By Matt Busel, who built the apps, crates and game he writes about · every number links to its source and every dataset is downloadable (methods) · corrections · featured in Kirino, gamebiz, This Week in Rust, New Mobile Life, By-Press
Anthropic S-1: Claude was banned. 5 agencies bought $1.1M since
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Short answer: Anthropic's S-1 tells investors the President ordered every federal agency to stop using Claude on February 27, 2026. Federal contract records say otherwise: since that order, five agencies signed six new Claude awards worth $1,101,545.82, and 99.9% of that money landed after Anthropic won in district court on August 27.
TL;DR: We pulled every federal contract award naming Claude or Anthropic from USAspending.gov and lined the dates up against the timeline in Anthropic's own S-1. The Department of Labor alone ordered $898,539.46 of "Claude for Government" on September 30, five days after Anthropic lost 2-1 at the D.C. Circuit. The ban the risk factors warn about is real at the Pentagon, but on the civilian side the buying has already restarted, and nobody has added it up until now.
Key numbers
| What | Number | Source, checked Oct 27 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| New federal Claude awards since the Feb 27 order | 6 awards, 5 agencies | USAspending.gov |
| Dollars on those awards | $1,101,545.82 | USAspending.gov |
| Largest: Department of Labor via ThunderCat, Sep 30 2026 | $898,539.46 | award 1605TB26F00112 |
| Share of post-order dollars signed after the Aug 27 ruling | 99.9% | our math on USAspending rows |
| Department of War awards naming Claude since Feb 27 | 0 | USAspending.gov |
| Revenue from outside Anthropic's top five customers, Q1 vs Q3 2026 | 64% to 79% | Anthropic S-1 |
The S-1 describes a ban. The ledger shows a reopening
Anthropic's prospectus, filed October 26, spends a full page on what it calls the "Challenged Actions." The President "directed that all federal executive agencies cease using our technology." The Secretary of War designated the company a "supply-chain risk to national security."
The notes to the financial statements add that "a portion of the Company's revenue is derived from contracts with various agencies" of the US government and that it "may experience material revenue losses." CNBC's read of the risk factors this morning, like most coverage, takes that warning at face value.
So we checked the receipts. USAspending.gov, the Treasury database every federal contract action flows into, lists every award that names Claude or Anthropic. Strip out the noise (Miami's Claude Pepper Federal Building generates dozens of HVAC contracts) and eight real Claude awards remain for 2024 to today. Six of them were signed after the order to stop.
Who bought, and how
- Department of Labor, Sep 30: $898,539.46 for "Anthropic Claude for Government (C4G)," through reseller ThunderCat Technology on NASA's SEWP contract vehicle.
- Smithsonian Institution, Oct 9: $114,000 for "Claude Enterprise software licensing," bought directly from Anthropic, PBC.
- National Endowment for the Arts, Oct 15: $29,760 for pooled, unlimited-seat Claude for Government access for about 50 to 150 staff, through Carahsoft.
- Department of Energy, Oct 21: $59,244.36 for "Claude for Government for the DOE EMCBC," through Carahsoft.
- FCC, May 5 and Jul 6: two $1 pilot orders through Carahsoft, one labelled "FedRAMP High compliant."
Two details stand out. The NEA and FCC orders sit under Carahsoft's GSA schedule contract 47QSWA18D008F, the same schedule GSA said in March it would pull Anthropic from. And the Labor order came five days after the D.C. Circuit upheld the supply-chain designation 2-1, which tells you agencies read that ruling as a Pentagon matter, not a civilian one.
Timing: the court did what lobbying could not
Split the dollars by the dates in the S-1 and the pattern is stark. Before February 27: $18,960 (a State Department buy). From the order to the August 27 summary judgment: $2, two FCC pilots. After the ruling: $1,101,543.82.
The district court found the actions were "retaliatory acts meant to punish us for speech protected under the First Amendment" and enjoined the agencies from implementing the directive. Our read: civilian buyers waited for a judge, got one, and started signing within five weeks. That is the evidence rule in action. Nobody presumed who blocks federal AI adoption; the ledger shows the block lasted six months and then cracked at the civilian agencies.
Why $1.1M matters to a company doing billions
$1.1M is a rounding error next to Anthropic's revenue. The point is direction. The S-1 shows Anthropic diversifying fast: customers outside its top five rose from about 64% of revenue in Q1 2026 to about 79% in Q3, and no customer topped 10% over nine months. Government is one of the few segments the filing paints as shrinking.
The contract records say it is not shrinking, it is restarting at the agencies the injunction protects. The live risk is narrower than the risk factors read: the Department of War, where the Section 4713 designation still stands and we found zero Claude awards since February, plus contractors who sell to it. Watch the en banc petition. If the full D.C. Circuit reverses, the Pentagon side reopens too; if it does not, the civilian buying we found is the ceiling, not the floor.
How we pulled it, so you can rerun it
We queried the USAspending award search API for the keywords "Claude" and "Anthropic" across contract award types A to D, from January 1 2024 to October 27 2026, and de-duplicated by award ID. That returns dozens of rows, most of them false hits: building maintenance at the Claude Pepper Federal Building in Miami, a parkway contract near Claude Moore Farm, a hotel booking for a traveler named Claude.
After removing those by hand, eight awards remain that buy Anthropic's product. Two predate the order (State, $18,960 on Feb 11; an FCC $0 pilot on Feb 23). Six follow it. Every one is in our CSV with its award ID, recipient, parent contract vehicle and a direct USAspending link.
Two limits, stated plainly. First, USAspending only sees awards whose text names the product; a reseller order labelled "AI software licenses" would slip past a keyword search, so our $1.1M is a floor. Second, an award amount is what the agency obligated, not what Anthropic booked as revenue after the reseller's cut. Neither limit changes the direction: civilian agencies are signing again.
The same query works for any vendor. Swap in OpenAI, Google Gemini or xAI and you get a live read on who is winning government seats, weeks before any earnings call mentions it. Agents can run it too: the endpoint is public, free and needs no key.
What this means for you
If you sell AI software to government, this is your map: civilian agencies are buying frontier models again through Carahsoft, ThunderCat and direct deals, and the paperwork is public. Download our CSV, which has every award ID and USAspending link, and check which vehicles your product is on. If you are weighing the Anthropic IPO, price the government risk as a Pentagon risk, not a federal-wide one. More money stories on Tensorust News and the deep tech + finance hub; our first read of the filing is here.
Want this ledger kept current without pulling it yourself? Company Watch ($99/mo) alerts you to new federal awards, 8-Ks and lobbying filings for the companies you pick. We keep fixing it at no extra cost until it does what it promises.
Not financial advice. Our numbers and our read, so you can check them.
Sources
- Anthropic PBC, Form S-1, October 26 2026
- USAspending.gov, Department of Labor award 1605TB26F00112, pulled October 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, Smithsonian award 33330227CF0010440, pulled October 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, NEA award 59310527F00001, pulled October 27 2026
- USAspending.gov, DOE award 89303327PEM000280, pulled October 27 2026
- CNBC, Anthropic's IPO is risky business, October 27 2026
- Nextgov, Agencies begin to shed Anthropic contracts, March 2026
First published here on tensorust.com on Oct 27, 2026. Related: Tensorust News, Deep tech + finance, Company Watch.
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Goes deeper on one question from this articleHow to search USAspending.gov for any company's federal contracts (and catch the resellers)Search USAspending.gov by keyword (brand and product names) with Award Type set to Contracts, not by recipient name. Agencies buy a lot of software through resellers, so...Read it next →Cite this
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