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In Today’s Issue:
📈 Anthropic nears a $900 billion valuation
📉 Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure
🛑 The White House blocks Anthropic from expanding access to its powerful Mythos model
⚠️ The ongoing war in Iran chokes global helium supplies
🤖 Gen Z pushes back against AI, using chatbots daily but increasingly resenting the pressure to rely on them
✨ And more AI goodness…
Dear Readers,
Anthropic just leapfrogged OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup on Earth, with a $900 billion valuation that would have sounded like science fiction even six months ago, and today we break down exactly how they got there and what it means for the entire industry. But the real story of this issue is tension: Meta is hemorrhaging users while raising its AI spending to $145 billion, Gen Z is using chatbots daily yet growing more resentful of them by the month, and the White House is actively blocking Anthropic from expanding access to its most powerful model over cybersecurity fears.
Meanwhile, the war in Iran is quietly strangling the physical backbone of the AI boom, from helium shortages threatening chip fabs to diesel costs up 42%, and we have a full update on just how bad the damage could get. Add Demis Hassabis claiming we are three quarters of the way to AGI, a UK benchmark showing frontier models can now autonomously hack through most of a full cyberattack chain, and Andrej Karpathy declaring that vibe coding was just the opening act, and you have an issue that captures a moment where the AI industry is simultaneously richer, more powerful, and more fragile than it has ever been.
Let's get into it.
All the best,
Kim Isenberg
📉 Meta Bets Bigger Despite Decline
Meta reported a 20 million decline in “Family daily active people” last quarter, a bundled metric covering Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. The company blamed internet disruptions in Iran and WhatsApp restrictions in Russia, but because Meta no longer breaks out user figures clearly by platform, the drop leaves open questions about where the weakness is actually coming from.
The more striking tension is that Meta is not slowing down spending, it is raising projected 2026 capital expenditures to $125–145 billion, about $10 billion higher than previously expected, largely because of AI infrastructure and compute demand. Revenue rose sharply to $56.3 billion, its fastest growth since 2021, yet Reality Labs remains a drag with a $4.03 billion quarterly operating loss, underscoring how Meta’s AI and metaverse ambitions are still carrying enormous costs.
🤖 Gen Z Resents AI Pressure
The Verge argues that Gen Z is not simply rejecting AI from the sidelines; many young people are using chatbots regularly while growing more skeptical of them. Polling cited by The Verge shows a sharp decline in enthusiasm, with only 18 percent of Gen Z saying they feel hopeful about AI, even as many say the tools help them work faster.
The deeper tension is cultural and economic: students and young workers are being told AI may replace jobs, yet they are also pressured to master it to stay employable. In universities, the push to weave AI into coursework and curricula is provoking backlash from students who see it as a threat to critical thinking, academic integrity, and genuine scholarship.
What makes the story more nuanced is that the criticism is not framed as technophobia. Several young people interviewed describe AI as convenient for certain tasks, but also as unreliable, ethically troubling, environmentally costly, and socially corrosive. The piece suggests Gen Z’s resentment comes from feeling drafted into an AI future they did not choose, one shaped less by proven educational value than by Silicon Valley hype, institutional pressure, and fear of falling behind.
⚠️ White House Blocks Mythos Expansion
The White House is pushing back against Anthropic’s plan to broaden access to its powerful Mythos AI model, citing security concerns and questions about whether the company has enough computing capacity to support more users without affecting government use. The dispute proofs a tense but necessary relationship: officials see Mythos as both a potential cybersecurity asset and a serious risk because of its ability to find and exploit software vulnerabilities.
The episode also shows a deeper political and institutional rift, with Anthropic’s ties to former Biden officials and pro-regulation groups complicating cooperation at a moment when AI companies and government agencies increasingly need to coordinate on critical infrastructure protection.
Kim, Andrej Karpathy argues that “vibe coding” was only the playful first phase of a deeper shift: programming is becoming agentic engineering, where developers increasingly orchestrate AI “ghosts” with taste, judgment, and understanding instead of merely writing code line by line.
Demis Hassabis, CEO Google Deepmind: “We are three quarters of the way to AGI”
Anthropic Nears $900B Valuation
The Takeaway
👉 Anthropic is fielding investor interest at a $900 billion valuation, more than doubling its $380 billion February round and potentially surpassing OpenAI's $852 billion mark as the world's most valuable AI startup.
👉 Revenue growth has been extraordinary, jumping from $1 billion annualized at the end of 2024 to over $30 billion today, driven by enterprise API usage, Claude Code's $2.5 billion run rate, and the new Mythos model attracting high level government and finance attention.
👉 The company may raise around $50 billion in what could be its final private funding round before a potential IPO, with a board decision expected in May.
👉 Massive infrastructure commitments from Amazon (up to $25 billion) and Google (up to $40 billion) are fueling Anthropic's compute expansion, but the circular capital structure, where investors' money flows back to those same companies for infrastructure, raises questions about long term margin sustainability.
Anthropic just turned the entire AI startup game upside down. The Claude maker is fielding investor interest at a staggering $900 billion valuation, a figure that would catapult it past OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup on the planet. To put this in perspective: Anthropic was valued at roughly $18 billion in early 2024, $61.5 billion by March 2025, and $380 billion just this February. That's approximately a 50x jump since 2024 and a 15x leap in just 12 months. We are witnessing what might be the fastest valuation climb in tech history.
The fuel behind this rocket: Revenue has exploded from $1 billion at the end of 2024 to over $30 billion in annualized run rate today, with TechCrunch sources suggesting it could already be approaching $40 billion. Claude Code, the company's AI coding assistant, has become a breakout product, generating over $2.5 billion in annualized revenue alone. Meanwhile, the secretive Claude Mythos Preview model is reportedly sparking intense interest from Wall Street executives and members of the Trump administration, with Anthropic citing the need for massive compute to run it as a key reason for seeking fresh capital.
Multiple investors have submitted preemptive offers for a potential $50 billion raise, according to half a dozen sources cited by TechCrunch, though Anthropic hasn't formally started fundraising yet. A board decision is expected in May. Backing from tech giants keeps piling up too: Amazon has committed up to $25 billion, and Google is planning investments of up to $40 billion. This could be Anthropic's final private round before a potential IPO, and it would mark a defining moment in the broader AI arms race. OpenAI, once the undisputed leader, is reportedly struggling to hit its own revenue and user growth targets, making Anthropic's surge feel all the more significant.
Why it matters: Anthropic's meteoric rise shows that the AI race is no longer a one horse contest. If the $900 billion valuation holds, it redefines what's possible for a company that didn't exist five years ago, and puts enormous pressure on every rival to keep up.
Sources:
🔗 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-29/anthropic-considering-funding-offers-at-over-900-billion-value
🔗 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/29/anthropic-weighs-raising-funds-at-900b-valuation-topping-openai.html
🔗 https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/29/sources-anthropic-could-raise-a-new-50b-round-at-a-valuation-of-900b/
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The UK AI Security Institute's "The Last Ones" cyber range benchmark shows that GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Mythos Preview now lead all frontier models in autonomous offensive cyber capability, averaging ~22–23 of 32 attack steps (from reconnaissance to full network takeover) with GPT-5.5 completing the entire chain in 2 out of 10 attempts — a sharp jump over previous generations like Claude Opus 4.6/4.7 and GPT-5.4, and a result that raises urgent questions about disclosure norms and defensive readiness.
The War In Iran Is Quietly Choking the AI Boom: an update.
Two months into the US-Israel war with Iran, the conflict's most underreported casualty might be the global AI infrastructure buildout. While headlines focus on oil prices and geopolitics, diesel costs have jumped roughly 42% since the war began, and a far more obscure crisis is unfolding: Qatar, which supplies about a third of the world's helium, had to halt production after Iranian strikes hit the Ras Laffan facility, the world's largest LNG plant. Helium is irreplaceable in semiconductor manufacturing, used in wafer cooling, lithography, and leak detection. Moody's now warns that this helium disruption directly threatens the chip supply chains powering AI and data center expansion.
The numbers are sobering. The Pentagon estimates the war has cost $25 billion over two months, the World Bank forecasts a 24% surge in energy prices this year, and global oil supply plummeted by over 10 million barrels per day in March, the largest disruption in history according to the IEA. Oil prices have surged above $120 per barrel, and electricity accounts for about half of a data center's operating expenses.
For hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Meta, the timing could not be worse. They planned to spend around $400 billion on data centers in 2026. But DRAM prices are now forecast to hit $9.71 per gigabyte, up from $3.76 in 2025, and rising energy costs combined with memory price hikes could push data center operators to cut capital spending and reduce chip orders. Analysts warn that AI data center builds in the Gulf region may slip down the priority list entirely for countries directly affected by the conflict.
The US has a structural advantage here. As the world's largest LNG producer, domestic energy costs for US data centers remain far lower than what international operators face. But even that buffer has limits. If helium supplies continue to dry up, semiconductor fabs face severe production constraints, and the regions feeling it first are Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, home to the most critical chip manufacturing facilities on the planet.
A ceasefire has technically been in place since April 7, but Defense Secretary Hegseth offered no indication of when the conflict might actually end. The IEA assumes a resumption of regular Middle East energy deliveries by mid-year, but acknowledges this could prove too optimistic. Meanwhile, Pakistan could receive Iran's revised peace proposal by Friday, and Trump warned Tehran to "get smart soon."
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