TNB Tech Minute: Pentagon Gives Anthropic Ultimatum in AI Use Impasse

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Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Tuesday, February 24th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei until Friday to comply with the Pentagon's demands on using its AI models or face cancellation of the company's contract.

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People familiar with the matter say the ultimatum came at a Pentagon meeting today that ended in a stalemate. Axios previously reported on today's meeting.

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If Anthropic doesn't show more flexibility working with the military, Hegsad said he could label the company a supply chain risk or invoke the Defense Production Act to essentially force the company to work more collaboratively with the Pentagon. Stripe is seeing more successful and high-growth businesses join the platform. That's according to the company's annual shareholder letter.

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The payment processing platform says that in 2025, a record number of new companies joined Stripe and that this cohort is growing around 50% faster than the 2024 cohort. It said the number of companies reaching $10 million annual recurring revenue within three months of launch was double the 2024 count.

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It attributes that growth partly to advancements in large language models, which are accelerating entrepreneurship by making it easier to build apps and code. The number of iOS apps released in December rose 60% year over year, while code writing platform GitHub saw its uploads jump 41% between the third quarters of 2024 and of 2025.

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Chinese auto giant BYD logged a nearly three-fold increase in European sales last month, topping more than 18,000 new car registrations. That's up from nearly 6,900 in January last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association.