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Jon Keegan

OpenAI’s Altman calls Anthropic an “authoritarian company” and says its Super Bowl ad is “deceptive”

Yesterday, Anthropic announced that it intends (for now) to keep its Claude chatbot free of ads. Competitors OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and Google all have expressed plans for ads in some form for their respective AI chatbots.

Anthropic also released cheeky ads depicting scenarios where people are asking questions to a personified version of their AI chatbot, only to recoil in confusion when the response transforms into a creepy ad.

It’s pretty clear that Anthropic was poking fun at the market-leading AI chatbot, ChatGPT. The characters playing the chatbot had the pitch-perfect tone of an eager-to-please ChatGPT session.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tried to be a good sport, calling the ads funny, but clearly they struck a nerve, prompting a 400-word post on X in which he called the ads “deceptive,” accused Anthropic of “doublespeak,” and said it was an “authoritarian company” that was heading down a “dark path.”

Altman pushed back on the depiction of how such creepy ads could show up in chats, saying that OpenAI has pledged to never weave ads into chat conversations, knowing it users would reject that.

Previewing how the rival AI startups might battle each other in the marketplace, Altman attacked Anthropic’s focus on paid subscription, rather than generous limits for free users (which appears to be working out pretty well for Anthropic):

“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”

Both companies are racing to launch an IPO this year, which will only raise the stakes for this billionaire beef.

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Rani Molla

Anthropic’s scramble for compute now includes rival xAI

Another day, another major partnership with an AI rival. This time, Anthropic signed a deal with SpaceX’s xAI to access compute from its Colossus 1 data center to help it improve capacity for its Claude Pro and Claude Max subscribers. Just yesterday, The Information reported that Anthropic planned to spend $200 billion on Google Cloud services over the next five years. As Sherwood News’ Luke Kawa wrote:

“Anthropic has been a victim of its own success: the popularity of Claude Code and Cowork have revealed compute constraints and left users frustrated by caps. In response, the Claude developer has embarked upon a mad scramble for compute, striking or expanding deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google, and Broadcom.”

Now, it’s adding xAI to the list — even as the Elon Musk company builds a competing model.

In less terrestrial news, xAI said that as part of the agreement, Anthropic “expressed interest in partnering to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.”

xAI — Creators of Grok, the AI Chatbot

xAI — Creators of Grok, the AI Chatbot

“Anthropic has been a victim of its own success: the popularity of Claude Code and Cowork have revealed compute constraints and left users frustrated by caps. In response, the Claude developer has embarked upon a mad scramble for compute, striking or expanding deals with CoreWeave, Amazon, Google, and Broadcom.”

Now, it’s adding xAI to the list — even as the Elon Musk company builds a competing model.

In less terrestrial news, xAI said that as part of the agreement, Anthropic “expressed interest in partnering to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.”

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Rani Molla

SpaceX and Tesla’s Terafab could cost $119 billion — far more than expected

The initial phase of SpaceX and Tesla’s joint chip production effort, called Terafab, could cost $55 billion, with additional phases adding up to $119 billion in capital investment, Reuters reports, citing a notice posted on a Texas county website. Ultimately the goal of Terafab is to build enough in-house AI chip capacity to supply both companies.

The price tag is also higher than expected. Morgan Stanley had previously estimated Terafab would cost $34 billion to $45 billion.

Fortunately for Tesla, whose capex is expected to skyrocket this year, much of the early spending will sit on SpaceX’s balance sheet.

Here’s Musk on the last earnings call:

“SpaceX is going to take care of like the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab... Any kind of intercompany thing has to be approved by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors. It’s got to go through a conflict resolution. It’s going to have, unfortunately, a lot of complexity because we’ve got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served, and strike the right balance there.”

SpaceX files plan for $55 billion Terafab chip facility in Texas

SpaceX files plan for $55 billion Terafab chip facility in Texas

The price tag is also higher than expected. Morgan Stanley had previously estimated Terafab would cost $34 billion to $45 billion.

Fortunately for Tesla, whose capex is expected to skyrocket this year, much of the early spending will sit on SpaceX’s balance sheet.

Here’s Musk on the last earnings call:

“SpaceX is going to take care of like the initial phase of the scaled up Terafab... Any kind of intercompany thing has to be approved by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors. It’s got to go through a conflict resolution. It’s going to have, unfortunately, a lot of complexity because we’ve got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served and SpaceX shareholders are served, and strike the right balance there.”

tech
Rani Molla

Apple to let users choose between Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI models

Apple has been inching toward letting outside AI power its devices — and now it’s going further.

The company plans to let users choose between rival AI models across iOS 27, due this fall, expanding beyond ChatGPT to include players like Google and Anthropic, Bloomberg reports. The difference this time: deeper integration, with outside models powering features like Siri, writing tools, and image generation across the system.

Currently, Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, gives users the ability to query ChatGPT, but doing so requires a clunky extra step and usage has been poor. Meanwhile, Apple’s own AI tools have fallen short. (Apple has decided to use Google’s Gemini to power Siri in the future.) It’s not clear users care which AI is under the hood — as long as it works.

Apple to Let Users Choose Rival AI Models Across Its iOS 27 Features

Apple to Let Users Choose Rival AI Models Across Its iOS 27 Features

Currently, Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, gives users the ability to query ChatGPT, but doing so requires a clunky extra step and usage has been poor. Meanwhile, Apple’s own AI tools have fallen short. (Apple has decided to use Google’s Gemini to power Siri in the future.) It’s not clear users care which AI is under the hood — as long as it works.

tech
Rani Molla

FactSet and S&P Global fall after Anthropic releases financial services agents

FactSet and S&P Global are trading lower after Anthropic unveiled a set of AI agents meant to automate financial services work. Both stocks also sold off earlier this year after Anthropic’s Claude introduced financial research tools.

The 10 agents handle tasks like earnings analysis, market research, financial modeling, and auditing — tasks that mirror how analysts use FactSet and S&P Global’s data and research platforms.

Agents for financial services and insurance

Agents for financial services and insurance

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