Anthropic's Claude, the AI assistant and developer platform built by the San Francisco-based AI safety company, dominated hallway conversations, panel sessions, and impromptu demos throughout the conference, which drew 6,714 AI leaders from 79 countries across more than 500 sessions.

Attendees frequently cited Claude as their preferred AI assistant for business and coding tasks over OpenAI's ChatGPT, a preference that played out in real time across the event floor.

HumanX 2026, which ran in partnership with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for market coverage, has positioned itself as a flagship gathering for enterprise AI adoption.

The volume of Claude-focused discussion was not accidental. Anthropic arrived at the conference carrying a dense portfolio of product updates, a model it says cannot safely be released to the public, and an unresolved legal confrontation with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

Claude Mythos Preview: Anthropic's Model It Won't Ship

The disclosure that generated the most sustained attention was the existence of Claude Mythos Preview, a next-generation model that Anthropic's own researchers have described as dangerous for public release.

Alongside the Mythos disclosure, Anthropic highlighted several features already available in Claude's current production lineup. The company's new Skills feature, positioned as an enterprise-grade tool for managing and customizing AI usage within organizations, drew attention from the executive contingent at the event.

"We are in this incredible moment in technology, where every month, and sometimes every day, we are all looking forward to something new", stated OpenAI CTO of B2B applications Srinivas Narayanan, adding, "We knew AI was going to impact software engineering, people have been using assistive coding over the last year, but even in just the last few months, the entire field has changed."

Claude includes computer control capabilities and real-time voice chat, both currently in research preview, extending the model's reach beyond text-based interaction into ambient computing tasks.

Claude Code, the company's AI-powered coding assistant that launched publicly in May 2025, has generated more than $2.5 billion in annualized revenue. The figure represents a significant reordering of the developer tools market in under a year and has forced competitors into reactive product moves.

Sierra, Co-Founder and CEO Bret Taylor, a chairman of the board of OpenAI said, "I think Sam is one of the most visible leaders and executives in the world. If you want to seek out detractors for him, you'll find them, and they'll be very vocal about it. I think Sam's remarkable. I think he's a remarkable leader of AI, and I really trust his character as someone who's worked with him."

OpenAI, and the company most directly in Claude's competitive sights, unveiled a new $100-per-month subscription tier for ChatGPT that bundles enhanced access to its Codex coding agent. The timing placed the announcement squarely in the context of Claude Code's commercial momentum.

Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: AI Ethics Meets Defense Contracting

The conference's most politically charged thread ran through Anthropic's ongoing legal dispute with the DOD over AI ethics and weapons usage. The dispute centers on the ethical guardrails Anthropic has built into Claude and the extent to which those guardrails are compatible with defense applications.

The dispute sits at an uncomfortable intersection for an AI company that has built its brand on safety-first development. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including CEO Dario Amodei, with an explicit focus on reducing the risks of powerful AI systems.

The tension also arrived at a moment when international governance frameworks are still being assembled. The United Nations launched its first global AI impact study this year, emphasizing human-centric decision-making as a guiding standard for national and institutional AI policy.

At HumanX, the job displacement question that has shadowed every major AI conference for the past two years surfaced again without resolution. Panels drew no consensus on the scale or timeline of AI-driven workforce disruption, and the absence of agreement was itself a recurring observation among attendees.

The conference, which drew more than 6,500 executives, founders, and investors to San Francisco, closed with warnings about AI's double-edged impact on labor markets still echoing from multiple sessions.

The NYSE's involvement in the event added a dimension that earlier AI conferences lacked. By partnering with the exchange for market coverage, HumanX signaled that the financial community now treats enterprise AI adoption as a capital markets story.

The conference, by the account of multiple attendees and observers, reflected a broader shift in enterprise AI preference toward tools that combine coding capability with safety architecture.

Claude vs ChatGPT: Anthropic Gains Ground at HumanX 2026 Conference