Anthropic’s revenue crosses $3Bn/year

Today’s Highlights:

📰 News: Anthropic’s revenue cross $3Bn/year + Sakana introduces a self improving coding agent

💰 Funding: LawZero raises $30M to build safe AI systems that protect humanity 

⚡️ Top News Stories:

1. Anthropic has reached $3Bn in annualized revenue — tripling in just five months — as its enterprise-focused AI services, especially in code generation, see surging demand from businesses adopting generative AI at scale.

2. Sakana AI introduces the Darwin Gödel Machine (DGM), a self-improving coding agent that can read, modify, and test its own code to improve performance—achieving major performance boosts in real-world coding tasks—while emphasizing safety through sandboxed environments and transparency to prevent reward hacking.

3. Universal, Warner, and Sony are negotiating licensing deals with AI music startups Udio and Suno — including potential equity stakes — in an effort to resolve lawsuits and create a framework for compensating artists whose work informs AI-generated songs.

4. Anthropic has launched Claude Explains, a blog showcasing AI-written educational content refined by human editors, aiming to demonstrate AI-human collaboration but sparking transparency questions over how much is truly AI-generated.

5. Microsoft has introduced Bing Video Creator, a mobile app feature powered by OpenAI’s Sora that lets users generate short videos from text prompts for free, marking Sora’s first public release outside a paid model.

6. Researchers and developers suspect Chinese AI lab DeepSeek may have used outputs from Google’s Gemini models to train its updated R1-0528 model, based on its language patterns and “traces” that closely resemble those from Gemini 2.5 Pro, adding to past allegations of unauthorized training on competitor data — a practice that major AI firms are now actively trying to block through stricter access controls.

7. ElevenLabs Conversational AI 2.0 marks a major leap in voice agent capabilities by introducing natural turn-taking, multilingual detection, integrated RAG for secure knowledge access, batch outbound calling, and enterprise-level compliance, significantly advancing enterprise and global communication.

8. Character.AI has expanded beyond text-based chat into video generation and social features with AvatarFX, Scenes, and Streams, enabling users to create and share animated character content.

9. Samsung is in advanced talks to invest in AI search startup Perplexity and integrate its technology across Samsung phones—including pre-installing the app, enhancing Bixby, and embedding AI search in its browser—as part of a strategic move to elevate its AI capabilities and keep pace with competitors.

10. The FDA has launched Elsa, a secure generative AI tool built in GovCloud to enhance staff productivity across scientific reviews, inspections, and internal analysis—representing the agency’s first step toward a broader AI transformation.

11. IBM has launched watsonx AI Labs in Manhattan as a hands-on innovation hub that partners with startups and enterprises to build domain-specific, agentic AI applications—supported by NYC’s booming AI ecosystem and bolstered by IBM’s acquisition of Seek AI’s data agent technology.

12. Meta is automating up to 90% of its privacy and societal risk reviews across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook, empowering product teams with near-instant AI approvals instead of human oversight — a controversial shift that employees warn could heighten the risk of harm from unvetted platform changes.

13. Meta is aiming to fully automate ad creation using AI by the end of 2025, enabling brands to generate entire campaigns from scratch and dynamically personalize content for users in real time—an ambitious shift that could reshape digital marketing but raises concerns over brand control and output quality.

14. As generative AI tools improve, companies like Shopify and Duolingo are hiring fewer people for roles that AI can perform, and data from Revelio Labs confirms a steep decline in job postings for tech-heavy, high-exposure occupations.

15. Thomson Reuters has unveiled its first agentic AI system, CoCounsel, which goes beyond basic AI assistance to autonomously plan, act, and adapt within professional workflows for tax, audit, and accounting, redefining how complex, high-stakes work is executed with human oversight.

💰 Top Funding News:

1.  Turing Award winner Yoshua Bengio has founded LawZero, a nonprofit research lab dedicated to building safer AI systems that protect humanity — a mission he says big tech firms are not prioritizing, backed by $30M from funders including Eric Schmidt, Open Philanthropy, and the Future of Life Institute.

2. Microsoft announced a $400M investment to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure in Switzerland, including data center upgrades that will help meet demand and ensure compliance with local data residency requirements.

3. Elon Musk’s xAI is reportedly conducting a $300M tender offer that values the company at $113Bn, offering employees liquidity while preparing for a larger investment round amid delays in its flagship AI model.

4. Speedata, which builds a purpose-built APU for accelerating AI and data analytics workloads, raised a $44M Series B led by Walden Catalyst Ventures, 83North, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Pitango First, and Viola Ventures.

5. Creatify, which uses AI to automate personalized video ad production and optimization for social media, raised a $15.5M Series A round co-led by WndrCo and Kindred Ventures, with participation from existing investors.

6. Console, which uses AI to automate IT help desk tasks through fast Slack integration, raised a $6.2M Seed round led by Thrive Capital.

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