Claudeonomics
Meta engineers compete on an internal leaderboard tracking Claude API spending. When your competitor gamifies their dependence on you, you're not a competitor anymore. You're infrastructure.
The Spectrum
Average wireless revenue per user was $65 per month in 2000. By 2020 it was under $45 — while data volume per user grew by orders of magnitude. Carriers invested hundreds of billions. The value accrued to Apple, Google, and Netflix. The dumb pipe earns dumb-pipe returns.
The Clock
AWS S3 storage launched at $0.15 per GB per month in 2006. Today it's $0.023 — an 85% decline across 90+ price cuts. The commodity layer is following the utility cost curve at compressed speed. But AWS margins are above 35%, the managed-services moat is deepening, and AI introduces a market structure the framework hasn't seen.
The Last Mile
The competitive ISP market of the 1990s had thousands of providers. A single FCC reclassification in 2005 ended mandatory infrastructure sharing and killed the competitive carriers overnight. The $65 billion federal broadband investment in 2021 was the acknowledgment that private markets had failed — exactly as they failed rural electrification 85 years earlier.
The Bargain
In 1898, Samuel Insull proposed the deal that defined American infrastructure: accept government rate oversight in exchange for a guaranteed monopoly. Allowed returns on equity have fallen from 14% to 10% over four decades. The bargain held. The treadmill didn't stop.
The First Wire
In 1904, over 20,000 independent telephone companies operated in the United States. By 1913, AT&T controlled nearly all of them. The mechanism wasn't better technology. It was network incompatibility — if you can't call your neighbor, the smaller network always loses.
The Infrastructure Cycle
Every American infrastructure — electricity, railroads, telephone, broadband, cellular, cloud — has followed the same five-stage economic cycle. Each completes faster than the last. The telegraph took 22 years to consolidate into monopoly. Cloud took 15.
OpenAI announces a Safety Fellowship program for external researchers, engineers, and practitioners to study the safety and alignment of advanced AI systems
A pilot program to support independent safety and alignment research and develop the next generation of talent
Anthropic signs a deal with Google and Broadcom for GWs of next-gen TPU capacity, and says its run-rate revenue surpassed $30B, up from ~$9B at the end of 2025
We have signed a new agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity that we expect to come online starting in 2027.
Sources say Apple will announce its foldable iPhone in September alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, rebutting a report about production delays
Apple Inc.'s first foldable phone is on track to arrive during the company's normal iPhone launch period later this year …
An Indianapolis city councilor says his home was targeted in what appeared to be a politically motivated shooting over a proposed data center in the city
Add CBS News on Google — An Indianapolis city councilor says his home was targeted in what appeared to be a politically motivated shooting …
Anthropic says it will make Claude Mythos Preview available to 40+ organizations that maintain critical software and doesn't plan to make it generally available
Anthropic on Tuesday released a preview of its new frontier model, Mythos, which it says will be used by a small coterie of partner organizations for cybersecurity work.
How social media became a “freak show”: X punishes external links and most top accounts, such as Catturd, are low-quality but get more engagement than the NYT
The ecosystem is unhealthy, especially on Twitter, and that's producing some strange beasts among the most influential accounts.
Sources: Apple is facing issues in the test phase of its foldable iPhone, which are taking longer than expected to resolve, potentially delaying mass production
TAIPEI — Apple is encountering setbacks in the engineering test phase of its first ever foldable iPhone, which could lead to delays …
A group of US agencies including the FBI and the NSA warns that Iran-linked hackers have targeted industrial control devices used in US critical infrastructure
As Trump threatens Iranian infrastructure, the US government warns that Iran has carried out its own digital attacks against US critical infrastructure.
Google updates Chrome with vertical tabs, a feature that Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge have long offered, and a new full-screen layout in reading mode
ZDNET's key takeaways — Google has started rolling out vertical tabs in Chrome. — With vertical tabs, all your open web pages appear in a sidebar.
Samsung reports a record preliminary Q1 operating profit of ~$38B, up more than 8x YoY and above ~$27B est., and revenue up 68% YoY to ~$88B, amid the AI boom
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) on Tuesday projected a record-high first-quarter operating profit from a year earlier …
A cryptography engineer calls for an urgent rollout of quantum-resistant cryptography, saying the risk of inaction is now unacceptable, after Google's warning
My position on the urgency of rolling out quantum-resistant cryptography has changed compared to just a few months ago.
Google is updating Gemini to add a UI that triggers support hotline referrals and a “help is available” module when chats indicate potential crises like suicide
Alphabet Inc.'s Google plans to introduce new mental health support features for its Gemini chatbot as the company and rivals …
Intel says it will join Elon Musk's Terafab AI chip complex project along with SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to help produce processors for robotics and data centers
Intel (INTC.O) said on Tuesday it would join Elon Musk's Terafab AI chip complex project along with SpaceX, Tesla (TSLA.O) and xAI. — Last month, Musk said his rocket company SpaceX …
OpenAI sends a letter to the California and Delaware AGs, urging them to investigate “anti-competitive behavior” by Elon Musk, ahead of a trial in April
OpenAI on Monday sent a letter to the California and Delaware attorneys general, urging them to investigate …
Z.ai releases GLM-5.1, a 754B-parameter model that it says outperforms GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 on SWE-bench Pro, available under an MIT license
Is China picking back up the open source AI baton? — Z.ai, also known as Zhupai AI, a Chinese AI startup best known for its powerful …
A look at the gold rush for firms claiming to help brands get cited by AI search tools, via tactics like hiding instructions behind “Summarize with AI” buttons
Let's pretend you work in IT and you're looking for a new digital service desk platform to help your employees reset passwords or onboard new hires.
The UK says Russia-linked hacking group APT28 is hijacking popular internet routers from MikroTik, TP-Link, and others to steal credentials and redirect traffic
Russian government-linked hackers are compromising popular internet routers to steal passwords for email accounts and other online services …
Sources: OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are sharing information via the Frontier Model Forum to detect adversarial distillation attempts that violate their ToS
Rivals OpenAI, Anthropic PBC, and Alphabet Inc.'s Google have begun working together to try to clamp down on Chinese competitors extracting results …
Elon Musk amends his OpenAI lawsuit to ask that damages he might win be awarded to OpenAI's charity arm and that Altman be removed from OpenAI's nonprofit board
Tesla billionaire also seeks Sam Altman's removal from OpenAI nonprofit's board in amendment to suit over for-profit conversion
Oracle reinstates its CFO role, appointing Hilary Maxson after Safra Catz became principal financial officer in 2014, amid investor scrutiny over AI spending
Oracle (ORCL.N) on Monday named Hilary Maxson as its chief financial officer, tapping an executive with deep experience in infrastructure …
Analysis: Gemini 3-based AI Overviews are accurate ~90% of the time, meaning across 5T+ searches per year, tens of millions of answers are erroneous every hour
The company's A.I.-generated answers look authoritative, but they draw on an array of sources, from trustworthy sites to Facebook posts.
Sources: Meta has an internal leaderboard dubbed “Claudeonomics” where its 85K+ employees compete on AI-token usage and earn rewards like “Token Legend” status
Employees at Meta Platforms who want to show off their AI superuser chops are competing on an internal leaderboard for status as a …
Interviews with Sam Altman and 100+ people on if he can be trusted amid allegations of consistent lying and more: some defend him as others call him a sociopath
Slack messages and H.R. documents, some photographed on a cellphone to avoid detection on company devices. One memo begins with a list: “Sam exhibits a consistent pattern of...” The first item is “Ly...
The US Treasury says Robinhood and BNY will work with the federal government to handle tax-sheltered “Trump Accounts” for children when they launch this summer
The new tax-sheltered savings and investment accounts will start accepting deposits this summer.
Spotify expands Prompted Playlists, its AI feature for creating playlists, to include podcasts, for Premium users in the US, Canada, the UK, and other countries
Spotify said today that it is expanding its AI-powered feature to create playlists, called Prompted Playlist, to include podcasts as well.
Sources: Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus hires xAI co-founder Kyle Kosic from OpenAI and has hundreds of staff across its San Francisco HQ, London, and Zurich
Kyle Kosic joins Project Prometheus, the secretive start-up working on systems that can understand the physical world
Q&A with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins on data centers in space, the memory shortage, Cisco's networking business, the AI bubble, company layoffs, AI coding, and more
Today, I'm talking with Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco. — Cisco is one of those big companies that everyone has heard of but that most of us …
The US NHTSA ends a 2025 probe into ~2.6M Tesla vehicles over the “Actually Smart Summon” driverless feature after finding it involved only low-speed incidents
Netflix launches Netflix Playground, a games app for kids aged eight and under, in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand
A US federal appeals court rules New Jersey cannot block Kalshi users in the state from sports-related event contracts, finding CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction
Waterloo-based Mappedin, which uses AI and LiDAR to create and maintain 3D digital maps of indoor spaces, raised $24.5M, bringing its total funding to $35M
Mappedin, a Canadian indoor digital mapping startup, raised a US$24.5 million growth equity financing led by Edison Partners, CEO Hongwei Liu tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Q&A with Sundar Pichai on the history of Google and AI, speed and Search, Google's AI comeback, bottlenecks, capital allocation, how Google works, and more
Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google and Alphabet. He sits down with John and Elad Gil to discuss Google's resurgence in the AI race …
Los Angeles-based Hermeus, which aims to build unmanned hypersonic fighter aircraft, raised $200M led by Khosla Ventures and $150M in debt at a $1B valuation
Defense startup Hermeus has raised $350 million to keep developing what it calls the “fastest unmanned aircraft,” …
Google rolls out an AI Enhance button for Photos on Android globally, offering automated lighting and contrast adjustments, and video playback speed controls
Google announced two new additions to Google Photos for all Android users, and they've already begun rolling out.
Israel-based Q-Factor, which is developing a quantum computer based on neutral atom technology, emerges from stealth with a $24M seed led by NFX and TPY Capital
Intel Capital-backed startup, founded by scientists from Weizmann and Technion, aims to move beyond current qubit constraints with neutral atom technology.
Asus Zenbook A16 review: 48GB of RAM is great for $1,599 and Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is speedy, but the chassis feels cheap and the battery life lags rivals
It's not all about what's on the inside. … Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing …
OpenAI unveils policy proposals for a world with superintelligence: higher taxes on capital gains, a public AI investment fund, bolstered safety nets, and more
The proposals are more serious than you might expect. …Viviana Jordan:If you're thinking about AI only as a tech issue, you're missing the bigger shift. — OpenAI just published a new piece on indust...
A Taiwan intelligence report to lawmakers says China is targeting Taiwan to obtain its chip manufacturing tech and talent to break through global “containment”
China is targeting Taiwan to obtain its advanced chip manufacturing technology and talent as a way of breaking through international …
Amazon and USPS reach a new delivery deal; sources say Amazon will reduce the packages it ships via USPS by 20%, instead of the two-thirds cut proposed earlier
South Korea is deploying thousands of ChatGPT-enabled social care robots to help elderly people; over-65s now account for ~20% of the country's 51M people
South Korea's strained social care system turns to ChatGPT-enabled devices as population ages — NEW
A look at Alibaba's Accio, an AI sourcing tool that helps small online sellers connect with manufacturers, including in China, and exceeded 10M MAUs in March
For years Mike McClary sold the Guardian LTE Flashlight, a heavy-duty black model, online through his small outdoor brand.LinkedIn:Kuo ZhangLinkedIn:Kuo Zhang:Thanks to Caiwei Chen for the conversatio...
GoDaddy integrates Cloudflare's AI Crawl Control into its hosting platform, enabling site owners to block, permit, or possibly monetize automated crawler access
Follow Alistair Barr … - Cloudflare and GoDaddy are addressing AI's impact on web traffic and revenue.
The Trump administration proposes cutting CISA's budget for 2027 by $707M+ to help the agency refocus on its “core mission”, not “weaponization and waste”
The Trump administration is planning to cut the budget of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by at least $707 million for 2027.
Polymarket plans to launch the CTF Exchange V2 upgrade within the next three weeks, including a rebuilt trading engine and a native, USDC-backed USD stablecoin
Quick Take — Polymarket noted the upgrade is its “biggest infrastructure change since launch,” and will include …
The US IRS is yet to issue guidelines on whether prediction market gains should be taxed as derivatives, gambling winnings, or income, worrying accountants
Americans flocked to prediction markets last year. Now, it's time to pay taxes on winnings. How do you do that? Great question.
Adobe launches Acrobat Spaces, a free AI-based study tool to help students generate flashcards, mind maps, quizzes, and Express presentations without logging in
Adobe Acrobat has largely catered to professionals with its recent AI features. Now, the company is turning its attention to students by making …
Aria Networks, which builds what it calls the world's first AI-native network to work with any AI chip, raised a $125M Series A from Sutter Hill and others
Aria Networks said on Tuesday it has raised $125 million in its first series funding round, as the startup seeks to develop …
Sources: Anthropic plans to invest $200M in a venture with PE firms to sell AI tools to their portfolio companies, and is in talks to raise $1B for the effort
Anthropic announces Project Glasswing, a cybersecurity initiative that will use its Claude Mythos Preview model to help find and fix software vulnerabilities
Today we're announcing Project Glasswing1, a new initiative that brings together Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Apple, Broadcom …
Kalshi signs a deal with Fox Corp. to integrate its forecasts into Fox News, Fox Business Network, Fox One, and Fox Weather, following deals with CNN and CNBC
The prediction market already has deals with CNN and CNBC. — The biggest prediction market in the U.S. is teaming up with the biggest TV news channel in the U.S.See also Mediagazer
Anthropic hires Microsoft executive Eric Boyd as head of infrastructure; Boyd oversaw Microsoft's AI platform and worked at the company for 16 years
Anthropic PBC has hired a senior leader from Microsoft Corp. to lead its push to establish the infrastructure needed to support growing adoption …
Silicon Valley investors say annual recurring revenue, a popular metric with AI startups, cannot be trusted because it has no SEC definition and can be massaged
The co-founder of Cluely — an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup with the motto, “Cheat on everything” — ignited a controversy earlier …
Sources: SpaceX plans to earmark a large portion of shares for retail investors and will host 1,500 of them at an event in June after the IPO roadshow launch
True Footage, which uses AI trained on years of appraisal data to generate property valuations, raised a $40M Series C led by Cox Enterprises' Socium Ventures
True Footage, a real estate appraisal platform, raised a $40 million Series C led by Cox Enterprises' Socium Ventures, CEO John Liss tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Q&A with OpenAI President Greg Brockman about OpenAI's research direction, how far it can push Codex, closing Sora, betting on text vs. world models, and more
OpenAI is shifting strategies yet again. Here's the logic behind the latest moves and what they mean for the company's direction.
MLB rolls out the Automated Ball-Strike System, “robot umps” that use Sony-made advanced cameras to help officiate games, as backups to human umpires
The automated ball-strike system has often validated the judgement of the human umpires … Tech Across the Globe
The rapid adoption of AI coding tools has let workers generate massive volumes of code, leaving companies scrambling to review and secure the AI-generated code
Sources: Meta is preparing to release the first AI models developed under Alexandr Wang, with plans to offer versions of those models via an open source license
Sources: AI music startup Suno's licensing talks with UMG and Sony have stalled; labels argue that AI tools like Suno rely on human-made music and should pay
OpenAI buying TBPN makes little sense, par for the course for a company that, like Twitter, stumbled into a big market and may never build a functional business
Q&A with UpScrolled founder Issam Hijazi, who says the non-algorithmic social app has 5M+ users, mainstream apps had censored pro-Palestinian content, and more
Issam Hijazi launched UpScrolled after users alleged censorship on other platforms. Nine months later, its user base is soaring …
Natter, an AI platform for large-scale video conversation insights, raised a $23M Series A led by Renegade Partners and says it grew revenue 5x in 2025
A look at Tencent-backed Even Realities, which makes $600 G2 smartglasses with no cameras; Omdia says AI smartglasses shipments grew 322% YoY to 8.7M in 2025
Australian AI infrastructure startup Firmus raised $505M led by Coatue at a $5.5B valuation, bringing its funding raised in the last six months to $1.35B
Source: Binance Chief Compliance Officer Noah Perlman is looking to leave in 2026 or 2027; other senior compliance staff have departed over the past few months
Filing: Broadcom agrees to produce future versions of Google's TPUs and expands its Anthropic deal to give the startup access to ~3.5 GW of computing capacity
- Broadcom said it agreed to produce future versions of Google's artificial intelligence chips,
Anthropic says Mythos Preview is a general-purpose model and found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities, including some in every major OS and web browser
Two points from brief: …Forums:Hacker News:Assessing Claude Mythos Preview's cybersecurity capabilitiesLobsters:Assessing Claude Mythos Preview's cybersecurity capabilities
A look at Catches and other startups that are offering AI tools to let shoppers visualize fit and style before buying clothes, aiming to curb online returns
Interviews with Anthropic executives on why Claude Mythos Preview is a cybersecurity “reckoning”, it is not releasing it publicly over misuse concerns, and more
Kevin Roose /New York Times:
Anthropic says Mythos Preview achieves 93.9% on SWE-bench Verified, compared with 80.8% for Opus 4.6, and 77.8% on SWE-bench Pro, versus 53.4% for Opus 4.6
Michael Nuñez /VentureBeat:NEW
Anthropic commits up to $100M in usage credits for Project Glasswing, along with $4M in direct donations to open-source security organizations
The program comes as the tech industry races to secure software before similar AI-powered offensive capabilities become too much for defenders to handle.
Anthropic's Project Glasswing launch partners include AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palo Alto Networks
so it built Project GlasswingAshley Capoot /CNBC:Anthropic limits Mythos AI rollout over fears hackers could use model for cyberattacksRoss Kelly /ITPro:Project Glasswing: Anthropic announces big tech...