Anthropic hires Teresa Carlson as public sector lead

Anthropic is deepening its government presence, with the company announcing Tuesday that it is hiring veteran public sector executive Teresa Carlson as its inaugural global head of public sector.

Carlson boasts a lengthy career working as the go-between for tech companies and the government. Between 2010 and 2022, she worked for Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Splunk in federal sales, public sector relations and business growth, respectively.

Carlson’s most recent role was serving as the founding CEO of the General Catalyst Institute, the public policy arm of venture capital firm General Catalyst, where she worked closely with congressional committees on the government’s adoption of AI. 

“Few people are as trusted across government and industry as Teresa, or understand how governments adopt new technology as well. We’re fortunate to have her leading this work for us in the U.S. and worldwide," Kate Earle Jensen, head of Americas at Anthropic, said in a statement.

Carlson is also vice chair of the White House Historical Association, is a National Portrait Gallery Trustee and serves as a board and Executive Committee member at the Atlantic Council.

“After more than two decades helping government leaders navigate new technologies, I joined Anthropic because it prioritized working alongside government early and takes this as seriously as anything it does,” Carlson said in a statement shared with Nextgov/FCW. “AI is changing how we work and how we live, and that change has to happen in collaboration with governments.”

Carlson's selection as Anthropic’s first public sector head comes at a crucial time for the company's relationship with the U.S. government. Anthropic continues to navigate the Pentagon’s April decision to designate the firm a supply chain risk following the company’s refusal to allow the Department of Defense to use its products in operations that involved autonomous weaponry and American surveillance. 

The launch of Mythos, Anthropic’s powerful new model designed to detect vulnerabilities across digital networks, has further complicated Anthropic’s relationship with the government. Understanding and harnessing Mythos’s benefits became a matter of national security, prompting the Trump administration to offer select agencies access to test the model.

Mythos’ advanced cyber capabilities, and the risk of those capabilities being leveraged by adversaries, prompted the White House on June 12 to apply export controls to both Mythos 5 and Fable 5 — a restricted version intended for more general use — following reports of a potential jailbreak. While the initial export controls applied to Mythos and Fable were meant to prevent access by foreign nationals, the complicated nature of user verification pushed Anthropic to withdraw model access altogether.

By early July, the export control was revoked, and general access to Fable 5 and select access to Mythos 5 were restored.