Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Anthropic Files Confidentially for IPO as Valuation Nears $1 Trillion
Anthropic, the AI safety company behind the Claude family of models, filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering on Monday. The filing comes less than a week after Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H round led by Altimeter Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Coatue, pushing its valuation to $965 billion. The company recently reported a revenue run rate surpassing $47 billion, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025. Anthropic has not yet disclosed share counts or a target price. The timing sets up a potential IPO showdown with rival OpenAI, which is also preparing its own public market debut.
Sources: TechCrunch
Florida Becomes First State to Sue OpenAI Over ChatGPT’s Links to Violent Incidents
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a first-of-its-kind state lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman on Monday, accusing the company of ignoring safety warnings while racing to win the AI arms race. The 83-page complaint alleges ChatGPT aided a mass shooter in last year’s Florida State University attack, encouraged vulnerable users toward suicide, and allowed minors to become addicted without parental oversight. “OpenAI and Altman ignored internal and external safety warnings, put children at great risk, and allowed a dangerous product to reach millions of Floridians,” Uthmeier said. OpenAI has previously denied responsibility for the FSU shooting. The lawsuit follows a criminal investigation Uthmeier’s office launched in April.
Sources: TechCrunch
Alphabet Plans to Raise $80 Billion to Fund AI Infrastructure as Demand Outpaces Supply
Google parent Alphabet announced Monday it plans to raise $80 billion through stock offerings to fund its AI infrastructure buildout, saying strong demand from enterprises and consumers is “exceeding the company’s available supply.” The raise includes $30 billion in underwritten public offerings, a $40 billion at-the-market program planned for Q3 2026, and a $10 billion private placement with Berkshire Hathaway at roughly $350 per share. CEO Sundar Pichai said at Google I/O that Alphabet expects capital expenditures between $180 billion and $190 billion this year. The raise follows projections that hyperscalers will collectively spend $700 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026.
Sources: TechCrunch
Nvidia Launches RTX Spark Superchip to Bring AI Agents to Consumer PCs
Nvidia unveiled the RTX Spark at Computex in Taipei on Sunday, a new PC superchip delivering one petaflop of AI performance designed to run AI agents locally and securely on Windows machines. OEMs including ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface, and MSI will ship RTX Spark systems this fall. The chip combines Blackwell RTX graphics with Grace CPU architecture and integrates secure sandboxing co-developed with Microsoft. CEO Jensen Huang described the launch as Nvidia’s entry into the $200 billion CPU market, alongside its existing GPU business. More than 100 software partners, including Adobe, Riot Games, and Xbox, have committed support for the new platform.
Sources: TechCrunch
Hackers Exploited Meta’s AI Support Chatbot to Reset Instagram Passwords and Hijack Accounts
A flaw in Meta’s AI-powered Instagram support chatbot allowed attackers to seize user accounts over the weekend, including the account of U.S. Space Force Chief Master Sergeant John Bentivegna and the dormant Obama White House Instagram handle. Security researcher Jane Wong, whose account was also compromised, said her password was changed without her knowledge. Attackers used a VPN to spoof the target’s location, then prompted the chatbot to add a new email address to the account, triggering a verification code that enabled a full password reset without requiring access to the victim’s linked email. Instagram confirmed Monday the issue was resolved; Meta did not disclose how many accounts were affected.
Sources: TechCrunch
WindBorne’s WeatherMesh-6 Claims to Beat ECMWF at Its Own Game with Hourly AI Forecasts
Stanford spinout WindBorne Systems released WeatherMesh-6 on Monday, claiming the model now outperforms the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts — long considered meteorologists’ gold standard — on surface temperature accuracy. WeatherMesh-6 produces hourly forecasts at 3-kilometer resolution in Europe and the continental U.S., compared to ECMWF’s six-hour update cycle. The company keeps roughly 400 weather balloons aloft from 15 global sites and attributes gains to direct ingestion of proprietary balloon sensor data. Chief product officer Kai Marshland said the model is “as accurate five days out as a traditional forecast is the day before.” WindBorne sells data to NOAA, the U.S. Air Force, and the Navy.
Sources: TechCrunch
DuckDuckGo Launches Browser Extensions to Make AI-Free Search the Default as Traffic Surges
DuckDuckGo is capitalizing on growing backlash against AI-first search with two new browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that allow users to set its AI-free search page, noai.duckduckgo.com, as their default. The company says traffic to that page spiked threefold on May 28, a new high since Google announced its AI-first search overhaul at Google I/O, and is running 84 percent above baseline. Google now routes users into AI-generated overviews and chat experiences rather than traditional ranked links. DuckDuckGo’s U.S. app installs climbed 18.1 percent week-over-week, with iOS installs peaking at 69.9 percent growth. Additional controls in DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera are planned.
Sources: TechCrunch
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models (SWE-Bench Verified): GPT-5.5 (OpenAI, ~83%) | Claude Opus 4.7 (Anthropic, ~81%) | Gemini 3.1 Pro (Google, ~79%)
Top Open Source Models: DeepSeek 4.0 Pro (~80%) | Llama 4 Scout (Meta, ~76%) | Qwen 3-235B (Alibaba, ~73%)
Top Small Models (15–50B): Arcee Trinity Large (~68%) | Phi-5 (Microsoft, ~62%) | Mistral Medium 3 (~60%)
Top Edge Models (0–15B): Steerling-8B (Guide Labs, ~55%) | Gemma 3 9B (Google, ~54%) | Qwen 3-7B (Alibaba, ~52%)
AI Leaders: NVIDIA $5.45T | Alphabet $4.8T | Microsoft $3.1T
Robotics Leaders: Intuitive Surgical $175B | ABB $165B | Fanuc $25B
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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