Claude 5 Adoption Stalls as Companies Defect to Cheaper AI Models

Anthropic's Claude 5 has plateaued at 11% of corporate spending since its June launch. Enterprise customers are switching to cheaper alternatives as the performance gap between frontier and cost-optimized models narrows. Procurement teams now justify switches on unit economics rather than capability rankings. The shift exposes a structural vulnerability in Anthropic's pricing power and suggests the company's enterprise TAM may be smaller than investors assumed if switching costs remain low.