Anthropic is entering into a two-year partnership with the Python Software Foundation. The company is investing a total of $1.5 million in the security and further support of the Python ecosystem.
With this contribution, the Foundation aims to take steps in the field of software security. In particular, this concerns the core of the programming language and the infrastructure that developers worldwide rely on.
A significant portion of the money will be used to improve CPython and the Python Package Index. The focus will be on better protecting users against attacks on the software chain.
The Python Software Foundation is working on new automated methods to proactively analyze packages on PyPI, rather than only intervening after problems are discovered. By also building a dataset of known malware, the foundation can develop analysis tools that recognize suspicious patterns more quickly. This approach is expected to be useful not only for Python, but also for other open source ecosystems.
The security work builds on the foundation’s existing roadmap and is carried out by specialized developers and security engineers who focus on Python and PyPI. These functions are made possible in part by funding from Alpha-Omega, underscoring collaboration among multiple parties on open-source security.
Support for the Python community
In addition to security, part of the investment will go toward the Python Software Foundation’s regular work. This includes structural contributions to Python’s development, support for the international community through grants and programs, and management of essential infrastructure such as PyPI. This gives the foundation additional financial leeway at a time when reliance on Python continues to grow across software development, data, and AI.
According to The Register, Anthropic itself also has a clear interest in a secure Python ecosystem. The company offers a Python SDK and uses the deep learning framework PyTorch, which is heavily Python-based. A stable and secure foundation for the language and its packages is therefore directly relevant to the AI company’s own products and services.
Anthropic expands Labs organization
The announcement of the investment coincided with other strategic news from Anthropic, reports The Register. The company is expanding its Labs organization, an internal department focused on developing and testing experimental products around Claude’s capabilities. In this context, Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, is joining the Labs team, while the product organization is also being scaled up to develop new applications faster and grow existing services responsibly.
These simultaneous announcements paint a picture of a company committed to both the underlying open-source infrastructure and accelerating its product development. The investment in Python is therefore part of a broader strategy in which Anthropic is positioning itself as an active player in the open-source landscape while also expanding its AI platform.