---
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
---

# 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
## 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]]
