the AI generates the code. Anthropic’s model particularly stands out not only for its user-friendly experience, but also for how quickly it understands complex problems, with many praising how naturally conversations flow with the AI.
Competition
OpenAI may have been the first to popularize turning natural language into code on its Codex model, however it was discontinued in 2023. Anthropic introduced Claude in March of that year, trained to be “helpful, honest, and harmless”, and it has only grown since. OpenAI relaunched Codex in 2025, further raising the stakes, to which Anthropic claimed “OpenAI’s own technical staff were also using our coding tools”, prior to the release of GTP-5. They have since withdrawn their competitors’ access, citing their commercial terms that prohibit customers from using Claude to “develop a competing product”.
The AI may still trail ChatGPT in mainstream fame, but its rapid rise and distinct vibe-coding tools are drawing in more people eager to try their hand at coding and embrace this newfound accessibility.
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