The Most Valuable Company in AI Just Shipped a Model It Calls Modest
Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation, passing OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup in the world. On the same day it shipped Claude Opus 4.8, a model it calls a "modest" improvement, and promised that the far more powerful Mythos is only weeks away. The gap between the price and the product is the real story.
Read full story →The AI Bill Arrives Before the Payoff Does
One company spent $500 million on Claude in thirty days. Gartner now puts generative AI in its "Trough of Disillusionment," an MIT study finds 95 percent of corporate pilots failing, and a new BCG study shows that putting AI on the org chart leaves human workers less accountable. The bills are arriving faster than the returns.
Read full story →The AI Boom Runs on Gas
The IEA says the United States will invest more in fossil-fuel power than China in 2026, driven almost entirely by the data-centre boom and the gas plants rushed up to feed it. Gas wins because it is fast: about three years to build, against a decade for nuclear. AI is now both the biggest new force behind fossil investment and a major backer of the clean tech meant to replace it.
Read full story →The First State to Demand AI Audits, Backed by the Companies It Will Audit
Illinois just passed the first US law requiring independent third-party audits of frontier AI developers, days after the White House backed away from even a voluntary framework. The twist: OpenAI and Anthropic publicly supported it, while a trade group and Washington pushed back. The companies being regulated would rather help write the rules than fight them.
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