Tech
Elizabeth Warren calls Pentagon’s decision to bar Anthropic ‘retaliation’
Anthropic is attracting an increasing number of supporters in its fight against the U.S. Department of Defense, which last month designated the AI lab as a supply-chain risk after it refused to make concessions on how its AI could be used by the military.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) equated the DOD’s decision with “retaliation,” arguing that the Pentagon could simply have terminated its contract with the AI lab, CNBC reports.
“I am particularly concerned that the DoD is trying to strong-arm American companies into providing the Department with the tools to spy on American citizens and deploy fully autonomous weapons without adequate safeguards,” Warren wrote, per the report, adding that the barring of Anthropic “appears to be retaliation.”
Warren’s words echo many other organizations that have spoken out against the Defense Department’s treatment of Anthropic. Several tech companies and employees — including from OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft — as well as legal rights groups, have filed amicus briefs in support of Anthropic and denouncing the designation, which is usually applied to foreign adversaries and not U.S. firms.
The dispute arose after Anthropic told the Pentagon that it did not want its AI systems to be used for mass surveillance of Americans and that the technology wasn’t ready for use in targeting or firing decisions of lethal autonomous weapons without human intervention. The Pentagon contested that a private company shouldn’t dictate how the military uses technology, and soon after designated the company as a “supply-chain risk.” The label requires any company or agency that does work with the Pentagon to certify that it doesn’t use the designated company’s products or services — effectively barring Anthropic from working with any company that also works with the U.S. government.
The letter from Warren comes a day before a hearing in San Francisco on Tuesday, when District Judge Rita Lin will decide whether to grant Anthropic a preliminary injunction that seeks to preserve the status quo while its case against the DOD is litigated.
While Anthropic is suing the DOD for infringing on its First Amendment rights and for punishing the company based on ideological grounds, the Defense Department has maintained that Anthropic’s refusal to allow all lawful military uses of its technology was a business decision, not protected speech, and that the designation was a straightforward national security call and not punishment for the company’s views.
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The AI lab last week submitted two declarations to the court that claim the government’s logic is flawed as they depend on technical misunderstandings as well as points of concern that were not raised during the company’s negotiations with the DOD.
Warren has also written to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, asking for details of the company’s agreement with the DOD, which came just a day after the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic.
Anthropic and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tech
Glean’s top line crosses $300M as AI budget cutting becomes its major selling point
Glean, a company often described as the Google for enterprise, said it has reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a three-fold increase from the $100 million milestone it reached just 15 months ago.
While many AI startups are growing at a blistering pace, Glean’s progress is particularly remarkable. After years of essentially being the only player in the category, the seven-year-old startup is accelerating its growth as tech giants enter the enterprise AI search market with rival products.
“The first four or five years of our existence, we had no competition,” Glean CEO Arvind Jain told TechCrunch. “Given how important search is to make AI work in the enterprise, every single company in the world wants to be in this space.”
Tech heavyweights building Glean-like tools include Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Atlassian.
Jain maintains there’s value in being a first mover in the space, but that it’s also equally important to offer a better product.
What Glean does better than its competition, according to Jain, comes down to the deep understanding that its AI tools have of customers’ business needs. Glean’s AI achieves this knowledge — a concept captured by the new, popular term “context graph” — by connecting to and learning from enterprises’ internal software systems.
Jain claims that Glean’s context graph also helps enterprises cut AI computing costs.
“If you connect your AI to Glean, it gives you all the information that you need to do your work, and that results in AI consuming far fewer tokens compared to if you unleash AI onto your systems directly,” Jain said. That’s because with Glean, AI ends up performing fewer operations, he added.
At a time when many companies are blowing through their AI budgets, those token cost savings have become a major selling point for the company.
“One of the things you know our customers really like about Glean is the fact that we can reduce your AI bill significantly,” he said.
The company, which was last valued at $7.2 billion when it raised a $150 million Series F last June, offers various pricing structures to its customers, which include Databricks, Reddit, Pinterest, and Samsung.
According to Jain, Glean offers both a consumption-based model, where clients pay per use, and a hybrid model that combines a fixed monthly fee for active users with separate usage fees for model consumption.
Glean is definitely not the first company to do this, but it’s worth pointing out that the company’s $300 million milestone cannot be fully described as traditional ARR, because a consumption model by definition doesn’t have a strictly recurring component.
Pure consumption pricing models depend on fluctuating user activity rather than predictable subscription renewals, therefore a portion of Glean’s top line is more accurately described as an annualized revenue run rate.
Glean did not immediately respond to a request for comment; this post will be updated if the company replies.
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Tech
Final 24 hours to save up to $410 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket
This is it. The countdown is almost over. You now have until tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT to lock in Early Bird savings of up to $410 for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 before prices increase.
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Register now and join 10,000+ founders, investors, operators, and innovators at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 13–15 for three days packed with networking, startup discovery, and conversations shaping the future of tech. Bring a plus-one at 50%, or bring a group to get an up to 30% discount.
What makes Disrupt worth attending year after year
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Today is the last day to apply to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 returns October 13–15 to Moscone West in San Francisco — and applications to speak are open for just a few more hours.
We’re inviting founders, investors, operators, and technology experts to apply for a chance to take the stage at one of the most influential tech events of the year.
More than 10,000 startup and VC leaders will gather at Disrupt 2026 to explore what’s next in AI, scaling, fintech, infrastructure, robotics, and the future of innovation.
Applications close tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now to share your expertise and help shape the conversations defining the tech industry.
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