By Nick Robins-Early
Publication Date: 2026-03-09 11:00:00
UUntil recently, Anthropic was one of the quieter names in the artificial intelligence boom. Despite being valued at about $350 billion, it rarely attracted the eye-catching headlines or public backlash associated with Sam Altman’s OpenAI or Elon Musk’s xAI. Its CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei was a fixture in the industry but hardly a household name outside of Silicon Valley, and its chatbot Claude lagged behind ChatGPT in popularity.
That perception has changed as Anthropic has become the central player in a high-profile dispute with the Defense Department over the company’s refusal to use Claude for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human intervention. Amid tense negotiations, the AI company rejected a deadline set by the Pentagon for a deal last week, leading Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to accuse Anthropic of “arrogance and betrayal” toward its home country and demand that all companies working with the U.S. government…