Microsoft said Anthropic’s AI tools aren’t going anywhere on its platforms despite the Pentagon blacklisting the startup.
The Pentagon on Thursday formally told Anthropic that “the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the designation effectively bars companies with defense contracts from doing business with Anthropic.
Anthropic has said it plans to challenge the decision in court.
The designation follows a dispute between the AI startup and the Pentagon over how its Claude models could be used. Anthropic has said it will not allow its technology to be deployed for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.
A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider on Thursday that the company’s “lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers.”
Claude will still be available to customers through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry, except for the Department of War, the spokesperson said in a statement.
“We can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defense related projects,” it added.
Microsoft has deepened its ties with Anthropic in recent months. In November, the companies said that Anthropic would spend $30 billion on Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, while Microsoft agreed to invest up to $5 billion in the startup.
Microsoft also said in September that it was integrating Anthropic’s models into Microsoft 365 Copilot alongside systems from OpenAI.
The Anthropic-Pentagon saga
In a statement published on Thursday evening, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company is in talks with the Defense Department even as it is preparing for court.
“I would like to reiterate that we had been having productive conversations with the Department of War over the last several days, both about ways we could serve the Department that adhere to our two narrow exceptions, and ways for us to ensure a smooth transition if that is not possible,” Amodei wrote.
However, Emil Michael, a Department of War official, said in a post on X following Amodei’s statement that negotiations are off the table.
“I want to end all speculation: there is no active @DeptofWar negotiation with @AnthropicAI,” Michael wrote.
Amodei also offered an apology in his statement after The Information reported that he had privately blasted the White House in a memo to staff after talks with the Pentagon fell apart.
In the memo, Amodei wrote that the administration disliked his company because he had not offered “dictator-style praise to Trump.”
“Anthropic has much more in common with the Department of War than we have differences,” Amodei said on Thursday.
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