New Line Cinema's "Lord Of The Rings" Gets 13 Oscar Nominations

(New Line/Getty Images)

one name to rule them all

Behold! Another “Lord of the Rings”-inspired company is revealed

Venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s affection for Tolkien-inspired names is legendary.

7/3/25 9:26AM

When it comes to tech startups, what’s in a name?

Today, a lot of them end with “AI.” Sometimes, you pivot and change the name to reflect your company’s new focus. And sometimes you just want to evoke a mythic power and flex your nerdy bona fides.

There’s one source of inspiration that tech startups have turned to more than others: the works of JRR Tolkien. Especially when venture capitalist Peter Thiel is involved.

This week the Financial Times reported that Thiel, along with Palmer Luckey, the cofounder of weapons and surveillance systems manufacturer Anduril, returned to Middle Earth for the name of the new national bank they’re starting to take the place of Silicon Valley Bank, which served a large part of the tech startup and venture capital world before collapsing in 2023.

“Erebor Bank” takes its name from Erebor, otherwise known as the “Lonely Mountain,” which featured prominently in Tolkien’s 1937 novel “The Hobbit.” Erebor is home to Smaug the dragon, who, like President Trump, surrounds himself with gold.

Let’s see if you can pick the real company names inspired by Tolkien’s works from the fake ones we made up.

(If you need some help, we’ve got two spoilers below the quiz)

Palantir, cofounded by Thiel, is named for the cursed seeing stones that allowed Sauron to pry into the minds of the Hobbits in “Lord of the Rings.”

Luckey’s Anduril is named for the mystical sword reforged from the legendary Shards of Narsil, a name chosen by Aragorn, which translates to “Flame of the West.”

Chris Stokel-Walker

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5