Anthropic is set to invest $1.5 million in the Python Software Foundation (PSF) to strengthen security across the Python ecosystem, underscoring the growing importance of open-source infrastructure in modern AI development. The funding will support critical security enhancements to CPython and the Python Package Index (PyPI), while also contributing to the foundation’s broader mission of maintaining and advancing the Python language, which underpins a significant share of today’s artificial intelligence and data science workloads.
According to the PSF, the investment will enable a new phase of security-focused development aimed at protecting developers and organisations that rely on Python packages at scale. A key area of focus will be improving safeguards around PyPI, the central repository that hosts hundreds of thousands of Python packages and serves as a core distribution channel for the global developer community.
Alex Albert, Anthropic’s head of developer relations, highlighted the strategic value of the ecosystem in a post on X, writing, “Python powers so much of the AI industry. Supporting the folks that make our work possible is an honour.” His remarks reflect a broader industry recognition that the resilience of open-source foundations is closely tied to the security and reliability of commercial AI systems built on top of them.
The PSF said the funding will support projects such as the development of new tools for automated and proactive review of packages uploaded to PyPI. Explaining the approach, the foundation noted, “We intend to create a new dataset of known malware that will allow us to design these novel tools, relying on capability analysis.” These efforts aim to identify and mitigate malicious packages earlier in the distribution process, reducing the risk of supply-chain attacks that have increasingly targeted open-source ecosystems.
Beyond immediate Python-specific benefits, the PSF expects the work to have a wider impact. The foundation said the outcomes of these initiatives are likely to improve security practices across multiple open-source ecosystems, starting with Python, adding, “We couldn’t be more grateful for Anthropic’s remarkable support.”
The donation will also help fund the PSF’s Developers in Residence programme, which supports sustained contributions to CPython and other core projects. The investment builds on Anthropic’s recent efforts to support open-source infrastructure, including its decision to donate the Model Context Protocol to the Linux Foundation’s newly launched Agentic AI Foundation. Together, these moves signal a growing commitment by leading AI companies to strengthen the foundational technologies that make large-scale AI innovation possible.
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