Austria asks EU to host Anthropic after US AI restrictions

Austria has formally requested the European Union explore hosting the American artificial intelligence company Anthropic within the bloc, a direct response to recent U.S. restrictions that cut off foreign access to the firm's most advanced AI systems. The proposal, detailed in a letter from Austrian State Secretary for Digitalization Alexander Pröll to European Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen, urges member states to consider the "strategic establishment and participation" of Anthropic inside the EU.

The initiative was triggered by a U.S. Commerce Department directive issued on June 12, which required Anthropic to block foreign nationals from accessing its two most powerful models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing national security concerns over their potential to identify software vulnerabilities. Unable to restrict access by nationality on a shared cloud service, Anthropic suspended global availability of the models, creating an immediate outage for users outside the United States, including in Europe.

In his letter, Pröll argued that Europe should not passively accept this limitation. He proposed offering Anthropic a European jurisdiction with incentives...