Anthropic begin sweeping offices for hidden devices, amps up security

Anthropic said it will start sweeping physical offices for hidden devices as part of a ramped-up security effort as the artificial intelligence race intensifies.

The company, backed by Amazon, published safety and security updates in a blog post on Monday, and said it also plans to establish an executive risk council and build an in-house security team.

Anthropic closed its latest funding round earlier this month at a $61.5 billion valuation, which makes it one of the highest-valued AI startups. But it’s a fraction the value of OpenAI, which on Monday said it closed a $40 billion round at a $300 billion valuation, including the fresh capital.

The generative AI market is set to surpass $1 trillion in revenue within a decade. In addition to high-growth startups, tech giants including Google, Amazon and Microsoft are racing to announce new products and features. Competition is also coming from China, a risk that became more evident earlier this year when DeepSeek’s AI model went viral in the U.S.

Anthropic said in the post that it will introduce “physical” safety processes, such as technical surveillance countermeasures — or the process of finding and identifying surveillance devices that are used to spy on organizations. The sweeps will be conducted “using advanced detection equipment and techniques” and will look for “intruders.”

For its new in-house security team, Anthropic will look for expertise in incident response and advanced persistent threats.

Anthropic will also begin implementing “multiple clearance levels” for employees as far as data classification and will start introducing “per-role permission sets” to decide which employees can access sensitive data. The company will also begin educating employees on “insider risk” and establish a program for incentivizing “risk reporting” internally.

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