Chamath Palihapitiya says Anthropic’s standoff with the Pentagon could reshape the competitive balance among frontier AI labs.
In a new post on X, the billionaire venture capitalist says the Claude creator may have shot itself in the foot after refusing to accept the Defense Department’s terms.
“In a Democracy, it’s absolutely ok to define who can use the things you make and how. But it’s also absolutely ok for the Government to lose trust in you… and find an alternative. It’s also absolutely ok for you to nuke your own company in the process.”
Palihapitiya says Anthropic may have given other AI labs an opening they can exploit, noting that a model provider that can change its Terms of Service (ToS) is a risk that many enterprise customers will not take.
“The timing of this is not good for Anthropic and could be a potential boon to every other model that is exceeding expectations in their upcoming version (Grok, OpenAI, Gemini). More generally, I don’t see how this isn’t a slippery slope. What if a model maker updates their ToS that would block a use case that is legal but subjective? Agreeable in some states but not in others? What about in different countries with different governance or religions? It’s a huge can of worms.
How can a government or company rely on a model that could have an ever-changing definition of what’s allowed without taking on major business/governance risk?”
He says companies may ultimately decide on a model based on perceived stability.
“My hunch is that the company that embraces the ‘no holds barred’ ToS will win because it’s the least risky to adopt with respect to long-term risk of getting rug-pulled.”
On Friday, President Trump banned the use of Anthropic models in federal agencies, accusing the AI start-up of strong-arming the Department of War for not complying with its Terms of Service.
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