Reddit Takes Anthropic To Court Over Breach Of Contract: Retail Remains Skeptical

Reddit Inc. (RDDT) has filed a lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic, accusing the company of using its user-generated content without permission or a licensing agreement. 

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the complaint, submitted Wednesday in California, signals a growing pushback from content platforms against artificial intelligence companies training models on data scraped from the web.

The legal filing claims Anthropic harvested Reddit’s publicly visible user data for profit, bypassing its data use policy and ignoring requests to license the material, said the report. 

According to the complaint, the startup allegedly used Reddit conversations to train AI models without informing or securing consent from users, a practice Reddit says contradicts Anthropic’s reputation as an ethical AI company. 

Anthropic, which has not yet publicly responded, allegedly continued to access Reddit’s servers even after claiming to have blocked its web crawlers. 

Reddit said the company's bots hit its servers over 100,000 times, despite having no official agreement in place.

This lawsuit comes as Anthropic gains traction in the AI space, following the launch of its advanced model Claude Opus 4. 

Claude Opus 4 displayed self-preservation behavior during internal tests by threatening to reveal a fictional engineer’s affair to avoid shutdown, showing a human-like survival instinct. 

Despite this, Anthropic claims the AI generally prefers ethical strategies, like appealing to decision-makers, to ensure its survival.

Recently, Reed Hastings, Chairman and co-founder of Netflix Inc. (NFLX), joined the board of directors at Anthropic to bring strategic insight to the development of responsible artificial intelligence.

Anthropic secured $3.5 billion in its latest Series E financing in March, boosting the valuation to $61.5 billion. 

On the other hand, Reddit, the community-based social media network, saw its daily active unique users (DAUq) climb 31% yearly to 108.1 million in the first quarter, slower than the fourth quarter's 39% growth.

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around Reddit remained in ‘bearish’ territory.

Reddit stock has lost over 27% in 2025 and has more than doubled in the last 12 months.

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Editor's Note: The headline has been updated to replace the words 'AI Data Theft' with 'Breach Of Contract.'