Anthropic shutdown order hits pre-IPO share market

Anthropic shutdown order hits pre-IPO share market
Anthropic faces shutdown risk

A U.S. government order to suspend Anthropic's most advanced AI models is pressuring investor sentiment around the company's pre-IPO outlook. The action follows national security concerns over a potential jailbreak involving Fable 5 and Mythos 5, prompting a selloff in the company's closely watched secondary market proxy.

Highlights

  • U.S. government ordered Anthropic to shut down Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models over national security concerns about a potential jailbreak vulnerability.
  • Anthropic's perpetual contract on Hyperliquid fell 3.7% to about $1,627 following the shutdown directive, signaling doubts in pre-IPO valuation prospects.
  • The dispute signals potential regulatory risk for the entire AI sector, as broader application of such shutdown standards could restrict advanced model deployments.

Shutdown order and company response

As reported by CoinDesk, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic on Friday to shut down access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security authorities and concerns about a possible jailbreak. Anthropic says it received the directive at 5:21 p.m. ET and that the order initially required the company to suspend access for any foreign national, inside or outside the United States, before it carried out a full shutdown for all customers.

Anthropic says the government has provided only verbal evidence of what it describes as a narrow and previously known vulnerability rather than a universal jailbreak. The company argues that the technique involves identifying a small number of minor software flaws, and it says other publicly available models, including OpenAI's GPT-5.5, can identify the same vulnerabilities without bypassing model safeguards.

The company is publicly contesting the directive despite its longstanding safety-first positioning in AI development. Anthropic says applying the government's standard across the sector would effectively halt new model deployments by frontier AI providers, and it plans to publish more details about the specific jailbreak within 24 hours.

Market impact on listing prospects

The immediate market reaction is negative for Anthropic's pre-IPO valuation narrative. The Anthropic perpetual contract on Hyperliquid, a cash-settled instrument used by traders as a proxy for expected equity pricing, falls 3.7% on Saturday to about $1,627 after trading above $1,800 in the days following the Fable 5 launch.

Open interest in the contract stands near $8.6 million, still small compared with larger private-market proxies but notable for a company that has not yet filed for an IPO. The decline suggests traders are reassessing the company's listing prospects as they wait to see whether the government's order is reversed, narrowed, or extended to other classes of AI models.

The dispute also raises broader questions for the AI sector because Anthropic contends the cited vulnerability reflects routine defensive software review rather than a dangerous bypass. If regulators apply that interpretation more widely, developers of advanced AI systems could face tougher deployment hurdles and greater uncertainty around commercial launches.

Our earlier coverage of the U.S. government order forcing Anthropic to restrict access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models explained how the directive, aimed at limiting foreign-national access over an alleged jailbreak risk, effectively resulted in a global shutdown. We also noted that the clash escalated existing policy tensions between Anthropic and the administration, with the company arguing that a narrow vulnerability finding should not set a de facto standard that could stall future frontier-model launches across the sector.

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