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Anthropic President Daniela Amodei questioned whether rival OpenAI’s decision to strike a deal with the Pentagon after her company refused to budge on military AI restrictions was a “really principled stand” or an “opportunistic moment,” according to an exclusive interview excerpt obtained by The Post.
Amodei made the pointed remarks during a joint interview with her brother, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, conducted by biographer Walter Isaacson for his podcast “The Builders.”
The interview is scheduled to air Tuesday.
“Was this a really principled stand that another technology company took based on their own ethics, or was this an opportunistic moment?” Daniela asked when Isaacson pressed the siblings about OpenAI stepping in after Anthropic’s bitter showdown with the Trump administration.
The comments marked a fresh jab at OpenAI amid an escalating rivalry between two of Silicon Valley’s biggest artificial intelligence companies.
“Our view is, look, we can’t control any other companies, and the only thing that we can do is take a principled stand on the areas that felt ethically correct to us,” Daniela said.
She acknowledged that other companies could reasonably disagree with Anthropic’s restrictions, including whether they should have been stricter or more permissive.
The remarks come as Anthropic prepares for a blockbuster initial public offering, filing paperwork Monday to list its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “ANT,” according to Wired.
The Claude chatbot maker disclosed revenue of more than $16 billion and a net loss of $80.7 million in the first half of 2026, compared with a $13 billion loss during the same period last year, the outlet reported.
Its prospectus also flagged the company’s bruising confrontation with the Trump administration as a business risk, warning that ongoing litigation could undermine sales to government agencies and federal contractors.
The dispute erupted in February when Anthropic refused to abandon restrictions on using its AI models for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous lethal weapons.
Pentagon officials insisted that defense contractors must permit their technology to be deployed for “all lawful uses,” arguing that private companies shouldn’t have the power to dictate military operations.
President Trump subsequently ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s products, while the Pentagon designated the company a supply-chain risk.
OpenAI later reached its own agreement with the Pentagon, permitting broad lawful uses of its technology while retaining safeguards governing surveillance and human control of weapons systems.
The company has maintained that its Pentagon agreement includes explicit restrictions barring the use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance, directing autonomous weapons systems and making high-stakes automated decisions.
The bad blood between the two AI giants dates to 2021, when Dario and Daniela left OpenAI and founded Anthropic amid disagreements over safety, corporate governance and the company’s increasingly commercial direction.
The feud turned especially nasty during the Pentagon showdown in March, when Dario reportedly blasted OpenAI’s account of its military deal as “straight up lies” and “safety theater” in a leaked internal message. He later apologized for the tone of his remarks but stood by Anthropic’s position.
Anthropic challenged the administration’s actions in federal court, winning a favorable ruling in California in August before a separate federal appeals court in Washington upheld a Pentagon exclusion the following month.
The company sought a rehearing of the latter decision earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Dario defended Anthropic’s refusal to permit fully autonomous weapons, warning Isaacson that artificial intelligence could pose a fundamental threat to democracy even if the technology became reliable enough to operate without human supervision.
The Anthropic boss envisioned a future in which one person could command an army of a million AI-powered robots or drones, without the checks provided by human soldiers.
Unlike AI models, soldiers can refuse orders that violate the Constitution or seem “morally abhorrent,” he told Isaacson.
AI models, he argued, don’t provide the same protection.
The prospect of “one person having their finger on a button that controls a million robots or a million drones” is “kind of fundamentally undermining to democracy,” Dario warned.
The Post has sought comment from OpenAI and the Pentagon.