Tech giants say Anthropic remains available outside defense projects

Google said it will continue offering Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tools to customers, but not for defense-related projects. The decision came a day after Microsoft made a similar announcement.

The announcement follows a Department of Defense ruling that labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk. 

Despite the designation, Google said the ruling does not block non-defense work. As a result, Anthropic’s tools will remain available on Google Cloud through its Vertex AI platform.

Amazon also confirmed it will continue providing Anthropic’s AI models to cloud customers, excluding Pentagon projects.

Google remains a major investor in Anthropic. In January 2025, it added $1 billion to its earlier $2 billion investment. Anthropic also trains its AI models on Google Cloud infrastructure, using access to as many as one million custom tensor processing units. 

The company plans to challenge the Defense Department’s designation in court.

Claude app usage surges
Meanwhile, downloads of the Claude AI chatbot have surged after Anthropic refused to allow its technology to support mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons.

Data from Appfigures shows that Claude recorded about 149,000 daily US downloads on March 2, surpassing ChatGPT's 124,000. 

According to Similarweb, Claude reached 11.3 million daily active users, up 183% since early 2026. Despite the growth, ChatGPT still leads with about 250.5 million daily mobile users.