Anthropic’s Claude AI rebounds from outage as downloads surge amid Pentagon dispute

By Mucahithan Avcioglu

ISTANBUL (AA) - Anthropic’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Claude experienced a widespread service disruption early Monday but has since restored normal operations after an influx of users overwhelmed its systems, according to the firm's updates.

The brief outage occurred as the AI platform set new usage records, driven in part by heightened public interest following a high-profile dispute with the US Department of Defense.

Anthropic engineers identified the cause of the outage as an unprecedented surge in demand and implemented fixes to stabilize service. The company is working to strengthen infrastructure after daily sign-ups hit record levels in recent days, according to internal updates.

The surge in users comes amid a political standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon over how its AI models may be used in military settings.

The disagreement, which escalated last week, led US President Donald Trump to direct federal agencies to phase out use of Anthropic’s technology after the startup refused to soften contractual safeguards that prohibit its AI from being deployed in mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons without human oversight. Defense officials subsequently labelled the company a “supply-chain risk,” complicating its relationship with government partners.

Despite government pushback, public interest in Claude has surged sharply. The chatbot climbed to the first position on Apple’s US App Store free-app chart late Saturday and has remained near the top in the days since, overtaking long-dominant competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Anthropic executives have welcomed the surge but caution that longer-term growth will depend on resolving infrastructure constraints and clarifying the company’s role in enterprise and government markets.