Google announced its intention to persist in providing Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology to clients, with the exception of defense-related projects, just one day following a comparable declaration from Microsoft to its customers. The recent announcements from two of the three predominant cloud infrastructure providers come in the wake of the Defense Department’s formal identification of Anthropic as a supply chain risk. “We understand that the Determination does not preclude us from collaborating with Anthropic on non-defense related projects, and their products remain accessible through our platforms, such as Google Cloud,” a Google spokesperson stated on Friday.
Amazon, the dominant player in the public cloud sector, announced on Friday its intention to persist in providing Anthropic’s AI technology to its cloud clientele, with the exception of projects related to the Department of Defense. Anthropic’s Claude models can be accessed through Google Cloud utilizing the Vertex AI platform. The search giant is a notable financial supporter of Anthropic and, in January 2025, committed to an additional $1 billion investment, augmenting its prior $2 billion stake. Anthropic utilizes Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure for the training of its models and has recently broadened the partnership by securing access to as many as 1 million of Google’s custom tensor processing units.
Following Anthropic’s refusal to comply with the Department of Defense’s requested terms of use last week, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to cease utilizing the company’s technology. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated that the collaboration with Anthropic would be phased out over a period of six months. It has confirmed that Anthropic models were utilized by the U.S. in its most recent offensive against Iran. Several defense technology firms have instructed their employees to cease utilizing Anthropic’s Claude models and to transition to alternatives, including those offered by competitor OpenAI.
Microsoft emerged as the inaugural significant collaborator to affirm its continued partnership with Anthropic following the Pentagon’s interventions. Microsoft stated late Thursday, “Our lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers — other than the Department of War.” On Thursday, Dario Amodei stated that the company has “no choice” but to contest the supply chain risk designation through legal means.