Startup Founded by Former DOGE Staffers Claims to Have Infiltrated Anthropic Systems

Cathedral, an AI-focused cybersecurity startup founded by former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees, has claimed to have infiltrated the internal systems of AI company Anthropic. According to a draft report reviewed by the Washington Post, Cathedral alleged that it used vulnerabilities in third-party business software to gain access to sensitive data, including meeting transcripts, salary information, and Slack messages, in less than 12 hours.

Anthropic stated that the researchers in question had previously made unsuccessful attempts targeting the software directly. While the company confirmed that the researchers gained access to a limited area within sales, human resources, and IT systems, it emphasized that they did not reach Claude user conversations, source code, or AI model weights.

The infiltration attempt occurred as part of a program where Anthropic rewards researchers who find security vulnerabilities. However, Anthropic accused Cathedral of failing to fully disclose the scope of its activities and violating program rules. Founded by Gavin Kliger, Luke Farritor, Marko Elez, and Jack Stein, Cathedral has a valuation of $1.4 billion and has raised $160 million in funding from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.