Lutnick says Anthropic now trusted, 'back on the right path'

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he now trusts Anthropic, the AI company that had been at odds with the Donald Trump administration for months.

In an interview with Axios published Wednesday (local time), Lutnick was asked whether he trusted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. "We trust Anthropic," he said. "They did what we asked them to do, and they came back on the right path — so the answer is yes."

Axios described the remarks as a remarkable development in the strained relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration, which had been locked in a bitter dispute over national security and AI safeguards.

Adding to the thaw, Anthropic co-founder Tom Brown attended the G20 Innovation Ministers' Meeting in North Carolina that day, holding a public conversation with Lutnick that signaled a broader rapprochement with the administration.

Brown praised a recent Truth Social post by President Trump about data centers, saying, "I really liked President Trump's post pointing out that data centers are a massive source of prosperity." He added that data centers create large numbers of jobs and generate tax revenue, and that the way they are currently designed "actually puts more power into the grid."

Brown also emphasized Anthropic's support for the administration's campaign pledge to protect electricity ratepayers from having the power costs of AI data centers passed on to ordinary households and consumers.

Axios said the moves reflected a broader industry awareness that aligning with the Trump administration helps advance policy priorities, and that Brown was giving a new turning point to a company that had once turned its back on the White House.

The rift between Anthropic and the Trump administration deepened earlier this year when Anthropic refused a Pentagon demand to fully open its Claude AI model for military use. Anthropic stood firm in its position that its model should not be used for mass surveillance of its own citizens or fully autonomous weapons. In response, the Defense Ministry designated Anthropic a supply chain threat in February and directed federal agencies to stop using its AI technology — a decision a federal court ruled unlawful last month.