OpenAI and Anthropic poach Trump officials as industry fights for Washington’s trust

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Anthropic and OpenAI are poaching officials from the Trump administration for senior roles as the AI sector scrambles to strengthen ties to Washington, with frontier tech increasingly viewed as a national security issue.

This year, Anthropic has appointed at least two former Trump officials, one to its board and another as the head of its frontier compute strategy. OpenAI has hired at least three from the president’s administrations to work across strategy and special projects.

Companies developing frontier AI have been racing to build relationships with the U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House, amid growing calls for regulation and in the wake of a number of cybersecurity incidents caused by rogue AI systems.

"Frontier AI companies are aware that the Trump administration has a lot of levers over their business, from federal procurement and supply-chain designations to export controls and everything in between, and that it's willing to use them," said Michelle Nie Duncan, visiting fellow with the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security.

"They have learned from the Anthropic episode that it pays to be on the good side of the White House," she told CNBC. A U.S. appeals court upheld a Pentagon designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk in September, after a public spat between the two parties at the start of the year.

OpenAI directed CNBC to previously released statements about two of its former Trump official appointments when approached for comment. Anthropic and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (L), President Donald Trump (C) and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (R).

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Ties to Trump

He'll be working on Anthropic's infrastructure expansion and "planning for rapid AI progress," Huang said in a post on X in September.