Although OpenAI still straggles behind Anthropic in a closely watched measure of AI adoption among businesses, there's a spark of hope for CEO Sam Altman's company.
OpenAI has an advantage over its rival's priciest and most advanced model, according to new data from Ramp's AI Index. The data shows that Anthropic's Fable 5 model generated 75% as much spend as OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol model did in July, indicating that Anthropic's top model was less popular among businesses. As Anthropic retains its lead in business adoption, weaker demand for top-end AI could ring alarm bells about customers' spending restraint.
Ramp, a financial technology firm, tracks data from bills and expenses for more than 70,000 US business customers to analyze spending on AI tools and products. While Ramp's customers represent a small subset of companies and generally skew toward smaller companies, its AI Index helps analysts and companies understand the competition among AI providers.
Fable got off to a rocky start for Anthropic; it was temporarily taken down by a government order, brought back on July 1, and then had its pricing adjusted throughout the month. The success of OpenAI's cheaper GPT-5.6 Sol threatens it. In the run-up to its IPO, Anthropic is staking its business on the idea that people will be willing to pay for its state-of-the-art tech rather than competitors' cheaper options.
Still, Anthropic has boasted dramatic growth this year and stays ahead of its rivals in adoption. In July, Ramp saw the share of US businesses paying for Anthropic AI products reach 43.5%, compared with 39.7% for OpenAI. Also, xAI climbed to 4%, and Google sank to 6.2%, down from 6.4%. Ramp economist Ara Kharazian told Business Insider that integrations via Google Workspace mean the number is likely a lowball estimate.
OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. Google declined to comment.
Kharazian said that the popularity of Chinese open-source models has grown, though not to the point he'd expect OpenAI and Anthropic to "freak out."'
As the number of businesses using OpenAI and Anthropic's products increases gradually, Ramp has seen much faster growth in the amount of money those businesses spend.
In July, the top 1% of AI spenders paid a median of $7,400 per employee for AI tools, Ramp found, versus less than $5,000 in June. Among the companies, the median firm spent about $12 per employee, versus about $11 in June.
AI agents have driven much of the industry's revenue growth this year and have become a major focus of development for both OpenAI and Anthropic. Kharazian said a large share of the AI spending Ramp tracked came from coding agents, which can trigger more tasks and cause costs to "spiral."
"That's why it's going up so quickly: It's scalable in a way that typical software is not," Kharazian said.
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