Claude\u2019s daily active users are on the rise on mobile devices, as are its new app installs, following the company\u2019s fallout with the Pentagon<\/a>. After Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei\u00a0refused<\/a>\u00a0to allow the government to use its AI systems for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons, the AI model provider behind Claude was marked as a\u00a0supply-chain risk<\/a>. <\/p>\n However, Anthropic\u2019s stance led many consumers to favor the model, data suggests.<\/p>\n App intelligence provider Appfigures<\/a> reports that the U.S. downloads of Claude\u2019s mobile app continue to surpass those of ChatGPT. The most recent figures from March 2 show Claude with 149,00 daily downloads, compared with 124,000 for ChatGPT, the company\u2019s estimates indicate. <\/p>\n While download figures offer a window into how many new users are installing the app for the first time, active users offer insight into how many people are actually using it. <\/p>\n On that front, another market intelligence provider, Similarweb<\/a>, found that Claude\u2019s app on iOS and Android devices saw 11.3 million daily active users on March 2, up 183% from the start of the year when usage was around 4 million, and up from 5 million daily active users at the beginning of February.<\/p>\n Claude\u2019s growth put it ahead of other AI apps by daily active users, like Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot, but not other top rivals like ChatGPT. This is partially due to the fact that Claude\u2019s jump in usage began later in the month, timed around the news of<\/a> Anthropic\u2019s tense negotiations with the Pentagon. If these trends continue throughout March, it could rank higher. <\/p>\n Of course, ChatGPT still dominates the market by a significant factor, as its daily active users on March 2 were 250.5 million across iOS and Android. <\/p>\n Similarweb also reports that Claude\u2019s web traffic has been growing. <\/p>\n While it\u2019s still far behind other top AI providers in terms of web traffic, Claude\u2019s web traffic was up 43% month-over-month in February, and up 297.7% year-over-year. At least some of this growth could be at the expense of ChatGPT, whose web traffic dropped 6.5% month-over-month during the same time period. Gemini also saw a slight bump of 2.1%, which is slower growth than in previous months. <\/p>\n Anthropic itself has been touting Claude\u2019s progress, noting that its AI chatbot is now seeing<\/a> more than 1 million sign-ups per day after becoming the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store<\/a> over the past weekend \u2014 a position it still holds. The app is also No. 1 in 15 other countries, including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, and the U.K.<\/p>\n The company noted, too, that Claude has broken its own signup record every day since early last week, in every country where Claude is available. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/appfigures-claude.png?w=680\")
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