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Anthropic files for its IPO

Anthropic published its S-1, showing rapid growth ahead of what the NYT calls a blockbuster IPO, and spelling out both promise and peril. By week's end, Blackstone and an FT report said the company may land a junk credit rating rather than investment grade.

AI

Big Tech earnings and the AI spending scare

Alphabet's revenue rose 25% while profit fell, Microsoft's profit jumped 32% despite heavier spending, and Intel's shares plunged 20%. Google Search is now less than half of Alphabet's revenue. Coverage converged on one question: the data center blitz is burning cash, and investors are starting to see cracks in the AI boom.

AI

The $6.3B Binance hack

Hackers stole $6.3 billion from Binance in about 20 minutes, and the exchange suspended withdrawals. The NYT framed it as the start of a riskier era for crypto.

AI

Backdoored Claude Code extensions

Hacker News front-paged several reports of a backdoor in Claude Code's VS Code extension as distributed on the Cursor marketplace, and of backdoors in official Claude Code extensions. A separate thread said Claude Code sends each background agent's transcript to its model.

AI

A week of breaches

Hackers exposed the identities of more than 40,000 DHS employees, Northflank and Scribd reported breaches, and a hack could leave fan-fiction site AO3 offline for weeks. Researchers also published five cross-tenant Azure compromises, while the NYT reported that AI is finding a flood of bugs.

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Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 employees

Microsoft offered buyouts to about a quarter of its workforce as it spends on AI.

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DoorDash buys Instacart

DoorDash agreed to buy Instacart for $17 billion, uniting two delivery giants.

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New models and OpenAI's funding

Gemini 4 Carbon took the top spot on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, and Mistral released the weights of Mistral Large 4. OpenAI raised less than half of its $30B target.

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Apple's first touchscreen Mac

Apple unveiled a MacBook Pro with a PROLED XDR display, its first touchscreen Mac, plus an M6 MacBook Pro and iMac and an OLED iPad mini. Some iPhone Duo screens are already failing, Apple said.

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Data centers in orbit

Google's first data center satellite came online and sent its first AI response to Earth, and startup Satlyt moved closer to turning satellites into space data centers.

AI

Reddit goes logged-in only

Reddit's CEO said the site is moving to a logged-in-only experience, so an account will soon be needed for most content.

AI

This week's stories