For most of 2025 OpenAI owned the boardroom conversation. Then the people who build with these tools flipped to Anthropic, and the executives followed a quarter later.
Technical leaders saw it first
Share of interviews naming Anthropic, split by cohort. Technical leaders led the executives for most of 2025; by early 2026 the executives were catching up fast.
The gap ran as wide as 2.1× in mid-2025. By February 2026 it had narrowed to 1.3× as the executive cohort moved. The builders are the leading indicator; the C-suite is the confirmation.
Methodology
Sample. 32,000 long-form executive interviews, of which 9,549 mention an AI provider. Cohorts split technical leaders (engineering, product, IT) from business executives. Mindshare is the share of a cohort’s interviews that name the provider in a given window.
Technical leaders named Anthropic at roughly twice the rate of executives through 2025; the gap has now nearly closed as executives follow.