This image shows the Claude AI app in a mobile phone’s app store on February 16, 2026 in New York City. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon used Anthropic’s Claude Eye through a contract with Palantir to support the attack on Venezuela and capture former President Nicolas Maduro.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence assistant app jumped to No. 2 on Apple’s list of top free apps in the U.S. late Friday, hours after the Trump administration tried to block government agencies from adopting the startup’s technology.
The rise in popularity suggests that Anthropic is benefiting from its presence in the headlines as it refuses to use its models for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
“The left-wing lunatics at Anthropic made a disastrous mistake in trying to superpower the Department of the Army and force it to follow the Terms of Service instead of the Constitution,” President Donald Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Friday.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said he called for Anthropic’s tools to be blocked from access to U.S. defense contractors, considering the company a supply chain risk to national security.
“It is the ministry’s prerogative to select the contractor that best aligns with its vision,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement. “But given the tremendous value that Anthropic’s technology brings to our nation’s military, we hope they reconsider.”
Historically, other AI chat apps have been more popular among consumers than Claude. OpenAI’s ChatGPT took first place in the App Store rankings on Saturday. Google Gemini was in third place.
The Claude iOS app is gaining momentum this month. It ranked 131st in the U.S. on Jan. 30, and bounced around the top 20 for much of February, according to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower. According to the data, ChatGPT held the number one spot for most of February.
Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has gained momentum over the past year as a coding and enterprise model supplier. OpenAI, which currently has more than 900 million weekly users on ChatGPT, is responding to the surge in Anthropic’s business by partnering with consulting firms like Accenture and Capgemini.
On Friday night, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company had reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy the model.
Hours later, pop singer Katy Perry posted a screenshot of Anthropic’s consumer Pro subscription with overlapping hearts.
Watch: Section Pete Hegseth Directs Department of Defense to Designate Human-Made Supply Chain Risks
