Plus: Claude Opus 4.8 gets honest, GitHub Copilot's pricing revolt, and SoftBank's €75B France bet.
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Today, we've got Anthropic rocketing past OpenAI to a $965 billion valuation, Claude Opus 4.8 learning the lost art of honesty, and GitHub Copilot developers in full revolt over surprise token billing.
🗓️ On this day in 2025…
Anthropic had just launched Claude Code into general availability, transforming it from a research preview into the viral AI coding assistant that would go on to reshape how developers write software. One year later, Claude Code powers a $47 billion revenue run rate and has spawned an entire ecosystem of agentic tools. What a difference a year makes.
🚀 Anthropic Raises $65B, Nears $1 Trillion Valuation
Anthropic closed a monster $65 billion funding round at a $965 billion valuation, officially surpassing OpenAI as the most valuable AI startup. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital. With a $47 billion revenue run rate and an IPO on the horizon, the Claude-maker is on an absolute tear.
🧠 Claude Opus 4.8 Launches With a Focus on Honesty
Anthropic dropped Opus 4.8 just 41 days after its predecessor — the fastest upgrade cycle in the company's history. The headline feature? The model is 4x less likely to let code flaws pass unremarked and will proactively flag uncertainties instead of confidently guessing. Bridgewater Associates called it a game-changer for analysis work. New "Dynamic Workflows" let Opus manage hundreds of parallel subagents in a single session.
💸 GitHub Copilot's Token-Based Billing Sparks Developer Revolt
Microsoft is switching Copilot from flat subscriptions to token-based billing starting June 1 — and developers are furious. Some report projected costs skyrocketing from $29/month to nearly $750. Reddit and X are flooded with complaints. The move raises a bigger question: just how much was Microsoft subsidizing AI coding this whole time?
🏗️ SoftBank Commits €75 Billion to French AI Data Centers
SoftBank is going all-in on Europe with a €75 billion investment to build AI data centers across France — the continent's largest AI infrastructure project ever. The first phase targets 3.1 GW of capacity in northern France by 2031, with state-owned nuclear giant EDF handing over a former power plant for conversion. Masayoshi Son cited France's energy exports as "absolutely decisive."
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🧑💻 Osaurus is an open-source, Apple-only LLM server that lets you run local AI models in a hardware-isolated sandbox on your Mac. Built by a former Tesla and Netflix engineer, it evolved from a desktop AI companion into a full personal AI platform. Move seamlessly between local and cloud models while keeping your files and data on your own hardware.
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📱 Meta Is Building an AI Pendant
Meta is developing an AI-powered pendant for recording and processing conversations, building on its Limitless acquisition from late 2025. Despite previous AI wearable flops, Meta is betting big on hardware with expanded AI glasses and a "Wearables for Work" subscription.
✨ Google Launches Gemini Spark, Its Always-On AI Assistant
Google's new agentic assistant runs on cloud VMs so you can close your laptop while it handles tasks. From inbox summaries to expense tracking, Spark works across Gmail, Calendar, and Docs. The question is: why did Google make it a separate product instead of baking it into Gemini?
🍎 Apple Working to Shrink Gemini for iPhone-Powered Siri
Apple is trying to distill Google's multi-trillion parameter Gemini models to run on-device for its long-delayed AI Siri upgrade. The challenge? Even Apple's Private Cloud Compute infrastructure is struggling with the full-size models. WWDC can't come soon enough.
🌍 China Is Keeping Its Best AI Talent at Home
Stanford's latest index shows the US-China AI performance gap has shrunk to just 2.7% — down from 31% in 2023. Beijing is advising top AI researchers to avoid traveling to the US and requiring government sign-off before AI firms accept American capital. The talent war is getting real.
⚡ Coders Now Refuse to Work Without AI
Most developers won't touch a codebase without AI tools anymore, new research shows. But faster code doesn't mean better code — Uber blew through its entire 2026 AI budget in four months with no measurable productivity gain. "You write code twice as quick? Better hope you've halved your maintenance costs," one viral post warned.
That's a wrap for this week! From Anthropic's jaw-dropping valuation to AI cracking century-old math problems, this was a week that reminded us just how fast things are moving. If you found something useful, share it with a friend who needs to keep up. 🎉
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Signing off,
— Somi AI
