How Anthropic may benefit from its fight with Trump

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, Hadas Gold, CNN

New York (CNN) — Anthropic’s high-stakes gamble to take on the Trump administration could give it an advantage in the AI race.

The AI company says it’s at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts from the Trump administration’s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. But fighting that decision in court appears to be earning it other benefits: strengthened recruitment, public brand recognition and employee morale.

Anthropic could join a handful of companies that have gained positive exposure after directly opposing the administration.

“I think it’s a calculated political risk,” said Alison Taylor, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business who studies corporate strategy and has written about Anthropic. “There’s a decent chance they walk out of this looking better than anybody else.”

Anthropic has long positioned itself as an AI company that prioritizes safety and ethics in contrast to its competitors. The Trump administration’s designation that Anthropic was a supply-chain risk — the first such designation for an American company — stems from Anthropic’s refusal to back down over those safety principles, including red lines over AI’s use in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

In the heated AI recruitment battle, where massive pay packages are handed out to top talent, Anthropic’s outspoken position could provide an edge. The company already had one of the highest employee retention rates in the space (80%) and boasted an offer-acceptance rate of 88% for tech roles, Anthropic’s head of global recruiting said in July.

“I’ve heard Anthropic talked about more than I’ve ever heard,” said Kanjun Qiu, an investor and CEO of the Nvidia-backed AI research startup Imbue. The company was previously “always niche.”

Several high-profile employees at OpenAI have recently joined Anthropic, including Zoe Hitzig, a former OpenAI researcher who penned a New York Times op-ed about quitting over the company’s decision to start showing ads in ChatGPT.

The broader tech industry is also rallying behind Anthropic. Google and OpenAI engineers and researchers — including Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean — filed a court brief in support of Anthropic’s lawsuit against the administration. As did Microsoft, one of the federal government’s largest contractors. Microsoft also has a $5 billion investment in Anthropic.

“Anthropic’s ‘perception stock’ within the tech community went up, not down,” said a former xAI engineer, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “The Pentagon issue made Anthropic look like heroes.”

Anthropic is seeing more interest from customers, too.

In the week after the Pentagon canceled its contract with Anthropic and kicked its product out of all federal agencies, Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude shot up to the top of both the Apple and Android app stores. The app was well outside the top 10 just a month earlier. Claude’s daily active users have also increased by more than 140% since January, according to data from SimilarWeb.

Anthropic is also getting a financial boost. “Anthropic now wins about 70% of head-to-head matchups against OpenAI among businesses purchasing AI services for the first time,” according to corporate financial technology company Ramp.

OpenAI declined to comment. Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

‘We want to work with you’

Anthropic’s stand against Trump is rare at a time when the administration has used the power of the federal government to compel US businesses, universities and other institutions to bend to its priorities.

Trump has threatened to punish companies that oppose his agenda.

Last year, he said he would hit Mattel and Apple with higher duties if they raised prices to offset the impact of his tariffs. The administration has also threatened to block mergers of companies with diversity policies.

Business leaders, who were once vocal about government interference in the private sector, have largely remained silent. Few companies and CEOs have challenged Trump since he returned to the White House out of fear of retaliation. Most have changed their policies on issues like the environment, diversity and content moderation to fall in line with the administration.

There have been notable holdouts, with some tangible benefits.

Trump last year issued executive orders against elite law firms to restrict the work they can do with the federal government. Many firms cut deals with the administration to stave off penalties, and dropped some pro bono legal work they were doing on asylum claims, transgender rights and reproductive issues.

But four firms — Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale — sued the administration. They have been successful in court so far and have seen bumps in recruitment, both from candidates in law school as well as attorneys from rival firms that settled with the administration.

“We got a surge of candidates from firms that made deals with Trump saying, ‘We want to work with you,’” Lindsey Higgins, the director of legal recruitment at WilmerHale, said on a panel last month. WilmerHale did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

John Keker — a partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters, which signed on to an amicus curie brief in support of Perkins Coie — said that many recruits have been drawn to firms that did not cave. The firms’ decision to fight the executive orders improved their reputation in the industry.

“The firms that litigated and won and will carry that victory on,” he said. “There are business benefits to having integrity.”

Trump has also sought to bring down DEI programs in the public and private sectors, prompting dozens of companies like Target, Amazon and McDonald’s to scale back their diversity policies in response.

But Costco stood firm on its DEI policies. In January 2025, the company’s board of directors unanimously recommended that shareholders vote against an anti-DEI proposal from a conservative group. More than 98% of Costco shareholders did.

“A diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings,” Costco told investors.

The vote galvanized support for Costco from civil rights leaders and customers last year. Supporters contrasted Costco’s move with Target, which had backtracked on DEI.

In the months following, Costco’s sales and foot traffic grew. They fell at Target, which is still trying to recover the customers it alienated.

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