Microsoft confirms ongoing access to Anthropic products despite supply chain risk designation

Microsoft announced on Thursday its decision to integrate the artificial intelligence (AI) tools of the startup Anthropic into its product lineup for customers, with the exception of the US Department of War.

Earlier that day, the federal department notified Anthropic of its status as a supply chain risk. Following this, Anthropic expressed its intention to contest this ruling in court.

The previous week, US President Donald Trump urged federal departments to cease utilising Anthropic’s technology, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth indicated that the company would continue offering services to the Pentagon for only six more months. 

Microsoft is among the first prominent businesses to persist in its partnership with Anthropic after the Pentagon’s decisions. 

Some defense tech companies have instructed their employees to discontinue using Anthropic’s Claude models and to switch to other options.

"After reviewing the risk designation, we determined that Anthropic's products, including Claude, remain accessible to our clientele — excluding the Department of War — through our platforms like M365, GitHub, and Microsoft's AI Foundry. We will continue collaborating with Anthropic on non-defense projects," a Microsoft spokesperson shared with CNBC.

Microsoft serves a range of US government agencies with its technology. The Microsoft 365 office tools are broadly employed within the Department of War. 

In September, Microsoft announced its initiative to merge Anthropic's AI models with the Microsoft 365 Copilot feature for Microsoft's subscribers, alongside models from OpenAI.

Many developers have embraced Anthropic's Claude models for code generation, which are available through GitHub Copilot, along with OpenAI's comparable Codex models.