The Who Pays for AI? study, published November 5, 2026, found that Claude’s share of directly billed UK consumer AI subscription spending quadrupled from 7.4% in December 2025 to 29.4% in July 2026. The paper by Nikhil Datta, Peter John Lambert and Patrick Schneider estimated that 5.1% of UK adults, about 2.8 million people, held an active paid AI subscription in June 2026, up from 2.3% in June 2025. The July 2026 dashboard recorded 52.0 paid users per 1,000 adults and monthly spending of…