Anthropic in Deep Trouble, 🍌 2.0, $110B for OpenAI, & More

TLDR;

Welcome back!

This week, the steep escalation in US Gov vs. Anthropic drama takes most of the industry’s interest, so we are compelled to cover it.

But we also have several exciting news items on hardware, including how Broadcom has raced ahead of NVIDIA in one particular domain, OpenAI’s huge $110 billion round, the release of Nano Banana 2, and the best SVG model in the world.

At the end, I’ll also share a much-needed update review of the state of the AI trade, capturing my beliefs on the future of several top AI stocks, and how my own picks have fared (really well, I have to say).

Enjoy!

WARFARE

Anthropic Gets Defined as a Supply Chain Risk

Anthropic has become the center of a high-profile dispute with the US government.

The company refused Pentagon demands to allow its AI to be used without restrictions in military operations, particularly for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.

The argument seems to revolve around the second point: that the Pentagon was seeking Anthropic’s approval for the use of Claude in fully autonomous weaponry.

But how did all this start? All this became an issue when it was “uncovered” that Claude had been used during the capture of Maduro (something Anthropic already knew and has only recently pumped its chest against now that it is public, but I digress).

This week-long standoff led President Donald Trump to order all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology and the Department of War to label the company a “supply chain risk,” effectively severing existing government contracts worth around $200 million.

Specifically, Trump said the following:

Being dubbed a supply chain risk forces all companies that work in some capacity for the government to stop working with Anthropic, effectively a death sentence for the company (if truly enforced, which I don’t think it will).

The reasons why things got out of control are hard to know, but according to the Washington Post, things escalated after a particular response from Dario: when put in a life-or-death situation (specifically, a ballistic missile being sent to the United States), Dario answered that the Pentagon should contact Anthropic to receive permission to act (he said, “you could call us and work it out”).

Anthropic plans to challenge that designation in court and defends its ethical constraints as essential.

IN the meantime, that contract has been secured by, you guessed it, OpenAI.

TheWhiteBox’s takeaway:

Just for the record, I’m no idealist, I’m sorry. Thus, you may not like what I’m about to say, but I hope you guys read me because you want honesty and, above all, want to understand how things really are, not how we would like them.

Let me be clear from the start: I don’t think things will end badly, and there’s a big chance this is all performative, helping Anthropic avoid the obvious PR hit of clearly not walking their own talk about ethics, and how the company is transitioning into one that, despite…

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