| |  | Mar 10, 2026 | | | | | | Happy Tuesday! Dozens of Google and OpenAI employees rally to defend Anthropic in court. Meta Platforms temporarily closes Tel Aviv office. Spark Capital, an early investor in Anthropic, targets $3 billion in new funds.
| | | | Nearly 40 employees at OpenAI and Google, including Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, have signed on to an amicus brief they submitted in court Monday in defense of Anthropic in its lawsuit against the Department of Defense for branding the company a "supply chain risk." The employees argued that "the technical concerns animating Anthropic's 'red lines' are legitimate and widely recognized within our scientific community." In particular, they argued that current AI systems are not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons because AI models often break in new environments, they are not perfectly accurate at identifying targets, they hallucinate, their chains of thought are often hidden, and their internal workings are illegible. They also agreed with Anthropic that the Department's decision violates Anthropic's right to free speech by "undermining the freedom to engage in public debate about how powerful technologies should be governed." The brief is the latest showing of support for Anthropic from peer AI companies, after employees at OpenAI and Google signed an open letter last month calling for their companies to refuse the use of their products for surveillance and autonomous weapons. OpenAI has faced criticism from some of its employees over the deal it struck with the Pentagon for classified use of its technology, and Google has not yet announced a deal of its own. Anthropic sued the Department of Defense in a California federal court on Monday, after the Department officially designated Anthropic a supply chain risk for allegedly threatening national security. In its suit, Anthropic argues that the department is retaliating against it, violating its rights to free speech and due process. | | | | Meta Platforms temporarily closed its 900-person Tel Aviv office over the weekend following missile attacks on Israel from Iran. Meta also offered staff without bomb shelters up to five nights in a hotel. "We understand that not everyone has access to a shelter or safe room at home during these challenging times," the memo says. "This has led to distressing experiences for a number of our employees, and we have been looking into ways we can support you." Meta's Tel Aviv office is the company's main hub in Israel, combining research, development, and business operations, with a focus on AR/VR products and advertising technologies. | | | | Spark Capital, the first venture firm to back Anthropic, is in the process of raising about $3 billion in new funds, 50% more than the size of funds it raised two years ago, The Information reported late Monday. In early 2023, the firm led a $450 million investment in Anthropic at around a $4 billion valuation. The maker of Claude was recently valued at $380 billion, including the investment, a nearly 100 times gain from the earlier valuation. Spark's first growth fund from 2014, which raised just under $400 million, is worth seven to eight times the value of the money invested, the report said. Its fourth growth fund, a $1.4 billion vehicle raised in 2022, invested in Anthropic. The fund is already worth four times the capital invested. | | | | Anthropic said that the Defense Department's designation of the company as a supply chain risk could jeopardize billions of dollars of revenue this year, and it cited business contracts it's already lost because of the agency's moves. In filings made with its suit against the government, Anthropic said one customer that provides AI to the Food and Drug Administration switched from Claude to a different AI product as a result of the supply chain risk designation, cutting off revenue worth more than $100 million. In addition, Anthropic was on the cusp of closing deals, worth over $80 million, with two financial services firms, but now the firms are insisting on the ability to unilaterally cancel their contracts. The filings also detailed some of Anthropic's financial figures. Since its founding five years ago, Anthropic has generated more than $5 billion in revenue, while training and running its models has cost the company over $10 billion. As the cost of running its models has jumped, Anthropic has lowered its gross margins projections, The Information previously reported. It also raised its training cost projections. | | | | Nvidia is planning to launch a platform for AI agents aimed at enterprise customers called NemoClaw, Wired reported Monday. The platform will be open-source, it said, meaning the software code of these AI agents will be publicly available and modifiable. Nvidia already has reached out to Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe and Crowdstrike over potential partnerships, though it isn't clear whether this resulted in actual deals, Wired reported. Nvidia plans to offer tools for security and privacy for AI agents on its NemoClaw platform, Wired said. It added that the platform will be available to enterprise customers regardless of whether they use Nvidia chips or not. The move comes amid the popularity of software similar to OpenClaw, an AI agent that runs on a user's computer that can write code, edit files and surf the web to complete tasks on behalf of users. Because the new Nvidia platform is open-source, it's likely that partners would get free, early access in exchange for contributing to the project, Wired reported. | | | | Anthropic sued the U.S. Defense Department, challenging the department's designation of the AI firm as a supply chain risk by focusing on the company's free speech rights. The suit said the federal government had "retaliated" against Anthropic for expressing the principle that "the most capable artificial intelligence systems should also be the safest and most responsible." The suit said "no federal statute authorizes the actions" the government has taken. It claims the government's supply chain risk designation, and President Donald Trump's social media orders that all government agencies stop using Anthropic, "are harming Anthropic irreparably." The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, had been expected since Sec. of War Pete Hegseth indicated he was directing the Department to issue the designation. Anthropic said in a blog post that it was prepared to take the government to court over the issue. On Wednesday, the Department officially informed Anthropic of the designation, which precipitated Anthropic's lawsuit. The Defense Department also declared Anthropic a supply chain risk under a second law. Anthropic said it would challenge that move in a separate lawsuit in the D.C. circuit. Sec. Hegseth previously said that Anthropic was a risk to national security because it was seeking "to seize veto power over the operational decisions of the United States military" by insisting on contractual restrictions on the use of its technology for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. | | | | Microsoft will start selling a new subscription bundle for businesses that combines its Office 365 software with its Copilot AI chatbot for the first time starting in May, the company said Monday. The launch reflects Microsoft's effort to use AI products to wring more revenue out of its existing base of corporate customers that already pay for software like Office 365 or Teams. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in January that 15 million people were paying for subscriptions to 365 Copilot, or roughly 3% of the total number of Office 365 subscribers. Microsoft last year started bundling 365 Copilot with consumer office subscriptions, but had kept Copilot subscriptions separate from its enterprise software bundle up until now. The new bundle, called E7, will cost $99 per user per month, up from the $60 price tag for the existing E5 bundle that combines Office 365, Outlook, Teams, and Microsoft's cybersecurity software. E7 will include those products as well as 365 Copilot, the AI tool that uses models from OpenAI and Anthropic to automatically summarize emails or generate Powerpoint slides, which Microsoft previously sold for $30 per month. It will also include Microsoft's new Agent 365 software, which lets users keep track of and manage AI agents and cost $15 per month. Microsoft also on Monday announced new AI features called Copilot Cowork, which relies on technology from Anthropic to automate complex tasks like reorganizing people's calendars and compiling reports based on research gleaned from the internet. After Anthropic released its own Cowork product earlier this year, Microsoft—which pays Anthropic for the use of its models—has been moving quickly to build similar features in Copilot, The Information previously reported. | | | | Archer Aviation escalated a tit-for-tat legal war at the top of the nascent flying electric taxi business, suing rival Joby Aviation for allegedly defrauding regulators and investors by concealing a heavy reliance on Chinese technology. In a federal civil suit in California, Archer claimed that Joby imported key aerospace parts from a Chinese subsidiary, and disguised them as household items like socks and hair clips. The lawsuit comes as the two companies engage in a multi-billion-dollar race to build the first electric vertical takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, businesses in the U.S. and abroad. Both companies had hoped to launch their businesses first in the United Arab Emirates later this year, though the Iran war has created doubts about those plans, and will meanwhile fly demonstration flights starting this summer in the U.S. Archer's action follows a suit by Joby in November. Joby claimed that Archer stole trade secrets by hiring away an employee who took with him Joby business strategies and aircraft specifications. Those secrets helped Archer interfere with a Joby real estate deal, Joby alleged. Archer denied the allegations. In a statement on Monday, Joby lawyer said, "Archer's constant legal issues and flailing business operations have left it no choice but to resort to invented nonsensical theories. We will see them in court." | | | | A senior Tesla finance executive, vice president of finance Sendil Palani, is leaving the company. He announced his departure in a X post on Monday. Palani started at Tesla in 2009 and worked on finance for vehicle manufacturing and autopilot software development, among other areas, according to his LinkedIn profile. He initially worked at Tesla from 2009 to 2011 before returning in 2014. In 2021, he was promoted to VP of finance. Reached by phone, Palani declined to comment. Palani is one of several veteran Tesla executives to leave in the past year. Other recent departures include Raj Jeganathan, who left in February just months after having his role expanded to include leading Tesla sales and service. Several other top executives left last summer, including Tesla's top North America and Europe sales and manufacturing executive and the head of its Optimus robot program. | | | | Nasdaq is partnering up with crypto exchange Kraken to distribute tokens representing U.S. equities to crypto users globally, a service planned for the first half of next year, pending regulatory approval. The move will "enhance global accessibility to U.S. equity markets," said Tal Cohen, president of Nasdaq in a statement. Nasdaq said its approach will allow issuers to "have more control over their shares" in the crypto token format, preserving underlying rights like shareholder voting and dividends for investors. Nasdaq crypto tokens are backed by actual stocks and endorsed by the companies that issue the shares. They differ from most of the stock tokens currently circulating in the market, which are derivatives or claims on special-purpose vehicles and don't require approval from issuers. Kraken-owned xStocks is the second largest provider of such stock tokens. Last week, Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of the New York Stock Exchange, said it plans to distribute its planned tokenized stocks to OKX's global user base and made a minority investment into OKX. | | | Popular articles By Ann Gehan and Sri Muppidi
By Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo, Sri Muppidi and Amir Efrati
| | | | | Opportunities Empower your teams to stay ahead of market trends with the most trusted tech journalism.
Learn more
Reach The Information's influential audience with your message. Connect with our team | | | | | |
0 comentários:
Postar um comentário