Senior Anthropic staffers are meeting with Trump administration officials in Washington, D.C., on Monday to try to resolve the artificial intelligence company’s latest high-profile dispute with the U.S. government, according to a source close to the company.

The person spoke anonymously to discuss an internal matter.

Anthropic received an export control directive on Friday that cited “national security authorities” and ordered the company to suspend access to its latest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, “by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States,” according to a statement.

The AI startup disabled access to the models for all of its customers in order to ensure compliance with the directive.

The unexpected action marks the latest wrinkle in Anthropic’s relationship with the government, which has been strained after a clash with the Department of Defense escalated earlier this year. The DOD labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk in March, which banned defense contractors from using the company’s technology because it purportedly threatens U.S. national security. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed the government’s latest directive in a post on X on Saturday, writing that “every passing day” proves why blacklisting Anthropic was “the right move.”

Anthropic sued the Trump administration in an effort to reverse the supply chain risk designation, and that litigation is ongoing.

Anthropic unveiled Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Tuesday, just days before it received the export control directive from the government. The company worked with government agencies to test the models ahead of the release and received approval to deploy them, according to a person familiar with the discussions who asked not to be named in order to discuss confidential matters.

The government called Anthropic at 1:00 p.m. ET on Friday and instructed the company to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 because of an unspecified national security threat, the person said. Anthropic received a formal letter around 5:30 p.m. ET that required the company to suspend the models.

Before the directive landed on Friday, Anthropic received no communication about a national security threat, the person said.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was among several tech leaders who raised concerns to senior Trump administration officials about security risks in Anthropic’s latest AI models, a White House official confirmed to CNBC.

“As a leading cloud provider that serves a large number of private and public sector customers, it’s not uncommon for governments to seek out counsel on potential security risks,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “When they occur, we don’t share the details of those discussions.”

Amazon and Anthropic are deeply linked. Amazon has invested $8 billion in the startup in recent years, and in April it committed to spend up to $25 billion in the future, with the funding tied to certain commercial milestones. Anthropic is a major user of Amazon’s Trainium AI chips, as well as its cloud technologies. Amazon is also reliant on Anthropic’s models for many of its services.

Fable 5 and Mythos 5 build on Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Preview, a powerful model that excels at identifying security vulnerabilities within software. Anthropic limited the rollout to a select group of companies as part of a cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing, and its approach appeared to earn it some goodwill from the Trump administration, which held several meetings with the company about the model’s capabilities.

Anthropic touted Fable 5 and Mythos 5 as state-of-the-art models that top many industry benchmarks. Mythos 5 is still limited to a select group of users, but Anthropic made Fable 5 available to its enterprise customers and paid subscribers. The company said the broad release was possible because of new safeguards that block responses in specific high-risk areas, including cybersecurity and biology.

In its statement on Friday, Anthropic said it believes the government’s concern is around a “potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak,” where a user could bypass a cybersecurity guardrail and ask Fable 5 to “read a specific codebase and fix any software flaws.”

“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people,” Anthropic said. “If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers.”

Anthropic characterized the dispute as a “misunderstanding” and said that it is working to restore access to the models “as soon as possible.”

WATCH: Anthropic disables new Mythos-class models days after release in response to government directive

Anthropic on Friday announced it’s disabled access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 artificial intelligence models to comply with an export control directive from the U.S. government that cited “national security authorities.”

The company said it received an order at 5:21 p.m. ET, instructing it to suspend all access to the models “by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.”

Anthropic abruptly disabled the models for all of its customers in order to ensure compliance, but said all of its other models will not be affected.

The unexpected move comes just days after Anthropic announced Fable 5 and Mythos 5, two powerful models that the company touted as state-of-the-art across a number of different industry benchmarks. Fable 5, in particular, marked the first time that Anthropic released such an advanced offering to the public, thanks to new safeguards that block responses in specific high-risk areas.

The models built on the release of Claude Mythos Preview, which captivated Wall Street and government officials with its advanced cybersecurity capabilities in April. The company said it did not plan to make the model generally available, and it has limited the rollout to a select group of companies as part of a cybersecurity initiative called Project Glasswing.

In its statement on Friday, Anthropic said the government did not provide specific details about its national security concern. The company apologized to its customers for the disruption.

“As we have stated publicly, we believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts,” Anthropic said. “This action does not adhere to those principles.”

The announcement marks Anthropic’s latest run-in with the U.S. government after a high-profile clash with the Department of Defense spilled into public view earlier this year.

After negotiations between the two organizations collapsed, the DOD declared Anthropic a supply chain risk, meaning the company purportedly threatens U.S. national security. The label has historically been reserved for foreign adversaries, and requires defense contractors to certify that they will not use Anthropic’s Claude models in their work with the military.

Anthropic sued the Trump administration in an effort to reverse its blacklisting, and litigation is still ongoing.

WATCH: OpenAI and Anthropic racing to public markets

North Carolina state Treasurer Brad Briner said the year’s hottest IPO is too expensive for his pension fund to own.

Briner, who oversees roughly $200 billion for North Carolina’s teachers, firefighters and police officers, said the state has invested heavily in artificial intelligence startups OpenAI and Anthropic while avoiding a direct stake in SpaceX — expected to go public Friday — because of concerns that the Elon Musk-led company’s $1.77 trillion valuation leaves little room for future gains.

“There’s been a pricing issue that we’ve been concerned about for the last year or so with SpaceX,” Briner said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “Elon Musk, an amazing entrepreneur, incredible technology to launch business, startling, etc. But at some point, things are fully priced. We’re trying to make a high-single-digit, predictable rate of return for our retirees. And we’ve got to consider valuation when we do that. And so, certainly, SpaceX at $1.75 trillion is a big valuation.”

SpaceX is scheduled to price its IPO on Thursday and begin trading on Friday. The rocket maker plans to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece, raising about $75 billion and valuing the aerospace company at roughly $1.8 trillion.

Briner’s comments underscore a growing debate among institutional investors as SpaceX prepares for what is expected to be one of the largest initial public offerings in history. While many money managers view the company as a unique asset with dominant positions in rocket launches and satellite internet, other long-term investors are questioning whether today’s valuation already reflects much of that optimism.

The state treasurer has instead directed capital toward AI companies that he believes offer stronger risk-reward opportunities. North Carolina invested about $40 million in OpenAI and committed roughly $250 million to Anthropic earlier this year, a position he said is now worth more than $600 million.

“We saw an opportunity in Anthropic which we thought was completely mispriced earlier this year,” Briner said. “If you use that technology, you see how powerful it is.”

Rather than buying SpaceX shares in the private market, Briner said North Carolina’s pension system expects to gain exposure through index funds once the company goes public.

“We will ultimately participate in SpaceX through our index positions in our public equity,” he said, “but we don’t have any on the private side.”

SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s email asking for comment.

Perplexity is planning to go public in 2028 regardless of how the market receives the listings of Anthropic and OpenAI, CEO Aravind Srinivas told CNBC. 

“Agnostic of these two companies, we were planning for something in 2028 so that still remains the case,” Srinivas said in an interview that aired on Tuesday.  

Srinivas has previously said the company has no plans to go public before 2028. His latest comments suggest a more concrete timeline. 

The CEO’s comments come after Claude developer Anthropic confidentially filed for an initial public offering last week. While there are no details on share pricing, Anthropic was last valued at nearly $1 trillion. OpenAI on Monday also confidentially filed for an IPO.  

These listings, along with SpaceX this week, are going to be among the biggest in history and a test of investors’ appetite for these mega-IPOs.  

“I certainly think there will be ripple effects if they don’t go well, like there is no sugar coating on that. The SpaceX IPO this week will definitely be a leading indicator to how Anthropic or OpenAI will go out,” Srinivas told CNBC. 

“I think it’s important for the AI industry that these IPOs go well, and I actually think they will go well, because they’re doing well.” 

The valuations of both Anthropic and OpenAI, known as frontier labs because their models are among the leading in the world, are under scrutiny from investors. 

Srinivas said that both companies deserve their high valuations because “they are on the frontier.” A slowdown in the pace of innovation may dent their valuations, he said, adding that there is no sign of this happening now.  

“If for six months you don’t see a model capability advance from one of these two companies, then it’s a problem for them,” Srinivas said.  

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned Tuesday that artificial intelligence has created a narrow window for the world’s tech firms, governments and banks to fix tens of thousands of software vulnerabilities found by his company’s latest model.

That AI model, Mythos, was previewed last month along with the disclosure that it had unearthed decades-old vulnerabilities in crucial software.

Since AI models from geopolitical adversary China are “maybe six to 12 months” behind the Anthropic product, there is “roughly that amount of time” to fix these issues, Amodei said.

The comments came during an Anthropic event in which Amodei shared the stage with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and unveiled a new suite of agents meant to automate financial work.

“The danger is just some enormous increase in the amount of vulnerabilities, in the amount of breaches, in the financial damage that’s done from ransomware on schools, hospitals, not to mention banks,” Amodei said.

Anthropic has limited Mythos to a few partner companies because of concerns about what criminals or adversarial nations could do with it. The last several of the company’s model updates have reverberated through the markets, but Mythos has caused the most concern from corporations and policymakers alike.

The scale of potential cyber exploits has ballooned with each generation of Claude, Amodei said. An earlier Anthropic model found roughly 20 vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser. Mythos found nearly 300, and the total count across all software now runs into the tens of thousands, he said.

Most of the vulnerabilities found by Mythos haven’t been publicly disclosed because they remain unpatched, and “the bad guys will exploit” them if they are identified, Amodei said.