Earlier in the day, the Pentagon had formally informed Anthropic that the company and its products would be labelled as a supply chain risk to the US, a senior defence official told Bloomberg. The move could effectively place the firm on a government blacklist.
While the determination was described as effective immediately, a person familiar with the matter said Anthropic’s Claude AI tools are still being used by the US military in operations related to Iran.US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had warned the company last week that the Pentagon would shift its AI work to other providers, allowing a six-month transition period for the move.
Despite the Pentagon’s decision, Microsoft said it will continue to integrate Anthropic’s AI models into its products for customers, excluding the US Department of War.Also read: Big Tech group tells Pentagon’s Hegseth they are ‘concerned’ about Anthropic supply-chain risk designation
A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC, “Our lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers — other than the Department of War — through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry and that we can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defence related projects.”
Following the comment, Microsoft became the first major company to assure continued collaboration with Anthropic after the Pentagon’s actions
The Pentagon’s move followed tensions between US officials and Anthropic over issues including mass domestic surveillance and the use of fully autonomous weapons. Around the same time, rival OpenAI said the Pentagon had agreed to run its models for classified workloads.
Also read: Anthropic CEO Amodei blasts OpenAI for ‘mendacious’ Pentagon deal
Anthropic’s models are widely used by developers and are integrated into services such as GitHub Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot, alongside models from OpenAI.
