Claude Enters the Money Chat 🪙 as Pompliano Says Anthropic Sniffed Around His Startup

Anthropic launched Claude’s Personal Finance feature on Thursday, giving U.S. subscribers on the Pro, Max, and Ultra plans a beta tool to connect bank and credit card accounts and ask questions about spending, bills, and remaining balances. The release came amid allegations from crypto investor Anthony Pompliano that Anthropic sought confidential information about his competing personal finance startup, Silvia, months before the rollout.

Users can link accounts through Plaid, which handles bank login and provides Claude with financial data without sharing account passwords. Claude can summarize spending, identify duplicate charges and unexpected fees, explain interest payments, and create charts and bill calendars. Anthropic’s example shows a user asking where their money went that month before following up to determine what remains until payday.

“Access is read-only, and Claude can't move, manage, or invest your money,” Anthropic wrote on X. The company added, “Like the rest of Claude, Personal Finance has no ads or sponsored recommendations.” With user approval, Claude can view balances, credit limits, account names and types, the last four digits of account numbers, and up to 24 months of transactions. Anthropic’s documentation says conversations in the Personal Finance hub are not used to train its models, while warning that account balances may lag and AI-generated figures should be checked against bank records.

Pompliano, whose Silvia product describes itself as a personal AI chief financial officer, alleged on X that Anthropic personnel approached Silvia engineers in April, initially citing interest in the startup’s growth and computing needs. “Anthropic was fishing for details on how we built our product and why it was so popular,” he wrote. He also described an alleged steak dinner with Anthropic representatives, saying one attendee claimed the meal was on CEO Dario Amodei’s tab. Pompliano said his engineers refused to disclose sensitive information and that an Anthropic representative warned the team about the launch several days beforehand.

Anthropic also disclosed that lower prices partly offset revenue growth generated by increased usage. In an amended SEC filing, the company said price reductions tied to new model versions and contractual discounts decreased revenue by “approximately $600 million,” while compute and infrastructure expenses rose from $5.56 billion to $9.86 billion, an increase of roughly 77%.