Anthropic has reportedly re-opened discussions with the U.S. Department of Defense on a potential government contract, Financial Times has reported citing sources familiar with the matter. The development comes after the two entities reached an impasse on a former deal which eventually did not materialize last week.
Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic is leading a new round of negotiations with the Department of Defense. He is looking to ensure that Anthropic is not labelled a “supply chain risk” by the government because of its reluctance to work with the Pentagon.
If Amodei succeeds in finalizing an agreement with the federal agency, it will ensure that defense-related companies do not blacklist its Claude LLM.
Emil Michael, the US undersecretary of defense for research and engineering is leading the ongoing discussions with Anthropic, representing the government.
For now, it remains unclear if these talks would shape into a contract between the Pentagon and Anthropic. More updates on the discussions remain awaited for now.
Revisiting the Anthropic-Pentagon fallout
Last week, Anthropic walked out of what could have been a $200 million contract with the U.S. Department of War.
At the time, Amodei claimed that the federal agency asked for an unrestricted access to Claude’s AI capabilities, which Anthropic was not on board with agreeing to. The AI firm had expressed concerns around the Pentagon deploying advanced AI in warfare, expressing concerns around the automation of weaponry and possibly eliminating human intervention.
The Department of War had denied any such intension, despite which, Anthropic did not sign the proposed contract. Sam Altman’s OpenAI, however, went ahead and materialized the discussions.
Pete Hegseth, the U.S. secretary of war called Anthropic arrogant. President Trump also directed all U.S. federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI technology.
The business-harming reaction from the top U.S. leaders could have nudged Anthropic to re-open negotiations.