Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is striving to keep pace with larger rival OpenAI, which benefits from massive backing from Microsoft and Nvidia, while also navigating scrutiny from the U.S. government.

David Sacks, the venture capitalist serving as President Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar, has publicly criticized Anthropic for allegedly promoting “the Left’s vision of AI regulation.” His remarks followed an essay by Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, head of policy at the AI startup, titled “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear.” On X, Sacks accused the company of running “a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”

OpenAI, by contrast, has positioned itself as a partner to the White House. On January 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration, the administration announced Stargate, a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank to invest billions in U.S. AI infrastructure.

Anthropic was founded in late 2020 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who left OpenAI to focus on building safer AI. OpenAI, originally a nonprofit lab founded in 2015, had been moving rapidly toward commercialization with significant funding from Microsoft. Today, the two companies are among the most highly valued private AI firms in the U.S., with OpenAI at $500 billion and Anthropic at $183 billion. OpenAI leads the consumer AI market with ChatGPT and Sora, while Anthropic’s Claude models are popular in enterprise settings.

The companies also differ on AI regulation. OpenAI advocates for fewer restrictions, while Anthropic has opposed certain federal efforts to limit protections. Notably, Anthropic challenged a Trump-backed provision that would have blocked state-level AI regulations for 10 years, which was ultimately abandoned. The startup later endorsed California’s SB 53, requiring transparency and safety disclosures from AI companies. Anthropic argued that such measures are crucial to ensure that frontier AI labs maintain safety standards even as competition intensifies.

No comment was provided by Anthropic for this story, and Sacks did not respond to a request for comment.