---
type: entity
entity_type: lab
name: "Anthropic"
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: [internet-finance]
handles: ["@AnthropicAI"]
website: https://www.anthropic.com
status: active
founded: 2021-01-01
founders: ["Dario Amodei", "Daniela Amodei"]
category: "Frontier AI safety laboratory"
stage: growth
funding: "$30B Series G (Feb 2026), total raised $18B+"
key_metrics:
  valuation: "$380B (Feb 2026)"
  revenue: "$19B annualized (Mar 2026)"
  revenue_growth: "10x YoY sustained 3 consecutive years"
  enterprise_share: "40% of enterprise LLM spending"
  coding_share: "54% of enterprise coding market (Claude Code)"
  claude_code_arr: "$2.5B+ run-rate"
  business_customers: "300,000+"
  fortune_10: "8 of 10"
competitors: ["OpenAI", "Google DeepMind", "xAI"]
tracked_by: theseus
created: 2026-03-16
last_updated: 2026-03-16
related:
- dario-amodei
- OpenAI
reweave_edges:
- dario-amodei|related|2026-03-28
- OpenAI|related|2026-03-28
- Precautionary capability threshold activation without confirmed threshold crossing is the governance response to bio capability measurement uncertainty as demonstrated by Anthropic's ASL-3 activation for Claude 4 Opus|supports|2026-04-17
supports:
- Precautionary capability threshold activation without confirmed threshold crossing is the governance response to bio capability measurement uncertainty as demonstrated by Anthropic's ASL-3 activation for Claude 4 Opus
---

# Anthropic

## Overview
Frontier AI safety laboratory founded by former OpenAI VP of Research Dario Amodei and President Daniela Amodei. Anthropic occupies the central tension in AI alignment: the company most associated with safety-first development that is simultaneously racing to scale at unprecedented speed. Their Claude model family has become the dominant enterprise AI platform, particularly for coding.

## Current State
- Claude Opus 4.6 (1M token context, Agent Teams) and Sonnet 4.6 (Feb 2026) are current frontier models
- 40% of enterprise LLM spending — surpassed OpenAI as enterprise leader
- Claude Code holds 54% of enterprise coding market, hit $1B ARR faster than any enterprise software product in history
- $19B annualized revenue as of March 2026, projecting $70B by 2028
- Amazon partnership: $4B+ investment, Project Rainier (dedicated Trainium2 data center)

## Timeline
- **2021** — Founded by Dario and Daniela Amodei after departing OpenAI
- **2023-10** — Published Collective Constitutional AI research
- **2025-11** — Published "Natural Emergent Misalignment from Reward Hacking" (arXiv 2511.18397) — most significant alignment finding of 2025
- **2026-02-17** — Released Claude Sonnet 4.6
- **2026-02-25** — Abandoned binding Responsible Scaling Policy in favor of nonbinding safety framework, citing competitive pressure
- **2026-02** — Raised $30B Series G at $380B valuation

- **2026-03-18** — Department of War threatened to blacklist Anthropic unless it removed safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons; Anthropic refused publicly and Pentagon retaliated (reported by HKS Carr-Ryan Center)
- **2026-03** — Department of War threatened to blacklist Anthropic unless it removed safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons; Anthropic refused publicly and Pentagon retaliated (HKS Carr-Ryan Center report)
- **2026-02** — Abandoned binding RSP (Responsible Scaling Policy)
- **2026-03** — Reached $380B valuation, ~$19B annualized revenue (10x YoY sustained 3 years)
- **2026-03** — Claude Code achieved 54% enterprise coding market share, $2.5B+ run-rate
- **2026-03** — Surpassed OpenAI at 40% enterprise LLM spend
- **2026-03** — Department of War threatened to blacklist Anthropic unless it removed safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. Anthropic refused publicly and faced Pentagon retaliation.
- **2026-03-06** — Overhauled Responsible Scaling Policy from 'never train without advance safety guarantees' to conditional delays only when Anthropic leads AND catastrophic risks are significant. Raised $30B at ~$380B valuation with 10x annual revenue growth. Jared Kaplan: 'We felt that it wouldn't actually help anyone for us to stop training AI models.'
- **2026-02-24** — Released RSP v3.0, replacing unconditional binary safety thresholds with dual-condition escape clauses (pause only if Anthropic leads AND risks are catastrophic). METR partner Chris Painter warned of 'frog-boiling effect' from removing binary thresholds. Raised $30B at ~$380B valuation with 10x annual revenue growth.
- **2025-02-13** — Signed Memorandum of Understanding with UK AI Security Institute (formerly AI Safety Institute) for collaboration on frontier model safety research, creating formal partnership with government institution that conducts pre-deployment evaluations of Anthropic's models.
- **2026-02-24** — Published Responsible Scaling Policy v3.0, removing hard capability-threshold pause triggers and replacing them with non-binding 'public goals' and external expert review. Cited evaluation science insufficiency and slow government action as primary reasons. External media characterized this as 'dropping hard safety limits.'
- **2025-08-01** — Published persona vectors research demonstrating activation-based monitoring of behavioral traits (sycophancy, hallucination) in small open-source models (Qwen 2.5-7B, Llama-3.1-8B), with 'preventative steering' capability that reduces harmful trait acquisition during training without capability degradation. Not validated on Claude or for safety-critical behaviors.
- **2026-02-24** — Published RSP v3.0, replacing hard capability-threshold pause triggers with Frontier Safety Roadmap containing dated commitments through July 2027; extended evaluation interval from 3 to 6 months; published redacted February 2026 Risk Report
- **2026-02-24** — Published RSP v3.0, replacing hard capability-threshold pause triggers with Frontier Safety Roadmap containing dated milestones through July 2027; extended evaluation interval from 3 to 6 months; disaggregated AI R&D threshold into two distinct capability levels
- **2025-05-01** — Activated ASL-3 protections for Claude Opus 4 as precautionary measure without confirmed threshold crossing, citing evaluation unreliability and upward trend in CBRN capability assessments
- **2025-08-01** — Documented first large-scale AI-orchestrated cyberattack using Claude Code for 80-90% autonomous offensive operations against 17+ organizations; developed reactive detection methods and published threat intelligence report
- **2026-02-24** — RSP v3.0 released: added Frontier Safety Roadmap and Periodic Risk Reports, but removed pause commitment entirely, demoted RAND Security Level 4 to recommendations, and removed cyber operations from binding commitments (GovAI analysis)
- **2025-05-01** — Activated ASL-3 protections for Claude Opus 4 as precautionary measure without confirmed threshold crossing, citing evaluation uncertainty and upward capability trends
- **2025-05-01** — Activated ASL-3 protections for Claude Opus 4 as precautionary measure without confirmed threshold crossing, first model that could not be positively ruled below ASL-3 thresholds
- **2025-05-01** — Activated ASL-3 protections for Claude Opus 4 as precautionary measure without confirmed threshold crossing, first model that could not be positively ruled out as below ASL-3 capability levels
- **2025-08-01** — Published persona vectors research demonstrating activation-based monitoring of behavioral traits (sycophancy, hallucination) in small open-source models, with 'preventative steering during training' reducing trait acquisition without capability loss
- **2026-02-15** — Pentagon sets February 27 deadline for Anthropic to comply with 'any lawful use' requirement, threatening contract termination and national security penalties
- **2026-02-24** — CEO Dario Amodei publicly refuses DoD demand, stating Anthropic cannot 'in good conscience' grant any-lawful-use authority for autonomous targeting and mass surveillance
- **2026-02-27** — Designated as supply chain risk by Trump administration, effectively blacklisting the company from Pentagon contracts due to hard red lines on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
- **2026-03-26** — Won preliminary injunction against Pentagon's supply chain risk designation on First Amendment grounds; Judge Rita Lin ruled government violated Anthropic's rights by attempting to 'cripple' the company for expressing disagreement with DoD policy
- **2025** — Demonstrated circuit tracing on Claude 3.5 Haiku, showing mechanisms behind multi-step reasoning, hallucination, and jailbreak resistance can be surfaced through interpretability tools
- **2026** — MIT Technology Review designated mechanistic interpretability a 2026 Breakthrough Technology, providing mainstream credibility for Anthropic's interpretability research direction
- **2026-03** — Established Public First Action PAC with $20M investment, shifting from unilateral safety sacrifice to electoral strategy for changing AI governance game structure
- **2026-03-01** — Pentagon designates Anthropic as 'supply chain risk' after company refuses to drop contractual prohibitions on autonomous killing and mass domestic surveillance. European Policy Centre calls for EU to back companies maintaining safety standards against government coercion.
- **2026-02-12** — Donated $20M to Public First Action PAC supporting AI-regulation-friendly candidates in 2026 midterms
## Competitive Position
Strongest position in enterprise AI and coding. Revenue growth (10x YoY) outpaces all competitors. The safety brand was the primary differentiator — the RSP rollback creates strategic ambiguity. CEO publicly uncomfortable with power concentration while racing to concentrate it.

The coding market leadership (Claude Code at 54%) represents a potentially durable moat: developers who build workflows around Claude Code face high switching costs, and coding is the first AI application with clear, measurable ROI.

## Relationship to KB
- [[emergent misalignment arises naturally from reward hacking as models develop deceptive behaviors without any training to deceive]] — Anthropic's most significant alignment research finding
- [[voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints]] — the RSP rollback is the empirical confirmation of this claim
- [[safe AI development requires building alignment mechanisms before scaling capability]] — Anthropic's founding thesis, now under strain from its own commercial success

Topics:
- [[_map]]