Anthropic's Claude surpasses $1 million in mobile app revenue

Anthropic’s AI app, Claude, has crossed a significant milestone by reaching $1 million in gross mobile app revenue across iOS and Android platforms, according to new data from app intelligence firm Appfigures. This achievement comes 16 weeks after the app's launch, marking a noteworthy moment for Anthropic as it seeks to establish Claude as a major player in the AI-driven productivity app market.

Despite the milestone, Claude still ranks far behind its primary competitor, ChatGPT which only took 3 weeks to reach the same milestone. ChatGPT currently holds the top spot for overall downloads and ranks 26th by revenue in the U.S. on iOS. Claude is positioned at 95th in the Productivity category by downloads and 68th by revenue. This stark contrast highlights the competitive challenges Claude faces as it tries to carve out a larger share of the market already dominated by OpenAI.

But, judging from some of the user reviews, Anthropic is doing a great job. “I just realized that I have not used ChatGPT for almost a month, because I was using Claude instead,” Pelin Bicen, Professor of Marketing at Suffolk University, wrote on her LinkedIn. “It just is much better to my experience. Higher quality writing, more human-like. Advanced reasoning. You go back and forth in conversation, and its logic is so clear.”

Claude’s journey to its first million in revenue wasn’t without its hurdles. The app had a relatively slow start, with only 157,000 global downloads in its first week on the market. In comparison, ChatGPT saw a staggering 480,000 mobile app installs within just the first five days of its UAS-only, iOS launch.

However, despite its slower start, Claude managed to surpass other AI app competitors like Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity in reaching the $1 million revenue mark. Copilot and Perplexity took 19 and 22 weeks, respectively, to get to $1 million in revenue.

Currently, the US is Claude’s largest market, contributing 32.5% of its downloads and 48.4% of its revenue. Other key markets include India, Japan, the U.K., and Germany. This distribution is a testament to Claude’s growing global presence, though it remains heavily reliant on the U.S. market for monetization.

Looking ahead, Claude faces significant challenges, particularly with the impending launch of Apple Intelligence, which will offer Siri users direct access to ChatGPT on their iPhones. This integration could potentially siphon off a significant portion of Claude’s user base, especially those who prioritize seamless integration with their existing Apple ecosystem.

Anthropic has also been served with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say it misused their books and hundreds of thousands of others to train Claude.