Anthropic’s Claude AI service experienced a major outage for over two hours on Monday morning, but the company has since confirmed that all systems—including Claude.AI, Claude Code, and the Claude Opus 4.6 model—are fully operational as of 11 a.m. ET.
Outage Details
The disruption began around 7 a.m. ET, with Anthropic’s status page registering ongoing errors for more than two hours afterward. The outage coincided with a significant surge in demand for Claude, according to the company. Third-party monitoring platform Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in reported issues starting at approximately 6:45 a.m. ET, peaking at nearly 2,000 reports before gradually declining to 275 by 9:30 a.m. ET.
Anthropic’s Response
Anthropic issued a statement at 11 a.m. ET confirming the resolution, stating, “We’re grateful to our users while the team works to match the incredible demand we’ve seen for Claude in recent days.” The company did not immediately disclose the cause of the outage, but the timing suggests it may have been related to unexpected strain on infrastructure due to rapid user growth.
Context and Implications
This incident underscores the challenges faced by AI developers in scaling services to meet growing demand. Outages are common during periods of rapid expansion, as systems struggle to handle increased traffic. Anthropic’s quick response is encouraging, but this event highlights the need for ongoing infrastructure investment to ensure stability. The timing is also noteworthy, coming shortly after Donald Trump publicly criticized Anthropic and called for federal agencies to stop using Claude, citing “woke” policies. The outage could be entirely unrelated, but the political pressure adds another layer of scrutiny to the company’s operations.
The services are now stable, but this event raises questions about the long-term resilience of AI platforms under pressure.
