Anthropic ran its first-ever Super Bowl ad, and it worked.
Claude went from a daily average of 62K estimated downloads to 225K. That's a 3.6x spike triggered by a single darkly comedic spot that mocked ChatGPT for stuffing ads into AI responses.
The message was simple: Claude doesn't do that. And the numbers say people ~~liked~~ loved that message.
According to Appfigures Intelligence, Claude was cruising at roughly 63K estimated downloads per day through mid-January. Then things shifted in early February when Anthropic started teasing their Super Bowl ad on social media, and downloads jumped to an estimated 116K. On Super Bowl Sunday on Feb 8, download crossed 170K.
Here's what's interesting. The peak didn't come on game day. It came over a week later on Feb 17 and was big. 225K downloads big, according to our estimates. That's word of mouth and press coverage doing what a Super Bowl ad is supposed to do. Keep the conversation going.
Revenue told the same story. Daily net revenue went from an estimated $270K per day to $545K at peak. That's a clean 2x.
So far downloads haven't dropped below 200K, suggesting this isn't a temporary spike but possibly a new baseline.
Before the Super Bowl, Claude's mobile business was okay. Our estimates show downloads hovered around 1.2M per month through most of 2025. Not flashy, just consistent. Revenue was the real story, climbing from $2.1M (net) in March to $6.2M (net) in December. Net means what Anthropic gets to keep after giving Apple and Google their share.
This revenue growth means the product was getting stickier even without new users flooding in.
February is pacing for roughly 5M downloads and $11M in net revenue, according to our estimates. That's a 4x jump in monthly downloads compared to where Claude sat six months ago. All-time net revenue is approaching an estimated $68M.
But let's not get carried away. ChatGPT pulled in 56M downloads and $224M in net revenue in January alone, according to our estimates. Claude is tiny in comparison. And it's not just ChatGPT. Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, and Perplexity all sit well above Claude in raw downloads.
Until now.
During Super Bowl week (Feb 8–14), Claude's downloads rose 211% compared to mid January (Jan 12–18). And they're still climbing.
Every other AI app went the other direction. ChatGPT dipped 2%, DeepSeek was flat, Gemini dropped 12%, Grok fell 15%, and Perplexity dropped 18%. So it wasn't a rising tide lifting all AI boats - The Super Bowl effect was entirely Claude's!
I was very curious to see how users would react to ChatGPT's addition of ads, and the success of this campaign tells me Anthropic's "we don't put ads in your AI" positioning actually resonated with consumers who have a choice.
And while Claude's download numbers are still small, Claude generated roughly $4.21 per download in January, on par with ChatGPT and well above Grok and Gemini. With more than 3x the users I expect that to drop a bit, but it's clear the users who show up are paying so this will lead to much faster revenue growth than the competition.
The AI race has officially entered its consumer marketing phase in 2026. Anthropic went from a company most people had never heard of to one with a Super Bowl ad and a top-10 app. Almost two weeks later and download are still climbing and revenue is still growing - the AI race just got a new real competitor.
I can't wait to see the response from the competition.
What does it look like when AI apps dominate both the download and revenue charts? January 2026 gave us a pretty clear answer.
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