“No Active Contracts,” Boeing Stock (NYSE:BA) Slides as Pentagon Quizzes Contractors on Anthropic Use

An unexpected turn emerged for aerospace stock Boeing BA -1.88% ▼ and some of its contemporaries in the field. The Pentagon recently turned to defense contractors and asked them how much business they were doing with the AI firm Anthropic. Boeing’s own connections therein were surprisingly slim, but investors seemed upset about this. Boeing shares slid nearly 2% in Friday afternoon’s trading.

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The Pentagon started gathering up data on how much Anthropic was used in military contracting, mostly due to the fact that Anthropic is not planning to cut back on usage restrictions to allow military operations to go through it. Several safeguards are in place that are, apparently, incompatible with military applications, and the Department of Defense is eager to get Anthropic to modify its own policies in accordance.

But Boeing noted that it had “no active contracts” with Anthropic, and it was not alone on this front. Which means that the Department of Defense will likely not find much support for convincing Anthropic to change its rules. However, the Department of Defense might ultimately classify Anthropic as a “supply-chain risk,” or may turn to other laws in place to force Anthropic’s hand. Anthropic may have little choice here, especially given that xAI recently allowed the Pentagon to turn to Grok for some of its classified systems needs.

Deliveries are On Track

Meanwhile, good news came out of Virgin Airlines, which revealed that Boeing’s deliveries were “on track” to meet targets. With Virgin on track to carry out fleet modernization efforts, that means modern Boeing aircraft need to arrive, and on schedule.

Boeing is expected to deliver 13 737-8 aircraft over the 2026 fiscal year, reports note, and will land some 737-10 models as well. Nearly half the 737-8s are expected to arrive in the first half of the year, and Boeing is apparently right on track to deliver. Virgin reportedly wants the 737-8 aircraft to take over for the 737-800 NG models, as the 737-8s are more fuel-efficient.

Is Boeing a Good Stock to Buy Right Now?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on BA stock based on 13 Buys and one Hold assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 31.37% rally in its share price over the past year, the average BA price target of $278.17 per share implies 23.5% upside potential.

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