- Trending
- Comments
- Latest
Anthropic’s first-ever Super Bowl ad pushed Claude’s user base up 11% in the days after the game, briefly landed the app in Apple’s top 10 free downloads, and set off a pointed public exchange with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — all in the span of roughly 48 hours, according to analysis by BNP Paribas.
The Super Bowl, watched by roughly 125 million viewers in the United States, has increasingly become a prime stage for tech companies chasing mainstream adoption. This year, artificial intelligence brands were front and center, and the results show that visibility can still translate into measurable user growth.
For Anthropic, the payoff was immediate: website visits jumped 6.5%, and the company briefly broke into the top 10 free apps on the Apple App Store, edging out competitors linked to Meta, Google’s Gemini, and OpenAI.
BNP Paribas’ data paints a nuanced picture of how the Super Bowl exposure affected the wider AI ecosystem. While the Anthropic user base posted the strongest gains, OpenAI still saw a 2.7% increase in daily active users, and Google’s Gemini added roughly 1.4%. The figures suggest that while Anthropic’s ad generated the loudest reaction, the event lifted awareness across the entire category.
Even so, scale remains a challenge. Despite the post-game surge, the Anthropic user base continues to trail the far larger audiences commanded by ChatGPT and Gemini. The gap underscores how difficult it is for newer AI platforms to compete with incumbents that already enjoy massive distribution and brand recognition.
BNP Paribas analysts described Anthropic’s commercial as the clear winner of the so-called “AI Super Bowl.” The ad’s humor and indirect jab at OpenAI helped it stand out in a crowded field of glossy tech messaging. More importantly, it reinforced Anthropic’s positioning as a company that wants to do things differently—particularly when it comes to monetization.
Paul Smith, Anthropic’s chief commercial officer, said the company’s strategy prioritizes long-term revenue growth over splashy tactics. Speaking during an AI partnership signing with Man Group, Smith emphasized that Anthropic has deliberately avoided advertising inside its products.
“It was a conscious decision not to include ads in Claude,” Smith said. “Advertising would take Anthropic in directions where you’re optimizing for the wrong things.”
Smith argued that remaining ad-free allows the company to stay “unconflicted” and focus on selling AI tools directly to businesses. According to him, this approach helps the Anthropic user base trust that product decisions are guided by safety, usefulness, and model quality rather than engagement metrics designed to please advertisers.
Behind the scenes, Anthropic is making significant infrastructure commitments to support future growth of the Anthropic user base. The company has pledged up to $50 billion toward building data centers in the United States, while also purchasing computing capacity from partners such as Google and Microsoft.
Chief executive Dario Amodei has repeatedly emphasized a “do-more-with-less” philosophy. Smith echoed that sentiment, noting that Anthropic aims to buy computing resources as close to actual demand as possible rather than overbuilding far in advance. The message is clear: controlled spending is part of the brand, even as the Anthropic user base grows.
The rivalry escalated quickly after the ad aired. Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, responded with a lengthy post on X, calling the commercial funny but misleading. In a follow-up interview on the tech show TBPN, Altman accused Anthropic of being deceptive in how it portrayed advertising on AI platforms.
Altman insisted that OpenAI would never deploy ads in the way Anthropic implied and argued that users would reject such an approach. He also took a swipe at Anthropic’s scale, claiming that more Texans use ChatGPT for free than the total number of people who use Claude across the United States.
Pricing became another flashpoint. Altman pointed out that ChatGPT offers tiers ranging from free to $200 per month, while Anthropic’s Claude plans top out at $100 per month. According to Altman, that positioning makes Claude an expensive option aimed at wealthier users, potentially limiting how fast the Anthropic user base can expand.
Altman went further, accusing Anthropic of trying to control how others use AI technology. He claimed the company blocks certain businesses from accessing its coding tools and seeks to dictate acceptable business models, calling that approach “a dark path.”
Anthropic has pushed back on that characterization, framing its restrictions as necessary guardrails to ensure responsible use.
For now, the debate highlights a deeper philosophical divide: OpenAI is experimenting with ads for free users while keeping paid tiers ad-free, whereas Anthropic insists that an entirely ad-free model is essential to building trust with its user base.
The timing of the ad clash is notable. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are widely viewed as potential IPO candidates later this year, and public perception matters more than ever. The sudden jump in the Anthropic user base gives the company a data-backed narrative it can point to as evidence of growing brand power.
Whether that momentum lasts remains to be seen. But the Super Bowl episode shows that in the AI arms race, marketing, monetization philosophy, and public sparring now sit alongside model performance as key drivers of growth. For Anthropic, the message is clear: the Anthropic user base is growing, the rivalry is public, and the competition for AI mindshare is only getting louder.
