Amazon and Google-backed AI start-up Anthropic has been slapped with a lawsuit from Reddit, the social news aggregation, internet forum, and platform for online communities.
CNBC reported that Reddit’s lawsuit was filed in San Francisco on Wednesday, for allegedly a breach of contract and for engaging in “unlawful and unfair business acts” by using the social media company’s platform and data without authority.
It comes after it revealed earlier this week that Anthropic, founded in 2021, is making roughly $3 billion (£2.2bn) in annualised revenue, mostly from sales to businesses.
Anthropic sued
This came after traffic on Anthropic’s consumer-oriented chatbot Claude is far below that of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but the company has seen strong business demand for use cases including code generation.
In February 2025 Anthropic had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the UK government to “explore how they can bring the transformative potential of advanced AI technologies to enhance public services for UK citizens.”
But now the firm, which has reportedly prided itself as being more responsible compared to its AI brethen over its AI safety and training methods, is being sued by Reddit.
The Reddit complaint opens by reportedly calling Anthropic a “late-blooming” AI company that “bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry,” CNBC noted.
Reddit followed by saying, “It is anything but.”
“For its part, despite what its marketing material says, Anthropic does not care about Reddit’s rules or users: it believes it is entitled to take whatever content it wants and use that content however it desires, with impunity,” the filing reportedly alleges.
The complaint reportedly accuses Anthropic of flouting Reddit’s data policies and continuing to scrape the platform even after the Anthropic allegedly claimed it had blocked its bots from accessing the site.
Reddit alleges that Anthropic “intentionally trained on the personal data of Reddit users without ever requesting their consent.”
Data collection
Reddit has been keen about monetising its data and userbase, after going public in 2024 despite much opposition from its users.
Indeed, Reddit has struck a number of content licensing deals (including with Google), as it seeks to show investors it can turn its massive user base and content into sustainable revenue streams.
CNBC reported that Reddit had announced a partnership with OpenAI in May that will allow the company to train its AI models on Reddit content.
In order to protect its data, Reddit reportedly implemented new restrictions on data scraping in 2024, creating a public content policy.
Reddit also reportedly recoded its backend to limit unauthorised access, but alleged that despite this, “Anthropic’s bots continued to visit Reddit’s servers over one hundred thousand times.”
In the lawsuit, Reddit reportedly said that “other giants in the AI space understand a respect Reddit’s rules,” which is why it has entered into formal partnerships with companies like OpenAI and Google.
Damages sought
It should be noted that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a former board member and major shareholder in Reddit, with a stake now valued at well over $1 billion.
“While Reddit has always been of the mind that the community should be open to all humans looking for connection and community, it has never allowed its platform and the countless communities who find a home on it to be appropriated by commercial actors seeking to create billion-dollar enterprises and offering nothing in return to Reddit and its users,” the complaint says.
Reddit said the aim of the lawsuit is to seek damages and compel Anthropic to abide by its contractual and legal obligations, CNBC noted.
