Trump Administration Partially Lifts Anthropic’s Ai Export Ban

The Trump administration on Friday partially rescinded its export ban on Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence model — de-escalating a confrontation that has caused confusion across the American AI industry.

The release clears the way for a select group of more than 100 companies and agencies to gain access to the Mythos 5 model. But a second advanced Anthropic model, called Fable 5, remains blocked by an export ban that the administration had imposed June 12.

“Since the issuance of my June 12 letter, Anthropic has worked with the U.S. government to address risks associated with the Covered Models,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote in a Friday letter to Anthropic’s chief compute officer Tom Brown, obtained by POLITICO. "These efforts have yielded significant progress.”

The letter gave no indication of when the administration might lift its restrictions on Fable 5. Meanwhile, pressure from the White House led another top U.S. tech firm, OpenAI, to limit the release of its most advanced model this week.

Friday’s reversal on Mythos came after Anthropic staff and senior White House officials met over the last two weeks to discuss ways to defuse thedispute, including technical questions about whether the company had done enough to prevent its AI products from being used to launch cyberattacks.

The action paves the way for the company to restore access to its Mythos 5 models to a list of more than 100 “trusted partners” including companies and federal agencies approved by the government, an administration official familiar with the move granted anonymity to discuss it said.

“In just two weeks, we have worked diligently to ensure America remains the global leader in AI while safeguarding our security,” said Benno Kass, a Commerce Department spokesperson.

The administration slapped the export restrictions on Fable and Mythos on June 12, banning their use by foreign nationals, after a series of tense calls with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about whether the company’s safety guardrails were as solid as promised. Anthropic then announced it was cutting off access “for all our customers to ensure compliance” — while insisting that “we believe this is a misunderstanding.”