Many security leaders at major companies, flush with expanded budgets to fend off AI-powered cyberattacks , are experiencing a level of decision fatigue that's freezing them in their tracks. Why it matters: Those leaders are still trying to size up how autonomous cyberattacks will affect their businesses at a time when they need to be taking bold action and mobilizing quickly, experts told Axios. The big picture: Companies have only a short window before AI models capable of end-to-end autonomous cyberattacks land in the hands of malicious attackers. - But four months after Anthropic released Mythos Preview to prepare for what's to come, many companies are still debating where to put their money and which controls to prioritize. State of…
Anthropic spent this winter and spring as the darling of America's AI boom, conquering the frontier while casting itself as the industry's moral conscience. - By summer, the Claude maker had found itself alone on an island of its own principles. Why it matters: Anthropic is simultaneously the world's most valuable startup and its most isolated AI leader. The company's idiosyncrasies have strained its relationship with developers, policymakers and partners as it barrels toward a potential trillion-dollar IPO . Driving the news: Anthropic is the only frontier AI lab that declined to sign an open letter led by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urging Washington not to restrict open-weight models, a category currently dominated by China. -…
Data: Company reports, Funda via "Key Context"; Chart: Ben Berkowitz/Axios AI revenue is accelerating so fast that it's starting to dwarf some of the world's most recognizable brands. Why it matters: AI infrastructure spending forecasts in the trillions of dollars start to make at least a little more sense when investors see how they're paying off. By the numbers: OpenAI and Anthropic, combined, are on track for an annual revenue rate of about $120 billion, "Key Context" Substack author Tae Kim noted on Monday, via data from AI investment research platform Funda . - Anthropic makes up about 60% of that, given the company's lead with corporate customers (a lead that OpenAI is working to shrink). - Both would land in the Fortune 500's …
CANNES, France — People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel accused Google of abusing its market power by using the same crawler for both search and AI. Why it matters: While some publishers want to block crawlers to protect their content from getting swept up by AI models, search traffic remains a key metric for advertising and affiliate revenue. What he's saying: "We can't actually block Google, because Google uses the same crawler for search as they do for AI, which is like an incredible abuse of market power," Vogel said. - "We would love to do something productive with them, but we're probably heading towards more confrontation than productivity with those guys," he said. - Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Catch up…
Knowledge workers now make up roughly one-fifth of OpenAI's Codex users and are growing more than three times as fast as developers, according to a new OpenAI report shared first with Axios. Why it matters: AI has made it easier to crank out documents, emails, decks and dashboards, and OpenAI is now betting agents can help workers make sense of them. The big picture: Previous waves of workplace software encouraged workers to produce huge volumes of files and messages, but those "workplace artifacts" largely remain siloed inside different software programs. - The report argues that Codex can round up the important context from all of those artifacts no matter where they are. By the numbers: Codex now has more than 4 million weekly active…
It's no secret that AI has become a splitting headache for private equity, or at least for funds that bought big into enterprise software. - But this isn't just a backward-looking problem, which can be temporarily stemmed by Q1 equity markdowns and maturing debt renegotiations. - Almost every industry big that spoke to Axios at the Milken Global Conference this week said that AI has created massive modeling challenges for new deals, almost regardless of sector. Private equity is a long-term asset class, typically holding portfolio companies for a minimum of three or four years. - For context, it's been only three-and-a-half years since ChatGPT was first released. - Subsequent AI advancements — including the introductions of Claude,…
The AI industry has entered an era of perpetual upheaval where market leaders are crowned — and dethroned — every few months. - Today's hottest company could be eclipsed by summer and the laggard could revolutionize the world. Why it matters: As AI changes everything, keeping up with who's dominant and who's falling behind is becoming an existential question for investors, big businesses and regular users trying to guarantee their own futures. - The wrong call can mean spending millions of dollars on a model that could be outdated by the end of the quarter — or spending hours learning a tool that will soon be obsolete. The big picture: OpenAI looked unstoppable through last fall thanks to its first-mover advantage with ChatGPT. …
OpenAI's revised Microsoft pact lets it sell AI models across multiple clouds, enabling a likely expansion with Amazon and broader enterprise distribution. Why it matters: The shift ends OpenAI's effective cloud exclusivity, widening its reach to customers using AWS, Google Cloud or others — and intensifying AI platform competition. Driving the news: A rewritten deal frees OpenAI to sell through any cloud, caps Microsoft's cut of OpenAI revenue and scraps a controversial provision that would have changed the companies' business relationship once artificial general intelligence (AGI) was achieved. Zoom in: Amazon and OpenAI are poised to quickly capitalize on the change. - "We're excited to make OpenAI's models available directly to…
IT budgets are getting blown out as some companies increasingly spend more on AI than on employees' salaries. Why it matters: Maybe human labor will be more cost efficient after all. What they're saying: "For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees," Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, told Axios. - Uber's chief technology officer already blew through his full 2026 AI budget due to token costs, according to The Information. - Amos Bar-Joseph, CEO of Swan AI, bragged about his Anthropic bill in a viral LinkedIn post , saying "We're building the first autonomous business - scaling with intelligence, not headcount." Zoom out: Worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $6.31…