Days after Anthropic abruptly suspended access to its latest AI models following a US government directive, questions continue to swirl around both the circumstances that led to the Trump administration’s decision and its broader implications for the global AI ecosystem.
Anthropic in a blog post on Friday, June 12, said it received an export control directive, citing national security authorities, from the US Commerce Department to stop any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including its own foreign national employees, from accessing Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — two AI models underpinned by Mythos Preview, which the AI startup has described as its most powerful model yet.
To comply with the directive, Anthropic said that it had to disable access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all its customers, including US citizens. The reactions poured in almost immediately. Across Europe and the UK, many viewed the move as a stark reminder of how heavily they rely on US-based AI model providers.
Similarly, in India, it reignited a long-running debate over technological sovereignty. Several Indian founders, investors, and policy experts took to social media, debating whether the country should accelerate efforts to build its own AI infrastructure, invest more aggressively in open-source alternatives, or continue relying on foreign frontier models. Here’s a quick roundup of the most notable reactions so far.
Sridhar Vembu, Zoho
Sridhar Vembu, founder of Indian SaaS company Zoho, said that the episode shows how globalisation is dead and that India must find her own way ahead. “What can our government do right now? Ensure that orgs in India embrace smaller models, both Indian and Chinese open source ones,” Vembu wrote on X.
This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America.
First thoughts:
1. Technology is the ultimate weapon. National sovereignty, national security, all of it is now about technology.
2. Globalization is dead and Bharat must find her… https://t.co/kCQpq93D3r
— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) June 13, 2026
“We must deepen our R&D. Sarvam has been on it and we have been on it but remember that the latest models cost not only huge GPU budgets to train, the GPUs themselves are restricted […[ I would not like to ask the government to fund tens of billions of dollars on this anyway – the money has far better uses. Zoho has been pursuing alternative R&D approaches that are far, far less expensive but by its nature cutting edge R&D takes time and we are patient. I am confident we will get there,” he further said.
Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam AI
Pratyush Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Sarvam AI, one of the first Indian startups to launch a foundational AI model built from scratch, said, “We need to have more countries and companies owning their own destinies. And in the post AI world, that means being able to use and improve AI systems within their own perimeters – what one may call Sovereign AI.”
Ok, so here is my take on the Fable ban, sovereign AI, Sarvam, etc.
The event is interesting as it has implications from many perspectives.
For AI users, it is clear that you should not confuse access with ownership, or adoption itself as advantage. And if the most significant…
— Pratyush Kumar (@pratykumar) June 13, 2026
“From our vantage point, it is super clear that India will build, leverage, and create massive business value and societal impact with sovereign AI [..] The Fable ban is a good instigation for more people to engage in recognising the need for sovereignty,” he added.
Aakrit Vaish, Activate
Aakrit Vaish, founder of Indian AI venture platform Activate, opined that Anthropic’s decision “completely changes things.” “I think this materially changes the way all of us should be thinking about sovereign AI in India,” he was quoted as saying by TechCrunch.
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“Over the past couple of years, I would often argue for sovereign AI by saying “what if one day the US decides to turn the switch off?” Had never imagined that day would come so soon. Sovereign AI has moved from a narrative to the largest business opportunity of our times,” he wrote in a post on X.
This is absolutely crazy.
Over the past couple of years, I would often argue for sovereign AI by saying “what if one day the US decides to turn the switch off?”
Had never imagined that day would come so soon.
Sovereign AI has moved from a narrative to the largest business… https://t.co/iyjJbjWE3P
— Aakrit Vaish (@aakrit) June 13, 2026
Vaish also reportedly plans to encourage companies in his portfolio to reduce their dependence on a small number of frontier AI providers as startups increasingly turn to open AI models.
Mohandas Pai, investor
Responding to Vembu’s post on X, investor and former Infosys executive Mohandas Pai argued that the development highlighted the need for a far more ambitious national AI strategy and called on the government to substantially increase investments in AI, computing infrastructure, and deep tech.
“We are way behind and need a national mission to get going quickly. Existing govt programs are too slow, way too small to make any large impact. We need an annual 50000 cr fund for deep tech and AI, a 200,000 cr ELGS Guarantee Fund to build Hyper cloud, hardware and chips,” he wrote on X.
For context, the Indian government approved the IndiaAI Mission in 2024 with an outlay of Rs 10, 371 crore over five years, aimed at expanding compute infrastructure, supporting startups, and developing indigenous AI capabilities.
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Hemant Mohapatra, Lightspeed
Hemant Mohapatra, a partner at VC firm Lightspeed, said, “The “sovereign AI is real” moment is here. Nation-states will soon start needing citizenship and/or security clearances to work on the next SOTA models the way they do for defense, space, nuclear tech. It is only a matter of time. Talent wars here will be crazy.”
In response to Pai’s argument that the lack of capital was India’s primary challenge in AI, Mohapatra said that the biggest constraints to building globally competitive AI companies are talent, access to computing resources, and execution.
To train a GPT class 1T model from scratch – including failed runs, data acq+clean+rlhf, post-training, team/people will likely req $250M of compute on an aggressive 3-4mo schedule (i.e. more reserved GPUs), $500-600M all-in IF you do a dense one. MoE + fp8 will cut costs by… https://t.co/KZaFo6BTW8
— Hemant Mohapatra (@MohapatraHemant) June 13, 2026
“To train a GPT class 1T model from scratch – including failed runs, data acq+clean+rlhf, post-training, team/people will likely req $250M of compute on an aggressive 3-4mo schedule (i.e. more reserved GPUs), $500-600M all-in IF you do a dense one […] So this is not as much about raising $50-60B, or raising it all at once as the OP says – we are investors in mistral, sarvam, reflection and anthropic – and they all scaled capital over time as models got adoption, but the early bottleneck is more on talent + GPUs at that scale where you can do interesting things,” he wrote in a post on X.
Samir Saran, ORF
Commenting on evolving export controls, Samir Saran, president of think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF), said, “[Export controls] just changed shape. Not chips or tech, not code. It’s People. Foreign nationals, including a US lab’s own employees, locked out of frontier models overnight, wherever they sit.”
#Thread#ExportControl just changed shape. Not chips or tech, not code. It’s People. Foreign nationals, including a US lab’s own employees, locked out of frontier models overnight, wherever they sit.
Hmm… If talent itself is the leak, ring fencing tech gets a lot harder.
1/n https://t.co/GBOO6Wl7o2— Samir Saran (@samirsaran) June 13, 2026
“[Data sovereignty] is now a sharper negotiation. If access can be pulled on national security grounds, the trade of data will need a hard revision as well. Leverage sits with whoever holds the switch. Don’t give it away cheap. Focus on capability, not access,” he added.
