Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI in UK Small Business AI Spending Surge

Small businesses in the UK are rapidly shifting their technology budgets toward artificial intelligence, with spending patterns revealing a dramatic pivot in provider dominance. New transaction data shows Anthropic now captures over half of all SME AI expenditure, signaling a maturing market where specific performance is beginning to outweigh the first-mover advantage of early leaders.

What was announced

Capital on Tap conducted an analysis of internal business credit card transaction data from its UK SME cardholders, spanning from Q1 2023 through Q2 2026. The findings highlight a significant acceleration in AI adoption, with overall UK AI usage climbing from 12% to 35% since late 2023. Currently, more than one in eight small businesses within the dataset are purchasing AI tools, and the data suggests the pace of adoption is accelerating rather than leveling off.

The most striking revelation is the shift in market share by expenditure. Anthropic, the developer of the Claude model, accounted for 54.1% of total SME AI spending by Q2 2026. This represents a massive surge from 2024, when the company held between just 1.6% and 6.6% of the market. Conversely, OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, saw its share of spend drop to 27.3%, down from over 70% in 2024.

Despite Anthropic’s lead in total spending, OpenAI remains the more widely used provider in terms of sheer volume, reaching 65.2% of AI-buying businesses compared to Anthropic’s 48.9%. The data also indicates that AI has transitioned from a discretionary expense to a fixed budget line. More than a quarter of AI-buying SMEs now pay for two or more different providers simultaneously, and the balance of spending between these providers can shift significantly within a single quarter.

"I'm hugely optimistic about what AI means for small businesses. For most of my career the big companies had the edge: more people, more specialists, more budget. AI is closing that gap fast. A three-person firm can now do its own research, marketing, bookkeeping and customer service to a standard that used to need a department. More than one in eight of the small businesses in our data are already buying AI tools, and the pace is accelerating, not levelling off."

Damian Brychcy, Chief Executive Officer at Capital on Tap.

The companies involved

Capital on Tap is a specialist provider of business credit cards and spend management tools designed specifically for the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector. The firm provides the underlying financial infrastructure that allows small firms to manage operational expenses and access credit. By analyzing its own cardholder data, the company provides a direct window into the actual spending habits of the UK's small business community.

The AI landscape is currently dominated by two primary entities. OpenAI, the organization behind the ChatGPT platform, has long been the market frontrunner, benefiting from early public awareness and widespread integration across various industries. Anthropic, its primary rival and the creator of the Claude series of models, has positioned itself as a high-performance alternative. Both companies have seen massive institutional interest and have become central to the "MANGOS" group of high-growth tech firms. While OpenAI maintains a larger total user base, the spending data suggests that businesses are increasingly willing to commit higher levels of capital to Anthropic’s ecosystem as they integrate AI more deeply into their core operations.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has closely tracked the expansion of these AI providers and their integration into the wider financial ecosystem. We recently covered how Hexaware and Anthropic Forge Multi-Year Partnership to Scale Claude AI for Global Enterprises, highlighting the growing enterprise demand for Claude. The investment community’s interest in these firms was also noted when Corgi Invest Launches MANGOS ETF: Retail Access to OpenAI and Anthropic. Additionally, the practical application of these models in insurance was demonstrated as Sigo Seguros Launches First AI Agent Insurance Quoting via Model Context Protocol, showing how firms are moving beyond simple chat interfaces to automated agentic workflows.

What this means

The shift in spending from OpenAI to Anthropic suggests that the initial phase of AI experimentation is over for SMEs. While ChatGPT remains the entry point for most users, the heavy concentration of capital flowing toward Anthropic indicates that businesses are finding specific, high-value use cases for Claude that justify higher price points or larger usage volumes. This puts immense pressure on OpenAI to defend its enterprise moat beyond mere ubiquity. For the fintech sector, this volatility in provider preference underscores the need for flexible payment and subscription management tools, as businesses are clearly willing to switch or stack providers to gain a competitive edge.