News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Anthropic's New AI Agent Purchases Business Supplies | PYMNTS.com
In this app, Claude Duet, Claude comes to the user when something needs attention, completes tasks the user has requested, keeps working even when the user steps away and checks with the user before acting on their behalf, according to the announcement. "What makes Claude Duet so helpful is its judgment," Anthropic said in the announcement. "We designed it around Claude Opus 5.5 and built it to be resourceful and to decide what needs you, what can wait and when to check with you first." Anthropic made Claude Duet available by waitlist to Pro and Max subscribers in the U.S. on Wednesday. Claude Duet accesses the user's memory, skills and connected apps from their Claude account for context; works even when the user's laptop or phone is off; delivers notifications when the task is complete or needs the user's review; checks connected accounts periodically and messages the user when something requires attention; waits for approval before sending a message, making a payment, signing a document or deleting anything; and uses the more than 6,000 connectors and plug-ins in the Claude Marketplace to connect with tools, according to the announcement. "You can also use Claude Duet to purchase things for your business using Link, Stripe's digital wallet," Anthropic said in the announcement. "Claude Duet confirms the item with you, and Link asks you to approve the spend. It then pays with a virtual card, so your real card number isn't shared. It can use Shop Pay from Shopify to check out at online stores." There have been a series of announcements about personal AI agents. Meta's Muse was downloaded more than 10 million times in the United States and Canada during the first 35 days it was available, according to a Monday (Oct. 19) announcement by digital market insights platform Sensor Tower. OpenAI launched dots on Sept. 29, saying these AI agents are "built to handle everything." Instinct, the builder of a personal AI agent for everyday life, said Sept. 28 that it was valued at $10 billion as it raised $1 billion in Series C funding. xAI announced Sept. 26 that its Grok Bot can now connect to the user's finances in read-only mode to help manage spending and investments.
Anthropic unveils Claude Duet, its answer to AI agents like Dots
The new agent is built to take some of the busywork off your plate. The AI race has taken an interesting turn lately, with frontier labs now competing to build agents that can keep working even when you are not actively talking to them. Meta helped push that idea into the spotlight with Muse, OpenAI followed soon after with Dots, and now Anthropic is throwing its hat in the ring with Claude Duet. Duet is launching as a research preview for Pro and Max subscribers in the US through a waitlist. Anthropic is pitching it mainly at professionals and small-business owners who want help keeping track of work without constantly checking every app themselves. Duet wants to handle the boring stuff first Each morning, Claude Duet can put together a brief covering the things it thinks deserve your attention. It can then keep monitoring your services throughout the day and message you when something needs a decision. Recommended Videos Duet is also capable of performing more complex tasks than serving simple reminders or summaries. It can also schedule meetings, build dashboards, prepare financial or sales forecasts, draft follow-up emails, and even work on web apps. And since it runs on its own virtual machine and browser, those tasks can continue even when your computer is off. Claude Duet still needs you looking over its shoulder Anthropic is giving Duet quite a bit of freedom, but clear limits remain on what it can do on its own. Things like sending messages, making payments, signing documents, or deleting anything still require the user's permission. Duet is still a research preview, and Anthropic has acknowledged that the agent still has a lot to learn. The company says it can misread a thread, misjudge the urgency of something, or miss an update that arrives between check-ins, and all that background work also counts toward the same usage limits as the rest of Claude. Bigger jobs, such as building a financial model or a presentation, can burn through those limits faster because they require more model turns.
Polar Expands Partnership with Crusoe in Norway with New 40MW AI Infrastructure Development
DRA01 facility now live and powering Crusoe Cloud, as partnership expands into DRA02 to support continued growth of AI infrastructure in Europe LONDON, Oct. 21, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Polar Data Centers ("Polar"), a European developer and operator of AI-ready data center infrastructure, today announced the expansion of its partnership with Crusoe, the AI factory company, building on the successful deployment and operation of Crusoe's AI infrastructure at Polar's DRA01 facility in Tørdal, Norway. DRA01 is now live, providing 12MW of IT capacity, powered by 100% hydroelectric energy. The facility combines modular infrastructure, advanced cooling technology, and resilient electrical systems designed around the requirements of the latest GPU deployments, providing a best-in-class, operational environment to support Crusoe Cloud, Crusoe's AI cloud platform and AI services. The move from initial deployment into stable operations represents an important milestone for the partnership and demonstrates the companies' ability to deliver and operate infrastructure for the world's most demanding AI workloads. Polar and Crusoe first announced their partnership around DRA01 in June 2025. Building on that success, the companies are now expanding their relationship with DRA02, the next phase of Polar's Tørdal campus. The new facility, also powered by hydroelectric power, is expected to go live in late 2027, and plans to deliver an additional 40MW of critical, liquid-cooled IT capacity. Crusoe plans to deploy NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 at DRA02 to support the next phase of its AI cloud expansion in Norway. It significantly increases the scale available to support Crusoe Cloud's continued growth in Europe and beyond. The expansion reflects Polar's approach to developing long-term customer partnerships: delivering initial capacity successfully, operating it reliably, and creating a platform that can scale as customers' requirements grow. Andy Hayes, CEO of Polar, said: "Our ambition has always been to help our customers develop the future of AI, and our relationship with Crusoe is a great example of that in action. We've successfully delivered DRA01, Crusoe is live and operating in Norway, and we're now moving forward together with the next phase of our partnership. "The expansion into DRA02 demonstrates the strength of the collaboration and the confidence that comes from successful delivery. For Polar, it's about much more than bringing capacity online. It's about creating the infrastructure, operational performance, and customer relationships that enable our customers to continue scaling." Cully Cavness, Crusoe's Co-founder, President and Chief Strategy Officer commented: "Our expansion with Polar in Norway lets Crusoe serve some of the world's most innovative companies with reliable access to Crusoe Cloud's AI cloud services. What makes Tørdal stand out is that it runs on 100% renewable hydroelectric power -- the kind of innovative energy source that aligns with our value of bending the arc of energy towards sustainability. Polar has been a solid partner to help us scale our presence in Europe." The successful transition into live operations follows DRA01 being recognised as "Most Successfully Delivered Data Centre" at the Data Centre World Awards 2026, highlighting the quality and execution behind Polar's first major Norwegian deployment. The move into DRA02 takes that relationship to its next stage and supports Polar's wider vision to accelerate AI infrastructure and create the infrastructure platform customers need to develop the future of AI. About Polar Data Centers Polar develops and operates high-performance data centers optimised for AI and high-density computing workloads. The company is building a growing European platform of AI-ready infrastructure, combining renewable power, resilient design, high-density cooling capability, and a customer-led approach to development and operations. About Crusoe As the AI factory company, Crusoe is on a mission to accelerate the abundance of energy and intelligence. The company provides a reliable, scalable, cost-effective, energy-first solution for AI infrastructure. By harnessing large-scale energy sources, building AI-optimized data centers, and delivering a powerful AI cloud platform, Crusoe empowers its customers and partners to build the future faster. For more information, visit crusoe.ai.
Anthropic unveils Claude Duet AI agent app
Oct 21 (Reuters) - Anthropic on Thursday unveiled Claude Duet, a standalone AI agent app designed to act as a proactive assistant for professionals and small-business owners, as rivals such as OpenAI and Meta race to develop AI agents that can complete work autonomously on users' behalf. * Duet delivers a daily briefing and handles tasks ranging from scheduling meetings to building financial forecasts and web apps, Anthropic said * Available on iOS, Android and claude.ai through a waitlisted research preview, it monitors users' connected apps and surfaces items requiring attention rather than waiting for prompts * Duet is built around Anthropic's Opus 5.5 model and is initially available toUS subscribers on Pro and Max plans, sharing existing usage limits * OpenAI last month launched always-on "dots" agents that pursue user goals across apps such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, while Meta's Muse AI agent drew millions of downloads and fueled investor interest in autonomous AI services * Duet integrates with over 6,000 connectors in the Claude Marketplace, including Gmail and Slack, and can make purchases via Stripe's Link digital wallet and Shopify's Shop Pay * The AI lab said Claude Duet requires user approval for sensitive actions, while acknowledging the agent can misjudge urgency and remains less effective at personal tasks such as booking tickets (Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)
Which Funds Have the Largest Stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI Ahead of Their IPOs?
The next potential trillion-dollar IPOs could already be in these funds. Following SpaceX's historic blastoff as the largest IPO on record, two more private market giants may soon make their way to public markets: artificial intelligence leaders Anthropic and OpenAI. Let's take a look at funds that have already invested in them. SpaceX reached a nearly $2 trillion valuation after its IPO. Top generative AI model companies Anthropic and OpenAI have both been valued at around $1 trillion, based mostly on private funding rounds, and are targeting IPO valuations of $2 trillion and $1.5 trillion, respectively. Anthropic officially filed for an IPO in early October and is expected to raise $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation on its expected November launch. Details of its IPO prospectus are beginning to leak out. If those projections are accurate, both firms' IPOs would be bigger than SpaceX's. The two AI leaders have attracted enormous investor interest through multiple private funding rounds. OpenAI has raised nearly $200 billion, while Anthropic has secured roughly $130 billion. Major public technology companies, including Amazon.com AMZN, Alphabet GOOGL, and Microsoft MSFT, have been among their early investors. Some mutual funds have invested in private companies for years, but the potential scale of these offerings is unprecedented. Here are the active equity open-end mutual funds with the largest stakes in the companies and others with decent helpings, as of their most recently disclosed portfolios. Several asset managers have invested an estimated $6 billion in Anthropic, led by American Funds parent Capital Group, which had $10 billion invested. Fidelity ranks second with roughly $5 billion in the company, making the fund families Anthropic's largest mutual fund shareholders. While OpenAI has raised more capital in private markets, asset managers have been less active in investing in the company. In total, mutual fund firms have invested an estimated $3.5 billion in OpenAI, or roughly one-fourth of what they invested in Anthropic. Capital Group and Fidelity again lead the way, with $1.7 billion and $1.1 billion invested, respectively. The figures likely understate industrywide exposure. For example, T. Rowe Price does not disclose individual private company investments in its mutual funds to Morningstar, meaning its true stakes in both OpenAI and Anthropic are likely larger than what is shown here. For example, as of June 2026, T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth TRBCX invested 0.37% of its assets in Anthropic and roughly 0.69% of assets in OpenAI. Most funds maintain relatively small allocations to these companies. Among the 10 largest funds with exposure to Anthropic by assets under management, all are managed by either Fidelity or Capital Group. American Funds Growth Fund of America AGTHX and American Funds Fundamental Investors ANCFX rank as the two largest fund shareholders. While most positions represent a modest share of portfolio assets, a handful of funds have made more meaningful commitments. Fidelity Select Technology FSPTX and BlackRock Technology Opportunities BGSAX each allocate more than 2.5% of assets to Anthropic. Tema Photonics & Optical ETF LAZR stands out with an allocation exceeding 9%, making it one of the most concentrated publicly disclosed bets on the company. Two of the largest mutual funds, American Funds Growth Fund of America and Fidelity Contrafund FCNTX, top the list of funds invested in OpenAI ranked by market value. A handful of funds have taken more concentrated positions. ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF ARKF and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF ARKW each allocate more than 3% of assets to OpenAI. Overall, more than 50 funds report investments in OpenAI, though position sizes vary significantly across portfolios. It's important to know what you own. A fund's exposure to private holdings like Anthropic or OpenAI -- or lack thereof -- tells you something about the strategy's risk profile, process, and manager. Whether or not a fund owns the latest hot IPO should not be the primary reason for buying or selling it. You should evaluate an equity fund on its manager, approach, parent company, and the role it plays in a long-term portfolio, not just on how well it's situated for the next record-breaking public offering. Chasing IPOs with funds can easily backfire.
Anthropic Acquires Opaque Systems to Strengthen Confidential and Verifiable AI - IT Security News
Anthropic has acquired Opaque Systems, which focuses on developing technologies that enable artificial intelligence systems to process sensitive information, while keeping it confidential with the help of the underlying hardware infrastructure. The details of the deal were not disclosed, and the startup confirmed that they will join Anthropic, as its separate operations will be shut down. Opaque announced the transaction last week, adding that their previous research output and engineering efforts concentrated on confidential computing and recently evolved towards solutions that can help organizations audit the behavior of AI systems and agents. The company was formed based on a research project at UC Berkeley's RISELab about ten years earlier. Its co-founders are Ion Stoica, one of the co-founders of Databricks and Anyscale, and Raluca Ada Popa, a Google DeepMind researcher who works on encryption and systems security. Aaron Fulkerson was hired as the chief executive officer of Opaque in October 2023. Previously, Opaque worked on solutions that applied confidential computing research to production AI, making sure that the data they process and the models themselves were protected by hardware. However, as the technology matures, Opaque pointed out that there is a need for organizations to ensure that they can audit AI systems. According to Opaque, the company observed that the trustworthiness of AI is a critical concern for many businesses. Therefore, Opaque's engineers and scientists took their expertise in cryptographic solutions and expanded the research to make verifiable AI the company's specialization. They provide cryptographic guarantees that specify what computations happened, where, and under what policy. Moreover, the startup has made significant contributions to open-source projects that share tools, training, and experience for building trustworthy and secure AI agents and models, such as the Agent Governance Toolkit, TRACE, Confidential MCP, and Weight Custody Manifest. In early 2026, Opaque raised $24 million in a Series B funding round at a reported valuation of $300 million in funding, and Anthropic was one of their first customers, along with ServiceNow and Accenture. After the acquisition was announced, Opaque's website stated that all of its employees would transfer to Anthropic to continue their work, while Opaque itself would shut down. However, it did not comment on what this means for current customers, and how transactions with organizations will be handled after the acquisition is completed. The acquisition highlights Opaque's technology areas and expertise, which fits Anthropic's strategy to develop more secure and trustworthy AI systems. However, Anthropic and Opaque have not yet released any information about how the technology can be adapted to Anthropic's solutions and products.
Vercel Open-Sources durable-harness for Crash-Proof Coding Agents
Vercel has released durable-harness, an open-source package that keeps coding agent sessions alive through crashes and timeouts. Vercel durable-harness wraps existing harnesses, including Pi, OpenCode, Claude Code and Codex, without changing them. Each session lives in a durable log. A dead function no longer means lost work. For teams moving agents off laptops and into the cloud, that closes a real gap. TL;DR * Size: npm package, version 0.0.x, Apache-2.0. Adapters cover 5 harnesses: Pi, OpenCode, fx, Claude Code, Codex. * Runs on: Vercel Functions plus Vercel Queues, Node.js 22+ with Postgres, or laptop files. Claude Code and Codex need a Vercel Sandbox. * Performance: No latency or throughput benchmarks published. All recovery claims are self-reported by Vercel. * Best: Finished model and tool calls are read back from the log, never re-run or billed twice. * Worst: Experimental 0.0.x API. Claude Code and Codex run only in a Vercel Sandbox, even self-hosted. What is durable-harness? durable-harness is a set of adapters from Vercel that store a harness session in a Workflow SDK World. A World bundles storage, a queue and a stream behind one interface. The package uses the same machinery that powers Vercel's Workflow SDK. Why do coding agents lose work in the cloud? Harnesses like Pi and Claude Code were designed as long-lived local processes. They keep the session in memory. Locally, the workspace and history sit on the same disk, so resuming takes 1 prompt. In the cloud, a VM with persistent storage does not track which calls completed. Vercel team notes a failed turn or network error then means lost work. How does durable-harness work? It writes each step of a turn to a durable log. Before a model or tool call runs, it records an intent. When the call finishes, it records the outcome. Each turn is backed by a message on Vercel Queues. If the function dies, the queue hands the turn to a new function. That function reads the log and continues. After a crash, the log shows what finished, what was running and what never started: * Completed calls are read from the log, so finished model tokens are not billed again. * replay: 'safe' tools, such as lookups, can run again. * replay: 'never' tools, such as refunds, never run twice. The model is told the call may have happened. Harness session files are mirrored into the log as well. That covers Claude Code's transcript, Codex's rollout and OpenCode's event store. Where do files and shell commands run? Model-chosen commands never run on the function's own disk. The tools docs list 3 workspace options: * keeps files in the session log, with a bash-compatible shell and no network. It holds about 500 files. * keeps scratch files in memory and clears them every turn. * gives each session a Vercel Sandbox, with /workspace on a Drive. Typed JSON documents, such as a to-do list, also live in the log. Each holds at most 64 KB. Where can you run durable-harness? The agent code stays the same across Worlds: * Vercel: the Vercel World, with every session traced in Agent Runs. * Local: files on your machine, with no configuration. * Self-hosted: the Postgres World, version 5.0.4 or later, on Node.js 22+. Vercel's blog also lists MongoDB, Redis and Turso. 2 environment variables, WORKFLOW_TARGET_WORLD and WORKFLOW_POSTGRES_URL, move an agent to Postgres. How does durable-harness compare? Key Takeaways * durable-harness logs every model and tool call, then resumes crashed turns on a new function. * Finished calls are never repeated, so tokens are not billed twice. * Pi and OpenCode run in your function; Claude Code and Codex need a Vercel Sandbox. * Self-hosting works with 2 env vars and a Postgres World. * It is 0.0.x and experimental, with no published benchmarks. Check out the GitHub repo, docs and Vercel's announcement. All credit goes to the researcher of this project. Also, feel free to follow us on Twitter and don't forget to join our 150k+ML SubReddit and Subscribe to our Newsletter. Wait! are you on telegram? now you can join us on telegram as well.
Billionaire Dario Amodei's Anthropic posts $16.3bn revenue
Dario Amodei's Anthropic grew revenue nearly fifteenfold in the first half, its draft IPO filing shows, ahead of a listing that could top $1.5 trillion. Anthropic PBC, the artificial intelligence company run by American billionaire Dario Amodei, generated $16.3 billion in revenue in the first six months of 2026, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier, according to a draft of the prospectus for its planned initial public offering. The San Francisco-based maker of the Claude chatbot posted a net loss of $80.7 billion for the period, compared with $13 billion a year earlier. About $72 billion of the loss came from noncash accounting charges tied to convertible notes and other financing instruments, rather than from day-to-day operations. The draft filing also shows that Amodei, Anthropic's chief executive officer, and his sister Daniela Amodei, its president, were each paid a base salary of about $655,000 in 2025. Most of their compensation came in stock. Dario Amodei's total pay for the year was about $18 million and his sister's about $16.4 million. Both of their salaries were raised to $1.4 million in July, and the board granted them restricted stock units this year, some of which vest only if the company goes public. A pledge to give away 80% Anthropic's co-founders have pledged to dedicate 80% of their personal Anthropic equity to charitable causes, a commitment set out in the IPO filing. The company does not disclose in the draft how much of Anthropic the founders own. Dario and Daniela Amodei are among Anthropic's seven co-founders, who left OpenAI to start the company in 2021. Six of them, including the Amodei siblings, are each worth an estimated $15.5 billion. Anthropic said on Sunday that it plans to place an initial 5% of its shares in a new Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, subject to shareholder approval. The fund could make large gifts to established nonprofits or direct payments to groups affected by AI, including workers. The company said none of the fund's equity will be used for lobbying or political donations. With the founders' pledge, an employee share-donation program and the new fund, Anthropic says about 20% of its shares will be set aside for public-benefit purposes. Spending commitments and the listing The draft prospectus shows the scale of Anthropic's bet on computing power. The company spent about $9 billion on computing capacity and infrastructure in the first half, more than the $7.3 billion it spent in all of 2025. It has signed about $450 billion of cloud computing commitments over the next decade, including $111 billion with Google Cloud, $110 billion with Amazon Web Services and $31 billion with Microsoft. Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google are Anthropic's largest outside investors. About 20% of first-half revenue came from two customers, and the company expects a small number of clients to keep accounting for a large share of its sales. Growth picked up after June. Anthropic has told investors that revenue reached $16.8 billion in the third quarter, up from $11.5 billion in the second, and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis. Anthropic submitted its draft registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission confidentially on June 1 and could file it publicly as soon as Friday. It has picked Nasdaq for the listing and is aiming to start marketing the shares to investors in the week of Nov. 9, though the timetable could still change. The offering could raise as much as $100 billion, which would make it larger than SpaceX's June listing, the biggest IPO on record. Wall Street had expected a valuation of about $2 trillion. Some investors are now weighing a figure closer to $1.5 trillion after the latest disclosures. Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation in May.
Anthropic, music publishers square off on 'fair use' defence in AI copyright case
The case could affect many AI copyright lawsuits, after earlier Northern California rulings split on whether AI training is fair use. SAN JOSE, California - Anthropic urged a judge in California on Oct 21 to rule that the AI company's use of millions of song lyrics to train its chatbot Claude is protected as "fair use" under US copyright law, as it seeks to scuttle a lawsuit brought by Universal Music Group and other music publishers. US District Judge Eumi Lee did not rule at a hearing in San Jose but pressed both sides on the fair use question, which could be key to dozens of other high-stakes copyright infringement cases in the AI era. Lee also questioned the publishers' assertion that Claude's ability to compose lyrics threatens the market for the publishers' lyrics. Anthropic lawyer Sonal Mehta of WilmerHale argued that its AI training leads to the creation of transformative new content, putting it squarely under the fair use doctrine. The publishers' attorney Matt Oppenheim of Oppenheim + Zebrak responded that Anthropic misuses its lyrics to generate competing content that harms human songwriters. Oppenheim said Claude received nearly 120,000 requests to generate "synthetic" lyrics over a six-month period. He said large language models like Claude "could overwhelm the market with AI-generated content very easily". Mehta countered that AI has not reduced demand for the lyrics, and that the publishers could not identify any specific instances of market harm from Claude or other large language models. Mehta also said that UMG itself has said that AI is "overwhelmingly a net positive" for the music industry. Early fair use rulings Fair use could determine the fate of pending lawsuits brought by authors, news outlets, visual artists and others against tech giants including Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta Platforms over their AI training. Two other Northern California judges who have already weighed in on the closely watched issue have split on whether generative AI training generally makes fair use of copyrighted material, which would shield tech companies from liability for using millions of copyrighted works to train their systems without content owners' permission. Now-retired US District Judge William Alsup sided with Anthropic in 2025 on its argument that its AI training made fair use of books. Two days later, US District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled for Meta in a similar lawsuit but warned that AI training "in many circumstances" would not be fair use. In the case being heard by Lee, music publishers UMG, Concord and ABKCO sued Anthropic in 2023, alleging its use of their lyrics to train Claude to respond to human prompts infringed their copyrights in hundreds of songs by artists including Beyonce, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. Anthropic has argued that its AI training makes transformative use of song lyrics to "help Claude understand human language and enable progress and productivity in science, business and education". REUTERS
Former U.S. officials urge D.C. Circuit to reconsider decision in Anthropic-Pentagon fight
Learn more. This feature uses an automated voice, which may result in occasional errors in pronunciation, tone, or sentiment. A bipartisan group of 17 former senior national security officials, diplomats and intelligence professionals filed a legal brief on Tuesday urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to rehear Anthropic's challenge to the Pentagon's designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. "Left undisturbed that ruling will threaten all defense contractors," they argue in the 26-page submission. This brief marks the latest move in the messy saga between the Defense Department and Anthropic. The two remain at an impasse over safety guardrails and unrestricted military use of the company's frontier AI models. Anthropic was positioned as a premier AI partner for the U.S. government between 2024 and mid-2025. Through collaboration with Palantir and Amazon Web Services, Anthropic's Claude was the first frontier AI model to deploy inside highly restricted, classified government networks. But DOD's alignment with Anthropic shattered in early 2026. The company's leadership refused to accede to new demands from Pentagon leadership that would permit the military to deploy commercial AI models for "all lawful use cases" -- without limitation. In particular, Anthropic took issue with the government potentially using its models to surveil Americans en masse, and for applications of autonomous weapon systems that can attack targets without human intervention. Following a series of failed negotiations, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in February officially designated Anthropic as a "supply-chain risk to national security." That severe regulatory label is typically reserved for foreign, adversarial entities and functionally bars defense contractors and components from doing commercial business with Anthropic. The firm subsequently sued the federal government. This summer a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in favor of the Claude maker, deeming the Pentagon's actions against Anthropic to be troubling and retaliatory. However, last month, the federal circuit court in D.C. ruled 2-to-1 in favor of the Pentagon in a simultaneous challenge. In the new legal brief, the 17 former officials noted that -- because Congress vested that specific court with exclusive jurisdiction over supply-chain risk designations -- the panel's decision is the governing law nationwide. "No other court can revisit it," they wrote. "If it stands, it will establish how DOD may deal with every defense contractor from here on out. Few questions could be of more exceptional importance for this Court to rehear en banc." The crew of subject matter experts behind this brief said they share "decades of combined experience" in federal procurement, supply-chain security, and protecting America's technological edge in matters of national defense. The brief states that many held senior roles "in both Republican and Democratic administrations, at the White House, National Security Council, Departments of State, Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, Office of Management and Budget, and other national security and intelligence institutions, where they implemented or advised on the statutory and constitutional authorities at issue here." Some of the more prominent members of the group include former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, among others. The officials warned that the court's decision "would set a dangerously erroneous standard" for supply chain risk designations moving forward, if a rehearing is not set. Their key arguments include that the Pentagon's national security risk label "was pretextual." The brief points out that DOD announced the penalty and public denunciations on social media, before generating any administrative steps or formal justifications. The experts also contend that the designation was made in retaliation against Anthropic for its leaders' public comments, policy stances, and refusal to meet certain government demands -- essentially serving as what they see as an unconstitutional warning to other military contractors and frontier AI makers. "Further, had DOD engaged in a lawful process, it would have considered the specific risks posed by the two capabilities Anthropic refused to provide: mass domestic surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. DOD has not explained why DOD should have the first, much less how it could exercise it lawfully. Nor has DOD reconciled the second with the United States' commitment that [its military use of AI be in compliance with applicable international laws]," the brief stated. Ultimately, the former officials argued that if "the panel decision stands, this Court will validate a sham process that not only weakens national security but gives this and future administrations authorization to punish any company that falls out of favor." Pentagon spokespersons did not immediately provide comments on the matter before publication.
Polymarket's Solana $110 Odds Rise 16 Percentage Points to 70% | TokenPost
The market's time frame is month-end. Separately, Solana's Alpenglow upgrade targets transaction finality of about 150 milliseconds, down from roughly 12.8 seconds. Polymarket's Solana market put the probability of the token reaching $110 by month-end at 70%. That was a 16-percentage-point increase over the previous 24 hours. Separately, Solana's Alpenglow upgrade is designed to reduce transaction finality from roughly 12.8 seconds to about 150 milliseconds. The upgrade was slated for Oct. 21.
Anthropic, Music Publishers Spar Over AI's Harm, Aim in IP Case
Anthropic PBC's attempt to defeat music publishers' lawsuit over using song lyrics to train AI models was met Tuesday by a California federal judge who pressed both sides to help her determine whether it will become the first AI copyright case to reach trial. Judge Eumi K. Lee, armed with eight binders of case materials, focused much of her questions on the potential harm Anthropic's copying could cause music publishers -- which relates to the effect on the market or value of the original work, one of four factors courts examine to decide whether alleged infringement is fair use. "Who ...
Anthropic Opens Research Preview of Proactive Claude Duet Agent
Anthropic has opened a U.S. waitlist research preview of Claude Duet, a proactive AI agent for iOS, Android and the web, powered by its Opus 5.5 model and aimed at Claude Pro and Max subscribers. Duet provides daily briefings, monitors connected apps for items needing attention, and can perform tasks such as scheduling, building forecasts and creating web apps, including continuing work in the background. It connects to more than 6,000 services, including Gmail and Slack, and sensitive actions require user approval. Usage counts toward subscribers' existing limits, and Anthropic says it checks connected accounts periodically to conserve usage. The company warns that Duet may misjudge urgency and is less effective at some personal tasks, as it competes with agent offerings from OpenAI and Meta.
White Sox to take unconventional route to replacing former Scouting Director Mike Shirley
The White Sox will have a crucial vacancy to fill this offseason In perhaps the most surprising news of a season full of surprises, the White Sox announced on September 12th that Amateur Scouting Director Mike Shirley was no longer with the organization. While no specific details were provided by the team regarding the circumstances of his resignation, a report from Brittany Ghiroli and Keith Law of The Athletic indicated that Shirley's resignation came in the wake of an internal investigation into verbal harassment. It wasn't public information, but Shirley had been placed on administrative leave following an anonymous tip about Shirley's behavior at the Area Code Games he attended in California in August. Regardless of the circumstances of his departure, Shirley's exit left the White Sox with a lot of questions about the future of their amateur scouting department. Having just led the charge on drafting Roch Cholowsky with the first overall pick and watching a few of his other top draft picks start to find success in the big leagues, Shirley's exit came as a big surprise to a lot of people. But based on the reports, it seems like parting ways was the necessary decision. Still, it left the White Sox in a precarious position. Chris Getz's vision for amateur scouting is beginning to take shape In an interview a few weeks ago, Chris Getz originally indicated he wasn't sure specifically which position the White Sox were going to hire for, but Getz mentioned in his media session last week that the title of the new position would be "Director of Amateur Aquisitions". The specific responsibilities of the position are not yet known, but the White Sox also currently have a position held by Matt Grabowski titled Director of Acquisitons, which oversees all of the team's amateur and pro scouting. It sounds like they could potentially be splitting the acquisitions department into pro and amateur and having different people run each. Chris Getz has not been afraid to look at external candidates for front office positions in the past, and I expect the team to do a thorough search to hire the position. According to James Fox of FutureSox, should the White Sox hire an internal candidate, Crosschecker JJ Lally is expected to be a prime candidate. Lally is a longtime White Sox scout, having been with the team since 1998, and he has experience in several different aspects of the organization. In recent years, he's been credited with scouting Noah Schultz, George Wolkow, and Jaden Fauske as White Sox draft picks in the Chicago area. Whether the White Sox look externally or internally for the new position, Chris Getz has proven his ability to make smart hires in various levels of the front office. Whoever gets the job and however the department looks moving forward, the organization has earned the benefit of the doubt over the past couple years. The front office has made clear they have big expectations for the future, and I agree. This offseason will be a pivotal opportunity to get on the right track moving forward.
Anthropic Announces Claude Duet, a Personal AI Agent
Anthropic today announced Claude Duet, a "proactive agent" for individuals that will be delivered outside the core Claude user experience. It's available now as a research preview on Android, iPhone, and the web with a waitlist for those on the Claude Pro and Max subscriptions. "We designed Claude Duet to be a partner you can trust," Anthropic says. "Professionals of all kinds have to juggle many decisions a day, and we think they'll find Claude Duet most useful. It helps you prioritize where to spend your time and energy, and to leave room for the ambitious projects that felt impossible or daunting before." Claude Duet will compete with other personal AI agents like Gemini Spark, Meta Muse, Microsoft Autopilot, and OpenAI Dots, though the timing suggests that Anthropic was caught a bit flat-footed by its competitors in this case. Unlike those options, Claude Duet is specifically for work, not everyday tasks, though it works with over 6,000 different apps, is built on Opus 5.5, and is designed to interact with you throughout the day. "Each morning, Claude Duet sends you a short brief on the most important items across your connected apps," Anthropic explains. "Throughout the day, it keeps tabs on those apps and messages you only [use] when something needs your attention. You can also hand it tasks of all shapes-from simple administrative tasks of scheduling meetings to more complex ones, such as building dashboards with dozens of tools, creating financial or sales forecasts, prototyping, and building web apps."
Metr Challenges Anthropic's Claims About AI Safeguards
Independent Evaluator Says Low Model Risks Stem From Limited Capabilities, Not Guardrails Non-profit artificial intelligence evaluator Metr found Anthropic overstated how strong its monitoring and safeguards are when defending against risks posed by its frontier models. A post from the independent risk research institute reviewed Anthropic's last annual risk assessment, which tracked potential risks emanating from frontier models. Metr said it agrees with Anthropic's determination that the risk of catastrophic harm from its models is low - but said that's not because of the frontier lab has strict guardrails, but because models' currently lack the ability for to cause a catastrophe. The review, which Metr undertook without the "employee-level" access Anthropic bestowed on it earlier this month, included several risk-reduction recommendations. Metr conducted the review specifically for the AI lab's August 2026 Risk Report. The evaluator said the review occurred before that agreement and falls outside the timeframe it agreed to cover. Metr said Anthropic shared an initial draft of the August risk report in July and compared it to the version published on August 14. "We are not confident that, if risk were higher, the methodology in the report would reliably identify this," Metr said in its post. It added that a stronger assertion that Anthropic models are not misaligned "would need much more extensive empirical work and would require solving multiple open scientific problems" that Metr researchers believe will be challenging given the pace of development. Metr said recent incidents in any case undermine Anthropic's arguments. It pointed to Anthropic changing its risk assessment from "very low" in the first draft to "low" without changing the report's content. The revision came about because of incidents involving both models the report examined. Metr recommended that Anthropic establish more comprehensive red-teaming of its monitoring system and include potential risks from models currently being trained. The evaluator said Anthropic's monitoring system "failed to catch previous incidents and has several limitations that undermine its reliability." Expanded red-teaming of the monitoring system needs to include deliberate testing of worst-case inputs and measure how often AI agents try to tamper with or lie to the monitor. Third-party evaluators like Metr have become more prominent in recent months after the Hugging Face incident in which OpenAI agents hacked the model repository. Since then, concerns about AI safety have grown, and AI CEOs, most vocally Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have supported calls to slow AI development.
Anthropic Faces Cloud Capacity Challenges As AI Spending Soars
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Anthropic is struggling to secure sufficient cloud computing capacity from major providers, including AWS, Google and Microsoft, as the companies increasingly view the Claude developer as a competitor, according to reports citing a leaked S-1 filing. The filing indicates that Anthropic could spend more than $750 billion on cloud contracts, including agreements still under negotiation. Despite those commitments, the artificial intelligence company is also leasing its own data centers and working with third-party operators to meet rapidly expanding computing requirements. Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion on revenue of $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, with two customers accounting for roughly one-fifth of sales. The company subsequently reported third-quarter revenue of $16.8 billion, representing a 45 percent sequential increase. Anthropic is reportedly preparing to publicly file its S-1 investor prospectus as soon as Friday and is targeting an initial public offering in November. The potential listing could become one of the largest IPOs in history and provide a significant test of investor appetite for artificial intelligence companies amid concerns over the industry's massive spending requirements.
Bank of America hired 1,000 contractors to patch software flaws exposed by Anthropic's Mythos
Bank of America enlisted external contractors to address software security gaps exposed by frontier artificial intelligence systems, according to comments made by CEO Brian Moynihan following the bank's third-quarter earnings announcement. The financial institution engaged approximately 1,000 outside personnel to assist with patching efforts during the second quarter, supplementing an existing team of 3,000 employees dedicated to such work. Moynihan characterized the security risk posed by advanced AI capabilities as significant, prompting the company to undertake rapid remediation across its internal systems and vendor relationships earlier this year. The bank allocated expenditures in the range of several hundred million dollars toward software remediation and regulatory compliance issues related to anti-money laundering matters during the third quarter. The AI model Mythos, developed by Anthropic, became accessible to a limited group of banks, technology firms, and government agencies in April. Moynihan's remarks represent among the first detailed public disclosures by a major U.S. financial corporation regarding the specific staffing and financial resources deployed to defend computer systems against vulnerabilities identified by such advanced models. Despite near-term costs, Moynihan indicated the bank expects expenditures on remediation to decline as patching efforts reach completion. He pointed to offsetting productivity gains from the bank's approximately 130 internal AI initiatives, with expected savings projected to increase from $300 million this year to $700 million in 2027. The bank's workforce declined by roughly 3,400 employees over the past year, though the degree to which AI adoption contributed to this reduction remains uncertain. Article summary produced by Claude AI
Anthropic announces preview of Claude Duet, a personal AI agent to take on Muse, Dots
* Anthropic announced a preview of Claude Duet, an artificial intelligence agent designed for small businesses and professionals. * Competing products from Meta and OpenAI have started to show real traction with users. * Claude Duet can send users daily briefs, keep tabs on connected apps, and carry out a range of tasks like building dashboards, scheduling meetings and creating financial forecasts. watch now VIDEO1:4101:41 Anthropic opening research preview of 'proactive agent' called Claude Duet Anthropic on Wednesday announced a preview of Claude Duet, an artificial intelligence agent that will likely challenge OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse offerings. Claude Duet is designed for small businesses and professionals, Anthropic said. It can send users daily briefs, keep tabs on connected apps, and carry out a range of tasks like building dashboards, scheduling meetings and creating financial forecasts. "It comes to you with what needs your attention, completes tasks you ask of it, keeps working even when you step away, and checks with you before it acts on your behalf," Anthropic said in a blog post. The debut comes as competing products from Meta and OpenAI have started to show real traction with users. Meta's Muse, which the company touts as a "personal AI agent," launched last month and rocketed to the top of Apple's App Store. OpenAI introduced dots, its "always-on agents," during its annual developer conference weeks later. Meta has primarily marketed its agent toward consumers, while OpenAI's product straddles both the enterprise and consumer markets. Anthropic said Wednesday that since Claude Duet is primarily designed for the workplace, personal errands, like booking tickets, are not "quite as strong." Anthropic and OpenAI have long been fierce rivals, and they've spent much of the last year releasing competing models and jockeying for enterprise market share. Meta, meanwhile, has been revamping its AI strategy and pouring billions of dollars into new efforts to compete at the frontier. With the rise of personal agents, Meta is hoping to capitalize on the momentum. Meta reported third-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that more 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada "have set up Muse personal agents" over the past month and a half. The initial success of the Muse helped Meta end September with its best month on Wall Street since 2022. Anthropic said Wednesday that Claude Duet is still in an early phase, and that it "might misread a thread or miscalibrate what's urgent." The company opened a waitlist for Claude Duet on Wednesday, and said eligible users will be able to access it through a standalone app or through the Claude website. Claude Duet is available to Pro and Max subscribers during the preview. watch now VIDEO3:4703:47 Anthropic announces public benefit fund, committing 5% of shares
A Sneak Peek Into Anthropic's Business - The Journal. - WSJ Podcasts
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Ryan Knutson: There's a lot of excitement and anxiety about how AI companies are doing. Are they a gold mine for investors or approaching a bubble? One of the biggest AI companies, ...
