Response from controller is truncated by 1 last character making JSON invalid

[Paulie-K]

View

$.ajax({
            type: 'GET',
            url: '/company/ajaxGetClients/1',
            dataType: 'json',
            success: function(response) {
                console.log(response); // Expecting this response logged in console.
            },
            error: function (a, e){
                console.log(e); // This logs "parseerror".
            }
        })

CompanyController

public function ajaxGetClients($id)
{
    return response(Company::findOrFail($id)->clients->toArray()); // versions without toArray() or with toJson() also does not work. response()->json() same result.
}

Response

[{"id":1,"name":"John","company_id":1,"phone":null,"email":null,"created_at":null,"updated_at":null}

As you can see, response is missing ending bracket ] making json invalid and ajax fails to parse it. Tried 3 browsers and Devtools Network panel shows same response. Laravel version 9.15.