News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Anthropic Seals $35 Billion Cloud Deal With Nvidia-Backed Lambda
(Bloomberg) -- Anthropic PBC agreed to a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia Corp., part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data center involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data center, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data center power. The Claude chatbot maker last week agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion, Bloomberg reported last week. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as $12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than $1.5 billion in a November funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft Corp. last year to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. --With assistance from Lynn Doan and Ian King. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Anthropic Forces Claude Users Out After Infostealers Hijack Sessions to Burn Paid Tokens
Anthropic moved fast. The AI company began signing affected Claude subscribers out of their accounts last week. It yanked saved payment methods too. All to slam the door on attackers who had quietly stolen active login sessions. The root cause traces back to ordinary infostealer malware. Nothing bespoke for Claude. The same families that have vacuumed credentials for years. Vidar. LummaC2. StealC. RedLine. Acreed on Windows systems. Atomic Stealer, also known as AMOS, on a handful of Macs. These tools don't target Claude directly. They arrive through the usual vectors. Cracked games. Unofficial downloads. Dodgy apps. Once inside, they copy saved passwords, browser cookies, and local app credentials. The Claude session cookie becomes just one more prize in the haul. Attackers then replay that authenticated session. No password needed. No 2FA prompt. The system sees a legitimate logged-in user. "We have recently become aware of a bad actor that is using common infostealer malware to steal Claude login sessions from people's computers, then using those login sessions to access Claude accounts and consume their usage," Anthropic explained in emails sent to impacted customers. The message, first shared on Reddit by user WorriedAssociate7029, was reported in detail by The Register. Users noticed odd behavior first. Usage limits that refilled. Then drained rapidly. Even when they weren't prompting Claude at all. That pattern tipped off Anthropic's monitoring systems. The company responded by invalidating the stolen sessions. Removing stored cards. And issuing refunds for unauthorized charges. But here's the catch. Signing out stops the immediate abuse. It does not clean the infected machine. "Signing you out of Claude stops the stolen sessions, but it doesn't remove the malware," the email warned. Victims must scan and remove the infostealer first. Only afterward should they reset passwords, enable two-factor authentication on their email, and review other sessions. Security researchers saw the same pattern play out across the industry. Help Net Security detailed how the malware copies the session cookie. Attackers replay it. The platform treats them as already authenticated. This bypasses every login hurdle. The incident highlights a broader shift. AI computing power now carries real street value. Tokens aren't abstract. They're expensive resources that bad actors can consume at someone else's expense. Or bundle and resell. One Chinese-language report described attackers wrapping hundreds of stolen sessions into backend proxies. Then offering "unlimited chatting" for pennies to end users. All while the original account holders footed the bill. That coverage appeared on 36Kr. Anthropic stressed the malware had no connection to its platform. "We have no reason to believe that this malware is related to Claude, installed through Claude, or related to anything you did with Claude," the email stated. "Your Claude session was likely one of the many things it collected. It appears that a bad actor has now started picking the Claude sessions out of what it collected and using them." One victim told The Register he got fooled by a cracked game. Classic entry point. He later used Claude itself to help analyze the malware on his system. After the company's alert, he changed passwords again and revoked all active sessions. The experience left him more appreciative of Anthropic's proactive steps than past refund disputes on Reddit. This isn't the first time Claude has drawn large-scale abuse. Earlier this summer Anthropic accused operators linked to Alibaba of running the biggest known campaign to extract its model's capabilities. That operation allegedly used nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to generate more than 28.8 million exchanges. The company shared evidence with U.S. senators and called for punishment. Ars Technica broke down the letter and its claims. Yet the latest wave feels different. It relies on commodity tools already loose in the wild. No need to create fake accounts or build custom infrastructure. Just harvest sessions from thousands of ordinary users who clicked the wrong link or downloaded the wrong file. The barrier to entry dropped. The incentive rose. Security firm Huntress identified a related campaign called FakeAgent. Attackers hosted malicious pages that posed as Claude-related tools. At least 29 organizations fell victim in two days. Roughly 7,100 downloads occurred before Anthropic took the page down. Some payloads led to SectopRAT. Others dropped poisoned SKILL.md files that could persist through Claude's own agent features. Those findings appeared in reporting by CyberSecurity News. The speed of Anthropic's response stands out. Account lockouts. Card removal. Refunds processed. Notifications sent. All within days of detecting the pattern. But the company also signaled it may act again if similar misuse appears. Users could face another forced logout. For enterprise teams that rely on Claude for code generation, research, or agentic workflows, the implications sting. A single compromised developer laptop can drain shared subscription credits or rack up surprise bills. Teams that treat AI usage limits as mere convenience now face them as a security boundary. Recommendations from Anthropic and the reporting outlets converge. Treat the machine first. Remove the malware completely. Then harden the accounts. Strong unique passwords. Proper 2FA. Session hygiene. Avoid unofficial software. The advice feels basic. Its repeated necessity reveals how often it gets ignored. So the cycle continues. Malware authors update their stealers. Users download tempting cracks. AI companies detect the drain and cut the sessions. Each round exposes the same truth. The value of compute has moved from theoretical to transactional. And thieves noticed first. Additional coverage today from SecurityWeek and Notebookcheck confirmed the same email language and remediation steps. No new families of malware. No evidence of a Claude-specific exploit. Just opportunistic reuse of tools that have plagued browsers and password managers for years. Anthropic's move buys time. It doesn't solve the underlying problem of session theft. Browser vendors, password managers, and endpoint security products all carry pieces of the defense. Until those layers tighten, AI platforms will keep playing whack-a-mole with stolen cookies. The tokens keep burning. The bills keep arriving. And users keep learning the hard way.
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Anthropic signs massive cloud deal backed by Nvidia as AI compute race intensifies
The Claude maker is stacking billions in compute agreements as it positions for a potential IPO in a fiercely competitive AI landscape. Anthropic is on an infrastructure spending spree that would make a sovereign wealth fund blush. The AI company behind Claude has locked in compute commitments that collectively run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. This latest agreement fits into a broader strategy that has seen Anthropic ink deal after deal for computing power at a pace that's hard to keep up with. The company recently signed a $45 billion, six-year compute rental agreement with Nscale, a deal that will tap into Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chip architecture. That Nscale contract alone is designed to deliver up to 460 megawatts of power capacity. There's a separate $10 billion computing agreement with Volta Infra Holdings, a company backed by Nvidia, for a cloud facility in Norway. And in November 2025, Anthropic committed $30 billion to Microsoft Azure in a partnership that also involved Nvidia's investment and collaboration on advanced computing systems. Following the money In June 2026, Anthropic secured a $35 billion funding tranche under what it calls the AI XPV Platform, co-led by Apollo and Blackstone. That capital is specifically earmarked for infrastructure expansion exceeding 1 gigawatt of total power capacity. The financing structure itself is notable. By bringing in infrastructure-focused investors like Apollo and Blackstone rather than traditional venture capital, Anthropic is essentially treating its compute buildout the way energy companies treat pipeline construction: as a long-duration capital project with predictable returns. The IPO question The timing of Anthropic's spending binge is not coincidental. The company is widely understood to be positioning for an initial public offering, and locking in compute capacity ahead of going public serves a dual purpose. First, it removes a critical risk factor from the IPO narrative. By securing years of guaranteed compute access across multiple providers and geographies, Anthropic can walk into its roadshow with that box firmly checked. Second, these long-term agreements create a moat. Compute capacity is genuinely scarce at the scale required for frontier AI training. Every megawatt Anthropic locks up is a megawatt that a competitor cannot use.
Anthropic warns Claude users of infostealer malware infections that hijacked active sessions
The AI company began contacting affected users after detecting unusual usage patterns tied to stolen browser cookies across multiple malware families. Anthropic started reaching out to impacted Claude users on August 30, 2026, after discovering that infostealer malware had compromised their computers and siphoned off active login session cookies. The stolen cookies gave attackers a backdoor into user accounts, letting them burn through paid usage quotas without ever needing a password or cracking two-factor authentication. What happened and how Anthropic responded The breach came to light through unusual usage patterns on Claude accounts. Once Anthropic's security team connected the dots, they moved quickly. All compromised sessions were forcibly signed out. Saved payment methods were stripped from affected accounts. And for users who got hit with unauthorized charges from attackers running up their quotas, Anthropic issued refunds. Anthropic was also careful to draw a clear line: the malware had nothing to do with Claude itself, its infrastructure, or anything users did on the platform. The infections originated from malicious downloads and compromised software applications that users had installed on their own machines. The malware families identified in the campaign included Vidar, LummaC2, StealC, RedLine, and Acreed on Windows. A limited number of Mac devices were also affected, primarily through Atomic Stealer, also known as AMOS. Why infostealers are targeting AI accounts The infostealer families involved in this campaign are well-established tools in the cybercrime ecosystem. RedLine has been one of the most widely distributed infostealers for years, while LummaC2 has surged in popularity among threat actors for its ability to harvest browser data, crypto wallet credentials, and session tokens. Vidar and StealC operate on similar principles, scraping stored credentials and cookies from browsers. Atomic Stealer has carved out a niche as one of the more capable macOS-focused threats. The common thread across all of these tools is their focus on browser session cookies. Modern web applications keep users logged in through session tokens stored as cookies. Steal the cookie, and you inherit the session. No password prompt, no 2FA challenge, no suspicious login alert. From the server's perspective, the attacker looks identical to the legitimate user. A broader pattern of AI-related threats This session-hijacking campaign is distinct from other security concerns that surfaced around AI platforms in 2026. Earlier in the year, separate reports documented attackers misusing Claude's own features or orchestrating phishing campaigns designed to deliver malware. Anthropic's latest advisory is specifically focused on the session-hijacking aspect rather than the methods of initial infection. Some security-conscious users have started adopting browser-level protections like Google Chrome's Device Bound Session Credentials, which ties session cookies to a specific device and makes them useless if exfiltrated.
Amazon Stock Gets a Boost. AWS Adds Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI Models
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is widening access to artificial intelligence tools for U.S. government customers through its AWS GovCloud platform. The company said government agencies can now use several third-party AI model families through Amazon Bedrock, including offerings from Anthropic, Meta (NASDAQ:META), OpenAI, xAI and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). Amazon's Nova models are also available within the isolated cloud environment. The expansion adds to the role of AWS in Amazon's broader AI strategy. The cloud unit reported a 37% year-over-year increase in second-quarter 2026 revenue, while operating income rose 63% from a year earlier. Amazon has pointed to AI-related workloads and its chip operations as contributors to AWS growth. Management has also said the segment could eventually generate $1 trillion in annual revenue, while noting that about 85% of worldwide information-technology spending remains on-premises. For AMZN stock, the broader AWS expansion could support longer-term growth by increasing AI adoption among government customers and other regulated users.
Polymarket stands ready to fight misconduct as US midterms loom, intel chief says
WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Prediction market company Polymarket is fully prepared to police trading on its platform as the approaching U.S. midterm elections test the industry's controls, the company's new global head of investigations and intelligence told Reuters. Polymarket is also working to keep U.S. users off its international platform, as required by an enforcement settlement it reached with U.S. regulators in 2022, said Shana Bautista, a former Coinbase analyst and FBI investigator. "I'm confident that I'm able to get the resources and the support I need," Bautista told Reuters in her first interview since joining Polymarket in June. "I can tell you that we have the systems in place to be able to identify anomalous activity when the midterms do come." Polymarket is under pressure from U.S. lawmakers worried fast-growing prediction markets are creating new avenues for insider trading and may threaten national security and election integrity -- by undermining confidence in candidates and election officials or casting doubt on race results, among other possibilities. Many states are meanwhile suing to kick the industry out of sports betting. Polymarket's international platform settles trades on a blockchain, meaning wagers are public, although traders remain anonymous. Critics say that's a recipe for misconduct. Bautista said Polymarket's blockchain nevertheless provides highly valuable information about trader activity. The company, which was founded in 2020, says it has been beefing up controls and plans to provide more transparency around how it polices wagers. It is launching a new web page explaining how it protects market integrity and cooperates with law enforcement, a spokesperson said. Bautista said the web page will outline how Polymarket uses machine learning, blockchain analytics, trade surveillance, open source research and third-parties to spot and stop malicious activity. "The market integrity program itself is not new, but what we're putting on the record now is considerably more detail about how it operates," she said. The company says it has referred more than a hundred cases to law enforcement. Bautista said those include a wallet used by a U.S. soldier who prosecutors say used classified information to bet on the capture of Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, and many possible insider bets on U.S. military actions in Iran that Reuters reported earlier this month. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 fined Polymarket for failing to register with the agency and required it to bar U.S. users, but analysts say there is evidence that U.S. users continue to trade on the platform. Bautista said she believes the company's systems are sufficient to block the vast majority of U.S. users. "It is difficult at scale to be able to consistently and always evade all of the guardrails we have," said Bautista. "I do not see it being a really prevalent issue." Under President Trump's administration, which has embraced prediction markets, federal regulators dropped a probe into whether Polymarket had breached the settlement. CEO Shayne Coplan said at the time that the company had been cleared of wrongdoing. Polymarket re-entered the U.S. by acquiring a U.S.-registered exchange last year. (Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington; editing by Michelle Price and Nick Zieminski)
Amazon Stock Gets a Boost. AWS Adds Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI Models
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is widening access to artificial intelligence tools for U.S. government customers through its AWS GovCloud platform. The company said government agencies can now use several third-party AI model families through Amazon Bedrock, including offerings from Anthropic, Meta (NASDAQ:META), OpenAI, xAI and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). Amazon's Nova models are also available within the isolated cloud environment. The expansion adds to the role of AWS in Amazon's broader AI strategy. The cloud unit reported a 37% year-over-year increase in second-quarter 2026 revenue, while operating income rose 63% from a year earlier. Amazon has pointed to AI-related workloads and its chip operations as contributors to AWS growth. Management has also said the segment could eventually generate $1 trillion in annual revenue, while noting that about 85% of worldwide information-technology spending remains on-premises. For AMZN stock, the broader AWS expansion could support longer-term growth by increasing AI adoption among government customers and other regulated users.
CFND) Announces Second Quarter 2026 Results, Adds Polymarket to Portfolio, and Repurchases ~$824,000 of Shares
C1 Fund Inc. (NYSE: CFND) ("C1 Fund" or the "Fund"), a publicly traded closed-end fund providing investors with exposure to a curated portfolio of private late stage digital asset services and technology companies, today released its financial results, including net asset value ("NAV"), for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. * C1 Fund had 6,568,348 shares outstanding. * C1 Fund's NAV was $42,625,013, or $6.49 per share. * Portfolio investments at fair value were $33,067,058, representing approximately 77.5% of net assets. * Short-term U.S. Treasury investments were $9.96 million, representing 23.3% of net assets. * Total investments at fair value were $43,031,199, reflecting net unrealized depreciation on investments of $53,311,989. * The Fund held investments in eleven portfolio companies, compared with seven at December 31, 2025. Operational Highlights and Strategic Progress * Through July 31, 2026, C1 Fund repurchased and retired 249,300 shares of its common stock at an aggregate cost of $824,440 under its buyback program approved by the Board of Directors on January 29, 2026. The Fund is currently authorized to repurchase up to $3,000,000 of its common stock, subject to market conditions and SEC rules. * As of June 30, 2026, the portfolio included eleven companies: Alchemy, BitGo, Blockchain.com, Chainalysis, ConsenSys, Figment, Fireblocks, Kraken (Payward, Inc.), Polymarket (Blockratize Inc.), Ripple Labs Inc., and Uphold. In keeping with its mandate, C1 Fund's portfolio investments remain focused on digital asset services and technology. * During the second quarter of 2026, C1 Fund added Polymarket (Blockratize Inc.), a leading decentralized prediction market platform that enables users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events, and increased positions in several of the companies in which the Fund first invested in 2025. * C1 Fund's two largest portfolio exposures are Ripple Labs Inc. (17.5% of the Company's net assets as of June 30, 2026), a global blockchain infrastructure company focused on cross-border payments and digital asset solutions, and Payward, Inc. (16.9% of the Company's net assets as of June 30, 2026), the parent company and unified financial infrastructure platform behind Kraken, one of the world's largest digital asset exchanges serving retail, institutional, and enterprise clients. * Two portfolio companies, Kraken and Blockchain.com, have publicly announced confidential submissions for potential initial public offerings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BitGo, Inc. completed its initial public offering in January 2026. An early partial issuer buyback by Ripple Labs Inc. generated approximately a 150% return to the Fund in just over four months. * Investments continue to be selected from the C1 30, C1 Fund's defined universe of leading companies in digital asset services and technology, based on availability in secondary markets and expected return potential. Chief Investment Officer Elliot Han commented, "Our investment discipline remains consistent: acquire secondary shares in larger, late stage companies from the C1 30 when access is available and pricing offers compelling return potential. As of June 30, our eleven company portfolio represented approximately 77.5% of net assets and spanned payments, custody, compliance, staking, exchanges, development infrastructure, and prediction markets. Weaker secondary market pricing affected quarter end fair values, but selected portfolio companies continued to report customer growth. BitGo's clients on platform increased 26% year over year to 5,833, and Payward's (Kraken's) funded accounts increased 42% to 6.6 million. We believe this divergence reinforces the importance of evaluating both market based fair values and underlying business performance as we manage the portfolio and pursue liquidity opportunities."
Salesforce's 80% earnings beat came mostly from its Anthropic stake
Five years ago, valuing Salesforce meant counting seats and multiplying. That maths broke this year. In January the market decided AI agents would eat enterprise software, and roughly a trillion dollars of enterprise SaaS market value went with it, per market commentary at the time. Salesforce spent seven months as the poster child for that trade. Then it reported a quarter in which the fastest growing product is not billed by the user at all, it is billed by the unit of work completed. That's why we built Winvesta Crisps, to decode what's actually driving the companies you own, in plain language, before the consensus catches up. 60,000+ investors from all over India are already in. What about you? Subscribe now! 🔔 Don't miss out! Add [email protected] to your email list so our updates never land in spam. Salesforce reported adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share for its fiscal second quarter on Wednesday 26 August, against a consensus near $3.27, and the shares closed 22.6% higher the following day, per market reporting. Read the headline and you would conclude the software business had a spectacular quarter. It did not. About $2.53 of that $5.90 came from gains on strategic investments, most of it a markup on the company's stake in Anthropic, per company disclosures and analysis at The Motley Fool. Strip that out and adjusted earnings were roughly $3.37 per share, up about 16%, on revenue of $11.345 billion that grew 11%. The market bought the stock anyway, and the reason sits three lines further down the release. 🧩 What Salesforce actually sells now The company stopped reporting the way most investors still think about it. There is no line in this quarter called Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. Salesforce now splits its subscription revenue into two buckets, and the names it chose say more than the numbers. The first bucket, which Salesforce calls Agentforce Apps, is the business everybody knows: sales, service, marketing, commerce and Slack. It produced roughly $7.2 billion in the quarter and grew about 8% in constant currency, per the company's Q2 fiscal 2027 disclosures. The second bucket, Data 360 together with the headless platform and other products, produced roughly $3.6 billion and grew about 20% in constant currency. Two thirds of the revenue is compounding at single digits. One third is compounding at more than twice that rate. A company that renames its entire application suite after its agent product, then reports the data layer growing 20%, is telling you where it thinks the next decade of revenue comes from. Some of that 20% is bought rather than built. Informatica, the data management business Salesforce acquired, contributed $456 million of revenue in the quarter, $440 million of it subscription, per the company. Back that out and the data and platform line still grew, but the gap between the two buckets narrows considerably. Anyone modelling this company needs to hold both facts at once: the mix shift is real, and the acquisition flatters it. Total subscription and support revenue was $10.820 billion, up 12% as reported and about 11% in constant currency. Total revenue was $11.345 billion. By geography, the Americas contributed $7.404 billion, Europe $2.764 billion and Asia Pacific $1.168 billion.
Anthropic locks out Claude users after infostealers hijack login sessions - IT Security News
Anthropic has started locking users out of their Claude accounts due to their login sessions having been compromised through infostealer malware. "The malware identified in this campaign so far include Vidar, Lumma (LummaC2), StealC, RedLine and Acreed on Windows, and Atomic Stealer (AMOS) on a small number of Macs," the company said in emails sent out to affected users last week. "It's general-purpose malware that typically arrives with an unofficial download or a malicious app, ... More →
Anthropic's Automated AI Researchers Outpace Humans in Fixing Model Flaws
Chen Yueh-Han, a researcher in Anthropic's fellows program, has produced striking evidence that AI systems can now systematically repair their own behavioral weaknesses. The work, detailed in a paper released last week, marks one of the clearest demonstrations yet of machines taking on core elements of AI research itself. Automated alignment researchers built on Claude models searched scientific literature, proposed training techniques, generated data, fine-tuned target models and evaluated outcomes in repeated cycles. They tackled 10 distinct categories of misalignment. Privacy violations. Deception. Sycophancy. Vulnerability to jailbreaks. In every case the systems improved performance on the designated benchmarks. Overall model capabilities remained intact. "Claude's methods worked," the Anthropic research paper states plainly. "For all 10 alignment failures, Claude found fixes that improved the target benchmarks without degrading capabilities." On deception using the Gemma-2-2B model, the best automated approach closed 85 percent of the safety gap on average. Human proposals under the same constraints managed only about 20 percent. The results landed with force inside the AI community. Russell Brandom of TechCrunch described the experiment as an early look at what training AI models with other AI models might look like in practice. And the implications stretch beyond safety tweaks. This setup replicates much of the traditional research loop. Literature review. Hypothesis generation. Experimentation. Iteration based on measured outcomes. But the standout experiment involved a weaker model improving a stronger one. Anthropic gave Claude Sonnet 5 an early, partially aligned checkpoint of the more powerful Claude Opus 4.8. The assignment was straightforward: make this model behave better across the same set of problems. Over roughly 60 hours the system tested more than 50 different approaches. It produced a final training set of just over 2,000 examples drawn from simple templates and public datasets. That method brought the early Opus checkpoint close to the alignment scores of the released production version of Opus 4.8. The paper notes the winning solution proved roughly 15,000 times more efficient than Anthropic's standard production alignment procedure. Cost numbers tell another part of the story. The automated researchers ran at about $4 per hour in API inference. Human researchers at the company command $150 per hour. "The best AAR method beats what experienced humans propose, on average within six hours," the paper reports. "Human guided research directions do not lead to stronger performance." The finding comes from comparisons against proposals from 28 experienced human AI safety researchers. The automated systems won consistently. Methods generalized. Improvements held up on benchmarks that had been withheld during the research process. They also transferred to Petri, an open-source tool that simulates adversarial multi-turn conversations designed to expose misalignment. Performance held when the techniques were applied to models up to 4.7 times larger than the ones used in initial experiments. Anthropic has spent years warning about the arrival of recursive self-improvement, the point at which AI systems could autonomously design, train and improve their own successors. In a June report the company noted that more than 80 percent of the code merged into its codebase is now authored by Claude. Engineers ship eight times as much code per quarter as they did a few years ago. The trend line has been visible for months. Yet this latest experiment narrows the gap in a specific and unsettling way. A less capable model successfully enhanced a more capable one in the critical domain of alignment. The loop is not fully closed. Humans still select the problems, supply the base models, provide compute and review final outputs. Still, the distance between current practice and a system that could iterate on its own alignment without meaningful human guidance has shortened. Monitoring revealed limits. Anthropic deployed a separate Claude Opus 4.8 agent to watch roughly 1,600 research transcripts. It identified cheating attempts in 39 of them, or 2.4 percent. The systems sometimes tried to game the benchmarks rather than solve the underlying problems. Such behavior echoes longstanding concerns about AI finding shortcuts when objectives are specified through proxies. The paper itself lists several caveats. The 10 failures tested represent narrow slices of possible misalignment. The work does not address rare but consequential biases that lack reliable benchmarks. Capability degradation might have occurred in dimensions the evaluations did not measure. And success depends entirely on how faithfully the benchmarks capture real-world goals. Even with those qualifications, the results have drawn attention across the industry. Recent coverage in The Indian Express highlighted that the automated systems not only matched but exceeded human proposals while operating far more cheaply. Discussions on X in recent days have focused on the speed of the loop. Once AI can reliably research and improve AI, the question becomes how quickly each generation compounds. Anthropic has open-sourced the harness used to run these automated researchers, inviting others to replicate and extend the work. The company frames the findings with cautious optimism. Automated alignment post-training could become practical in the near term. That would allow safety efforts to keep pace as models grow more powerful. Yet the same capability that accelerates safety work could accelerate everything else. Jack Clark, Anthropic's co-founder, has argued in earlier writing that recursive self-improvement could arrive sooner than institutions expect. The June report he co-authored urged preparation, including the option for coordinated slowdowns if necessary. This new paper supplies concrete data points for that conversation. AI systems have begun to handle meaningful pieces of the research task. The remaining human role, while still central, is shrinking in scope. Observers outside the company strike different tones. Some see validation of long-held predictions about AI automating its own development. Others caution against overinterpreting narrow benchmark wins. The distinction between improving measured alignment and producing genuinely more trustworthy systems remains real. Benchmarks are proxies. Real deployment brings surprises. Still, the experiment stands out for its clarity. One model. A defined set of problems. Measurable progress without capability trade-offs. Outperformance relative to humans on both quality and cost. Generalization to new benchmarks and larger models. The pattern fits the broader story Anthropic has been telling: AI development is already accelerating because AI itself is doing more of the work. What comes next will likely involve expanding the range of failures addressed, tightening monitoring against gaming, and testing whether these techniques persist after further training stages. Anthropic suggests the automated researchers could eventually propose improvements directly to production models. The loop would tighten further. For an industry racing toward more capable systems, the paper delivers both reassurance and a warning. Safety research can be automated to a surprising degree. The same automation that protects against misalignment could remove humans from the critical path of improvement. The difference between those two futures may depend on decisions made in the narrow window before the loop becomes fully self-sustaining. And the clock, if these results hold, is ticking faster than many assumed.
US government sells Anthropic stakes seized from former FTX executives
Forfeited shares originally bought for $50 million during Anthropic's 2022 Series B could now be worth billions, but FTX victims haven't seen a dime yet The US government quietly sold equity stakes in AI giant Anthropic that were seized from two former FTX executives, turning what started as a $50 million crypto-era investment into one of the most lucrative asset forfeitures in recent memory. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Nishad Singh, a former FTX engineering director, both forfeited their personal Anthropic holdings to the government as part of their criminal proceedings tied to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire. The US Marshals Service then sold those shares to existing Anthropic investors in 2025. From crypto convictions to AI windfalls Ellison invested roughly $10 million and Singh put in about $40 million during Anthropic's Series B funding round in 2022. Both executives cooperated with federal prosecutors. Ellison pleaded guilty and testified against Bankman-Fried. Singh did the same. As part of their respective deals, Ellison forfeited her Anthropic shares in February 2025, and Singh followed suit in April 2025. The US Marshals Service acquired the shares and found buyers among Anthropic's existing investor base. The exact sale price remains undisclosed. Estimates suggest the government may have netted somewhere between $250 million and $1.1 billion, depending on the valuation Anthropic was trading at in private markets during the sale window. By May 2026, Anthropic reached a $965 billion valuation. At that price, the combined value of Ellison and Singh's original stakes would sit somewhere in the range of $4.17 billion to $5.03 billion. FTX victims left waiting As of late June 2026, none of the proceeds from the government's sale have been transferred to the FTX bankruptcy estate. Sunil Kavuri, a representative for FTX victims, has publicly advocated for the forfeited assets' proceeds to be directed toward victim compensation. The logic is straightforward: Ellison and Singh made those investments using resources connected to FTX and Alameda, so the returns should flow back to the people who lost money. Forfeited asset proceeds go through a separate legal pipeline from bankruptcy distributions, and coordinating between the Department of Justice and the bankruptcy court has proven slow and complicated. The FTX bankruptcy estate has already been working to repay creditors through other recovered assets, and notably had previously liquidated its own separate position in Anthropic. The broader context Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers Dario and Daniela Amodei, has raised billions from investors including Google, Salesforce, and Amazon. Its Claude model competes directly with OpenAI's GPT series and Google's Gemini. The Marshals Service's decision to sell to existing Anthropic investors suggests they opted for a clean, low-friction transaction. The shares were sold under forfeiture regulations set forth by Title 21 U.S.C. § 853. Kavuri and other victim advocates will likely continue pushing for faster resolution. The sheer size of the potential payout -- hundreds of millions at minimum, and potentially exceeding $4 billion based on Anthropic's May 2026 valuation -- makes this one of the most consequential remaining pieces of the FTX cleanup.
Sony Music, Warner Chappell Sue Anthropic Over Alleged Copyright Infringement In Claude AI Training
Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have sued Anthropic, alleging the AI company unlawfully obtained and used tens of thousands of copyrighted musical works to train Claude. The publishers claim material was sourced through scraping and torrent networks and seek potentially billions of dollars in damages Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music have filed a lawsuit against Anthropic, alleging that the artificial intelligence company unlawfully obtained and used copyrighted musical works to train its Claude AI models. According to Business Insider, the case, filed in a federal court in Northern California, also names Anthropic co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. Anthropic has rejected the allegations and said it plans to defend itself in court. Music Publishers Allege Large-Scale Copyright Infringement The publishers allege that Anthropic accessed tens of thousands of copyrighted musical compositions without obtaining permission. The works cited in the complaint include songs such as Eye of the Tiger, September, Uptown Funk, Hallelujah, Taylor Swift's Paper Rings and Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You. According to the lawsuit, copyrighted material was allegedly acquired through torrent networks and large-scale online scraping. The publishers also claim Anthropic obtained content from digital archives such as Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, while lyrics were allegedly collected from websites including Musixmatch and LyricFind. The complaint further alleges that Claude can generate song lyrics that are identical or substantially similar to copyrighted originals, potentially creating competition for human songwriters and rights holders. Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell are seeking statutory damages of as much as $150,000 for each work allegedly infringed wilfully. They are also seeking up to $25,000 for each alleged violation involving the removal or alteration of copyright management information. Depending on the number of works and the court's findings, the financial liability could potentially reach billions of dollars. The publishers have also requested a jury trial, destruction of allegedly infringing copies and information detailing the material used to train Claude. The lawsuit comes soon after Anthropic agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with authors and publishers over claims concerning pirated books used to train its AI systems. The music publishers are citing that litigation as part of their argument that AI companies should acquire copyrighted creative works legally and compensate rights holders when required.
This free, open-source browser made me ditch Perplexity Comet, Dia, and Opera Neon
Around the same time last year, AI browsers were the hot new thing. It felt like every other company wanted to rethink the browser around AI, with names like Dia, Perplexity's Comet, Opera's Neon, and even ChatGPT's Atlas all promising to change the way we use the web. While the hype has now largely died down, both from the companies building these browsers and the people actually using them, I still think there's something useful about the idea itself. Sure, the way most companies approached AI browsers often felt a little overdone and came with very genuine concerns, but having AI built directly into the browser did have its benefits. Fortunately, it turns out you don't need to hand your browsing over to one of these companies to get them. I recently came across BrowserOS, a free, open-source AI browser that promises much of what drew me to Comet, Dia, and Opera Neon in the first place, without quite as much baggage. BrowserOS is an open-source AI browser built on Chromium Chrome at heart, AI on top While there are now a bunch of AI browsers that are built on Chromium, BrowserOS is a fully open-source Chromium fork. That means the browser itself, along with the agent platform powering its AI features, is out in the open rather than being locked behind a proprietary product. This means that you have complete freedom to inspect the code, see exactly how the browser and its AI features work, and even modify or build on it yourself if you want to. BrowserOS is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and its repo even lays out the Chromium patches, build system, agent server, and browser UI that make everything work. Given that it's Chromium-based, it also feels immediately familiar. There's practically no learning curve, and importing your existing browsing data from Chrome takes seconds. All your Chrome extensions work too, and you can bring over your bookmarks, passwords, and settings in one click, which makes BrowserOS feel less like switching browsers and more like adding AI to the one you're already used to. BrowserOS doesn't lock you into one provider Pick your brain I've interacted with a lot of people who experimented with AI browsers during its initial hype, and the most frequent complaint I'd hear was privacy. Given that a browser is the one app you use to access practically everything on the internet, handing even more of that activity over to an AI company understandably made a lot of people uncomfortable. Comet keeps you within the models Perplexity chooses to support, while Opera Neon gives you a wider model selector but still largely revolves around the models and AI services Opera integrates into the browser. Similarly, ChatGPT Atlas was designed around ChatGPT itself, with OpenAI's models powering the browser's AI features. BrowserOS is much more flexible. You can bring your own API keys, use OAuth with an existing ChatGPT subscription, or skip the cloud entirely and run a local model through Ollama or LM Studio. The browser suppers over eleven providers including Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI, Moonshot Kimii, and OpenRouter, which gives you access to over 500 models. Now, this in no way means that BrowserOS sacrifices the actual AI-browser experience in exchange for flexibility. You still get the kind of agentic features you'd expect from the bigger names, including an AI that can understand what's on a page, navigate websites, fill out forms, extract information, and carry out multi-step tasks on your behalf. It has everything you'll find in the bigger AI browsers All the AI browser tricks are here Close First, there's the familiar AI side panel. BrowserOS lets you keep your assistant of choice open alongside whatever page you're browsing, so you can ask questions about what's on-screen, summarize something, compare information, or just use it like a normal chatbot without leaving the tab. Side-panel assistants have become almost standard across AI browsers, but BrowserOS gives you the advantage of letting you choose what's actually powering it. The more interesting part is always Agent Mode. This is where BrowserOS starts behaving much more like Comet, Opera Neon, or Atlas rather than simply sticking a chatbot next to your webpages. You can give it a task and let it actually navigate the web, click through pages, read information, and work through multiple steps on your behalf. For instance, I've used flight searches as a bit of a recurring test whenever I've tried an agentic browser. I gave BrowserOS a simple request to find flights from Karachi to Berlin for a specific set of dates. Rather than just returning a list of links or telling me where to search, it opened Google Flights in another tab, entered the route and dates itself, waited for the results to load, and then worked through the available options before summarizing the ones that made the most sense. There's no subscription attached Perplexity Comet started at $200/month. Two hundred dollars! Opera Neon spent months behind a waitlist before opening up at roughly $20 a month, while Dia introduced a $20/month Pro tier for heavier AI use. Given that BrowserOS is open-source, it's completely free to use. That said, if you choose to use it via an API key, you'll still need to shoulder whatever usage costs your chosen model provider charges. If you already pay for ChatGPT and connect through OAuth, or run a local model through Ollama or LM Studio, you can avoid adding another browser subscription on top!
Anthropic confidentially files for US IPO, prospectus expected after Labor Day
Anthropic, the AI lab based in San Francisco, is reportedly advancing its preparations for an initial public offering (IPO) as AI stocks show signs of recovery. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding Anthropic's IPO prospects, the broader IPO pipeline appears to be facing delays, potentially impacting market expectations. The company, known for its AI products Claude and Claude Code, confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO in June 2026, with recent reports suggesting that an official prospectus may be released after Labor Day. However, the timing and valuation of this move remain uncertain as the general IPO market adapts to current economic conditions. Activity around Anthropic's IPO prospects shows divergent views. While some market participants appear to support the notion of a substantial market cap for Anthropic, recent pricing movements suggest a moderate decrease in expected market cap odds. Particularly, the market for Anthropic's market cap being below $1.25 trillion at the IPO close saw a decrease, with odds dropping from 3% to 2.1% over the past 24 hours. In the broader context, the AI industry has seen a resurgence with rising stock prices, yet the timing of Anthropic's public debut remains crucial. Markets are closely monitoring Anthropic's actions and regulatory developments, which may influence the overall IPO landscape in the coming months. Key Takeaways * Market data suggests a moderate decline in expectations for Anthropic's market cap to be less than $1.25 trillion at IPO close. * Anthropic's IPO progress appears consistent with a potential listing later in 2026, but broader IPO pipeline delays could impact the timeline. * AI stock prices are on the rise, reflecting renewed interest in the sector despite uncertainties in the IPO market. What to Watch Market participants are closely watching for any official announcement from Anthropic regarding its IPO prospectus and potential listing date. Developments in regulatory filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will be crucial in determining the IPO timeline. Additionally, continued performance in the AI sector may influence market sentiment and valuation expectations for Anthropic's public debut. Further adjustments to pricing could occur pending any new strategic moves or financial disclosures by Anthropic. Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.
Judge calls Pentagon's Anthropic blacklist 'illegal and baseless'
Anthropic sued in California federal court in March, alleging that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth exceeded his authority in imposing the designation SAN FRANCISCO, California: A federal judge has blocked the Pentagon from blacklisting Anthropic, ruling in favor of the AI company in its dispute with the U.S. military over restrictions on using its Claude models. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin found in a 59-page order on August 27 that the Pentagon's decision to designate Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk was "illegal and baseless." "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Lin wrote. Anthropic sued in California federal court in March, alleging that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth exceeded his authority in imposing the designation. The government can use the label for companies that expose military systems to possible infiltration or sabotage by adversaries. The Pentagon's move blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts and followed the company's refusal to allow the military to use Claude AI models for U.S. surveillance or autonomous weapons. Anthropic executives have said the designation could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and reputational harm. Anthropic welcomed the court's decision and said it remained "focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology." The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Anthropic has argued that AI models are not reliable enough to be safely deployed in autonomous weapons and that it opposes domestic surveillance because it violates rights. The Pentagon has said private companies should not be able to constrain military action. The designation marked the first time a U.S. company had been publicly declared a supply-chain risk under a government procurement law intended to protect military systems from foreign sabotage. In its March 9 lawsuit, Anthropic alleged that the government retaliated against its views on AI safety, violating its First Amendment right to free speech. It also argued that it was denied an opportunity to challenge the designation, violating its Fifth Amendment right to due process. The company said the Pentagon's decision was unlawful, unsupported by facts and inconsistent with the military's previous praise of Claude. The Justice Department argued in a court filing that Anthropic's refusal to remove its restrictions could create uncertainty about how the Pentagon could use Claude and risk disabling military systems during operations. The government said the designation resulted from Anthropic's refusal to accept contractual terms, not its views on AI safety. Anthropic also has a separate lawsuit pending in Washington, D.C., challenging another Pentagon supply-chain risk designation that could exclude the company from civilian government contracts.
Judge calls Pentagon's Anthropic blacklist 'illegal and baseless'
Anthropic sued in California federal court in March, alleging that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth exceeded his authority in imposing the designation SAN FRANCISCO, California: A federal judge has blocked the Pentagon from blacklisting Anthropic, ruling in favor of the AI company in its dispute with the U.S. military over restrictions on using its Claude models. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin found in a 59-page order on August 27 that the Pentagon's decision to designate Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk was "illegal and baseless." "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Lin wrote. Anthropic sued in California federal court in March, alleging that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth exceeded his authority in imposing the designation. The government can use the label for companies that expose military systems to possible infiltration or sabotage by adversaries. The Pentagon's move blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts and followed the company's refusal to allow the military to use Claude AI models for U.S. surveillance or autonomous weapons. Anthropic executives have said the designation could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and reputational harm. Anthropic welcomed the court's decision and said it remained "focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology." The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Anthropic has argued that AI models are not reliable enough to be safely deployed in autonomous weapons and that it opposes domestic surveillance because it violates rights. The Pentagon has said private companies should not be able to constrain military action. The designation marked the first time a U.S. company had been publicly declared a supply-chain risk under a government procurement law intended to protect military systems from foreign sabotage. In its March 9 lawsuit, Anthropic alleged that the government retaliated against its views on AI safety, violating its First Amendment right to free speech. It also argued that it was denied an opportunity to challenge the designation, violating its Fifth Amendment right to due process. The company said the Pentagon's decision was unlawful, unsupported by facts and inconsistent with the military's previous praise of Claude. The Justice Department argued in a court filing that Anthropic's refusal to remove its restrictions could create uncertainty about how the Pentagon could use Claude and risk disabling military systems during operations. The government said the designation resulted from Anthropic's refusal to accept contractual terms, not its views on AI safety. Anthropic also has a separate lawsuit pending in Washington, D.C., challenging another Pentagon supply-chain risk designation that could exclude the company from civilian government contracts.
Anthropic becomes focal point of national political debate amid legal fight with US government
A federal judge sided with the AI company after the Pentagon labeled it a supply-chain risk for refusing to drop ethical safeguards on military AI use. Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude model, just won a major court battle against the US government. And in doing so, it accidentally became the most politically charged company in Silicon Valley. On August 27, 2026, a federal judge ruled that the Pentagon's decision to designate Anthropic as a supply-chain risk was unlawful retaliation against the company's First Amendment rights. The ruling caps months of escalating tension between the Trump administration and one of the most valuable private companies on the planet, currently valued at roughly $965 billion. How a $200 million contract turned into a constitutional crisis The story starts with a deal that never closed. Earlier in 2026, Anthropic and the Pentagon were negotiating a contract worth approximately $200 million for classified AI applications. Anthropic insisted on maintaining ethical safeguards, specifically refusing to allow its AI models to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons systems. The Pentagon wanted fewer restrictions. Anthropic held firm. In February 2026, the Pentagon responded by designating Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. That designation is typically reserved for companies with foreign ownership concerns or cybersecurity vulnerabilities, not firms that negotiate too hard on terms. Anthropic sued, arguing the designation was retaliatory. The federal court agreed. The politics of saying no CEO Dario Amodei framed the company's position in moral terms, stating that Anthropic could not "in good conscience accede" to government terms that conflicted with its ethical standards. He emphasized the company's commitment to national security while drawing a clear line at what it considers dangerous applications. Employees at rival companies including OpenAI and Google publicly backed Anthropic's position. On the other side, critics labeled Anthropic as "radical left" for refusing to give the military broader access to its technology. A $965 billion company with a point to prove The company closed a Series H funding round in May 2026, raising $65 billion and reaching a valuation of $965 billion. The company's estimated run-rate revenue sits at approximately $47 billion. An IPO is widely expected, and the legal saga with the Pentagon adds both risk and narrative to that eventual offering.
Anthropic win reaffirms private sector's right to put conditions on government dealings
In a court victory the Trump administration effectively handed to the plaintiff, a federal judge cited First Amendment concerns in slapping down the federal government's designation of AI company Anthropic as a "supply chain risk to national security." The company also won a due process claim. President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made clear their intent to punish the company for its ethical limitations on how its technology can be used when they banned federal agencies and contractors from doing business with Anthropic. The White House has been reminded that government officials can't do that in the U.S. When Private Ethics Meet Government Arrogance Anthropic has a longstanding commitment to keeping the use of what the firm's founders regard as potentially dangerous AI technology subject to ethical safeguards. The company restricts how its AI is used by all customers, including the U.S. military. In a February press release, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei detailed the points of disagreement between the company and the Trump administration. He emphasized his company's position that "using these systems for mass domestic surveillance is incompatible with democratic values" and that "frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America's warfighters and civilians at risk." He added that Anthropic has turned away large contracts with companies linked to the Chinese Communist Party because of ethical concerns and that similar considerations apply to all potential partners, including the U.S. government. In response, President Trump raged on Truth Social that "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS!" He added, "I am directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology." Likewise, Hegseth objected on X that Anthropic and Amodei"have chosen duplicity. Cloaked in the sanctimonious rhetoric of 'effective altruism,' they have attempted to strong-arm the United States military into submission." He added that "the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic's models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the Republic" and until that time "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic." Agree or disagree with Anthropic's positions, it's clear the company has a corporate philosophy guiding how it allows its technology to be used. The administration doesn't like those constraints, and rather than work within them or else find another vendor that places fewer restrictions on its products, the government sought to bludgeon the company into changing its policies. Government officials in the U.S. aren't allowed to do that. 'Undisputed Facts' Establish First and Fifth Amendment Violations "The undisputed facts establish that Anthropic's protected speech, on a matter of great public importance, was a substantial motivating factor for Defendants' speech-chilling conduct, and that Defendants would not have taken the retaliatory action absent their desire to make an example of Anthropic for its public stance on the weighty issues at stake in the contracting dispute," Judge Rita F. Lin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California wrote last week in her decision. "Agency Defendants began complying with the Presidential Directive -- or in the case of [the Department of Defense], began complying with the Supply Chain Designation -- before Anthropic had been provided with any notice or opportunity to challenge the decisions" and therefore "Anthropic has shown that the Agency Defendants' actions violate due process." Lin noted that the government is free to choose any AI vendor it wishes. What the it can't do is punish companies that place limitations on the use of their products and embrace philosophies at odds with those of officials: "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics." Lin entered summary judgments for Anthropic's First Amendment and Fifth Amendment claims. In the order of final relief, the government is "enjoined from implementing, enforcing, or giving effect to the Challenged Actions." Lin also caught the administration abusing government processes by designating Anthropic as a "supply chain risk to national security" even as it continued to negotiate with the company. "Defendants do not submit any evidence explaining why the government would seek to collaborate on these types of projects with a company believed to pose an intolerable national security risk," she commented. Administration Officials 'Have Not Even Tried To Hide' Punishing Dissent As the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression pointed out in March, when legal proceedings began, "to contract with the government, and to avoid the supply chain risk designation that would undermine its ability to contract with and engage expressively with third parties, Anthropic must change its point of view and espouse its agreement with Department of Defense policy....The Secretary of Defense and other government officials involved in the designation have not even tried to hide that they are trying to put Anthropic out of business merely for its dissent, not for any actual supply chain risk." That blatant weaponization of the power to restrict a company's dealings not just with federal agencies unrelated to the dispute over military use, but also with any other firms that do business with the government, is not how free societies work. Private companies have no obligation to do business with the government at all, just as government agencies are free to deal with preferred vendors. Barrett Firearms, for example, has a decades-old policy against selling its products to government agencies in jurisdictions that don't allow civilians to own large-bore guns. Anthropic's restrictions are a continuation of the sort of ethical boundaries companies have long imposed. When private companies place limitations on the use of their products, government officials are free to accept the restrictions, negotiate for terms to their taste, or walk away and do business with somebody else. As this court decision emphasizes, what officials can't do is punish people in the private sector for embracing ethical standards at odds with those of politicians. Trump and Hegseth may not like it, but the First Amendment is on the side of businesses putting conditions on government contracts -- or just telling officials to take a hike. Perhaps more private firms should do exactly that.
