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Silicon Valley Circling The Wagons Around Anthropic?
00:22:17
Dario might need some message discipline as Anthropic is officially designated a risk by the US government. GPT-5.4 is here. Oracle is considering laying off a ton of people and Softbank is considering taking on a ton of debt, both for the same reason. An early warning system for AI job destruction. And, of course, The Weekend Longreads Suggestions.
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It's the Paradise Podcast.
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I am your host Ryan Michele Bathe with my husband Sterling.
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What's up?
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Join us here on Hulu and Hulu on Disney where we'll discuss each episode with the cast and crew of Paradise. I'll be getting all the secrets from Dan Fogelman, James Marsden, Shailene Woodley, Julianne Nicholson and Sterling Kelby Brown. Paradise. The official podcast is now streaming and
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stream paradise on Hulu and Hulu on Disney. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Friday, March 6, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Dario might need some message discipline as Anthropic is officially designated a risk by the US government. GPT 5.4 is here. Oracle is considering laying off a ton of people and Softbank is considering taking on a ton of debt, both for the same reason, an early warning system for AI job destruction and of course the weekend long rate suggestions. And here's what you missed today in the world of Tech. The US DoD says it has officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately. Dario Amodai says Anthropic plans to fight the DoD's risk designation in court, claiming the DoD's letter to it has a, quote, narrow scope and apologizes for a recent leaked memo. Quoting and Gadget, Amodai explained that the designation has a narrow scope because it only exists to protect the government. That is why the general public and even Defense Department contractors can still use Anthropic's Claude Chatbot and its AI technologies. Microsoft told CNBC that it will continue using Claude after its lawyers had concluded that it can keep on working with Anthropic on non defense related projects. More on that in a second. The CEO has also admitted that his company had productive conversations with the department over the past few days. He said that they were looking at ways to serve the Pentagon that adheres to its two exceptions, namely that its technology not be used for mass surveillance and the development of fully autonomous weapons and looking at ways to, quote, ensure a smooth transition. If that's not possible. That confirms reports that Anthropic is back in talks with the agency in an effort to reach a new deal. In addition, Amodai apologized for a leaked internal memo wherein he reportedly said that OpenAI's messaging about its own deal with the department is just straight up lies, end quote. Actually, he said more than that. Quoting the New York Post, Anthropic CEO Dario Amadai has apologized for bashing the Trump administration in an explosive letter to staffers as he gears up for a court battle over the Pentagon's blacklisting of his AI firm. The exec said he's sorry for the quote, tone of a 1600 word internal missive that accused the Department of War of targeting Anthropic for not giving dictator style praise to Trump. I also want to apologize directly for a post internal to the company that was leaked to the press yesterday, amadi wrote in a note published on his company's website Thursday. Anthropic did not leak this post nor direct anyone else to do so. It is not in our interest to escalate the situation. He went on to note his inflammatory comments came hours after Trump blasted Anthropic staff as left wing nutjobs and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on X he would designate Anthropic a supply chain risk. It was a difficult day for the company and I apologize for the tone of the post, amadi wrote. It does not reflect my careful or considered views, end quote. In his memo to staffers earlier this week, Amadi said Anthropic was being punished because he didn't quote donate to Trump while quote OpenAI/greg have donated a lot. Referring to OpenAI President Greg Brockman, the Information reported Amo Dai, who donated to Democratic former Vice President Kamala Harris failed presidential campaign, blasted OpenAI and the Pentagon for allegedly smearing his company's name. I want to be very clear on the messaging that is coming from OpenAI and the mendacious nature of it, he wrote in the note. End quote. Indeed. Also in that memo, Amadai said OpenAI's DoD deal is quote, safety theater and the DoD dislikes anthropic in part because it hadn't again given quote dictator style praise to Trump. So that's why he's walking that back. Meanwhile, Microsoft says it will keep Anthropic's AI tools embedded in its client products after its lawyers concluded the DoD's designation is only for defense projects. Quoting CNBC, Microsoft is the first major company to say it will keep working with Anthropic after the Pentagon's actions. Some defense technology companies have told employees to stop using Anthropic's cloud models and migrate to alternatives. Our lawyers have studied the designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, can remain available to our customers other than the of war through platforms such as M365, GitHub and Microsoft's AI Foundry, and that we can continue to work with Anthropic on non defense related projects. A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email. Microsoft supplies its technology to a variety of U.S. government agencies. The Microsoft 365 productivity software is widely used inside the Department of War. In September, Microsoft said it was integrating Anthropic's generative artificial intelligence models into the Microsoft 365 Copilot add on for Microsoft 365 subscriptions alongside models from OpenAI. Many software engineers have adopted Anthropic's Claude models for drafting source code, and they are available in the GitHub Copilot AI software development service along with OpenAI's competing Codex models. In November, Microsoft said Anthropic has committed to spending $30 billion on Microsoft's Azure cloud services, while Microsoft agreed to invest up to $5 billion in anthropic. End Quote. As expected yesterday, OpenAI launched GPT 5.4, saying it is its quote, most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work and its first with native computer use capabilities. Quoting the verge, it's also OpenAI's first model with native computer use capabilities, meaning it can operate a computer on your behalf and complete tasks across different applications. The new model is a step toward the agentic future that AI companies are aiming to build build, where a network of AI powered agents operates in the background to complete complex jobs online and within software. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT agent amid a flurry of other agentic tools that emerged last year, which can take control of your computer to perform tasks such as searching for and buying ingredients for a meal. While OpenAI is bringing GPT 5.4 to its API and its AI powered coding tool Codex, it's rolling out its Reasoning model GPT 5.4 thinking to ChatGPT. OpenAI says GPT 5.4 can write code to operate computers as well as issue keyboard and mouse commands in response to screenshots. GPT 5.4 also shows improvements while using web browsers, as well as its ability to call upon tools and APIs more accurately and efficiently to help it complete tasks. The model is better at fielding questions that require it to gather information from multiple sources too. As OpenAI says the model quote can more persistently search across multiple rounds to identify the most relevant sources, particularly for needle in the haystack questions and synthesize them into a clear well reason to answer. OpenAI claims GPT 5.4 is its most factual model yet, with individual claims 33% less likely to be false compared to GPT 5.2. Inside ChatGPT 5.4 thinking will provide an outline of its work for more complex queries, while also allowing users to tweak or change their request during its response. This makes it easier to guide the model toward the exact outcome you want without starting over or requiring multiple additional turns. OpenAI says this feature is now available in the ChatGPT web app and on Android, but OpenAI says it's coming soon to the iOS app. GPT 5.4 is rolling out now across ChatGPT codecs and the API, with the GPT 5.4 thinking model coming to Plus Team and Pro users. There's also a 5.4 Pro model for maximum performance on complex tasks rolling out in the API, as well as for ChatGPT, Enterprise and EDU users. End quote Foreign. Sources tell Bloomberg that Oracle is planning to cut thousands of jobs as soon as March. Among its moves to handle a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion effort that we've been discussing at length. Quote the job reductions will affect divisions across the company and may be implemented as soon as this month, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named discussing the still private plans. Some of the cuts will be aimed at job categories that the company expects it will need less of due to AI, two of the people said. Wall street projects the expenditures by the cloud unit for data centers to push Oracle's cash flow negative over the coming years before the spending begins to pay off in 2030, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Last month, Oracle said it would raise as much as $50 billion this a combination of debt and equity sales. The reductions being planned are expected to be wider reaching than the company's typical rolling job cuts, according to the people. This week, Oracle announced internally that it would be reviewing many of the open job listings in its cloud division, effectively slowing down or freezing the hiring process, according to people with knowledge of the move. Oracle declined to comment. The company had about 162,000 employees globally as of the end of May 2025. Planning for the workforce reductions is still active and could change, the people said. Orac initial moves as an AI cloud provider drew favor from investors who boosted the stock 61% in 2024 and 20% last year. However, as the costs increased, the market has soured on the company, with the shares falling 54% from their September 2025 high through Wednesday's close. End quote.
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Bloomberg sources also say that SoftBank is seeking a bridge loan of up to $40 billion, its largest ever borrowing denominated solely in dollars, to help finance its investments in OpenAI. The bridge loan would have a tenor of about 12 months, according to some of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. Foreign lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, will be underwriting the facility, the people said. The potential size of the loan underscores SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's aggressive bid to try and position his company as the linchpin in the global AI boom. The $30 billion bet on OpenAI comes on top of more than $30 billion the company has already injected into the startup, which now forms the centerpiece of San's ambitions, a gamble reminiscent of his early investments in ByteDance or Alibaba, but at a far higher price. The Japanese company, which held about 11% in OpenAI at the end of December, has unloaded assets, including its stake in Nvidia, to bankroll its growing bet on OpenAI. Still, the scale of SoftBank's bet, as well as persistent concerns about a bubble given the lack of a truly mainstream use case for AI services, has spooked market observers. This week S and P lowered SoftBank's credit outlook, citing the danger that its investments in OpenAI may hurt the Japanese company's liquidity and the credit quality of its assets. End Quote. Anthropic says Claude's daily signups have grown 4x since the start of 2026 and more than a million users now sign up for Claude every single day. According to Apptopia, Claude downloads jumped more than 220% week on week. So again, Anthropic has really become the main character of 2026 so far for so many reasons. But what I want to tell you about now is that Anthropic has debuted a sort of early warning system for potential AI driven destruction of white collar jobs and says it shows limited evidence of AI led job loss so far, quoting Axios. While the new index from Claude's maker shows limited evidence that AI has affected joblessness so far, the efforts enter a larger debate among economists over how a possible AI labor doom and gloom scenario should be tracked in the first place. Anthropic's new measure takes into account an occupation specific tasks, an estimate of which of those tasks can be performed by large language models, and which tasks are actually being done by AI Today. Jobs are more exposed when their core tasks could be automated by AI, and Anthropic's anonymized data data shows those tasks are already being automated in the real world. According to that computer programmers, around 75% task coverage, customer service reps, data entry keyers and medical record specialists rank among the most exposed to AI disruption. Anthropic says its economists estimate roughly 30% of occupations don't clear the minimum threshold to register as exposed in their index. Those are fields you might expect to be the least susceptible to AI disruption, given how human intensive they are, like cooks, lifeguards, dishwashers, and the like. Workers in the most exposed occupations have not become unemployed at meaningfully higher rates though, than workers in jobs considered AI proof, according to the data. Quote the average change in the gap since the release of ChatGPT is small and insignificant, suggesting that the unemployment rate of the more exposed group has increased slightly. But the effect is indistinguishable from zero, researchers write. Anthropic does find, Quote suggestive evidence that hiring of younger workers, particularly ages 22 to 25, has slowed in exposed occupations, a sign that certain entry level workers are so far among the most affected by the uptake of AI. End quote. I'm also linking to the Anthropic study on this as well, because if you scroll down to figure two in that post, there is a handy graphic that shows you which industries they feel are the most at risk. So see if yours is in there. Guess. In the long reads this week the FT takes a look at SpaceX's potential IPO later this year, which reportedly aims to raise up to $50 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation, more than seven times higher than its around $200 billion valuation from October of 2024 and also like one of the biggest IPOs of all time ever. With these numbers and with the SpaceX and XAI combination happening almost concurrently with the expected IPO, investors must make comic book heroic assumptions about sustained hypergrowth to justify a $1.75 trillion market cap. The media have been guided to expect 2026 revenues of 22 to $24 billion, and given the likely mid year timing, investors will be pointed to 2027 projections, presumably with even punchier year over year growth. Even taking those forecasts at face value, we are aware of no serious company ever having gone public at anything close to the enterprise value to sales multiple apparently being contemplated here. Facebook, for example, went public on 11 times EV. This would be a moonshot valuation inspired by a healthy dose of moonshine. Success hinges on the premise that Musk's personal brand, the lack of terrestrial competitors and Unbounded retail enthusiasm can propel the offering off the launch pad and into deep space. And then from TechCrunch, who needs data centers in space, as Elon wants SpaceX to do, when you can just put them in the ocean, maybe? Quote One startup thinks that the ocean is a better place for AI data centers. Offshore wind developer Aikido is planning to submerge a 100 kilowatt demonstration data center off the coast of Norway this year. The small unit will live in the submerged pods of a floating offshore wind turbine. If all goes well, the company hopes to build a larger version to deploy off the coast of the UK in 2028. That model will sport a 15 megawatt to 18 megawatt turbine that will feed a 10 megawatt to 12 megawatt data center. The move offshore could solve a few challenges. Proximity to power is an obvious one, since the source will sit overhead. Winds offshore are more consistent than onshore, and a modest battery could bridge any lulls. Submerged data centers could eliminate concerns from not in my backyard groups who oppose data centers near their properties due to noise and or pollution concerns. And lastly, by floating in cold seawater, cooling the servers could be a simpler proposition. Cooling is one particularly vexing issue for orbital data centers, since they need to employ different techniques in the vacuum of space. But for all of the challenges offshore data centers could solve, they do introduce a few more the ocean is a harsh environment. While submerged servers wouldn't be battered by waves, they also wouldn't be completely stationary, so they'd need to be fully battened down. Seawater is also corrosive, so any equipment, including the container and power and data connections, will need to be hardened against it. No weekend bonus content for you this weekend. Talk to you on Monday.
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