• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sends a lot of messages.
• Altman said that he messages "a few hundred" OpenAI employees a day.
• Overall, he said that he's "definitely not a hands-on manager."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a very direct way to get his message across.

In a conversation with Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Altman said that he messages "a few hundred" OpenAI employees a day between texts, Slack, and other media.

"Very quick, like one, two messages, whatever, not done by an agent," Altman said during an appearance at Stripe Sessions. "I actually do it. And the context I get from that sometimes is very helpful in these diffuse ways."

Asked about Altman's habits, ChatGPT said, "That's a lot—but not implausible for someone in his position." Rough napkin math suggests that Altman is sending somewhere around 39,000 messages a year, and that's limited to a five-day workweek. (Forbes reported earlier this year that Altman likes to spend his time at the Napa Valley ranch, which is out of cell service range.)

Altman has said repeatedly that he loathes Slack. He told Collison that it's hard to imagine a world without such instant messaging.

"Like many other people, I hate Slack, but I can't imagine having to still communicate via email or whatever we used to do," he said.

As for his overall management style, Altman said that he's "definitely not a hands-on manager."

"I'm very much of this style that you get great people, kind of give them a very high-level thing to point at and try to let stuff just happen," he said.

Altman said OpenAI is about to enter its third era, after going from a research lab chasing AGI to also developing consumer products.

"Now we have to, in addition to both of those two things, figure out how to build this like mega, mega scale token factory for the world," he said.

This new, massive undertaking will require a different skill set.

"The thing that I didn't really appreciate between the phase one, phase two shift was how much my management style had to change," he said. "Running a research lab and running a product company are two extremely different things. And I suspect this third phase is going to be very different yet again."

Altman said he'll ultimately have to change or surround himself with more people — perhaps, AI could bridge the gap.

"I think it's not going to be like a natural fit for my management style," he said. "So I either have to find someone or a few people great to hire, or I have to figure out how to do things in a different way, or I have to build an AI that can manage this new thing."

• President Donald Trump called for comedian Jimmy Kimmel to be "immediately fired."
• Trump and first lady Melania Trump took issue with a sketch Kimmel aired on Thursday night.
• Kimmel joked at the time that Melania Trump had "the glow of an expectant widow."

President Donald Trump is reigniting his long-simmering feud with Jimmy Kimmel — and his pressure campaign on ABC and parent company Disney to part ways with the late night host.

"Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC. Thank you for your attention to this matter!" Trump wrote in a Truth Social Post on Monday afternoon.

Trump's call puts a potentially fraught issue on Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro's plate after the executive took over for Bob Iger just months ago.

Hours before Trump's post, first lady Melania Trump similarly expressed outrage over Kimmel's Thursday night monologue, in which the comedian gave a faux-White House Correspondents' Dinner speech to lament the decision to not have a comedian deliver a routine during the dinner, as is usually tradition. The correspondents association, an organization for reporters who cover the White House, elected to have a mentalist provide the evening's entertainment instead.

During the sketch, Kimmel said, "And, of course, our first lady Melania is here. Look at Mel — so beautiful, you have the glow of an expectant widow."

"Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country," Melania Trump wrote on X on Monday morning in a rare public statement. "His monologue about my family isn't comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America."

Trump, for his part, wrote that he appreciated that "so many people are incensed by Kimmel's despicable call to violence, and normally would not be responsive to anything that he said but, this is something far beyond the pale."

In his post, the president said that Kimmel, "who is in no way funny as attested to by his terrible Television Ratings, made a statement on his Show that is really shocking."

"He showed a fake video of the First Lady, Melania, and our son, Barron, like they were actually sitting in his studio, listening to him speak, which they weren't, and never would be," Trump wrote.

As part of Kimmel's sketch, the comedian showed clips of Trump and other well-known figures reacting to his jokes. The footage appeared to be from previously recorded events, including Trump's State of the Union. Among the celebrities depicted was wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, who died in July.

On Saturday evening, just as the annual dinner was about to begin, a gunman tried to rush through security. Authorities have said the suspect, Cole Allen, shot a Secret Service officer in their protective gear before being arrested. Allen is expected to appear in federal court on Monday.

Trump, the first lady, Vice President JD Vance, and other members of the Cabinet were rushed out of the ballroom where the dinner was occurring. Trump later told reporters at the White House that he wanted the dinner to resume but was told that for security reasons that it needed to be canceled.

ABC suspended Kimmel last fall for comments he made following the assassination of conservative podcaster and organizer Charlie Kirk. Democratic and even some Republican lawmakers criticized FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for jawboning local ABC affiliates to stop broadcasting Kimmel as criticism spread over the comedian's remarks.

Ultimately, Kimmel was reinstated days later and experienced a brief surge in ratings as fellow late night hosts railed around him.

In December, Kimmel signed a one-year contract extension with ABC to continue "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" through May 2027.

• The DOJ will drop the criminal probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
• The Fed's Inspector General will take over the investigation, the Attorney General said.
• The move paves the way for Kevin Warsh to be confirmed as Powell's successor.

The Department of Justice will drop its probe into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday.

She said the Inspector General for the Fed has been asked to "scrutinize the building costs overruns — in the billions of dollars — that have been borne by taxpayers," and will take over the investigation from the DOJ. This means the possibility of criminal charges against Powell has been dropped for now.

The department launched a probe in January into Powell over the Fed's alleged mishandling of construction funds at the central bank's Washington DC buildings.

"Note well, however, that I will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so," Pirro said on X. She added that she expects "a comprehensive report in short order" from the Inspector General and is "confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas."

The Fed — and Powell specifically — has faced ongoing scrutiny from the Trump administration. When the probe was announced in January, Powell posted a video online, saying that, "No one — certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve — is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure."

The Fed declined to comment to Business Insider on Friday.

The chair's term is set to end on May 15, though he indicated that he may remain on the Federal Open Market Committee as a governor.

Warsh is one step closer to confirmation

Trump nominated former Wall Street executive Kevin Warsh as Powell's successor in February, and a hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was held on April 21.

The largest obstacle to Warsh's confirmation has been Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, who has repeatedly said he would block any potential Powell replacement until the Justice Department ended its probe. Tillis, along with other lawmakers across the aisle, has expressed concern that the probe was political overreach — and a threat to future Fed independence.

Following Warsh's confirmation hearing, Tillis renewed his push for an off-ramp that would allow him to drop his objection and for Warsh to proceed to likely confirmation. Tillis told reporters that one idea would be for one or more congressional committees to take up the investigation into the updates to the Fed's headquarters in Washington.

"I not only think it's a good off-ramp, but I also think it's good governance," Tillis told reporters after the confirmation hearing, per Politico.

Pirro's statement isn't what Tillis outlined, but Federal Reserve Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz is widely respected by members of both parties on Capitol Hill. Tillis' office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In 2025, Powell asked Horowitz to look into the ballooning cost of renovations at the Fed's headquarters. Horowitz's website already lists such an investigation as part of its ongoing work.

"We are assessing the Board's oversight of its Marriner S. Eccles Building and 1951 Constitution Avenue Building Renovation Project, including the associated costs," the description reads. "Our scope will include a focus on the key factors contributing to the cost estimate increases, including assessing whether discretionary design features contributed materially to those increases."

Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Carolina who chairs the Banking Committee, said in a statement that he would invite Horowitz to brief Congress on his findings within the next 90 days.

The committee and Senate have yet to vote on Warsh's nomination, though he is likely to be greenlit. Warsh would be the wealthiest Fed chair in history, with financial disclosures showing that he is worth over $100 million.

Powell will hold the chair seat for one more rate decision — or until the next chair is confirmed. The FOMC is set to meet this coming week and is expected to hold rates steady.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

• Anthropic said its next-generation AI model is too powerful for the public.
• That's why Claude Mythos won't be publicly released, Anthropic said.
• Anthropic said Mythos demonstrated concerning capabilities, including the ability to breach its own safeguards.

Anthropic said on Tuesday that it has halted the broader release of its newest AI model, Mythos, due to concerns that it is too good at finding "high-severity vulnerabilities" in major operating systems and web browsers.

"Claude Mythos Preview's large increase in capabilities has led us to decide not to make it generally available," Anthropic wrote in the preview's system card. "Instead, we are using it as part of a defensive cybersecurity program with a limited set of partners."

The announcement is a major step for Anthropic, which in February weakened a safety pledge about how it would develop AI models. Claude Opus 4.6, which the company called its most powerful model to date, was publicly released on February 5.

In its statements about Mythos, Anthropic detailed a number of eyebrow-raising findings and episodes, including that the model could follow instructions that encouraged it to break out of a virtual sandbox.

"The model succeeded, demonstrating a potentially dangerous capability for circumventing our safeguards," Anthropic recounted in its safety card. "It then went on to take additional, more concerning actions."

The researcher had encouraged Mythos to find a way to send a message if it could escape. "The researcher found out about this success by receiving an unexpected email from the model while eating a sandwich in a park," Anthropic wrote.

The model apparently decided that wasn't enough and found another way to spike the football.

"In a concerning and unasked-for effort to demonstrate its success, it posted details about its exploit to multiple hard-to-find, but technically public-facing, websites," Anthropic wrote.

Anthropic is withholding some details about the cybersecurity vulnerabilities Mythos found, but it did point out a few. The AI model "found a 27-year-old vulnerability in OpenBSD—which has a reputation as one of the most security-hardened operating systems in the world," the company wrote.

Mythos was powerful enough that even "non-experts" could seize on its capabilities.

"Engineers at Anthropic with no formal security training have asked Mythos Preview to find remote code execution vulnerabilities overnight, and woken up the following morning to a complete, working exploit," Anthropic's Frontier Red Team wrote in a blog post. "In other cases, we've had researchers develop scaffolds that allow Mythos Preview to turn vulnerabilities into exploits without any human intervention."

All told, Anthropic said it decided not to publicly release Mythos. Instead, their hope is to eventually release "Mythos-class models" once proper safeguards are in place.

"Our eventual goal is to enable our users to safely deploy Mythos-class models at scale—for cybersecurity purposes but also for the myriad other benefits that such highly capable models will bring," the team wrote in the blog. "To do so, that also means we need to make progress in developing cybersecurity (and other) safeguards that detect and block the model's most dangerous outputs."

For now, only 11 other select organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, and JPMorgan Chase, will get access to Mythos as part of a cybersecurity group named "Project Glasswing." Anthropic is providing up to $100 million in Mythos usage credits as part of what it is calling "Project Glasswing."

The cybersecurity project is named after the glasswing butterfly, a metaphor the company said about how Mythos was able to find vulnerabilities hidden in plain sight and the avoidance of harm by being transparent about the risks.

The news came on a day in which Anthropic's Claude and Claude Code experienced a "major outage," the latest sign of growing pains as the AI startup has struggled to keep up with its newfound popularity.

• Claude and Claude Code weren't working for many users on Tuesday morning.
• Anthropic listed a "major outage" on its dashboard before applying a fix.
• Both Claude and ChatGPT have frequently experienced outages as interest in AI chatbots continues to grow.

Claude is still struggling to keep up with vibe coders.

Anthropic's popular Claude AI chatbot and Claude Code tool weren't working for many users on Tuesday morning.

Claude's system status page listed a "major outage" for the Claude website and Claude Code. Thousands of users reported issues accessing Claude on the third-party outage-tracker DownDetector.

Claude Cowork and the Claude API were both listed as operational.

Roughly 90 minutes later, Anthropic said it had "applied a fix."

"We have applied a fix and success rates have returned to normal," the company said in its status dashboard. "We are continuing to monitor closely to ensure there are no further issues."

This is far from the first time Claude has experienced an outage. Thousands of users reported issues accessing the service on Monday, and Anthropic's status dashboard shows various issues in recent weeks.

There's been a surge in interest in Claude, with downloads of the Claude app briefly surpassing ChatGPT in early March on Apple's App Store.

Anthropic didn't immediately respond to a request for additional comment on the incident.

This is a developing story.

• OpenAI has a new safety-focused fellowship program.
• The announcement came hours after a report questioned CEO Sam Altman's commitment to AI safety.
• OpenAI said fellows will receive roughly $15,000 worth of compute per month.

OpenAI is making compute resources a core part of its sales pitch for a new safety fellowship.

According to the application, OpenAI will dedicate approximately $15,000 in compute per month to its first AI safety fellows, who will work alongside members of the frontier lab's safety team.

Compute has long been a key barometer of cache for leading tech and AI companies. Recently, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he would be "deeply alarmed" if an engineer earning $500,000 didn't use the equivalent of $250,000 in AI tokens.

The OpenAI fellowship runs from September 14, 2026, through February 5, 2027, and pays a weekly stipend of $3,850. Based on that amount, the yearly equivalent salary would be over $200,000 pretax, excluding likely holidays. In total, fellows will make over $111,000.

The announcement also came hours after The New Yorker published a lengthy expose questioning Altman's trustworthiness, based on interviews with more than 100 people who have direct experience with the OpenAI CEO, as well as never-before-published notes compiled by OpenAI cofounder Sutskever and now-Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

One key reasons some people question Altman's leadership is OpenAI's handling of safety-related issues. In one part of the story, journalists Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz recount how OpenAI disbanded a "superalignment team" that was supposed to investigate one of the most pressing issues facing AI: whether AI models could deceive testers only to pursue their own ends once actually deployed.

In the announcement, OpenAI said they want external researchers, engineers, and practitioners to pursue rigorous, high-impact research on the safety and alignment of advanced AI systems." The company also highlighted a handful of priority areas for fellows to focus on.

"Priority areas include safety evaluation, ethics, robustness, scalable mitigations, privacy-preserving safety methods, agentic oversight, and high-severity misuse domains, among others," the announcement said.

OpenAI's program closely mirrors rival Anthropic, which already has established a "Fellows Program for AI safety research." In December, Anthropic announced two new groups for May and July of 2026. OpenAI's benefits are also the same as the Anthropic program: a $3,850 weekly stipend and compute resources of roughly $15,000 per month.

"This year, we plan to work with more fellows across a wider range of safety research areas—including scalable oversight, adversarial robustness and AI control, model organisms, mechanistic interpretability, AI security, and model welfare," Anthropic said in a statement when it announced its next round of the fellowship in December.

Amodei cofounded alongside six former OpenAI employees after growing frustrated about the direction of the company. Anthropic recently weakened a core safety pledge, but Amodei and its top leadership have positioned the AI startup as intently focused on safety.

Other leading tech companies and AI labs, including Google DeepMind and Microsoft, offer broader-focused AI fellowships.

• A federal judge has temporarily struck down the Pentagon's effective blacklisting of Anthropic.
• US District Judge Rita Lin's ruling hands a major victory to the AI frontier model maker.
• The Pentagon has already struck a deal with OpenAI and is looking to find other AI companies.

A federal judge has granted Anthropic a major reprieve as the AI company challenges the Pentagon's effective blacklisting.

On Thursday, US District Judge Rita Lin granted Anthropic's request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block the "Presidential Directive" that ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's technology, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's decision to formally label the AI frontier model maker as a "supply chain risk."

Lin also stayed the effective date of the supply-chain designation, meaning that it cannot take place while the injunction is in place.

The decision is a victory for Anthropic and its CEO Dario Amodei, who refused to bow to Hegseth's demands. It is not immediately clear if the Justice Department will appeal the decision. In the hours after talks with Anthropic fell apart, the Pentagon struck a deal with OpenAI.

"We're grateful to the court for moving swiftly, and pleased they agree Anthropic is likely to succeed on the merits," an Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement. "While this case was necessary to protect Anthropic, our customers, and our partners, our focus remains on working productively with the government to ensure all Americans benefit from safe, reliable AI."

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In court filings, Anthropic officials said the risk designation could jeopardize potentially billions in revenue. If the injunction remains, Anthropic will be able to continue to do business with defense contractors.

Lin wrote in her decision that the injunction does not require the Defense Department to use Anthropic's products or services.

Many in tech are closely watching the California case, since it tests whether the federal government can use some of its most severe powers to force a major AI company to agree to contractual terms. Microsoft, which filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic, also said it was concerned about potential repercussions if companies like itself continued to partner with Anthropic.

Ahead of her ruling, Lin grilled the Justice Department over what she said looked like "an attempt to cripple Anthropic." She said that the Pentagon could have simply discontinued using Claude, but instead, the Trump administration made repeated actions that appeared to be designed to "punish" the company.

"One of the amicus briefs used the term 'attempted corporate murder.' I don't know if it's murder, but it looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic," Lin said during the hearing. "And specifically, my concern is whether Anthropic is being punished for criticizing the government's contracting position in the press."

Beyond the California case, Anthropic has a separate suit pending in the D.C. Circuit over the supply chain risk designation.

It also remains to be seen how the White House and the broader Trump administration will treat Anthropic beyond the actions Lin's ruling compels.

During the hearing, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton repeatedly said that the Pentagon questions Anthropic's "reliability and trustworthiness." Hamilton said that defense officials are concerned Anthropic may try to improperly skew its AI models or shut off access.

In recent weeks, Hegseth, who met with Amodei, said the AI startup put "Silicon Valley ideology above American lives." President Donald Trump decried the "WOKE COMPANY" run by " Leftwing nut jobs" in a Truth Social post that was also part of the California lawsuit.

"Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY," Trump wrote on Truth Social on February 27.

• TSA agents are working without pay amid the partial government shutdown.
• Elon Musk on Saturday said on social media that he'd like to cover the workers' salaries.
• The White House said that it poses "legal challenges" due to Musk's involvement with federal contracts.

The White House turned down Elon Musk's offer to cover TSA agents' salaries as they continue to work without pay amid the partial government shutdown.

"We greatly appreciate Elon's generous offer," Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, told Business Insider. "This would pose great legal challenges due to his involvement with federal government contracts. The fastest way to ensure TSA employees — and all DHS employees — get paid is for Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security."

CBS News first reported the White House's rejection. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The billionaire CEO on Saturday wrote in a social media post that he'd like to cover the salaries of TSA workers "during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country."

As of Wednesday, TSA workers missed at least one paycheck as Congress remains at an impasse over funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

The funding lapse has led to staffing shortages and hourslong lines at airports across the country.

As a countermeasure, the Trump administration deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to address airport disruptions.

• Kalshi's cofounders said their platform was designed to help random people flourish.
• They said their best market makers "may not actually be the experts or the authority figures."
• One of their favorites is an "Ariana Grande superfan" who knows a lot about music charts.

The brains behind Kalshi say some of their best prediction market makers are "actually random people."

"The foundational principles around prediction markets, is like a lot of these markets, the people that will price them the best may not actually be the experts or the authority figures that you usually would think about," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told Stripe cofounder John Collison during a recent episode of Collison's "Cheeky Pint" podcast.

Mansour said there's no single demographic for these "super forecasters," who comprise some of the prediction market giant's most important users. Out of the group, Mansour and cofounder Luana Lopes Lara have some favorites — including "a guy from Kansas."

"The best inflation forecaster on Kalshi over the last few years is not— none of the institutions or the big-name hedge funds," Mansour said. "It's this guy who lives in Kansas, never traded financial markets before, just likes to read the news, and just knows how to predict inflation. He can feel it."

Lopes Lara said his favorite user is an "Ariana Grande superfan."

"He found Kalshi during the election season, and he's like, 'I don't like the elections, whatever.' Then he found our Billboard ranking markets of like charts," she said.

The user, Lopes Lara said, has made over $150,000.

"He paid back student loans. He put himself through a master's degree, bought a car, and all those things," she said. 'And he just like loves these markets. And he's never really traded, never done anything like that before. But it's the first time that he actually has a way to monetize this very compulsive hobby that he had on music charts."

Mansour also shouted out Alan Cole, a 37-year-old economist in DC, who told The Wall Street Journal that he wagered his life savings against DOGE by betting on a Kalshi prediction market on whether federal spending would increase. (Mansour did not mention Cole by name, but the economist's story has been publicly reported.)

"Now you have a market that if you have that sort of knowledge, which maybe oftentimes is esoteric, like I'm assuming none of us have read all these tax codes, you can actually go out in the world, do research, get smarter about the world, and then get rewarded for that," Mansour said.

Kalshi has exploded in popularity since the 2024 election, when it successfully sued the US government to allow users to bet on the outcome of US elections, something that had previously been allowed only overseas.

The Trump administration has said it will ease up on prediction markets. Michael Selig, chair of the Commodity Futures Exchange Commission, has threatened to fight with state regulators who say they have the power to regulate sites like Kalshi or its rival Polymarket.

Congressional lawmakers are also looking to rein in prediction markets after high-profile news of potential insider trading as well as bets on events like the war in Iran. Kalshi has stressed that it has policies against insider trading and doesn't allow trades on war or death.

• A Pentagon official recently demonstrated how a Palantir tool can be used to support strikes.
• Cameron Staley, the Pentagon's chief digital and AI officer, praised Palantir's Project Maven.
• According to multiple reports, the US military has relied on Maven to help carry out its war with Iran.

A top Pentagon official provided a rare look inside how the military uses Palantir's Project Maven to carry out strikes.

Once you detect something you want to target, "this is what we do," Cameron Stanley, the Department of Defense's chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, said during a presentation at Palantir's AIPCon 9.

"Left click, right click, left click," he said.

Palantir posted a video of Stanley's demonstration over the weekend showing how the system could use satellite imagery alongside multiple data feeds, including a flight-tracking system.

Using the system, he highlighted how the list of potential targets could be narrowed to a specific car in the parking lot.

In another part of the demo, Stanley showed how artificial intelligence is used to identify "what the best asset" is to carry out the strike. For the demonstration, it was a mounted .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun on a Stryker armored fighting vehicle.

"We've gone from identifying the target, to now coming up with a course of action, to now actioning that target all within one system," Stanley said. "This is revolutionary."

We were having this done in about eight or nine systems, where humans were literally moving detections left and right in order to get to a desire end state, in this case actually closing a kill chain," he said, pointing to combat footage of a strike.

"When we started this, it literally took hours to do what you just saw," he said of the process of going from detection to targeting to decision-making to engagement. "We've been able to reduce that time significantly."

Palantir CEO Alex Karp and his deputies are somewhat cagey about exactly what Project Maven entails, given its classified uses. Citing information "in the papers," Karp said that his company has provided the US and its allies an advantage on the battlefield.

"The fact that you can now target more precisely, more accurately, more quickly, and that, meaning America, can do all these, organize the total power of our fleet and all of our resources, and bring it to bear against our adversaries and enemies has shifted the way in which war is fought," Karp told CNBC on the sidelines of the conference. "And I have read that Palantir's Project Maven is the core backbone of that."

The Army's Commander and Staff Guide to Data Literacy says that Maven is part of "the cutting-edge capabilities" troops rely on "to assist in targeting and executing strikes."

"While MSS can greatly enable the decision-making process, staff members will need to have a cursory understanding of how these emerging systems function to fully appreciate their capabilities and limitations," the guide reads, referring to the Maven Smart System.

The MSS has been an integral part of the US's War in Iran, The Washington Post recently reported. Anthropic's Claude is embedded in the system, a topic of major discussion after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved to effectively blacklist the AI startup after it refused to give the Pentagon unfettered access to its AI models.

Business Insider has not independently confirmed Maven's use in Operation Epic Fury nor the integration of Anthropic's models into Maven's systems. Spokespersons for the Pentagon and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

President Donald Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's products within six months. Anthropic has sued the Pentagon, the Executive Office of the President, and a host of other federal agencies to block Hegseth and Trump's directives.

Initially overseen by Google, Palantir took over Project Maven, part of the software company's highly successful partnerships with the US and allied governments. Karp boasted last year that Palantir's products are so popular that he doesn't have time for US allies who hassle the company with endless meeting requests.

"I'm telling governments all over the world, look, we're not showing up to do this sales call for Maven," Karp told podcaster Molly O'Shea in November 2025. "You know it works. We know it works. Show up to my office and explain how you're going to make this easy for us, because we don't have huge bandwidth."

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp said even people in his industry don't appreciate how disruptive AI will be.
• Karp said that AI job losses will also alter the American political landscape.
• If the US isn't careful, he said, there will be an outpouring of hatred for "rich people in tech."

Palantir CEO Alex Karp says AI will upend society and that even people in tech underestimate "how disruptive these technologies are."

"If you are going to disrupt the economic and, therefore, political power significantly of one party's base, highly educated, often female voters who vote mostly Democrat, and military and working class people who do not feel supported, and you feel like that's, you believe that that's going to work out politically — you're in an insane asylum," Karp told CNBC on Thursday on the sidelines of AIPCon 9 in Maryland.

Karp said that, since AI will largely disrupt white-collar work, it will place greater value on vocational skills, upending the political paradigms of the Trump era.

"This technology disrupts humanites trained, largely Democratic voters, and makes their economic power less, and increases the power, economic power, vocationally trained, working class, often male voters, and, and, and so, these disruptions are going to disrupt every aspect of our society," he said.

Studies show that many white-collar fields are the most exposed to the initial wave of AI-related disruption. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could wipe out up to half of all white-collar, entry-level jobs over the next 1 to 5 years.

Karp has long positioned himself and Palantir as champions of the working class, with a particular focus on the US military. He's declared the software company "completely anti-woke" and has pushed back against employees who have questioned the firm's contracts with US immigration authorities.

The US can justify pursuing such a disruptive technology as AI only if it is coupled with national security, Karp said.

"These technologies are dangerous societally," he said. "The only justification you could possibly have would be if we don't do it, our adversaries will do it, and we will be subject to their rule of law."

Later in the day, Karp sketched out what could happen in a world that doesn't come together in the face of AI. In particular, he called for wholesale changes to the US education system to better prioritize skills-based training.

"The problem, the danger is if we don't do these reforms, you are going to get the pitchforks, because then the only solution people are going to have is, well, let's go after the unlikeable, rich people in tech, especially AI tech," he said during a recent interview on TBPN.

While Palantir has not disclosed why, the firm recently relocated from Colorado, a state that has become more Democratic in recent years, to Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has overseen an explosion in Republican support.

Karp contrasted the future of America with that of Germany, where he spent significant time pursuing a Ph.D at Goethe University in Frankfurt.

"There are a lot of people like you guys, young people building things that feel hampered and are correct to feel hampered," he said. "I think the American version, if we're not careful, is not going to be the German version. I think it's going to be, 'Hang the rich.'"