February 23 (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Dario Amodei, chief executive of artificial intelligence company Anthropic, to the Pentagon on Tuesday in what is expected to be tough negotiations over the military use of Anthropic’s Claude artificial intelligence tool, Axios reported on Monday, citing sources.
Reuters exclusively reported this month that the Pentagon is pushing major artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, to make their artificial intelligence tools available on classified networks without many of the standards the companies impose on users.
Also this month, Axios reported that the Pentagon has been considering severing ties with Anthropic over its insistence on retaining restrictions on how the U.S. military can use its models, which include Claude AI.
Defense Department officials said the Pentagon’s negotiations with Anthropic were on the verge of collapse, according to Monday’s report.
A senior Defense Department official reportedly told the newspaper that Anthropic knew it was not an “awareness meeting.”
An Anthropic spokesperson said “we are having a productive conversation in good faith,” Axios reported.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. The Pentagon, White House and Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
(Reporting by Angela Christie in Bengaluru; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Hugh Lawson)
