Analysis: The U.S. government restricting foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic's latest model may impact its IPO expectations

BlockBeats News. On June 13, according to Fortune, after the U.S. Department of Commerce banned Anthropic from providing access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 to any foreign nationals on the grounds of national security export controls, it shut off all access to these two latest AI models. The directive applies not only to people outside the United States, but also to foreign nationals located within the United States, as well as Anthropic’s own non-U.S. citizen employees. Anthropic said that, given the order’s excessively broad scope, the company had no choice but to disable the relevant models for all users, although lower-capability models such as Claude Opus 4.8 are not affected.

The policy has sparked strong reactions within the AI industry and among policy experts. Some believe this is a move by the Trump administration to further punish Anthropic. The Trump administration previously asked federal agencies to stop using Anthropic models and listed them as “supply chain risks.” AI policy expert Dean Ball said it is impossible to determine whether this is a “legal battle” against Anthropic or an extreme national security hawkish stance; in any case, it is simply absurd.”

There are also critics who believe Anthropic is bearing the consequences of its own security narrative. Cybersecurity researcher Peter Girnus said that if a company describes its products as military equipment in every press release, the government will eventually treat them as such based on what it claims. He believes Anthropic wrote the legal premises itself and turned them into a brand. Critic Gary Marcus of the AI industry said that government actions lack logic and may prompt Chinese-born AI researchers working at labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI to return to China, while also causing investors to question whether U.S. AI companies are still safe bets.

Anthropic secretly filed for a public listing earlier this month, and the latest round of funding values it at $965 billion. This export control decision could weaken investor enthusiasm for Anthropic’s IPO, as investors worry that if the government continues to impose restrictions on Anthropic models, whether the company can still maintain its position at the forefront of AI model development. Others believe that some people who are concerned about AI creating existential risks for humanity might even welcome this decision, because it could slow down the pace of AI development.