News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Anthropic's lobbying spend jumps after Commerce Department pulled its flagship models offline - Cryptopolitan
The surge comes as Washington leans toward voluntary AI oversight, leaving critics worried that frontier model policy is being shaped more by lobbying than binding rules. Anthropic spent $1.97 million lobbying the federal government in the second quarter of 2026, a 26% jump from Q1 that pushed the company's spending past Nvidia and within reach of Oracle. The surge can be traced directly back to two weeks in June, when the Commerce Department took Anthropic's latest models offline. The company spent much of the quarter trying to get that order lifted. Commerce order pushed Anthropic deeper into lobbying As Cryptopolitan earlier reported, Commerce forced Anthropic to disable its two most capable models days after their launch, citing national security concerns the company couldn't limit to foreign users alone. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick issued the directive to CEO Dario Amodei at 5:21 p.m. on a Friday, and Anthropic disclosed later that the flaw in question had been detected not by any government official but by Amazon, which competes with the firm and has invested in it. Axios reports Anthropic's Q2 lobbying centered on export controls, cybersecurity, and AI safety standards as it worked to "smooth over tensions" with the administration, running an expanding in-house team alongside nine outside K Street firms. The controls stayed in force for about two weeks before Commerce lifted them. Anthropic outspent Nvidia as AI lobbying spiked Anthropic's $1.97 million topped Nvidia's spend and closed in on Oracle's roughly $2 million, according to CNBC. OpenAI logged $1.2 million, up nearly 18%. Together, the two labs spent $3.17 million. Adding self-driving firm Waymo, put combined AI-sector spending at a record $4.3 million for the quarter. Anthropic's first half of 2026 already tops $3.5 million, more than the company spent in all of 2025. Big Tech still dwarfs these numbers. The Magnificent Seven, including Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla, spent $21.25 million combined, essentially flat against Q1. Meta led that group at $5.99 million despite a 15% drop from its own Q1 total, while Amazon held nearly steady at $4.36 million. Washington's AI compromise so far satisfies almost nobody Anthropic's spending comes against a backdrop where the White House is favoring a voluntary approach over a regulatory one. President Trump signed an executive order requesting AI developers to provide the government a 30-day preview of frontier models before public release. Rep. Don Beyer, co-chair of the Congressional AI caucus, said: This strategy follows the trend of the Trump administration to create a wild west environment. Anthropic has also put money into the midterms directly, donating $20 million to the bipartisan group Public First Action, while CEO Dario Amodei personally contributed $1 million. The donations are part of more than $321 million raised this cycle by AI- and crypto-backed super PACs, according to FEC filings.
Anthropic gives Canadian researchers $10M in Claude credits - Cryptopolitan
The pledge comes as Anthropic says Canada ranks second globally in Claude use per working-age person, behind only the United States. According to the statement made by Anthropic on Tuesday, the firm is set to give eight research organizations in Canada $10 million CAD in Claude credits. These credits will provide free access to Claude for two universities, two hospitals, and Canada's three federal artificial intelligence institutes. This is significant for Canadian researchers since they get access to a state-of-the-art model, fully funded by Anthropic, without any cost. And for Ottawa, this is even a bigger deal, since the government sees the development of AI capability in Canada as a priority. Reports say that Anthropic will not steer research directions or claim ownership of findings, and said more partners are expected in the coming months. Canadian labs choose how to use Claude The recipient list includes the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, known as Amii, in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal, and Toronto's Vector Institute, plus CHEO, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Université Laval, the University of Toronto, and the University of Saskatchewan. The institutions have already mapped the credits to their own priorities. Mila, which Anthropic describes as home to the largest concentration of academic deep learning researchers anywhere, plans to build AI assistants that help its scientists find and vet research. CAMH's Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics will develop predictive models for mental health treatment and test psychiatric AI systems for fairness. At Université Laval, researchers will study how large language models handle Quebec French, Indigenous languages, and other low-resource dialects. Saskatchewan is directing its share toward agriculture, public health, and quantum computing. The University of Toronto's Data Sciences Institute will run a competitive, peer-reviewed process to distribute its Claude API credits. The University of Toronto Data Sciences Institute will go through a competitive procedure to have access to Claude API credits, whereby the scientific committee guarantees that these credits are allocated to high-caliber and impactful research projects. - Professor Gary Bader, Associate director for research and software. Anthropic ties the pledge to Canada's AI roots Anthropic linked the announcement to Canada's role in the history of modern AI. The company noted that the University of Toronto and the Université de Montréal continued working on neural networks when much of the field had moved away, while the University of Alberta advanced reinforcement learning. The institutions are linked to Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Richard Sutton, the three scientists who were most instrumental in the deep learning and reinforcement learning innovations that formed the backbone of the AI industry today. Chris Olah, an Anthropic co-founder who grew up in Canada and spent a year at the University of Toronto before leaving, said the issuance of credits to Canadian institutions is a continuation of that research culture. I was formed by that culture, and I'm proud Anthropic can support the next chapter. - Chris Anthropic will also add Amii, Mila, and Vector to its Anthropic for Startups program this summer. Hundreds of startups affiliated with the three institutes will each receive at least $5,000 USD in API credits. Canada ranks second globally in Claude use per worker Alongside the funding, Anthropic released its first Canadian country brief from the Anthropic Economic Index, its analysis of Claude usage based on anonymized conversation data. Canada accounts for 2.6% of global consumer use of Claude.ai, ranking eighth worldwide. Adjusted for working-age population, however, the country ranks second, behind only the United States. Canadians use Claude at more than four times the rate their population would predict, according to Anthropic's Canada brief. Usage inside Canada follows the structure of the local economy, according to the brief. British Columbia leads on a per-person basis, while Ontario records the most conversations overall. Translation requests are concentrated in provinces with large public sectors, which Anthropic linked to federal bilingualism rules requiring services in English and French. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Québec rank highly in both government employment and translation-related Claude use. The pledge lands as Ottawa pushes its AI sovereignty agenda. Canada published the world's first national AI strategy in 2017 and launched AI for All, its new national AI strategy, in June. The plan reinforces Canada's three national AI institutes and commits to strengthening the country's AI safety work. The Canadian pledge also follows Anthropic's $200 million partnership with the Gates Foundation, announced in May, to support AI programs in global health, life sciences, education, and economic mobility.
German regulator says Google and Perplexity must follow media laws - Cryptopolitan
Germany's regulator is focusing on how AI products distribute news and who is responsible for the output when it is incorrect. Germany's media watchdog said Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity AI are content providers under the country's media law on Tuesday. This means that the two most popular AI search engines now have to follow the same rules as regular publishers and are directly liable for the content generated by their AI systems. The decision was made by ZAK, the Commission for Licensing and Supervision, which is made up of 14 German state media. ZAK found that the companies running AI created news summaries and chatbot responses are the authors. That's a critical distinction because it implies AI products can no longer hide behind the legal shield they have relied on in the past. "AI search engines and chatbots are content providers," ZAK Chairman Thorsten Schmiege said in a statement. "From now on, we will always apply German media law to them." In those cases, the Digital Services Act's responsibility exemption is not applicable, the regulator said. That immunity typically shields platforms from liability for user created illicit content. German court holds Google responsible for AI Overview content The decision by ZAK came after a court in Munich said that Google was directly responsible for the allegedly false statements that its AI Overview feature made. The court saw the summaries as Google's own work, not as repackaging information from other sources. That reasoning is the same as what ZAK applied to the broader issue of media law. Once an AI system is the author of what appears on screen, the company behind it bears the obligations and risks associated with publication. ZAK says that Google's AI Overviews show up at the top of search results, pushing down traditional lists of links. The regulator thinks this is unfairly hurting third-party media outlets that depend on that traffic. ZAK says that tools like Perplexity change the news that people read by letting users pick and show sources, links, or suggestions along with their own answers. On that basis, the regulator stated that such services could qualify as media intermediaries, a category with rules designed to protect media plurality. The German move comes as global pressure grows for formal oversight of frontier AI systems. According to Cryptopolitan, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis recently called for a US watchdog, similar to Wall Street regulator FINRA, to screen the most powerful AI models before they are released. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has advocated for a more powerful agency, similar to the FAA, with the authority to prohibit unsafe models. These proposals address safety concerns with the underlying models. Germany's regulator is looking into how AI products distribute news and who is responsible if the output is incorrect.
Cursor poaches designer behind Anthropic's Claude
The hire highlights the growing competition for AI product talent, as companies increasingly compete on user experience -- not just model performance. Jenny Wen, the designer involved in creating Anthropic's Claude and the general-purpose AI agent Cowork, has joined Cursor as its new head of design. She will be leveraging her experience at one of the most established AI labs at a rapidly growing company that aims to develop more than coding tools. Wen disclosed the news on X on July 13, after leaving Anthropic to take the position at Cursor, where she would be able to lead "a team that cares so deeply about craft, quality, and building great tools." She chose to make this decision at a time when Cursor is developing its own AI agent aimed at helping in the workplace, which puts it in competition with the product that Wen was involved in at Anthropic. From Claude to Cursor During her time at Anthropic, Wen had the task of designing both Claude and Cowork, the latter being the name of the AI agent that was designed to handle complex workplace tasks. According to Wen's portfolio, in 2025 Wen was heavily involved in directing the roadmap of Cowork as well as contributing to the development of the product post-launch. Before Anthropic, Wen worked at Figma as its Director of Design, where she launched FigJam, and previously served as the design leader at Dropbox, Square, and Shopify. The uniqueness of Wen's experience lies in the integration of product strategy and product creation. With more AI companies competing to develop better models, it is worth remembering that the skill to create desirable products remains just as crucial as the technical part. Initially recognized as an AI coding assistant, Cursor now aspires to pursue more ambitious goals. According to The Information, the company is now working on the creation of an AI assistant called Sand, which can manage e-mails and spreadsheets and help with engineering tasks. If released successfully, it will compete with Cowork by Anthropic and the recently introduced ChatGPT Work by OpenAI. Cursor has not made any announcements regarding the project. Additionally, the company is gearing up for its next growth stage. SpaceX declared in June that it has intentions to take over Anysphere, the parent company of Cursor, in an all-stock transaction worth $60 billion expected to close later this year. The agreement will give Cursor more resources, thus enabling it to widen its scope beyond just developing software. Why this matters for Anthropic? It is interesting to note that the timing takes place at a time when Anthropic has expanded the capabilities and accessibility of Cowork. The company has updated the service for use on both mobile and the web, as well as added the cloud execution functionality, which enables tasks to continue even if the user has disconnected. Anthropic even states that, out of its analysis of about 1.2 million Cowork sessions, knowledge-work tasks make up almost half of all usage, suggesting the product is increasingly being used for more than software development. While Wen's leaving may not indicate difficult times ahead for Anthropic, it points to the intense competition among AI firms for talented people like product leaders. Now that emerging AI technologies are growing in sophistication, the challenge is not just about developing better technologies, but also about creating software that easily fits into the routines of end-users. This is where experienced design leaders can make a big difference. Creating an effective workplace AI agent involves more than just technical performance. In addition to this, it requires proper design of workflows, simple interfaces, and a lot of trust for users to delegate important tasks. Those are qualities which, if developed, can give a strong competitive advantage. A broader shift in the AI talent market This step by Wen is indicative of a bigger trend emerging within the competitive environment surrounding AI enterprises. Whereas back in the days of early generative AI, the battle for talent was mainly carried out between researchers and infrastructure engineers, now there is competition among businesses to secure experts who already have experience working on creating and deploying AI products. These experts will be able to share valuable information about consumer behavior and preferences, as well as features that actually work. In the case of Cursor, the recruitment of the designer of one of the first AI workplace assistants will allow the company to go beyond programming in terms of further steps in its development. In the case of Anthropic, the hiring shows how the market has developed, with competition, among other things, both for skilled workers and for the designers behind those who turn advanced AI into products.
SpaceX's AI empire is built on data centers, not satellites - Cryptopolitan
Analysts caution that the contracts carry termination clauses and that space computing is still 10 years or more away. SpaceX's AI returns over the next few years will not come from space. According to Wall Street analysts, the money is coming from Earth data centers rather than the orbital compute that Elon Musk has promised. This reframes SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) as primarily an infrastructure company. Space computing is a bet for the future, not now, for anyone considering SpaceX as an AI play. SpaceX already charges for computing. Reuters reported that the company signed enterprise deals for its Colossus supercomputer clusters with Anthropic, Alphabet's Google, and Reflection AI. Those contracts alone are expected to generate more than $28 billion annually. SpaceX's AI revenue in 2025 is ~$3.2 billion, which is significantly higher than the new deals. The compute contracts also outperformed SpaceX's earnings from rocket launches and Starlink, when counted separately. The contracts, however, include termination clauses, so analysts caution against reading them as recurring revenue. What SpaceX spent to get here SpaceX invested ~$18 billion in AI infrastructure and research in 2025. According to company filings, ~$12.7 billion was spent on capital expenditures and $5.1 billion on research and development. That expenditure outpaced spending on space and connectivity lines. Colossus and a second cluster, Colossus II, together provide ~1 gigawatt of AI compute. That makes SpaceX one of the world's largest compute operators. J.P. Morgan predicts that terrestrial capacity will reach ~9 gigawatts by 2029, which is equivalent to four times the output of the Hoover Dam. Brokerages cited by Reuters pointed to its $60 billion purchase of AI coding startup Cursor as a sign the company wants to sell AI applications, not just the machines that run them. The deal ties into Musk's model plans on the software side. A separate Cryptopolitan report said Musk's lab, now renamed SpaceXAI, built its Grok 4.5 model jointly with Cursor, and Musk has said SpaceX is buying the startup for that same $60 billion figure. Why orbit is still a distant bet Musk has proposed a future in which computers run in space. Analysts Reuters spoke with view this as a later chapter. "The narrative that (orbital) will fundamentally disrupt terrestrial data centers is a little bit overblown," said Anthony Milovantsev, a partner at consultancy Altman Solon, who estimated that any real displacement of ground-based data centers would take "ten years plus." The case is based on hardware that does not currently exist at scale. Orbital computing relies on SpaceX's Starship flying frequently and cheaply, lower launch costs, and better satellites, according to analysts. Ground clusters continue to run regardless of direction. BofA analysts were more blunt, calling the long term viability of orbital data centers "unproven and heavily reliant on key technological milestones that have yet to be realized." If the engineering is delivered, the appeal will be valid. Starships could eventually launch solar computing satellites into orbit, avoiding ground based costs such as energy, cooling, and land use. Analysts aren't asking if SpaceX can build and sell AI infrastructure. J.P. Morgan's estimate of ~9 gigawatts in 2029 remains the benchmark for establishing a business beyond Earth.
China exposes security backdoor in Anthropic's Claude Code - Cryptopolitan
Chinese developers have been advised to uninstall or upgrade their coding assistants. China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB) has instructed developers to uninstall or upgrade specific versions of Anthropic's coding assistant, Claude Code. Claude Code was flagged as a security risk following allegations that the tool sends user data to remote servers without consent. Is using Claude Code dangerous? Anthropic's coding assistant Claude Code has had its versions 2.1.91 through 2.1.196 flagged as a security risk by China's National Vulnerability Database (NVDB), days after Alibaba reportedly barred staff from using the same software. Claude Code allegedly contains a monitoring mechanism that is built into its system. This mechanism can automatically transmit sensitive data, including a user's region and identity identifiers, to remote servers. The NVDB, which sits under China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), did not share the details on how it identified the alleged backdoor. Anthropic has yet to publicly respond to the specific claim. Chinese organizations have been advised to disconnect the affected versions from development machines, move to fixed versions of the coding assistant, and closely monitor any coding tools that are connected outside a company's core network. Why did China flag Claude Code now? The NVDB warning follows a period of increased tension between Anthropic and Chinese AI developers. In February, Anthropic stated that it does not sell commercial access to Claude in China for national security reasons, and that Chinese labs, including DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax had used fraudulent accounts and proxy services to reach its models anyway. U.S. chips and Apple software have also been accused of having "backdoors" built into them, while Anthropic has argued that models copied from American systems could have their safety features removed and then be used for surveillance.
