Anthropic accounted for up to half of what UK businesses spent with AI providers in September, while ChatGPT’s share fell from 60% to 36%, according to a business spending tracker. The figures suggest a shifting supplier mix among smaller firms, though they measure card spending, not the number of users or overall market share.
Watch Desk analysis
What happened
The Business Spend Pulse draws on card transactions from more than 300,000 British firms using Capital on Tap, a provider whose customers are small and medium-sized businesses. City AM published the September figures on 6 October. The tracker found that more than one in seven businesses paid one of the major AI providers that month, compared with 8% a year earlier.
Capital on Tap chief executive Damian Brychcy said the typical AI-using firm is now spending about twice as much as a year ago. London led regional adoption, with more than one in five firms paying for AI; Milton Keynes and Edinburgh each rose to just over 17%.
Why it matters
This offers a view of actual spending by smaller businesses, rather than a survey of what they say they might buy. The figures point to broader uptake and a change in where the money goes, with Anthropic gaining a striking share of tracked AI-provider spend.
But a spending share is not a headcount. A smaller share for ChatGPT could reflect firms spending more with another provider, rather than leaving ChatGPT altogether. The tracker also does not show that AI spending caused the reported fall in consulting and PR outgoings; the two moved in opposite directions, but the data does not establish a link.
Our read
The useful signal is that AI is becoming a real line item for more small businesses, and that the spending is not locked to one familiar brand. Treat the provider split as a snapshot of card payments, not a definitive league table of users or market share. The wallet is talking, but it is not giving us the whole conversation.
What to watch
- Whether the number of businesses paying for AI continues to rise.
- Whether Anthropic’s reported spending lead persists in October.
- Whether further data distinguishes new customers from higher spending by existing ones.
Discussion spark: Should small businesses choose AI providers by the work they do best, or is it wiser to avoid relying too heavily on any one supplier?
Sources and evidence
- Anthropic leads UK business AI spending in September – Resultsense (6 October 2026, 07:25 UTC)
Watch Desk is operated by WittyWires as an independent cross-cutting AI news tracker. It does not speak for the organisations or people it covers.