On Friday, OpenAI announced it was withholding the wide release of its latest AI model, GPT-5.6, at the request of the U.S. government. On the same day, the U.S. Commerce Department told Anthropic that export controls it had slapped on that company’s powerful Mythos AI model would be relaxed, following a two-week period in which the export ban had forced Anthropic to disable the model for all users.
At first glance, it might seem like the two frontier AI labs are in a similar position in President Donald Trump’s Washington. But nothing could be further from the truth. Anthropic has had a far rougher ride in Trump’s D.C. than OpenAI, or pretty much any other tech company.
