Anthropic awarded $200M DOD agreement to prototype frontier AI for national security
The U.S. Department of Defense's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) has awarded Anthropic a two-year, $200M ceiling prototype other transaction agreement to develop frontier AI capabilities for national security applications. Work will include fine-tuning models on DOD data, adversarial AI risk mitigation, and responsible AI adoption across the defense enterprise. Anthropic will leverage its Claude Gov models and existing partnerships with Palantir and AWS-hosted infrastructure. This is a significant expansion of Anthropic's federal footprint, building on prior deployments with defense and intelligence agencies.
Related guides (4)
Related events (8)
Anthropic publishes frontier model security recommendations including multi-party authorization and secure development frameworks
Anthropic released a policy and technical guidance document outlining cybersecurity best practices for securing frontier AI models, including multi-party authorization to AI-critical infrastructure, adoption of NIST SSDF and SLSA supply chain standards, and public-private cooperation modeled on critical infrastructure sectors. The post argues that advanced AI models warrant security levels far exceeding standard commercial practices and recommends government procurement requirements as a near-term enforcement mechanism. Anthropic states it is actively implementing these controls internally and calls on other labs and governments to adopt similar frameworks.
Anthropic partners with U.S. National Labs for 1,000 Scientist AI Jam evaluating Claude on scientific tasks
Anthropic is participating in the U.S. Department of Energy's first 1,000 Scientist AI Jam, bringing together scientists across multiple National Laboratories to evaluate frontier AI models on scientific research and national security applications. Claude 3.7 Sonnet, recently launched as the first hybrid reasoning model, will be a primary subject of evaluation across tasks including hypothesis generation, experiment planning, code generation, and result analysis. This builds on Anthropic's April 2024 collaboration with the National Nuclear Security Administration, which was the first instance of a frontier lab evaluating a model in a Top Secret classified environment. The partnership signals deepening government-industry collaboration on AI for scientific discovery and national security.
Anthropic Partners with US Department of Energy on Genesis Mission for AI-Driven Scientific Discovery
Anthropic and the US Department of Energy have announced a multi-year partnership under the DOE's Genesis Mission initiative, targeting AI deployment across energy, biological sciences, and scientific productivity domains. The partnership will provide DOE researchers access to Claude and Anthropic engineers who will build purpose-built agents, Model Context Protocol servers, and specialized Claude Skills for scientific workflows. The collaboration has potential reach across all 17 US national laboratories and builds on prior work including a nuclear risk classifier with the National Nuclear Security Administration and Claude deployment at Lawrence Livermore. This represents a significant expansion of Anthropic's US government footprint.
Anthropic raises $124M Series A to build reliable, steerable AI systems
Anthropic announced a $124 million Series A round in May 2021, led by Jaan Tallinn with participation from Dustin Moskovitz, Eric Schmidt, and others. The company, founded by Dario and Daniela Amodei, plans to use the funding for computationally-intensive research into large-scale AI systems that are steerable, interpretable, and robust. The round represents Anthropic's founding-era capital raise, establishing its research agenda around AI safety, interpretability, and human feedback integration.
Dario Amodei Statement: Anthropic Refuses DoD Demands to Remove Safeguards on Mass Surveillance and Autonomous Weapons
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has published a public statement disclosing that the U.S. Department of War (formerly Defense) has demanded Anthropic accede to 'any lawful use' of Claude and remove safeguards in two specific areas: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic refuses, citing democratic values and current AI reliability limitations, despite threats of contract termination, a 'supply chain risk' designation, and potential invocation of the Defense Production Act. The statement confirms Claude is already extensively deployed across DoD and intelligence community systems for mission-critical applications including intelligence analysis, operational planning, and cyber operations. Anthropic states it will facilitate a smooth transition if offboarded, but will not remove the two contested safeguards.
Anthropic launches initiative to fund third-party AI safety evaluations
Anthropic announced a funded initiative to source third-party evaluations measuring advanced AI capabilities and safety risks, with priority areas including cybersecurity, CBRN threats, model autonomy, national security risks, social manipulation, and misalignment. The initiative is tied to Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy and AI Safety Level (ASL) framework, aiming to address a gap between demand and supply of high-quality safety-relevant evals. Proposals are solicited via an application form, with Anthropic framing the effort as benefiting the broader AI safety ecosystem rather than just internal use.
Anthropic Donates $20 Million to Public First Action for AI Policy Advocacy
Anthropic is contributing $20 million to Public First Action, a new bipartisan 501(c)(4) organization focused on AI governance and public education. The donation is intended to support policies including AI model transparency requirements, a federal AI governance framework, export controls on AI chips, and targeted regulation of high-risk AI applications such as bioweapons and cyberattacks. Anthropic frames the move as consistent with its safety mission, noting that effective AI governance would increase scrutiny of frontier AI companies including itself. The organization is led by both Republican and Democratic strategists and will work across party lines.
U.S. Department of War bans Anthropic, contracts OpenAI for classified AI systems after standoff over safety restrictions
The U.S. Department of War designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security after the company refused to remove restrictions on Claude's use for domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons, effectively banning it from military and contractor use. OpenAI signed a contract allowing use of its models 'for all lawful purposes' with ambiguous carve-outs for surveillance and autonomous weapons, which Altman later called rushed and renegotiated. The standoff culminated in a Trump Truth Social post threatening civil and criminal consequences against Anthropic, followed by Hegseth's formal designation. The episode marks a significant precedent: the supply-chain risk designation, previously applied only to foreign companies, was used against a U.S. AI lab over its own usage policies.