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Anthropic’s Claude popularity with paying consumers is skyrocketing
Whatever the final outcome for Anthropic from itsfeudwith the Department of Defense, the attention it has generated — coupled with the company’s funnySuper Bowl adstaking aim at OpenAI and thesurging popularityof Claude Code — has made Anthropic more popular with consumers than ever. An examination of billions of anonymized credit card transactions from about 28 million U.S. consumers, conducted for TechCrunch byIndagari, a consumer transaction analysis company, shows Claude gaining paid subscribers in record numbers. Now, as with all big-data analysis, caveats exist. While this data is substantive, it doesn’t include every consumer. That means that Indagari can’t calculate Anthropic’s total current or new user numbers. It also doesn’t include Claude’s enterprise business (which is its bread and butter) or its free-tier users (those not paying Anthropic at all). Estimates for total Claude consumer users are all over the map (we’ve seen figures ranging from 18 million to 30 million) but Anthropic has not disclosed this data. A spokesperson did tell TechCrunch, however, that Claude paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year. What’s notable is that consumers pulled out their wallets in record numbers for Claude between January and February. Also interesting, previous users returned to Claude in record numbers in February as well, Indagari told TechCrunch. Indagari tells us that the majority of new subscribers are at its lowest tier, “Pro” users ($20 per month, compared with $100 or $200 per month). Data through early March confirm that subscriber growth is continuing. (Data is available with a two-week delay.) To recap why consumers may have become so much more aware of Claude since January: Anthropic released several Super Bowl commercials that mocked ChatGPT’s decision to show ads to its users — and promised Claude would never do the same. The spotswere funny and effective(and alsogot under the skin of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman). But the bigger hullabaloo began in late January when multiple media sites, including the Wall Street Journal and Axios, began reporting on a deepening feud between Anthropic and the DoD. At its core, the dispute was about what the military could and couldn’t do with Anthropic’s AI. Anthropic refused to allow the DoD to use its AI models for lethal autonomous operations (AI potentially killing people) or mass surveillance of American citizens. That beef grew increasingly public, with Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei issuing a makingfirm public statementon February 26 amid the DoD’s threats to hurt Anthropic’s business by labeling the company a supply risk. Which the DoD did. Lawsuits are now flying, although a federal judge this week temporarily blocked the department’s designation. New user growth climbed sharply during this period. The increase is especially pronounced between those late January media reports and Amodei’s statement on February 26. Beyond the drama, Claude Code andClaude Cowork— developer and productivity tools released in January — have been drivers of subscriptions. TheComputer Usefeature, released this week, has also sparked a surge, Anthropic tells TechCrunch. That feature allows Claude to navigate a computer independently — clicking, scrolling, and taking actions on its own. It works with Dispatch, which lets users assign tasks from their phones. These features are not available to free-tier users. Still, for all of Anthropic’s growth among U.S. consumers willing to pay for AI, Claude remains a long way behind ChatGPT. While OpenAI’suninstalls spiked immediatelyafter it announced a deal with the DoD — a move that stood in contrast to Anthropic’s safety stand — Indagari’s data shows that OpenAI is still gaining new paid subscribers at a rapid rate and remains the biggest consumer AI platform of them all.
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A Robot From Kerala is Taking Over the State’s Oldest Poll Campaign Tradition
Chuvarbot is already being tested in election campaigns, ahead of its planned commercial launch within two months.
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Doreswamy, Who Played Role in Excelsoft IPO, Appointed CEO
Veteran tech and finance leader to focus on expanding the company globally, deepen tech capabilities, and position Excelsoft as EdTech leader.
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One Kubernetes Config Change Saved Cloudflare 600 Engineering Hours a Year
Cloudflare changed Kubernetes ‘fsGroupChangePolicy’ to ‘OnRootMismatch’, cutting restart times.
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Why SoftBank’s new $40B loan points to a 2026 OpenAI IPO
SoftBank has taken on a new $40 billion loan to help it cover its $30 billion commitment to invest in OpenAI as part of the AI model maker’srecord-breaking $110 billion raise last month, the Japanese conglomeratesaid on Friday. Most striking is that the loan is unsecured and has a 12-month term, meaning it must be repaid or refinanced by next year. This could be a signal that the lenders believe OpenAI’s highly anticipated public listing will indeed come later this year, as some outlets,like CNBC, have reported. The loan is provided by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and four Japanese banks. Since OpenAI’s IPO is bound to be one of the largest listings ever, if it does happen this year, that would presumably give SoftBank the liquidity to settle the debt in such a short time span. SoftBank’s new $30 billion investment in OpenAI brings its total bet on ChatGPT’s maker to over $60 billion.
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Memory chip giant SK hynix could help end ‘RAMmageddon’ with blockbuster US IPO
SK hynix, a South Korean memory chip giant already listed on the KOSPI, is laying the groundwork for a potential U.S. listing that could reportedly raise an estimated $10 billion to $14 billion. The company announced this week that it has confidentially filed a Form F-1 with the the listing, targeting the second half of 2026. But the real question isn’t just how much it can raise: it’s whether a U.S. listing could increase is trading value as one of the most critical players in the AI chip supply chain. Despite its critical role in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a key component powering AI systems from companies like Nvidia, the stock has historically traded at a discount to global peers, according to a Seoul-based semiconductor analyst. It’s got a market cap of around $440 billion, but it’s valuation multiples remain below those of U.S.-listed semiconductor firms, raising questions about whether geography, rather than fundamentals, is partly driving the gap. The move is widely seen as an effort to increase its valuation to match global peers like Micron. “SK hynix’s U.S. listing could help close a long-standing valuation gap with global peers. Despite having comparable – or in some areas stronger production capacity than U.S.-based chipmakers, the Korean company has historically traded at a discount, partly due to its primary listing in Korea,” the analyst told TechCrunch. The analyst also mentioned structural factors shaping the deal. “SK Square, SK hynix’s largest shareholder, which held 20.07% as of December 2025, is required to maintain a stake of at least 20% under Korea’s holding company rules.” Based on current share prices, issuing roughly 2% in new shares could raise $10 billion to $14 billion while allowing SK Square to maintain its ownership threshold, the analyst said. (Under Korea’s Fair Trade Act, holding companies must maintain minimum ownership stakes in subsidiaries, at least 20% for listed entities, to retain control.) There’s precedent. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), for example, has seen its U.S.-listed shares trade at a premium to its domestic shares at times, particularly during periods of strong AI-driven demand, suggesting that cross-listing can influence how investors price the same underlying business. The move is already rippling across the broader Korean chip sector. Following SK hynix’s filing, some investors are now pushing Samsung Electronics to consider a similar U.S. listing. Artisan Partners, a major shareholder, said Friday that a U.S. listing (technically known as an American depositary receipt, or ADR), could help Samsung boost its valuation, too, as well as give U.S. retail investors a chance to buy its stock, according toa Bloomberg report. SK hynix’s planned ADR listing is also widely seen as a move to secure funding ahead of increased capital spending to meet the rising demand for memory from AI semiconductors. At its annual general meeting on March 25, SK hynix CEO Noh-Jung Kwaksaid financial capacity will be key to sustaining growth in the AI era, adding that the company is targeting approximately $75 billion (more than 100 trillion KRW) in net cash to support long-term investments. Soaring cost for memory, and limited supply has been one of the bottlenecks slowing AI builds, but also impacting other industries, like consumer gamers. It’s a situation that’s been dubbed‘RAMmageddon’and, if nothing in the market changes, is expected to continue on until at least 2027,Nature reports. Time will tell if that doomsday prediction holds up. The tech giants are working on solving RAMmageddon in other ways beyond increased manufacturing. For instance, Google this weekintroduced a tech called TurboQuant, an ultra-efficient AI memory compression algorithm. It allows AI to become vastly more efficient in using memory. Nevertheless, the signals indicate that more memory production will be necessary as well. SK hynix is gearing up for a wave of capital-intensive projects. The company plans to invest around $400 billion by 2050 to build a semiconductor cluster in Yongin, South Korea. It is also constructing new facilities in South Korea and Indiana, with planned investments of about $25 billion and $3.3 billion, respectively, underscoring the scale of capital required. The chipmaker said this week it will acquire advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography scanners from ASML by 2027 in a deal worth $7.9 billion, aimed at boosting high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production for AI. All of this would be supported by a blockbuster U.S. IPO. And that could lead other Korean chip makers to follow.
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Wikipedia Says No to AI-Generated Text in Articles, but Makes Two Exceptions
Wikipedia updated its content policy recently, banning artificial intelligence (AI)-generated text in articles. The new guidelines explicitly prohibit the use of large language models (LLMs) when writing an article or rewriting a page for the website. While taking a strong stance against AI, the platform has also made two exceptions for editors, allowing them to use such tools to make copyedits to pages and to translate pages from any language to English. However, it has warned contributors to apply caution when using AI chatbots.
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David Sacks is done as AI czar — here’s what he’s doing instead
David Sacks has used up his days as Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar. Speaking with Bloombergon Thursday, the longtime entrepreneur, investor, and podcaster confirmed that his non-consecutive 130-day stint as a special government employee is over and that he’s moving on to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) alongside senior White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios. “I think moving forward as co-chair of PCAST, I can now make recommendations on not just AI but an expanded range of technology topics,” he told Bloomberg via a video interview. “So yes, this is how I’ll be involved moving forward.” What that means in practice is Sacks will be much further from the power center in Washington than since the outset of this second Trump administration. As AI czar, Sacks had a direct line to Trump and a hand in shaping policy. PCAST is a federal advisory body, so while it studies issues, produces reports, and sends recommendations up the chain, it doesn’t make policy. The council has existed in some form since FDR, though Sacks made a point to Bloomberg of noting that this particular iteration has “the most star power of any group like this” ever assembled, and it’s hard to argue he’s wrong. The initial 15 members include Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Marc Andreessen, AMD’s Lisa Su, and Michael Dell, among others. (That’s a lot of billionaires.) Sacks told Bloomberg the council will take up AI, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, and nuclear power, and that near-term attention will go toward pushing Trump’s national AI framework, released just last week. The framework is aimed at replacing what Sacks described to Bloomberg as a mess of conflicting state-level rules. “You’ve got 50 different states regulating this in 50 different ways,” he said, “and it’s creating a patchwork of regulation that’s difficult for our innovators to comply with.” What Sacks didn’t address head-on was why the transition is happening now and whether his recent comments were a factor. Earlier this month, on the popular “All In” podcast that he co-hosts, Sacks publicly urged the administration to find an exit from the U.S.-backed war with Iran, walking through a set of worsening scenarios — attacks on oil infrastructure in neighboring countries, the destruction of desalination plants, the possibility of nuclear use by Israel — and calling for a polite way out. Trump responded by telling reporters that Sackshadn’t spoken to himabout the war. (The U.S.-Israel war on Iran has now been going on for approximately 27 days.) Asked about the podcast episode on Thursday by Bloomberg, Sacks figuratively threw his hands in the air: “I’m not on the foreign policy team or the national security team,” he said, adding that his podcast comments represented his personal view, not an official one. For all the marquee names Sacks is bringing to PCAST, it’s worth reflecting on what the council has historically been, which is an advisory body with some influence in some administrations and almost none in others. President Obama’s version was seemingly the most productive on record, churning out 36 reports over eight years — two of which led to concrete policy changes, including an FDA rule that opened the market for over-the-counter hearing aids. President Trump’s first-term council, by contrast, took nearly three years just to name its first members, produced a handful of reports, and made no particular mark, while President Biden’s council skewed heavily academic — Nobel laureates, MacArthur fellows, National Academy members — and issued a modest number of reports before the administration ended. The current PCAST is a completely different animal, built almost entirely from the executive suites of the companies shaping the technology it will advise on. Now, Sacks is again one of those unencumbered executives, free to resume his life as an investor and entrepreneur. A spokesperson for Craft Ventures, the firm Sacks co-founded and where he remains a partner, has not yet responded to related questions about next steps; TechCrunch reportedlast yearon the ethics waivers Sacks obtained to maintain financial stakes in AI and crypto companies while shaping federal policy in both areas — an arrangement that drew sharp criticism from ethics experts and lawmakers.
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OpenAI shuts down Sora while Meta gets shut out in court
Loading the player… When an 82-year-old Kentucky woman wasoffered $26 millionfrom an AI company that wanted to build a data center on her land, she said no. Sure, that same company can try to rezone 2,000 acres nearby anyway, but as AI infrastructure stretches further into the real world, the real world is starting to push back. That tension is everywhere this week, fromOpenAI shutting down its Sora appto courts finally starting tohold social platforms like Meta accountable. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what it looks like when the AI hype cycle meets reality. Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.
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VCs are betting billions on AI’s next wave, so why is OpenAI killing Sora?
When an 82-year-old Kentucky woman wasoffered $26 millionfrom an AI company that wanted to build a data center on her land, she said no. Sure, that same company can try to rezone 2,000 acres nearby anyway, but as AI infrastructure stretches further into the real world, the real world is starting to push back. That tension is everywhere this week, fromOpenAI shutting down its Sora appto courts finally starting to hold social platforms accountable. On this episode of TechCrunch’sEquitypodcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what it looks like when the AI hype cycle meets reality. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Subscribe to Equity onYouTube,Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. You also can follow Equity onXandThreads, at @EquityPod.
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Are Databases Ready for Agentic AI?
As agents gain more autonomy, the risk of unintended actions grows.
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Anthropic Accidentally Reveals Its Most Powerful AI Model Mythos
The model is said to represent a significant leap beyond Anthropic’s existing Claude lineup, such as Opus 4.6.
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