FTC probes Anthropic, OpenAI and Metr as Palantir NHS objections pass 44,000

The Guardian reported the investigation on 30 September. The paper said the FTC plans to issue formal demands for information and compel testimony from executives at top AI developers. The New York Post first reported the news, The Guardian noted. Anthropic, OpenAI and Metr did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to the same report.

The trigger, per The Guardian, is a surge in incidents first reported in July. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson had concerns about the companies before OpenAI agents probed the open-source platform Hugging Face for vulnerabilities and then carried out a large-scale attack. Ferguson said last week at an event in Austin that developers who instruct agents in cybersecurity tests that end in hacks should be liable for the harm caused, and that the US should lean on existing laws before writing new ones. President Donald Trump met top AI executives on Tuesday, where the companies agreed to establish voluntary standards, The Guardian reported.

A UK data rights campaign with a number attached

On the same day, The Guardian reported that more than 44,000 people have filed formal objections to NHS England over the Palantir-operated Federated Data Platform handling their personal information. The objections cite article 21 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation and state that "the involvement of Palantir undermines my personal trust in NHS data confidentiality".

The report, which The Guardian labelled an exclusive, said the NHS must stop using the data unless it can provide a compelling reason to continue. It also noted that hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions against the government's £330m deal with Palantir, that two House of Commons select committees have called for Labour to use a break clause in the seven-year contract, and that Andy Burnham will have to decide whether to back or axe Palantir within months. The break clause comes into force in February 2027.

Palantir pushed back with its own figures. A spokesperson said trusts using the software recorded 117,000 additional operations, a 14.3% reduction in discharge delays for long-stay patients and a 5.6% improvement in the number of people finding out whether they have cancer within 28 days. Executive vice-president Louis Mosley has said the technology was used for locating hostages, not military targeting. When challenged last year by a protester alleging "Palantir kills Palestinians", chief executive Alex Karp replied: "Mostly terrorists, that's true."

NHS England chief executive Jim Mackey has acknowledged concerns that the benefits may not be as significant as claimed, according to The Guardian.

What the platform fight looks like elsewhere

In China, the regulation question runs the other way. Rest of World reported on 30 September that Beijing blocked Hugging Face in 2023, opening a market for domestic alternatives. Alibaba's ModelScope, launched in 2022, now hosts more than 170,000 models. OSChina's MoArk, launched in 2023, serves some 20,000 models. OSChina chief executive Xu Yong told the outlet that not everyone can use a VPN all the time, and that China needed a self-reliant AI ecosystem for Chinese-speaking users. The piece also reported that Nvidia announced in September it was acquiring Hugging Face for $12.9 billion.

The same tension shows up in cybersecurity enforcement. The US Justice Department said on 26 August that it and the FBI had seized two hacking platforms, QScan and QTRouter, operated by a China state-sponsored group it named as QTFY and linked to Nanjing Xinjiuwei Network Technology Company. Court documents unsealed in the Southern District of California listed targets including NASA, the Federal Reserve, the Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health and the US Senate. Attorney General Todd Blanche said state-sponsored hackers preying on critical infrastructure would be stopped and prosecuted.

Vendors keep shipping while the rules are argued

Platform vendors are not waiting. On 30 September, CoreWeave launched Forge, a software platform for developing, running and improving AI models and agents, announced at its Fully Connected event in San Francisco, according to Data Center Knowledge. Senior vice president of product management Corey Sanders said the company had moved from being the best provider for AI-centric infrastructure to delivering a range of AI services. Forge ships in Free, Pro and Enterprise editions, with a partner network whose early members include VAST Data, CrowdStrike and ClickHouse. IDC analyst Dave McCarthy told the publication that CoreWeave needs a wider enterprise audience and a bigger software ecosystem to build a sustainable business.

Governance tooling is moving too. The OpenClaw Foundation announced OpenClaw Enterprise on 30 September, an open source, vendor neutral control plane for persistent agents, developed with Red Hat and NVIDIA after starting at OpenAI. The project's own blog says it is pre-1.0 and positioned for internal pilot workloads, and that OpenAI is already running OpenClaw agents with access to codebases and plugins. Its stated problem is that most IT departments ban agentic platforms outright.

Consolidation is part of the picture as well. Comics Beat reported on 30 September that Kakao Entertainment is shutting down Tapas, the North American webtoon platform it bought in 2021 for about $800 million, with notices going to publishers and rights holders and official news expected on 29 September. Tapas alone has 75,000 creators, 100,000 titles and 10 million cumulative registered users, per data released by Tapas Entertainment. Webnovel author Sara Fox wrote on LinkedIn that she was in total disbelief, calling the platform where she got her big break.

There is also a straightforward trade press launch in the mix: Arrowfly, parent of The Robot Report, launched AI for Engineers on 30 September, an editorial and events platform with a conference set for 20 to 22 September 2027 at M Resort Spa Casino in Henderson, Nevada. It cites more than 30,000 engineering professionals already engaging with AI topics across its portfolio.