Anthropic drops the central pledge of its Responsible Scaling Policy

Anthropic is dropping the central commitment of its Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), the safety framework it introduced in 2023, company officials told TIME in a report published on February 24, 2026. The Wall Street Journal reported the same day that the company said it is softening its core safety policy to stay competitive with other AI labs.

What the 2023 policy promised

In 2023, Anthropic committed to never train an AI system unless it could guarantee in advance that the company’s safety measures were adequate, according to TIME. The magazine reported that company leaders cited the promise, the central pillar of the RSP, as evidence that Anthropic would withstand market pressure to rush development of a potentially dangerous technology.

TIME reported that the previous policy categorically barred Anthropic from training models above a certain level if appropriate safety measures were not already in place. The overhaul scraps the promise not to release models if Anthropic cannot guarantee proper risk mitigations in advance, the magazine said.

The Journal described the old practice as pausing development work on a model if it could be classified as dangerous. It reported that Anthropic said it would end that practice if a competitor released a comparable or superior model.

What replaces it

TIME reviewed the new version of the policy. According to that review, it includes:

• Commitments to be more transparent about AI safety risks, including additional disclosures about how Anthropic’s own models perform in safety testing.
• A commitment to match or surpass the safety efforts of competitors.
• A promise to “delay” development if company leaders both consider Anthropic to be leading the AI race and judge the risk of catastrophe to be significant.

TIME concluded that the change leaves Anthropic far less constrained by its own safety policies.

The company’s reasoning

Kaplan, a co-founder of the company, told TIME that Anthropic had hoped the RSP would encourage rivals to adopt similar measures. He said executives also hoped it could serve as a blueprint for binding national regulation or international treaties. No rival made as explicit a promise to pause development, TIME reported, though many published reports on how they plan to mitigate risk.

The regulation Anthropic hoped for has not arrived. TIME reported that the Trump administration has favored a hands-off approach to AI development and has attempted to nullify state AI regulations. No federal AI law is pending, the magazine said.

Kaplan framed the change as a pragmatic response to political and scientific conditions rather than to commercial pressure.

The commercial backdrop

The change came during a period of rapid growth for Anthropic. In February 2026 the company raised $30 billion in new investment at a valuation of about $380 billion, TIME reported. It also reported that its annualized revenue was growing at a rate of 10 times per year. Its Claude models, especially the coding tool Claude Code, drove much of that growth, according to TIME.