Right now, Anthropic is facing a double fight – one against OpenAI, its biggest rival, and another against President Donald Trump’s administration, which has taken direct aim at the company’s policies.
The San Francisco startup, founded by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei in 2020 after they split from OpenAI, has built its entire identity on making AI safer. But that stance has now landed it in political crossfire, drawing attacks from David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar.
Sacks has accused Anthropic of playing politics instead of innovation. After Jack Clark, the company’s policy chief, published an essay titled “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear,” Sacks fired back online.
“Anthropic is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering,” he wrote on X. He claimed the company was pushing “the Left’s vision of AI regulation” and trying to control how the technology is governed in the United States.
OpenAI aligns with Trump while Anthropic fights regulation
OpenAI has become one of Trump’s closest tech partners. On January 21, just a day after Trump’s second inauguration, the White House announced Stargate, a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank.
The plan involves billions of dollars for U.S. AI infrastructure and marks a deep partnership between government and industry. Backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, OpenAI now holds a valuation near $500 billion, dwarfing Anthropic’s still massive $183 billion.
While OpenAI dominates the public side of AI with ChatGPT and Sora, Anthropic has carved its niche in enterprise with its Claude models. But the companies could not be more different in their regulations.
OpenAI has lobbied for lighter federal rules, while Anthropic has been one of the most outspoken opponents of Trump’s plan to block state-level AI oversight.
The clash intensified over a Trump-backed proposal inside the “Big Beautiful Bill”, which sought to ban states from introducing their own AI regulations for ten years. The plan was later dropped after heavy pushback from Anthropic and others.
Instead, the company threw its support behind California’s SB 53, a bill requiring AI transparency and safety disclosures. In a blog post on September 8, the company wrote, “SB 53’s transparency requirements will have an important impact on frontier AI safety.
Without it, labs with increasingly powerful models could face growing incentives to dial back their own safety and disclosure programs in order to compete.”
Sacks and Rabois step up political pressure
Sacks has denied trying to take down Anthropic, saying he only wants the U.S. to win the AI race against China. “The U.S. is currently in an AI race, and our chief global competition is China,” Sacks said at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. “They’re the only other country that has the talent, the resources, and the technology expertise to basically beat us in AI.”
When Bloomberg linked his comments to federal scrutiny of Anthropic, Sacks shot back. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said on X. “Just a couple of months ago, the White House approved Anthropic’s Claude app to be offered to all branches of government through the GSA App Store.”
Sacks also accused Anthropic of painting itself as a political victim. “It has been Anthropic’s government affairs and media strategy to position itself consistently as a foe of the Trump administration,” he said. “But don’t whine to the media that you’re being ‘targeted’ when all we’ve done is articulate a policy disagreement.”
He cited several examples, including Dario comparing Trump to a “feudal warlord” during the 2024 election and endorsing Kamala Harris for president. Anthropic ran multiple op-eds pushing back against the administration’s AI moratorium and chip export strategy, while hiring several former Biden-era officials to manage its policy team.
Sacks said Clark’s essay contributes to the “fear-mongering” that is harming startups. Clark had written:
“As these AI systems get smarter, they develop more complicated goals. When these goals aren’t aligned with human preferences, they behave strangely. Another reason for my fear is that I can see a path to these systems starting to design their successors, albeit in an early form.” Sacks replied that this type of rhetoric is “principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.”
Anthropic maintains several federal contracts, including a $200 million deal with the Department of Defense and ongoing access to government agencies through the General Services Administration. It also launched a national security advisory council to align with U.S. interests and even offers its Claude model to government users for just $1 per year.
Adding to the heat, tech investor Keith Rabois, whose husband serves in the Trump administration, joined the criticism. “If Anthropic actually believed their rhetoric about safety, they can always shut down the company,” Rabois wrote on X. “And lobby then.”
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