Last fall, Anthropic was playing second fiddle to OpenAI. It had a lower valuation, while OpenAI was still drawing much of the attention as the first mover in the generative AI boom. But the dynamic shifted in late November, when Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5, which gave the company’s Claude Code coding agent a new brain and helped elevate it to the status of “AI killer app.” Arguably, that was the moment that set Anthropic on its path toward a forthcoming initial public offering (IPO). Developers had been using Claude Code to build software for much of 2025, but the…
Author: Staff Writer
There is a powerful narrative arc called the Hero’s Journey that is employed in stories like Star Wars. A hero, like Luke Skywalker, receives a call to adventure. He or she has doubts at first, but meets a mentor, crosses the first threshold, undergoes an ordeal and, once successful, receives a reward and returns home changed for the better. Franz Kafka offers a very different and less happy narrative in his unfinished novel, The Castle. The hero, “K.” receives a call from the mysterious castle that looms above the town. No one can confirm his authority, role or even what…
Jerome Powell is now warning that the Federal Reserve is undergoing a “stress test” and that political interference threatens public confidence in the institution. He stated that “the public would lose faith” if administrations could remove Fed officials over policy disagreements and argued that democratic institutions can be “torn down all too quickly.” What is interesting is not what Powell said. It is what he did not say. The Federal Reserve has spent years demanding independence from elected officials while simultaneously expecting the public to trust its judgment after one of the largest inflationary episodes in modern history. Powell himself…
The past few days have been full of bad news for the AI industry. The headlines paint a picture of an industry confronting growing pushback on multiple fronts, from political and regulatory headwinds to disappointing financial returns to poor results from real AI deployments. These are the stories that fed the narrative. The AI industry’s shifting narrative on jobs In a notable shift in tone, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that artificial intelligence is unlikely to trigger the “jobs apocalypse” he had previously warned about. Speaking virtually at a Commonwealth Bank event in Sydney, Altman downplayed earlier predictions of widespread…
Corporate agriculture turned food into a chemistry project. A recent consumer test of Driscoll’s conventional strawberries found 12 pesticide residues, including eight described as PFAS-linked “forever pesticides,” while the organic sample came back non-detect. Why are Americans expected to eat food treated with chemicals that other nations restrict or prohibit? The USDA will run out and tell you that over 99% of tested foods fall below EPA tolerance levels. That is the same bureaucratic trick they always use. They define the allowable poison, then congratulate themselves when the poison is within the legal limit. The average person does not eat…
High-pressure situations at work, like an important meeting, are often the backdrop for our most reactive professional moments. In 2025 nearly two-thirds (60%) of employees who spent more than 15 hours a week in meetings reported experiencing severe stress levels, according to a Wiley Workplace Intelligence report. When conflict arises, our bodies often react before our brains. You might lose your temper, lose your words, or find yourself anxiously agreeing to something that you don’t actually have capacity to do. It can feel deeply frustrating, and even shameful, when your responses feel impulsive and out of your control. But is…
Nobody elected Google to manage the ecosystem. Yet here we are. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has quietly spent the better part of a decade developing what it calls the “Debug” project. The latest proposal seeks approval to release tens of millions of laboratory-bred mosquitoes across California and Florida. We are told not to worry because these are the “good” mosquitoes. We are assured they are male mosquitoes and therefore do not bite. We are told they carry a naturally occurring bacteria known as Wolbachia that will interfere with reproduction and reduce mosquito populations. For generations, governments and corporations have repeatedly…
The biggest IPO of the year may be upon us. Anthropic PBC, the AI company behind the popular Claude LLM, has confidentially filed to go public. On Monday, the company announced that it has filed a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “This gives us the option to go public after the SEC completes its review,” a company statement said. “The proposed initial public offering will depend on market conditions and other factors.” With all of the fervor around AI and LLMs, the filing sets the Claude maker up for a massive stock…
Duolingo just released one of its most requested features ever—but it’ll only be available for a single month. The feature gives anyone who had previously built a streak of more than 30 days, but then lost that streak by missing too many lessons, the chance to earn it back. That means anyone who skipped their French instruction for their wedding, for an international vacation, or while in labor will finally be able to stop lamenting their lost language-learning glory to their friends. The event will run from June 1 to June 30. While Duolingo does give users “streak freezes,” which…
AI is now front and center in every conversation about the future of design in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. At my firm, we’re embracing AI, but not in the way some headlines would have you think. Our belief is that AI should augment our design expertise, not replace it. Across the industry, some organizations are pushing full automation, which means automating deliverables and trying to remove the designer from the creative process. I believe that’s a terrible idea. Design is personal. Our teams pour passion into their work, and people feel that downstream. If we chase efficiency by…