Anthropic’s Claude surges after Pentagon blacklist
Mar 2nd 2026
After a public standoff with the Pentagon over military uses of AI, Anthropic’s Claude surged in popularity, topping app charts and registering record sign-ups amid service disruptions and renewed debate about AI in defense.
- Claude hit No. 1 on Apple’s US free app chart, overtaking ChatGPT.
- Claude climbed Android charts in the US and UK while ChatGPT remained top on Android and in the UK Apple chart.
- The Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk after CEO Dario Amodei refused to allow company technology for mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
- Anthropic reported outages during a spike in demand with more than 1,400 disruption reports logged before service was restored.
- The company said it saw record daily sign-ups, a 60 percent rise in free active users, quadrupled daily sign-ups and more than doubled paid subscribers.
- The federal government awarded a separate AI deal to OpenAI for classified networks, with OpenAI saying its tools will not be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance.
- Anthropic provides a memory import feature that lets paid users transfer conversations to Claude with a single copy and paste.