Anthropic hands lawmakers its own draft AI safety bill

Anthropic has quietly presented its own draft AI safety bill to lawmakers, Bloomberg reported, citing Politico². Reuters carried the same report¹, and Channel NewsAsia and The Hindu reported the company proposing a law to regulate AI to US legislators^3,4. Yeni Safak described it as a federal AI safety law put to Congress⁵. Tech Insider characterised the proposal as a billion-dollar AI safety bill⁶.

The company is making the case publicly as well. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark renewed calls for robust regulation of frontier AI, The Standard reported⁷. The Tech Buzz reported that Anthropic is opening its models to independent AI auditors, while noting that the company is battling a Pentagon blacklist that has locked it out of defence work⁹. Channel NewsAsia and The Hindu reported that Anthropic was banned from the Pentagon by the Trump administration in February 2026 and was pressed by Washington in June 2026 over one of its services, in accounts that are cut short in the available excerpts^3,4.

Why it matters to investors

A frontier lab drafting its own statute is a bid to set the compliance baseline before someone else sets it. Reuters’s report sits alongside news that Anthropic is seeking a rehearing of its case over the Pentagon’s security risk branding¹, which points to the commercial stake: federal procurement. The draft bill and the auditor opening pull in the same direction, toward demonstrating that the company can be trusted by government buyers^7,9.

It is not the only draft in circulation. Semafor reported that Humans First, a conservative-led group advocating stronger AI guardrails, has published an “America First AI Policy” platform proposing export controls and visa restrictions⁸. Two competing regulatory templates, one from industry and one from the political right, is a different environment for investors to price than no legislation at all.

What to watch

Watch whether any member of Congress introduces the Anthropic text, because a circulated draft and a filed bill are different things^1,2,5. Watch the Pentagon dispute, since a rehearing or a lifted blacklist would change what the company is negotiating for^1,9. And watch which provisions survive contact with the rival platform, in particular export controls and visa restrictions, which are not reported to be in Anthropic’s own draft⁸.