FTC Demands Anthropic Executives Testify in AI Safety Probe

The US Federal Trade Commission has told Anthropic’s executives to come and answer questions under oath. Anthropic is the only AI company the consumer watchdog has named so far for testimony in its safety probe, and the demand landed on the same day Anthropic was pitching its stock market listing to investors.

An FTC spokesperson confirmed the demands to Axios on Monday 26 October. People at other AI companies have also been told to testify, the spokesperson said, without naming them.

The number: 50 pages each

The testimony follows written demands sent earlier this month. On 14 October the FTC sent Anthropic and OpenAI civil investigative demands of more than 50 pages each. A civil investigative demand is a legal order, a bit like a subpoena, that forces a company to hand over documents before any lawsuit. These ones ask for records on security incidents, safety practices, marketing materials and privacy policies.

The FTC polices business practices that are “unfair or deceptive” to consumers. That covers things like misleading marketing or how a service charges people. No one has been accused of breaking the law. The probe, first reported by Reuters on 30 September, follows a run of incidents in which AI agents reached systems they were not meant to, including cases DailyAI has covered at OpenAI and with Anthropic's Claude in Georgia.

What Anthropic told investors

Antropisch S-1 filing, the document a company publishes before selling shares to the public, already flagged the probe. It says the FTC’s demand covers its “consumer protection, data protection, and privacy practices, as well as the safety and security of our products”. The company warns the investigation “could result in significant costs, require changes to how we design, test, or deploy our models”.

The filing also warns that, because of its public positions on AI safety, Anthropic may be “disproportionately or selectively targeted by particular governmental bodies, even where similarly situated companies are not”. Axios notes the filing does not name the Trump administration, but lists several open disputes with Washington.

De eenvoudige lezing

For now this is fact-finding, not a fine. But testimony under oath raises the stakes. Whatever executives say can be used if the FTC later sues. For ordinary users, the probe matters because it tests one question: when an AI company says its product is safe, does it have the records to prove it? Investors in a company that made $16.3 billion of revenue in the first half of 2026, according to the same filing, will be watching the answer closely.