When marketers talk about optimizing their brand for AI, they default to focusing on ChatGPT. After all, it has the large majority of the market, and your grandmother probably even knows what it is.
But what about Claude? Perplexity? Should marketers just ignore them? Or are there certain industries and customer segments where these alternatives make up a significant part of LLM usage?
And most of us know Claude is popular with developers – but is it popular with all developers, or just a specific type?
To find out, I used technographic data from Bloomberry, which tracks which B2B products companies subscribe to, to analyze 44K companies (customers of ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity) to see who actually picks what as their enterprise LLM.
Here’s what the data shows.
- Do companies use multiple AI tools, or just one?
- Which industries prefer Claude and Perplexity over ChatGPT?
- What other tools do Claude and Perplexity users use vs ChatGPT users?
- What roles are companies hiring for that mention Claude only, Perplexity only or ChatGPT only?
- Are companies optimizing for Perplexity like they do for Google?
- Is Claude or Perplexity adoption more US-centric than ChatGPT?
1. Do companies use multiple AI tools, or just one?
Let’s start with the raw numbers. Of the companies in our dataset that use ChatGPT (Business or Enterprise), Claude (Team or Enterprise), or Perplexity Enterprise:
- ChatGPT: 41,087 companies
- Claude: 3,964 companies
- Perplexity: 1,116 companies
ChatGPT has roughly 10x the enterprise customers of Claude, and 37x Perplexity. No surprise there. But the overlap patterns are more interesting:
| Tool | Also use ChatGPT | Also use Claude | Also use Perplexity |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT users | – | 4.1% | 1.2% |
| Claude users | 43.0% | – | 3.8% |
| Perplexity users | 45.1% | 13.6% | – |
ChatGPT users don’t feel the need for alternatives – only 4% also have Claude, and just 1% have Perplexity. But 43% of Claude users also pay for ChatGPT. For Perplexity, it’s 45%.
Why? Claude and Perplexity are specialists. Claude is strong at code and long documents. Perplexity is built for research with citations. ChatGPT is the generalist – image generation, plugins, voice mode, and a dozen other features. It’s also what everyone already knows how to use.
So it makes sense that companies adopt Claude for their engineering team but keep ChatGPT for everyone else.
So who are the true believers? The ~2,300 Claude-only companies and ~560 Perplexity-only companies who chose an alternative and stuck with it.
2. Which industries prefer Claude or Perplexity only?
I compared the ~2,300 Claude-only companies, ~560 Perplexity-only companies, and ~39,000 ChatGPT-only companies by sector. Three different profiles emerge.
Claude-only users are mostly software companies, with a notable tilt toward regulated industries like financial services, insurance, and healthcare.
| Sector | Claude-only | ChatGPT-only | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software Development | 23.3% | 10.1% | 2.3x more likely to be Claude |
| Financial Services | 8.7% | 4.5% | 1.9x more likely to be Claude |
| Insurance | 2.1% | 1.0% | 2.1x more likely to be Claude |
| Security | 1.9% | 0.9% | 2.1x more likely to be Claude |
| Hospitals & Health Care | 2.6% | 1.6% | 1.6x more likely to be Claude |
| Biotechnology Research | 1.2% | 0.9% | 1.3x more likely to be Claude |
Almost a quarter of Claude-only companies are software companies (examples include: Taboola, Anaplan, and Redfin) – more than double the rate of ChatGPT-only. This confirms what we’d expect. Claude has invested heavily in coding capabilities, and it shows.
Financial services, insurance, and healthcare also over-index on Claude. My theory: Anthropic was early to emphasize that they do not train on customer data, and their safety-first positioning likely resonated with compliance teams. Once a few major players in an industry adopt a tool, others tend to follow.
Perplexity-only users are mostly investors, lawyers, and journalists.
(Examples: Bayer, HP, SAP, Visa, the US Patent and Trademark Office, O’Melveny & Myers, Clarivate)
| Sector | Perplexity-only | ChatGPT-only | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Newspaper Publishing | 1.6% | 0.2% | 8x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Government Administration | 2.3% | 0.5% | 4.6x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Biotechnology Research | 3.0% | 0.9% | 3.3x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Law Practice | 2.3% | 0.7% | 3.3x more likely to be Perplexity |
| VC & Private Equity | 2.8% | 1.0% | 2.8x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Investment Management | 2.0% | 1.1% | 1.8x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Market Research | 1.1% | 0.3% | 3.7x more likely to be Perplexity |
The common thread: jobs where you need to find information, synthesize it, and cite your sources. Perplexity was built as an “answer engine” – every response includes inline citations with links. For a journalist fact-checking a story, a lawyer researching case law, or an investor doing due diligence, that’s the core requirement.
ChatGPT-only companies are everyone else.
(Examples: Carnival, Warner Bros Discovery, Reuters, KKR, Harbor Freight, Massimo Dutti)
| Sector | ChatGPT-only | Claude-only | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing Services | 1.8% | 0.5% | 3.6x more likely to be ChatGPT |
| Real Estate | 2.0% | 0.9% | 2.2x more likely to be ChatGPT |
| Advertising Services | 4.9% | 2.4% | 2x more likely to be ChatGPT |
| Business Consulting | 3.7% | 1.9% | 1.9x more likely to be ChatGPT |
| Professional Training & Coaching | 0.8% | 0.4% | 2x more likely to be ChatGPT |
| Staffing & Recruiting | 0.7% | 0.4% | 1.8x more likely to be ChatGPT |
Marketing, advertising, consulting, real estate, recruiting – industries where the specific tool matters less than just using something. They’re writing emails, generating content ideas, drafting proposals. For these use cases, ChatGPT is good enough and everyone already knows it.
If your target audience is software developers, Claude might be their primary tool. If you’re targeting investors, lawyers, or journalists, check Perplexity. But if you’re going after marketers, agencies, or consultants? ChatGPT is almost certainly their default.
3. What other tools do Claude and Perplexity users use?
To get more granular than industry, I looked at what other software these companies actually pay for.
Claude-only companies are heavy on dev and design tools.
| Tool | Claude-only | ChatGPT-only | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | 13.4% | 4.6% | 2.9x more likely to be Claude |
| Docker Hub | 17.5% | 5.5% | 3.2x more likely to be Claude |
| Figma | 8.0% | 2.6% | 3.1x more likely to be Claude |
| PagerDuty | 7.8% | 2.1% | 3.7x more likely to be Claude |
| Incident.io | 3.0% | 0.4% | 7.5x more likely to be Claude |
| Vanta | 5.0% | 1.1% | 4.5x more likely to be Claude |
Cursor is an AI-powered code editor that’s popular with developers who take AI-assisted coding seriously. The fact that Claude-only companies use it at nearly 3x the rate tells you these aren’t casual AI users – they’re teams that have built AI into their daily workflow, and they’ve chosen Claude for that workflow.
The rest of the stack tells a similar story: Docker, GitHub Enterprise, PagerDuty, Incident.io, Linear. Engineering-led orgs with real ops infrastructure. Companies with on-call rotations.
But it’s not just devs. Figma, Miro, Lucidchart, Dovetail – design and product tools also show up. Claude-only companies are product companies with strong design functions, not just code shops.
Then there’s the security/compliance cluster: Okta, Vanta, Kandji, OneLogin. This lines up with the Financial Services and Insurance industries we saw earlier.
Perplexity-only companies use research, deal flow, and security tools.
| Tool | Perplexity-only | ChatGPT-only | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| DealCloud | 0.9% | 0.04% | 22x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Luminance | 2.1% | 0.03% | 70x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Wiz | 3.4% | 0.3% | 11x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Zscaler | 7.6% | 1.5% | 5x more likely to be Perplexity |
| Box | 4.1% | 0.6% | 6.8x more likely to be Perplexity |
DealCloud (PE/VC deal management), Luminance (legal research), Box (enterprise document management) – the tooling confirms what the industry data already told us. Perplexity users are established enterprises in research-heavy, compliance-conscious fields like finance, law, and biotech.
ChatGPT-only companies? No strong pattern.
The most over-represented tools are Google Tag Manager, Microsoft365, Yoast, Intune, Cloudflare. Generic enterprise stack. Marketing tools. The kind of software every company uses.
4. What roles are companies hiring for that mention Claude only, Perplexity only or ChatGPT only?
To pressure test this, I looked at job postings. I searched for jobs that mention “Claude” and “AI” (but not ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini), and did the same for each tool.
Claude job postings are almost entirely engineering roles.
| Job Title | % of Claude jobs | % of all jobs | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 17.8% | 0.04% | 445x more likely |
| Backend Engineer | 26.1% | 0.9% | 29x more likely |
| Research/Applied Scientist | 2.5% | 0.02% | 125x more likely |
| Data Scientist | 3.7% | 0.07% | 53x more likely |
| Frontend Engineer | 4.1% | 0.12% | 34x more likely |
| Product Designer | 1.5% | 0.06% | 25x more likely |
Nearly half of Claude job postings are for people who write code. Companies mentioning Claude are hiring people to build AI products.
ChatGPT job postings are mostly marketing and sales roles.
| Job Title | % of ChatGPT jobs | % of all jobs | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performance Marketing Specialist | 1.7% | 0.01% | 170x more likely |
| Content Marketing Specialist | 2.3% | 0.04% | 58x more likely |
| Graphic Designer | 2.0% | 0.05% | 40x more likely |
| Copywriter | 0.8% | 0.02% | 40x more likely |
| Social Media Specialist | 0.8% | 0.02% | 40x more likely |
| Product Manager | 5.7% | 0.21% | 27x more likely |
Not a single engineering role in the top results. Companies that mention ChatGPT are hiring people to use AI for content and marketing – not to build with it.
But even within engineering, Claude and ChatGPT split the market.
This is where it gets more nuanced. I looked at engineering roles specifically:
| Role | Claude mentions | ChatGPT mentions | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 1,357 | 537 | 2.5x Claude |
| Backend Engineer | 1,990 | 1,416 | 1.4x Claude |
| Research/Applied Scientist | 187 | 164 | 1.1x Claude |
| Solutions Architect | 146 | 132 | 1.1x Claude |
| Mobile Engineer | 120 | 107 | 1.1x Claude |
| Frontend Engineer | 318 | 306 | Even |
| Data Scientist | 285 | 278 | Even |
| DevOps Engineer (SRE) | 200 | 232 | 1.2x ChatGPT |
| Data Engineer | 114 | 148 | 1.3x ChatGPT |
| QA Engineer | 144 | 252 | 1.8x ChatGPT |
| Data Analyst | 68 | 243 | 3.6x ChatGPT |
Claude dominates with engineers building AI products: ML Engineers, Backend Engineers, Research Scientists. These are roles writing code that calls APIs and integrating LLMs into products. These roles also involve sustained, multi-file work – the kind where Claude’s longer context and coding tools matter.
ChatGPT wins with engineers closer to data, testing, and operations: Data Analysts, QA Engineers, DevOps, Data Engineers. These roles tend toward shorter, one-off tasks – a SQL query, a test case, a config script – where ChatGPT’s chat interface is fast and sufficient.
Frontend engineers are split evenly. They’re building products, but they’re not typically the ones integrating the AI backend. They’re somewhere in between.
The dividing line seems to be whether you’re building AI into products or using AI to do your job faster.
5. Are companies optimizing for Perplexity like they do for Google?
Here’s something I didn’t expect. When digging through Perplexity job postings, I kept seeing SEO roles – companies hiring to optimize their content for Perplexity as a search platform.
Some examples:
- “Lead global & local strategies optimised for Google SGE, Bing Copilot, Perplexity, and more” – Fisher & Paykel
- “Lead the evolution of Vio’s SEO playbook for emerging surfaces: e.g. SGE, Perplexity, zero-click results” – Vio.com
- “GEO Optimization: Design and implement strategies to increase discoverability through AI-driven experiences (e.g., Google SGE, Bing Copilot, Perplexity)” – ScienceLogic
I looked at 13,000+ SEO specialist job postings since 2024:
| Tool | % of SEO jobs mentioning it |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 5.3% |
| Perplexity | 2.5% |
| Gemini | 2.0% |
| Claude | 1.1% |
ChatGPT leads – it’s dominant, so marketers care what it says. Perplexity is #2, probably because it’s explicitly positioned as a search engine alternative. SEO teams already think in terms of ‘how do we show up in search’ – Perplexity fits that mental model. While Claude is seen as a coding/productivity tool, not a search product.
6. Is Claude or Perplexity adoption more US-centric than ChatGPT?
Over half of Claude-only companies are American.
| Country | % of Claude-only companies |
|---|---|
| US | 53% |
| UK | 9.4% |
| Australia | 5.2% |
| Canada | 3.7% |
| Germany | 3.0% |
The US only makes up about 10% of all companies in our index, so Claude-only companies are 5x more likely to be American than you’d expect. Anthropic is a San Francisco company, and it shows. Internationally, Claude hasn’t broken through yet.
Compare to ChatGPT:
| Country | % of ChatGPT-only companies |
|---|---|
| US | 38% |
| UK | 6.5% |
| Germany | 5.0% |
| Canada | 3.8% |
| Australia | 3.2% |
Only 38% of ChatGPT-only companies are American – a 15 percentage point gap. OpenAI has a genuinely global user base. ChatGPT’s massive consumer launch made global headlines, and that brand awareness translates to enterprise adoption.
Perplexity has an interesting pattern:
| Country | % of Perplexity-only companies |
|---|---|
| US | 43% |
| Germany | 9.2% |
| UK | 6.2% |
| Canada | 4.3% |
| Switzerland | 2.5% |
Germany is at 9.2% – nearly double ChatGPT’s 5%. I don’t have a clean explanation for this. Maybe Perplexity’s citation model resonates more in markets where verifying sources matters more? Or maybe it’s noise in a smaller sample. Worth watching.
If you’re selling to US tech companies, assume Claude is in the mix. If you’re selling globally, especially in Europe, ChatGPT is probably what your customers are using.
Conclusion
Three AI tools, three different profiles.
Claude is the tool for building AI into products – but that doesn’t mean all technical roles. ML engineers and backend engineers favor it. Data analysts, QA engineers, and DevOps lean toward ChatGPT. Frontend engineers are split down the middle. The dividing line is whether you’re building AI into products or using AI to do your job faster.
ChatGPT is the default. Marketing, agencies, consulting, and the roles that use AI to write emails and draft proposals. It’s what you pick when you haven’t done the research – and that’s not an insult. Defaults win. It has the broadest global footprint and the biggest moat: everyone already knows how to use it.
Perplexity is for researchers. Investors, lawyers, journalists, government workers – jobs where you need to find, synthesize, and cite. It’s also quietly becoming a search channel that SEO teams are starting to optimize for.
📊 See which companies use these tools
Explore adoption data for dev tools, security platforms, and AI infrastructure used by Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity customers:
