Unprecedented demand! Claude experienced downtime; Anthropic says free users increased by 60% since January, and paid users doubled since October.

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Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude experienced a large-scale service outage on Monday morning due to "unprecedented demand," highlighting the infrastructure pressures behind the startup's recent surge in users.

The peak of the outage occurred around 6:40 a.m. New York time on Monday. According to service monitoring site Downdetector, nearly 2,000 users reported disruptions to Claude's service at that time.

Anthropic stated that the outage affected consumer-facing products, including claude.ai and company applications, but enterprise customers who have integrated the Claude model into their own systems were not impacted. As of 10:50 a.m. New York time, the company announced that the outage had been resolved and all systems had returned to normal operations.

According to Bloomberg, the surge in users is closely tied to the ongoing dispute between Anthropic and the US Department of Defense—the latter has listed Anthropic as a supply chain risk. This move is seen by outsiders as an unprecedented action against a US-based company and may have far-reaching effects on its commercial outlook. Meanwhile, the Claude app has topped the Apple App Store chart for several consecutive days, and Silicon Valley professionals have voiced support for Anthropic's position.

Explosive User Growth, Outage Reveals Capacity Bottleneck

According to Anthropic, since January this year, the number of free Claude users has increased by more than 60%; since October last year, the number of paid subscribers has more than doubled. This outage is a direct reflection of this growth momentum at the infrastructure level.

Anthropic stated in its announcement: “Thank you for your patience. We are working hard to restore service. The demand Claude has experienced in the past week is unprecedented.” The company released this statement via WhatsApp and provided real-time updates on the progress of repairs on its status page.

Notably, the outage only affected consumer-facing products. Services for enterprise API customers were not impacted, showing Anthropic’s differentiated capabilities in guaranteeing infrastructure for enterprise versus consumer businesses.

Dispute with Pentagon Unexpectedly Catalyzes Traffic

The rapid growth of Anthropic’s user base is closely related to its public standoff with the US Department of Defense. The Pentagon has listed Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a rare move against a domestic company that has attracted widespread industry attention.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called the move "retaliatory and punitive" in an interview with CBS News, and stated the company will legally challenge any formal supply chain risk designation. The company has previously stipulated that its products may not be used for surveillance of US citizens or for developing fully autonomous weapons, and announced on Friday that “no matter how much the Department of Defense pressures or punishes us, we will not change our position.”

Just hours after Anthropic was listed as a supply chain risk, its larger competitor OpenAI announced a deal with the Department of Defense to deploy its AI models on the Pentagon’s classified networks. OpenAI stated that the agreement includes multiple safeguards to ensure model use aligns with its principles, such as banning large-scale domestic surveillance and requiring "human responsibility in the use of force." However, the deal immediately sparked controversy online, with some users calling for the cancellation of ChatGPT subscriptions.

The starkly different choices between the two companies led Anthropic to gain greater brand recognition within certain user groups, and objectively accelerated migration of users to the Claude platform.

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