The White House said its meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was “productive and constructive” on Friday, the latest sign of a potential thaw in the standoff between the government and the leading artificial intelligence company.
But when President Donald Trump was asked about Amodei’s visit on a runway in Phoenix, Ariz., he responded, “Who?” and then said he had “no idea.”
Amodei met with Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and other senior administration officials to talk about the company’s powerful new Mythos model, which was announced earlier this month. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was one of the officials in attendance, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the meeting was private.
“We discussed opportunities for collaboration, as well as shared approaches and protocols to address the challenges associated with scaling this technology,” the White House said in a statement on Friday. “The conversation also explored the balance between advancing innovation and ensuring safety.”
The company appears to be inching back into the White House’s good graces, weeks after Trump blacklisted it and called it a national security risk, declaring that his administration would “not do business with them again.”
An Anthropic spokesperson said Amodei had a “productive discussion” with administration officials on Friday about how the company and the U.S. government can “work together on key shared priorities such as cybersecurity, America’s lead in the AI race and AI safety.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei arrives for meetings with U.S. President Donald Trump’s admnistration officials at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 17, 2026.
Jessica Koscielniak | Reuters
“The meeting reflected Anthropic’s ongoing commitment to engaging with the U.S. government on the development of responsible AI,” the spokesperson said. “We are grateful for their time and are looking forward to continuing these discussions.”
Mythos excels at identifying weaknesses and security flaws within software, according to Anthropic, and the company said it has been engaging in “ongoing discussions” with U.S. government officials about its capabilities. Anthropic is rolling the model out to a select group of companies as part of Project Glasswing, a new cybersecurity initiative, and does not have plans to release it publicly.
Anthropic declined to comment. Axios was first to report the meeting on Friday.
Just weeks prior, Anthropic and the Trump administration were firmly on the outs. Anthropic sued the government to try to reverse its blacklisting in courts in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and those cases are ongoing.
The lawsuits followed a dramatic few weeks of negotiations between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, which clashed over how the agency could use the company’s models.
The DOD wanted Anthropic to grant the Pentagon unfettered access to its models for all lawful purposes, while Anthropic wanted assurance that its technology would not be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance.
The talks stalled, and the DOD declared Anthropic a supply chain risk in early March, meaning that use of the company’s technology purportedly threatens U.S. national security. The label requires defense contractors to certify that they don’t use Anthropic’s Claude AI models in their work with the military.
Trump then ordered all federal agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology” in a Truth Social post, but that directive has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge in San Francisco.
The DOD has not commented on Mythos, but the agency has continued to use Anthropic’s Claude models in the war with Iran. At the very least, the power of Mythos seems to be changing the broader tone from the Trump administration.
Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell met with the heads of the top U.S. banks last week about the AI model. The week before, Vice President JD Vance and Bessent also met with Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and other top tech execs about AI cybersecurity.
Amoedi’s meeting with Wiles is the latest signal that tensions could be easing.
Wiles is a former employee of Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm with strong ties to the Trump administration. Anthropic hired Ballard after the Pentagon designated the company a supply chain risk, according to federal disclosures.
— CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos and Megan Cassella contributed to this report.
