The Claude service from Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup embroiled in a dispute with the Donald Trump administration over whether to allow defense use, experienced a temporary access error on the 2nd (local time) due to a surge in users.

Bloomberg reported that the consumer application (app) service for the AI chatbot Claude from Anthropic was down that morning.

Anthropic said, “There was unprecedented demand for the Claude service last week,” and stated that all issues had been resolved at about 10:50 a.m. Eastern Time that day. Although Claude had been relatively less well known than ChatGPT or Gemini, Anthropic, the developer, has recently drawn the attention of general users as it has clashed with the Trump administration.

On the 28th of last month, Claude ranked first among free apps in the U.S. Apple App Store. The number of free Claude users has increased by more than 60% since January, and the number of paid subscribers has doubled so far this year.

Last month the U.S. Ministry of National Defense asserted that it would use Claude (the only AI that can be utilized on classified U.S. military systems) without restriction for ‘all lawful purposes’. However, Anthropic has argued that AI should not be used for mass surveillance of its own citizens or for fully autonomous weapons.

As President Trump also stepped in and fiercely condemned Anthropic, the conflict between the Trump administration and Anthropic intensified.

On the 27th of last month, President Trump wrote on the social networking service (SNS) Truth Social that he would “never allow a radical-left, ‘woke’(woke) company to dictate how the military fights and wins wars,” and urged all federal agencies to halt the use of Anthropic technology. Accordingly, the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency on that day announced a halt to the use of all Anthropic technologies, including Claude.