Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic, at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026.
Ruhani Kaur | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei will meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Tuesday morning to discuss how the military will use the startup’s artificial intelligence models, according to a senior Department of Defense official.
Negotiations between Anthropic and the DoD have hit a snag in recent weeks as the two organizations have clashed over the terms of use for Anthropic’s technology.
Anthropic wants assurance that its models will not be used for autonomous weapons or to spy on Americans. The DoD has made clear it wants to use Anthropic’s models “for all lawful use cases,” without limitation.
As of February, Anthropic is the only AI company that has deployed its models on the DoD’s classified networks and provided customized models to national security customers. The company was awarded a $200 million contract with the DoD last year.
Axios was first to report the upcoming meeting between Amodei and Hegseth.
The conflict has been the latest hurdle in Anthropic’s increasingly strained relationship with the Trump administration, which has publicly criticized the company in recent months. The meeting between Amodei and Hegseth could help the organizations come to a resolution and establish a path forward.
“Anthropic is committed to using frontier AI in support of U.S. national security,” a spokesperson said Monday, adding that the company is having “productive conversations, in good faith” with the DoD about how to “get these complex issues right.”
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI researchers, and the startup is best known for developing a family of AI models called Claude. The company closed a $30 billion funding round earlier this month, pushing its valuation to $380 billion.
WATCH: OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs make case for companies on global stage
