Claude AI Down Again; At Least 10,000 Users Are Experiencing Issues

The digital workspace shuddered to a halt on Wednesday morning as one of the world's most prominent artificial intelligence platforms suddenly fell silent. Thousands of developers, writers and researchers encountered an unexpected problem while using Anthropic's AI chatbot. Instead of receiving a helpful response, what they saw was an 'API 500 error'.

The disruption is not a solitary event but part of a frustrating pattern for users who rely on these tools for daily productivity. As screens across offices and home set-ups alike displayed the dreaded internal server error, the modern workforce's dependence on a handful of Silicon Valley servers became uncomfortably clear.

Thousands Locked Out As Claude Suffers Major Meltdown

The primary wave of technical difficulties peaked on Wednesday, 25 February, leaving a significant portion of the user base unable to access the chatbot. According to data monitoring services, at least 10,000 users were encountering the problem as of 10:16 am, per GV Wire.

Reports began to flood social media platforms as people realised the issue was not restricted to their local internet connections. Many users specifically cited an 'API 500 error', which typically indicates that the server has encountered an unexpected condition that prevents it from fulfilling the request.

This technical bottleneck rendered both the web interface and the integrated applications that used Anthropic's backend effectively useless. For a company that markets itself on reliability and safety, such a widespread failure represents a significant hurdle in maintaining user trust.'

Crashes Keep Coming After Claude Sonnet 4.6 Launch

This latest instability follows closely on the heels of a similar event that occurred only eight days prior. On 17 February, the platform suffered another significant crash shortly after the organisation introduced its latest model, Claude Sonnet 4.6.

The timing of that previous outage suggested that the infrastructure may have struggled to cope with the surge in demand following the new release. During that incident, reports of service failures surged as users attempted to test the updated software's capabilities.

In a statement provided to Forbes, the company confirmed that Claude 'experienced a brief service issue affecting a subset of claude.ai and desktop users' on Tuesday. Claude, however, did not provide an exhaustive breakdown of the root cause and said the issue was quickly resolved.

The recurring nature of these outages has led some industry analysts to question whether the rapid scaling of AI models is outpacing the hardware required to sustain them.

The Rise of Anthropic and the Evolution of Claude

Claude AI is a sophisticated large language model designed by Anthropic, an artificial intelligence start-up based in San Francisco. The company was founded by former members of OpenAI who sought to build a system with a greater emphasis on AI safety and constitutional ethics.

The platform officially launched in March 2023 and has since grown into one of the most formidable competitors to ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It is designed to handle complex reasoning, creative writing and extensive coding tasks with a tone that many users find more human-like than its rivals.'

The core of the technology relies on a massive dataset and proprietary training methods that allow the AI to 'read' and 'summarise' entire books in seconds. Despite its brilliance, the recent outages prove that even the most advanced AI system is vulnerable to technical glitches or server strain.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Anthropic technicians were reportedly working to restore full functionality to the system.