Item — HN Reader

I like Claude, but polling done on Americans late last year shows otherwise:

Overseas numbers are likely worse for Claude.

Try and ask someone not in tech what they think of Claude or Anthropic. There's a high chance they've never heard of either.

Things might have changed with Anthropic showing up at the Superbowl, and in the news over their fight with the Pentagon.

2 comments

Late last year is not the timeline you want. Anthropic’s hockey stick happened earlier this year.

Late last year was like 3 months ago.

I'm bullish on Claude. It will see a surge in users, and will likely surpass Perplexity this year. However I don't think it will catch up to even Meta AI (which had 10x the number of users) this year.

I use Claude. I use Codex. I've never heard of or used Meta AI. Nor do I have a Facebook account. Never have, never will.

I am also a software developer. So while the numbers of "people" that use one AI or another may be higher than either of these, it's not a useful metric for myself.

That's fine. I'm not making a value judgement about which LLMs you should use, if any.

I'm only pushing back against someone thinking "oh HN talks about Claude a lot, therefore Claude must be extremely popular". The information bubble is a real problem.

I’m aware of how long ago late 2025 was.

Anthropic’s revenue in Q1 2026 has skyrocketed.

It's probably true that Anthropic's revenue is booming. But we need massive grains of salt:

a) they are private and revenue numbers for private companies are hopelessly unreliable, and

b) they are planning an IPO, so there's an extra incentive to big up the numbers. Anthropic always brings up ARR, which is very gameable when the year hasn't ended yet

You’re right that time will tell the end story.

It's Android app is 18th place in Denmark right now. Someone must have heard about it.