Quick, name the app that just became the number one free app in the U.S. App Store. No cheating. Here’s a hint. It’s an AI app that has recently made the headlines thanks to an ongoing dispute with President Donald Trump. The app is Claude, an AI chatbot developed by Anthropic. Last week, a feud between Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei and President Trump hit the headlines.
The feud revolves around a rumored $200 million contract between the Pentagon and Anthropic. The government demanded that it have unrestricted use of Claude models. However, Anthropic and Dario Amodei refused to allow the government to use Claude to monitor American citizens. The CEO and his company also did not want Claude to be embedded in any U.S. weapons system that can make a decision to “kill” without requiring human intervention.
Trump attacks Claude, Anthropic and the latter’s CEO Dario Amodei
Trump responded by going on Truth Social and in a “truth” he wrote that Anthropic’s leaders were “Leftwing nut jobs” and he ordered that every federal agency “Immediately Cease” using the company’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,” which is a designation usually given to foreign outfits like Huawei preventing the blacklisted company from dealing with military contractors.
“It is the Department’s prerogative to select contractors most aligned with their vision. But given the substantial value that Anthropic’s technology provides to our armed forces, we hope they reconsider.”
-Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic
OpenAI, the company that developed the ChatGPT chatbot, announced a deal with the Pentagon replacing Anthropic and Claude. As we noted earlier in this article, Claude is now the top free app in the U.S. App Store ahead of second place ChatGPT. In third place among free apps after Claude and ChatGPT is Gemini AI.
Claude is the top free app in the U.S. App Store. | Image by PhoneArena
Claude climbed quickly to the top of the charts
To show you how Claude has climbed sharply in the App Store charts, on January 30th Claude was number 131 before spending much of February in the 20s according to app tracker Sensor Tower. ChatGPT was in first for most of February.