I queried the DNS records for 39 AI companies — labs, safety orgs, tooling companies — and checked their SPF and DMARC email security policies. The results are worse than I expected.
The headline number
-
26 of 39 use SPF
~all(softfail) — including Anthropic, Google, Apple, NVIDIA, and Hugging Face -
10 of 39 use SPF
-all(hardfail) — OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, x.ai - 3 of 39 have no SPF record at all — Meta, Tesla, Alignment Forum
Why softfail matters
SPF (Sender Policy Framework) tells receiving mail servers which IPs are authorized to send email on behalf of a domain. The all mechanism at the end defines what happens when a sender isn't on the list:
-
-all(hardfail): reject the message -
~all(softfail): accept it but maybe flag it -
?all(neutral): no opinion -
+all(pass all): accept everything
Most email servers treat softfail as "deliver normally, maybe add a spam score." Combined with weak DMARC policies, this means spoofed emails from most AI companies will land in inboxes.
The worst combinations
| Company | SPF Includes | SPF Policy | DMARC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cohere | 6 (Google, Proofpoint, Outlook, Salesforce, Marketo, SES) | ~all | p=reject |
| Jasper | 7 (Google, HelpScout, SendGrid, Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot, Highspot) | -all | p=reject |
| Weaviate | 6 (SendGrid, 3 custom records, HubSpot, Google) | ~all | p=quarantine |
| Scale AI | 5 (Autopilot, Customer.io, SendGrid, Google, HubSpot) | ~all | p=reject |
| Tesla | 0 includes, 13 IP ranges | ?all (neutral) | p=quarantine |
Cohere stands out: 6 approved sending services with only softfail. That's a wide attack surface with weak enforcement.
DMARC makes it worse
DMARC tells receivers what to do when both SPF and DKIM fail. p=reject blocks spoofed messages. p=none lets them through.
No DMARC at all:
- Alignment Forum (also no SPF — zero email authentication)
- Manifold Markets
DMARC monitoring-only (p=none):
- MIRI, Hugging Face, Inflection AI, xAI, Aleph Alpha, Qdrant, Metaculus
That's 9/39 domains (23%) with weak or absent DMARC. For AI safety organizations like MIRI and Alignment Forum, this is notable — organizations focused on existential risk from advanced AI, vulnerable to basic email impersonation.
The strong side
OpenAI (-all, p=reject), Microsoft (-all, p=reject), Anthropic (~all, p=reject), and Stripe (-all, p=reject) all have strict DMARC enforcement. Anthropic's DMARC compensates for the SPF softfail — even if SPF softfails, DMARC with p=reject will block the message.
One weird finding
xAI's infrastructure is unusual: SSL certificate from a Chinese issuer (Guangdong Baota Security Technology), DMARC reports sent to Alibaba Cloud, domain registered in 1994 (32 years before xAI was founded). Response time: 660ms.
Try it yourself
All data comes from public DNS records. Verify any claim:
dig +short TXT example.com # SPF record
dig +short TXT _dmarc.example.com # DMARC policy
dig +short MX example.com # Mail servers
I built an interactive email security checker where you can enter any domain and see its SPF policy, DMARC enforcement, approved sender list, and mail provider — all from live DNS queries.
The full analysis of all 39 companies, including Anthropic domain verification records, MCPv1 cryptographic keys, and infrastructure details, is at domainintel.vercel.app/research.
Data collected May 20, 2026. All sources are public — DNS records, SSL certificates, WHOIS, HTTP headers.
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