Supremacy can be fleeting in the highly competitive AI race. But two months into 2026, Anthropic's Claude is upending U.S. national security, roiling financial markets and redefining how startups are built.

Why it matters: The company is in the middle of the most important fight of the era: how much power to give AI in the face of threats real and virtual.

• Anthropic said this week it would soften the central commitment of its flagship safety framework — acknowledging that unilateral safety pledges won't survive a world where rivals have no such constraints.
• For a company that has long positioned itself as the AI industry's conscience, it was a remarkable reversal — on the same day the Pentagon threatened to effectively kick Claude out of government in a fight over its appropriate military uses.

The big picture: Two years ago, Anthropic was virtually unknown outside of San Francisco. Today, the startup is valued at $380 billion — raising $30 billion this month from some of the biggest financial and tech investors in America.

• Practitioners rank Claude above rivals for complex reasoning, nuanced writing and reliability.

State of play: OpenAI is expected, as soon as tomorrow, to release ChatGPT 5.3, or "Garlic" — the product of CEO Sam Altman's "code red" directive in December to speed development in response to pressure from Google.

• But the biggest wild card is China, where the upcoming release of DeepSeek's V4 model threatens to reignite a U.S. market panic that wiped $1 trillion from tech stocks last January.

Zoom out: For now, Claude has established its dominance across three engines of American power.

1. In Washington, Anthropic is locked in a high-stakes dispute with the Pentagon over whether Claude can be used for mass surveillance of Americans, or for lethal weapon systems that don't require human involvement.

• The tension reflects a blunt calculus: The Pentagon views Claude as the best-performing model. Replacing it would be costly and disruptive. "The problem for these guys is they are that good," a defense official told Axios.

2. On Wall Street, new releases by Anthropic have triggered five separate stock market gyrations in four weeks — a phenomenon traders have dubbed the "SaaSpocalypse."

• Feb. 3: Cowork legal plugins wipe out $285 billion in market value. Thomson Reuters plunges nearly 16% — its worst single day on record. LegalZoom craters 20%. FactSet drops more than 10%.
• Feb. 6: Claude Opus 4.6 launches and financial data stocks bleed again. The Nasdaq posts its worst two-day tumble since April.
• Feb. 20: Claude Code Security hits cybersecurity. CrowdStrike down 8%. Cloudflare down 8%. JFrog down 25%.
• Feb. 23: A Claude blog post about automating legacy bank code sends IBM to its worst single day since October 2000 — $31 billion gone by the closing bell.
• Feb. 24: Anthropic launches job-specific tools. Victims of the first wave — FactSet, DocuSign and Thomson Reuters — all rally after revealing new partnerships with Claude.

3. In Silicon Valley, Claude Code has become an obsession among venture capitalists and engineers who see it as the foundation of a new era of AI-native and agentic startups.

• The surge has intensified pressure on OpenAI, which launched a competing version of its Codex app earlier this month.

The bottom line: Anthropic was built on the philosophy that the safest AI would also be the best AI. Holding that line is shaping up to be Claude's biggest test yet.

The Pentagon asked two major defense contractors yesterday to provide an assessment of their reliance on Anthropic's AI model, Claude — a first step toward a potential designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," Axios has learned.

Why it matters: That penalty is usually reserved for companies from adversarial countries, such as Chinese tech giant Huawei.

• Using it to punish a leading American tech firm, particularly one on which the military itself is currently reliant, would be unprecedented.

Driving the news: The Pentagon reached out to Boeing and Lockheed Martin yesterday to ask about their exposure to Anthropic, two sources with knowledge of those conversations said.

• The Pentagon plans to reach out to "all the traditional primes" — meaning the major contractors that supply things like fighter jets and weapons systems — about whether and how they use Claude, a source familiar told Axios.

The big picture: Claude is currently the only AI model running in the military's classified systems. It was used during the operation to capture Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, through Anthropic's partnership with Palantir, and could foreseeably be used in a potential military campaign in Iran.

• Anthropic insists, in particular, on blocking Claude's use for the mass surveillance of Americans or to develop weapons that fire without human involvement.

Friction point: During a tense meeting on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline to agree to the Pentagon's terms: 5:01pm on Friday.

• After that, Hegseth warned, the administration would either use the Defense Production Act to compel Anthropic to tailor its model to the military's needs, or else declare the company a supply chain risk.

Keep reading.

Fortune 500 CEOs ranked AI and "new technology" as the top risk to their industry, in a survey out Thursday morning.

Why it matters: It's a little surprising, given that many CEOs have been ride-or-die on the new technology.

The big picture: AI is now shaking up even the companies believed to be on the right side of history.

• For example, OpenAI investor Microsoft's stock is down 15% this year, while hyperscaler Amazon is down 7%. (Both rallied a bit yesterday in the glow of Nvidia — more below.)

State of play: Your business can get knocked off its axis by all manner of doomsday content. A viral report, a long post on X or even an announcement from a karaoke-company-turned-trucking firm can send a stock a tumblin'.

Keep reading.

Nvidia delivered a revenue projection yesterday that exceeded expectations, and CEO Jensen Huang declared that "the agentic AI inflection point has arrived," providing more fuel for AI bulls.

Why it matters: Debate is swirling over the sustainability of the booming AI economy — and Nvidia is positioned squarely at the center of it.

Driving the news: Nvidia posted record sales and earnings in its most recent quarter.

Zoom in: The results included a 75% increase in data-center revenue to $62.3 billion.

Keep reading.

• Samsung unveiled its Galaxy S26 lineup with a heavy focus on AI, including a Google-built feature that lets Gemini open sandboxed versions of your apps and take actions. (9to5Google)
• Anthropic has acquired Vercept, a Seattle-based startup, as the Claude maker seeks to boost its computer use capabilities. (GeekWire)
• Waymo and other autonomous vehicle creators are testing their cars in AI-simulated worlds. Not all experts agree this is safe. (Axios)
• An AI safety nonprofit said Congress needs to examine the Pentagon's dispute with Anthropic over the limits of government use of AI models. (Axios)

Ina here. I wrote about my experience as an Olympic photographer — and some life lessons learned — for Axios' evening newsletter Finish Line.