Jerome Powell and Sam Altman Speak At Federal Reserve's Regulatory Capital Framework Conference

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OpenAI’s Altman: Our rushed deal with the Pentagon “looked opportunistic and sloppy”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared an internal memo in which he expressed some regrets for the bad optics of the company’s hasty deal with the Pentagon, and outlined new additions that were made to the agreement.

Jon Keegan

3/3/26 11:37AM

The fallout from Anthropic’s messy breakup with the US government, and OpenAI’s hasty deal to take its place, is still settling across the AI industry.

Last night, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared an internal post on X in which he expressed some regrets about how the deal came to be as well as some new additions to the agreement.

The new conditions centered around the mass surveillance of Americans, one of the key issues that blew up Anthropic’s deal with the Pentagon.

Altman said they added language to clarify that, in accordance with the Fourth Amendment and laws already on the books, “the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals.” The rub is that the scale and reach of data collection today, in pretty much every corner of our life, lets anyone — including the government — buy massive amounts of sensitive data that can be used for surveillance without getting a warrant.

Altman acknowledges this gaping loophole in personal privacy protections, and also included this language:

“For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information.”

This exact issue is one that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei flagged in a post last week as he outlined the company’s red lines surrounding the government’s use of its AI tools.

Altman also acknowledged the bad optics surrounding the last-minute deal as the Trump administration attacked Anthropic. Altman said they shouldn’t have rushed to do the deal, saying, “It just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”

But where does this leave things? It seems that Altman was able to get the same deal that Anthropic was fighting for. Meanwhile, Anthropic faces a potential catastrophic blacklisting that could cripple countless partnerships and investments.

In the post, Altman said he told the Pentagon that Anthropic should not be designated as a “supply chain risk,” and hoped that it would be offered the same deal that OpenAI ended up with.

Here is re-post of an internal post:

We have been working with the DoW to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear.

1. We are going to amend our deal to add this language, in addition to everything else:

"• Consistent with applicable laws,…
— Sam Altman (@sama) March 3, 2026

Jon Keegan26m

Anthropic launches “Claude Design,” sending shares of Figma and Adobe down

Anthropic has been slowly and steadily gaining a leading share in the enterprise AI market by focusing on coding, spreadsheets, and other common productivity and workplace apps.

And now they are going after design apps.

Today Anthropic launched Claude Design, a dedicated app powered by its latest model Claude Opus 4.7 that lets users use text prompts to build web site designs, user interface prototypes, presentations, and marketing materials.

Shares of Figma and Adobe sank on the news.

While Claude has previously had the ability to create designs and user interfaces, breaking it out into a dedicated app signals a major new piece of its enterprise strategy alongside its popular Claude Code product.

Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs

Shares of Figma and Adobe sank on the news.

Rani Molla5h

Apple’s China iPhone shipments surged 20% in Q1 even as overall smartphone shipments fell

Apple’s iPhone shipments in China jumped 20% last quarter, even as the country’s overall smartphone market fell 4%, according to new data from Counterpoint Research. Rising memory costs have pushed prices higher across the industry, weighing on demand.

Apple appears poised to ride out the broader smartphone slump. Its strength at the less price-sensitive high end of the market and its unusual leverage over suppliers, which helps keep costs in check, give it an edge over rivals.

Greater China remains a critical region for Apple, making up about 18% of its total revenue in the fourth quarter. The company accounted for 19% of China’s smartphone market in the first quarter, up from 15% a year earlier, per Counterpoint.

Rani Molla4/16/26

Anthropic has surged past OpenAI in capturing business spending on generative-AI software

Last quarter, Anthropic attracted the lion’s share of trackable business spending on generative-AI software, according to new data from Ramp, a fintech company that provides corporate cards and expense management software for small firms and Fortune 500 companies alike.

The data showed that in the first quarter, Anthropic saw 37% of spending, its biggest share yet, versus 33% for OpenAI. Notably, the dataset doesn’t capture spending by Google or Microsoft.

OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, still leads in overall adoption at 81% of AI buyers, but Anthropic is catching up, at nearly 63% in March. Overall, more than half of Ramp’s customers currently pay for AI, up from just 18% two years ago.

Anthropic’s enterprise tools, including Claude Code and Cowork, have been making waves among the business class, sending its revenue soaring.

Anthropic’s revenue share is even higher among companies spending on AI for the first time.

“Anthropic has definitely been on a tear,” Ara Kharazian, Ramp’s economist, told Sherwood News. “Its increase in adoption rates has been driven by its ability to sell to less technical users and smaller contracts than it typically has.”

It’s notable that midway through the first quarter, Anthropic had a falling-out with one of its biggest customers, the US government, which near the end of February decided to shun Anthropic’s products and lean into working with OpenAI.

Jon Keegan

4/16/26

Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7, with better coding, better vision, and occasional doom loops

The incremental update of Anthropic’s most capable public model includes steady improvements to coding and new ways to blow past your token budget.

Tunnel. Optical illusion. Abstract striped background. Vector illustration.

Jon Keegan4/16/26

Report: Google ditches its objection to defense work, pitches Gemini to Pentagon

In 2018, Google employees protested against the company’s tech being used for the US military’s Project Maven — a drone targeting program — reminding the company of its “don’t be evil” motto.

After the controversy, the company declined to renew the contract with the Pentagon, drawing a bright line between Big Tech and the national security establishment.

What a difference a few years makes.

Google is now actively working to get its Gemini AI model to be used in classified national security settings, according to a new report from The Information. Seeking a similar deal to the one OpenAI hashed out with the Pentagon, Google reportedly wants a contract that allows use of Gemini in classified work, but with a prohibition on mass domestic surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons.

But Google is playing catch-up in a major way. Amazon and Microsoft both have been widely used for classified defense work, and contractors are already experienced in working with their cloud systems, while Google’s services have never been used in classified work.

Google and Pentagon Discuss Classified AI Deal as Company Rebuilds Military Ties