1 in 20 UK adults now pays for AI: banking data shows $1.4B market, Claude surges to 29%
RexDouglass · x · 2026-11-06
A new working paper, "Who Pays for AI?" by Nikhil Datta, Peter John Lambert and Patrick Schneider, uses open-banking and cardholder data covering millions of accounts and billions of transactions from 2022 to mid-2026 to map the consumer AI subscription market:
- Penetration: 1 in 20 UK adults now pays for tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — a $1.4B annual market; subscriptions have roughly doubled every 12 months since launch
- Demographics: adoption is 5x higher for under-30s than over-60s, 27% higher for men, and grows 1.8x from the bottom to the top earnings quintile
- Shifting shares: ChatGPT held 74% of direct subscription spending in late 2025 but fell 21 points by mid-2026, as Claude surged from 7% to 29%, driven partly by technical/professional users buying the most expensive plans
The authors argue high-frequency banking data are well suited to studying this fast-moving market.
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