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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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Anthropic, one of the most prominent artificial intelligence companies in the United States, is warning that its employees could face targeted immigration or visa action because of the company’s positions on artificial intelligence policy and regulation.
In an SEC filing Monday, the company said its engagement with policymakers and public statements on AI regulation and safety could expose it to heightened government scrutiny, including "targeted immigration or visa actions affecting our personnel."
The warning comes as President Donald Trump's administration has tightened parts of the legal immigration system and sought changes to employment-based visas widely used by the technology industry. Visa applicants have faced additional scrutiny under the administration, including reviews of social media activity. The government is also carrying out a widespread immigration enforcement operation across the nation under the GOP's flagship mass deportation policy.
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Anthropic wrote that its political engagement could leave it vulnerable to being "disproportionately or selectively targeted by particular governmental bodies," including investigations, enforcement, licensing restrictions, and immigration or visa actions affecting its personnel.
Newsweek contacted Anthropic and the Department of Homeland Security for comment. The Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment.
The company separately warned that changes to U.S. immigration policy could make it harder to recruit and retain skilled workers, saying policies that "restrain the flow of professional and technical talent" may "inhibit our ability to recruit and retain highly qualified employees."
Anthropic had 219 H-1B beneficiaries approved between fiscal years 2021 and 2026, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. H-1B visas allow U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers for specialized jobs requiring highly specialized knowledge, including in fields such as engineering and science.
Trump's approach to H-1B visas has exposed divisions among his supporters. Technology companies have defended the visas as a way to recruit highly skilled workers and the president has called it "a great program," while immigration hard-liners have pushed for tighter restrictions.
The Trump administration has pursued restrictions affecting highly skilled foreign workers, including a $100,000 fee on certain H-1B petitions, which was later blocked by a federal judge. It has separately proposed a $103,265 fee on some H-1B petitions, as well as ending the 60-day grace period that allows foreign workers to remain in the country after losing their jobs.
The administration has also suspended Microsoft, Adobe, and several other technology companies from the PERM permanent labor certification program, a key step for some foreign workers seeking employment-based green cards.
In 2025, the State Department has required online-presence reviews for all H-1B applicants and their H-4 dependents and instructs applicants to make their social-media profiles public. The department says this is intended to identify inadmissible applicants, including potential national-security or public-safety threats.
Stark Warnings
Anthropic's filing also issued stark warnings about the wider dangers posed by advanced AI, including potentially "catastrophic" risks, as the company prepares to go public.
It follows a bitter clash between Anthropic and the Trump administration earlier this year.
In July 2025, the Pentagon awarded Anthropic and three other AI companies contracts worth up to $200 million each to accelerate adoption of advanced AI for national security. In February, Trump ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic technology after the company refused to drop restrictions it sought to place on certain military uses of its AI. The Pentagon subsequently designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security. Anthropic later sued the Trump administration over the designation, calling the government's actions "unprecedented and unlawful" and saying they put hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue at risk. Anthropic is the developer of Claude, an AI assistant that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
On March 5, Anthropic confirmed it had officially been designated a U.S. government supply-chain risk, becoming the only American company ever publicly given a label typically reserved for organizations operating within foreign adversaries.
The disclosures come as Anthropic prepares for a potentially blockbuster IPO after reporting $16.29 billion in revenue for the first six months of 2026.
The filing also revealed the enormous cost of Anthropic's AI expansion. The company has made chip and data center commitments that could total about $1 trillion through 2045. The AI data-center boom has faced growing public opposition over its demands on electricity and water supplies and its environmental impact. The International Energy Agency says data-center electricity use rose 17 percent in 2025 and is projected to double by 2030.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matt Cannon and Tony Phillips.
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