Tech
Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs condemn ICE violence, praise Trump
On a Monday night NBC News segment, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern over “some of the things we’ve seen in the last few days,” referring to the violence of Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.
Amodei focused on the importance of preserving democracy at home, both on NBC and in a post on X that specifically called out “the horror we’re seeing in Minnesota.” On NBC, he said he’s a believer in arming democracies to defend against autocratic countries, and that “we need to defend our own democratic values at home.” He added that Anthropic has no contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Meanwhile, in an internal Slack message to OpenAI employees that got leaked to The New York Times, Sam Altman said, “What’s happening with ICE is going too far.”
“Part of loving the country is the American duty to push back against overreach,” Altman wrote. “There is a big difference between deporting violent criminals and what’s happening now, and we need to get the distinction right.”
Tech workers, including employees of both companies, have been calling on their chiefs to call the White House and demand that ICE leave U.S. cities in the aftermath of Border Patrol agents killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. In an open letter, tech workers also urged their CEOs to cancel all company contracts with ICE and speak out publicly against ICE’s violence.
Employees calling for CEOs to take action are encouraged and want more to join the ranks.
“We’re glad to hear the CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic condemning the ICE murders,” the ICEout.tech organizers, whose identities remain unknown, told TechCrunch. “Now we need to hear from CEOs of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, all of whom have remained silent despite calls all across the industry.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
While Amodei and Altman may be taking something of a stand — one in public, the other internally — both CEOs couched their statements with praise for President Trump, as well.
Amodei applauded Trump’s consideration to allow Minnesota authorities to conduct an independent investigation into the shootings by federal agents after multiple videos of Alex Pretti’s death circulated online. (It remains to be seen if that investigation will happen, but a growing number of Republicans have begun to call for an investigation, as well.)
In Altman’s message to his staff he also said he was encouraged by Trump’s more recent responses and said he hopes the president, “a very strong leader,” will “rise to this moment and unite the country.”
Altman assured them that OpenAI would “try to figure out how to actually do the right thing as best we can, engage with leaders and push for our values, and speak up clearly about it as needed.” Altman has yet to publicly criticize the administration’s immigration agenda, or how it is deploying Border Patrol agents into American cities.
J.J. Colao, founder of PR firm Haymaker Group and one of the signatories on ICEout.tech’s letter, called Altman out for trying to “have it both ways” by calling Trump a strong leader, “as if the president bears no responsibility for ICE’s actions.” He added: “On net, I think his statement is helpful, but the performative tribute to the president does a lot to diminish it.”
Of course, the Trump administration’s current AI-forward policies have helped fuel explosive growth at companies like OpenAI and Anthropic over the past year; OpenAI raised at least $40 billion and is in talks to raise another $100 billion at an $830 billion valuation, and Anthropic has raised $19 billion and is in talks to raise another $25 billion at a $350 billion valuation.
Still, such words of praise for Trump is an about-face for Altman. In the lead up to Trump’s first term in 2016, Altman posted the following to his own blog:
“[Trump] is not merely irresponsible. He is irresponsible in the way dictators are…To anyone familiar with the history of Germany in the 1930s, it’s chilling to watch Trump in action.”
At that time, he called Trump a “demagogic hate-monger” who dangles the lie that he will “Make America Great by keeping us safe from outsiders” to distract from the fact that he actually has “no serious plan for how to restore economic growth.” Altman acknowledged that he took some risk by writing his post, and ended on a quote that has been attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
“This would be a good time for us all—even Republicans, especially Republican politicians who previously endorsed Trump—to start speaking up,” he wrote.
And Amodei also appeared to be more passionate about his opposition to Trump allowing Nvidia to sell AI chips to China, calling the decision “crazy” last week during the World Economic Forum and likening it to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and [bragging that] Boeing made the casings.”
Whether these CEOs are doing everything that some among their workforce want them to do remains to be seen. Still, given what’s at stake for their companies, even internal and mild-mannered critiques are notable.
TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic and OpenAI for comment.
This story has been updated with comment from J.J. Colao.
Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? We’re reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry — from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Reach out to Rebecca Bellan at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com or Russell Brandom at russell.brandom@techcrunch.com. For secure communication, you can contact them via Signal at @rebeccabellan.491 and russellbrandom.49.
Tech
Anthropic’s India expansion collides with a local company that already had the name
As Anthropic expands into India, a local software company has filed a court complaint saying it was already using the name “Anthropic,” spotlighting how the rapid global push of AI firms can collide with local incumbents.
The filing comes amid Anthropic deepening its focus on India, announcing an India office last October and more recently appointing former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to lead its operations in the country, underscoring the South Asian market’s growing importance to global AI companies expanding beyond the U.S. and Europe.
In a complaint filed in a commercial court in Karnataka in January, reviewed by TechCrunch, the Indian company Anthropic Software says it has used the name since 2017 and that Anthropic’s recent entry into India has led to customer confusion. The firm is seeking recognition of its prior use and relief to prevent further confusion, along with ₹10 million (about $110,000) in damages.
Anthropic Software founder and director Mohammad Ayyaz Mulla told TechCrunch that the Indian company was not seeking confrontation, but clarity and recognition of its prior use in India, adding that litigation was a fallback if clean coexistence could not be achieved.
“As of now, I am exercising my legal right as it’s causing huge confusion to my customers,” he said.
India, the world’s most populous nation and one of the fastest-growing internet markets, has become a key battleground for AI companies like Anthropic and its rival OpenAI. The country is also set to host an AI Impact Summit in New Delhi next week, where Anthropic co-founder and chief executive Dario Amodei is appearing alongside other industry leaders like Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and Sundar Pichai.
A court order dated January 20 and seen by TechCrunch shows that the court has issued notice and suit summons to Anthropic. However, it declined to grant an interim injunction and listed the matter to return on February 16.
Techcrunch event
Boston, MA
|
June 23, 2026
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.
Tech
Databricks CEO says SaaS isn’t dead, but AI will soon make it irrelevant
On Monday, Databricks announced it reached a $5.4 billion revenue run rate, growing 65% year-over-year, of which more than $1.4 billion was from its AI products.
Co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi wanted to share these growth numbers because there’s so much talk about how AI is going to kill the SaaS business, he told TechCrunch.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, it’s SaaS. What’s going to happen to all these companies? What’s AI going to do with all these companies?’ For us, it’s just increasing the usage,” he said.
To be sure, he also wants to distance Databricks from the SaaS label, given that private markets value it as an AI company. Databricks on Monday also officially closed on its massive, previously announced $5 billion raise at a $134 billion valuation, and nabbed a $2 billion loan facility as well.
But the company is straddling both worlds. Databricks is still best known as a cloud data warehouse provider. A data warehouse is where enterprises store massive amounts of data to analyze for business insights.
Ghodsi called out, in particular, one AI product that’s driving usage of its data warehouse: its LLM user interface named Genie.
Genie is an example of how a SaaS business can replace its user interface with natural language. For instance, he uses it to ask why warehouse usage and revenue spike on particular days.
Just a few years ago, such a request required writing queries in a specific technical language, or having a special report programmed. Today, any product with an LLM interface can be used by anyone, Ghodsi noted. Genie is one reason for the company’s usage growth numbers, he said.
The threat of AI to SaaS isn’t, as one AI VC jokingly tweeted, that enterprises will rip out their SaaS “systems of record” to replace them with vibe-coded homegrown versions. Systems of record store critical business data, whether it’s on sales, customer support, or finance.
“Why would you move your system of record? You know, it’s hard to move it,” Ghodsi said.
The model makers aren’t offering databases to store that data and become systems of record anyway. Instead, they hope to replace the user interface with natural language for human use, or APIs or other plug-ins for AI agents.
So the threat to SaaS businesses, Ghodsi says, is that people no longer spend their careers becoming masters of a particular product: Salesforce specialists, or ServiceNow, or SAP. Once the interface is just language, the products become invisible, like plumbing.
“Millions of people around the world got trained on those user interfaces. And so that was the biggest moat that those businesses have,” Ghodsi warned.
SaaS companies that embrace the new LLM interface could grow, as Databricks is doing. But it also opens up possibilities for AI-native competitors to offer alternatives that work better with AI and agents.
That’s why Databricks created its Lakebase database designed for agents. He’s seeing early traction. “In its eight months that we’ve had it in the market, it’s done twice as much revenue as our data warehouse had when it was eight months old. Okay, obviously, that’s like comparing toddlers,” Ghodsi says. “But this is a toddler that’s twice as big.”
Meanwhile, now that Databricks has closed on its massive funding round, Ghodsi tells us that the company is not immediately working on another raise, nor prepping for an IPO.
“Now is not a great time to go public,” Ghodsi said. “I just wanted to be really well capitalized” should the markets go “south” again as they did in the 2022 downturn, when interest rates rose sharply after years of near-zero rates. A thick bank account “protects us, gives us many, many years of runway,” he added.
Tech
Bluesky finally adds drafts
Social network Bluesky is finally rolling out one of users’ most-requested features: drafts. Bluesky’s competitors, X and Threads, have long supported the ability to write drafts, which is seen as a baseline feature for services like this.
Users can access drafts on Bluesky the same way they do on these other platforms, which is by opening the new post flow and selecting the Drafts button in the top-right corner.
The rollout of drafts comes as Bluesky recently teased its roadmap for the year ahead. The company said it plans to focus on improving the app’s algorithmic Discover feed, offering better recommendations on who to follow, and making the app feel more real-time, among other updates. At the same time, the company acknowledged that it still needs to get the basics right.
Although Bluesky has gained a loyal user base, it still lags behind rivals when it comes to basic features, like private accounts and support for longer videos.
Launched to the public in early 2024, Bluesky has since scaled to over 42 million users, according to data sourced directly from the Bluesky API for developers.
Perfect, Forgotten 80s Thriller Is Hitchcock Meets Mad Max
Anthropic’s India expansion collides with a local company that already had the name
