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.