White House Crafts Plan to Bring Anthropic Back Into Government Fold

The White House is working on a way to allow federal agencies to use new artificial intelligence models from Anthropic, sidestepping the supply chain risk designation it placed on the AI startup, Axios reported Wednesday (April 29), citing unnamed sources.

The administration is drafting an execution action that could reverse the Office of Management and Budget’s directive that limits the use of Anthropic products in the government, according to the report.

The White House told Axios, per the report, that it works with frontier AI labs and other organizations to benefit the economy and the country.

“However, any policy announcement will come directly from the President and anything else is pure speculation,” the White House said, according to the report.

Currently, since the White House imposed restrictions on the use of Anthropic products, government agencies can use the company’s models while a legal battle between Anthropic and the Pentagon continues, according to the report. However, cooperation between the government and the company is complicated, per the report.

The White House told federal agencies in late February to stop using Anthropic’s AI products, marking a sharp escalation in a dispute that started inside the Defense Department but expanded to touch the broader government.

President Donald Trump said the federal government would no longer work with Anthropic and that agencies using Anthropic’s Claude models would get a six-month phaseout period.

The decision came just ahead of a Pentagon deadline for Anthropic to agree that the military can use the company’s models in “all lawful use cases,” a concession the company refused. Anthropic wanted contract language that would prohibit use of its models for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance.

Soon after the White House announced this decision, Anthropic said it was planning legal action to challenge the government’s action in court.

On April 17, it was reported that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was meeting with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in the West Wing to resolve the dispute.

By that time, Anthropic’s Mythos model was causing widespread concern about cybersecurity. Anthropic had been briefing government officials about Mythos and was in talks to give government agencies early access to the model.