ChatGPT Is Losing Ground to Rivals—Here Are Some Numbers

For a agelong time, "ChatGPT" was astir synonymous with "AI." That shorthand is getting harder to defend.

According to SimilarWeb's latest web postulation data, ChatGPT commanded 77.6% of planetary generative AI website postulation successful May 2025. By April 2026, that stock had dropped to 53.7%. Still the leader—but it’s mislaid astir 24% successful 12 months.

The crushed it's ceding isn't going to a azygous challenger. Google's Gemini went from 7.27% to 26.7% successful the aforesaid window—nearly quadrupling its share. Claude jumped from 1.37% to 7.95%, a near-sixfold increase.

Grok, Perplexity, and DeepSeek besides grew, though little dramatically. The AI marketplace is fragmenting, and OpenAI is carrying the outgo of that fragmentation much than anyone else.

It's worthy being precise astir what web postulation stock really measures. It counts visits to chatbot websites—not API calls, endeavor contracts, oregon the usage baked into third-party apps. Someone opening ChatGPT.com to constitute an email counts. A developer routing millions of API calls done Claude does not. So the web postulation numbers amusement user mindshare much than gross oregon deployment astatine scale.

And that's wherever the 2nd information acceptable comes in—and it tells a akin story. The Ramp AI Index, which tracks paid AI subscriptions crossed much than 50,000 U.S. businesses, published its May 2026 update this week. And, for the archetypal clip ever, much companies connected Ramp's level are paying for Anthropic than for OpenAI.

Anthropic's adoption roseate 3.8% successful April to 34.4% of businesses; OpenAI fell 2.9% to 32.3%.

Ramp pb economist Ara Kharazian called it "a stunning reversal." A twelvemonth ago, lone 9% of businesses connected the level were paying for Anthropic astatine all. That fig has present quadrupled. OpenAI, meanwhile, grew its concern adoption by conscionable 0.3% implicit the aforesaid 12 months.

The motor down Anthropic's concern surge is mostly Claude Code, the company's agentic coding tool, which has been expanding rapidly successful developer teams astatine firms of each size. Uber's CTO publically noted the institution blew done its full 2026 AI fund successful 4 months—driven mostly by Claude Code usage—with per-engineer monthly API costs moving betwixt $500 and $2,000.

One nuance the Ramp information can't afloat capture: OpenAI pushed backmost done a spokesperson, noting that its biggest endeavor deals don't travel done firm cards. "We are driving endeavor translation astatine scale," the institution said, per Axios. "These are not engagements wherever customers wage with a recognition card." That's a just point—Ramp's methodology captures a wide but imperfect portion of concern spending.

Still, Ramp doesn't deliberation the pb volition beryllium casual to hold. The study flagged 3 circumstantial risks: Anthropic's token-based pricing exemplary incentivizes pushing users toward much costly models; Claude has experienced work outages and prime complaints successful caller weeks; and newer, cheaper inference platforms are increasing accelerated connected Ramp's ain data. The scale notes that OpenAI's Codex does akin developer tasks astatine little cost, with minimal friction to switch.

Traders and investors are paying attraction to each of this. As Decrypt antecedently reported, Anthropic's shares connected secondary trading level Forge Global were hovering around $1 trillion—above OpenAI's $880 cardinal connected the aforesaid platform. Three months ago, Anthropic's secondary marketplace valuation was $380 billion. That's the market's mode of saying it believes the existent trajectory is real, adjacent if premature.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic pushed backmost against these markets, but inactive those statistic are a decent thermometer, if adjacent connected comparatively illiquid markets, of what the planetary marketplace is expecting and however radical are seeing these companies.

Meanwhile, Google's Gemini has been gaining ground since astatine slightest mid-2025, with its Android integration giving it structural organisation advantages that different challengers simply don't have. ChatGPT was built connected novelty and first-mover advantage. Both are fading assets. OpenAI's adjacent trial is whether it tin rebuild the pb connected substance—Codex maturation and endeavor declaration wins are the 2 figures Ramp says it'll beryllium tracking adjacent month.