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Anthropic led OpenAI in one major measure of UK small-business AI spending by Q2 2026, but there is no single nationwide leaderboard. Capital on Tap’s anonymised SME card data assigned 54.1% of recorded AI spend to Anthropic and 27.3% to OpenAI. A separate Spendesk sample covering UK companies in 2025 produced a different result: OpenAI and Dust each accounted for 42%, while Anthropic had 14%.
The consistent finding is the rapid growth of business spending on AI tools. Spendesk reported a fivefold increase in UK SMB AI-tool expenditure between 2022 and 2024, while government data shows that AI adoption is becoming embedded in business systems.
What the latest UK spending data actually shows
The apparent Anthropic lead comes from Capital on Tap’s analysis of anonymised, aggregated transactions made by UK SME business-card users from the first quarter of 2023 through the second quarter of 2026. In that dataset, Anthropic represented 54.1% of AI spend and OpenAI 27.3% by Q2 2026. The average AI spend among the card provider’s SME customers was £288 per quarter.
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That is a share of recorded card expenditure, not a count of companies, seats, users or prompts. A business paying for several services can appear in more than one vendor’s transactions, and companies paying through invoices, procurement systems or employee expenses may not appear in the same way.
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Why another dataset puts OpenAI level with Dust
Spendesk’s platform data covers companies that use Spendesk to manage expenditure, rather than the card transactions analysed by Capital on Tap. Its separate UK sample for 2025 attributed 42% of AI spending to OpenAI, 42% to Dust and 14% to Anthropic.
The contrast is not a mathematical contradiction. The datasets cover different company pools, payment records and periods. Capital on Tap’s result runs through Q2 2026 and reflects SME card transactions; Spendesk’s result is a 2025 platform sample. Neither is a complete census of every UK small business, so their percentages should not be merged into one ranking.
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| Dataset | Period | Businesses and payment data | Anthropic | OpenAI | Other reported providers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capital on Tap | Q1 2023–Q2 2026 | UK SME business-card transactions | 54.1% of AI spend by Q2 2026 | 27.3% of AI spend by Q2 2026 | Shares for other vendors were not included in the published figures |
| Spendesk | 2025 | UK companies using the Spendesk platform | 14% of UK AI spend | 42% of UK AI spend | Dust: 42% |
How quickly is AI spending growing?
Spendesk reported that UK SMB spending on AI tools grew fivefold between 2022 and 2024. Its 2024 sample recorded €656,355 in OpenAI billing, up from €183,052 in 2023. Anthropic billing rose from €323 in 2023 to €14,574 in 2024.
Those euro figures are totals observed in Spendesk’s customer platform, not estimates of all UK business spending. The Anthropic increase is especially large in percentage terms because the 2023 base was very small. The figures show accelerating adoption in the sampled companies, but they do not establish Anthropic’s or OpenAI’s total UK market revenue.
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What UK businesses are using these services for
The spending records identify paid providers, not the exact tasks performed by each company. They therefore cannot show whether a particular pound went to writing, software development, customer support, analysis, marketing or another workflow.
For buyers, the more useful distinction is whether an AI service is being used as an individual assistant or connected to existing business processes. The UK Government’s 2026 business survey found that 41% of businesses handling digitised data used AI-based technologies during 2025–2026. Among the reported size groups, 31% of small businesses and 27% of microbusinesses said AI tools were integrated into existing systems. Integration can involve additional seats, software connections and administration that do not appear as a simple comparison of chatbot subscriptions.
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What the figures leave out
- Free tiers: A business using a free AI account creates no subscription transaction for a card or spend platform to capture.
- Enterprise invoices: Large or negotiated contracts paid by invoice may be absent from card-led datasets and may be classified differently in an expense platform.
- Employee-paid use: Staff purchases reimbursed outside the recorded payment system can be missed.
- Unrecorded use: Employees may use personal accounts or employer-provided tools without a separate vendor line item.
- Sample composition: Companies using a particular card or spend-management platform are not identical to all UK SMEs.
These exclusions mean the percentages describe observed paid spend in specific samples. They are not market-share estimates based on every user or every pound spent in Britain.
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The statement is accurate only with the Capital on Tap qualification: in its UK SME card-transaction sample, Anthropic’s recorded share was 54.1% versus OpenAI’s 27.3% by Q2 2026. It is not a universal claim that more UK small businesses subscribe to Anthropic, nor that Anthropic has higher national revenue.
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Spendesk’s 2025 sample demonstrates why the qualification matters. There, OpenAI held 42% and Anthropic 14%, with Dust also at 42%. A ranking changes when the period, customer mix and payment channel change, so the two datasets should be used as separate indicators of paid adoption.
What this means for a small-business budget
- Separate adoption from spend share. A vendor’s percentage of expenditure does not reveal how many businesses use it or how many seats each business buys.
- Track the payment route. Record card charges, invoices and reimbursed employee subscriptions together before comparing vendors internally.
- Measure integration costs. Connected workflows can require higher plans, additional seats or implementation work beyond a basic subscription.
- Review usage by team and task. Compare the value generated by each workflow rather than treating a national sample’s vendor ranking as a recommendation.
- Recheck the period. AI pricing, packaging and procurement can change quickly; a 2025 platform sample and a Q2 2026 card sample answer different questions.
The bottom line on Claude versus ChatGPT spending
UK small-business spending on AI is clearly rising, and the growth is large enough to register as a new high in the available spending trend. Anthropic appears ahead of OpenAI in Capital on Tap’s SME card data through Q2 2026, while OpenAI is ahead in Spendesk’s 2025 platform sample. The defensible conclusion is not that one provider has definitively won the UK SME market, but that paid AI adoption is expanding and provider rankings depend on who was measured, how they paid and which period was analysed.
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