Anthropic Momentum Builds, Data Centers Go Green, Private Weapons-Grade Plutonium
Research Rundown #187, plus a new memo on Retro Biosciences
Anthropic Releases Opus 4.8, Surpasses OpenAI
Anthropic had a big week. On Thursday, it announced it had raised $65 billion in a Series H led by Altimeter, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia at a $965 billion post-money valuation, overtaking OpenAI’s $852 billion March valuation for the first time and more than doubling its valuation from the $380 billion it was valued at in February. It also reported that run-rate revenue had crossed $47 billion this month. The round brought in strategic infrastructure partners Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix alongside the hyperscaler commitments, signaling that Anthropic is now thinking about its compute supply chain at the memory and storage layer, not just GPUs. The same day, the company launched Claude Opus 4.8, an upgrade to its flagship model available at the same price as its predecessor, with fast mode now three times cheaper than prior models.
Earlier in the week, Anthropic also confirmed it will imminently roll out Mythos-class models to all customers, having made swift progress on the cyber safeguards required for general release. As we noted in a previous newsletter, the model’s public launch has been the subject of significant debate, with regulators, bank CEOs, and cybersecurity researchers all weighing in on whether the threat was real or overstated. If the rollout proceeds, it will be the first time a model of this capability class has been made broadly available, and the first real test of whether Anthropic’s Project Glasswing safeguards hold up outside a controlled partner environment.
Clean Energy for Data Centers
Elemental Impact, a nonprofit investor, launched a clean energy initiative on Tuesday in partnership with Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. Dubbed the Data Center Innovation Initiative, the program aims to accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies in data center projects. It involves hyperscalers paying annual membership fees to cover the operating costs of new technologies, rather than each hyperscaler running its own bespoke pilots.
According to the press release from Elemental Impact, the initiative is designed to “test and validate critical technologies in data center environments” in collaboration with philanthropic partners such as Breakthrough Energy Discovery, Builders Vision Philanthropy, Salesforce, and the Stolte Family Foundation. Funding for individual projects will range from $500K to $5 million, with the initiative targeting up to 10 startups developing clean energy storage, low-carbon materials, advanced electrical systems, and industrial cooling before the end of 2027.
Private Companies, Weapons-Grade Plutonium
This week, it was reported that the DOE has selected five companies to enter into “advanced negotiations regarding the potential allocation of surplus plutonium materials” sourced from dismantled Cold War-era nuclear warheads, which will be converted into fuel for advanced reactors. If finalized, it would be the first time the US government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies. The companies named in the negotiations were Oklo, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy.
The plan stems from an executive order calling for a pause to an existing program diluting and disposing of surplus plutonium from dismantled warheads to instead repurpose about 20 metric tonnes of the material as fuel for advanced nuclear technologies. The plan has drawn opposition from Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Representatives Don Beyer of Virginia and John Garamendi of California, who claim that 20 metric tonnes of weapons-usable plutonium is enough for approximately 2K nuclear bombs and have asked the agency to cancel the plan. Scott Roecker of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, meanwhile, pointed out that other countries had concluded that this type of plutonium was a liability that should be permanently disposed of rather than used as fuel.
Latest Research
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What We’re Reading
The OpenAI Foundation committed an initial $250 million to study and support AI’s economic disruption across labor-market measurement, near-term worker support, and new models for distributing AI gains, part of a broader $1 billion+ annual pledge. This occurred amid OpenAI’s IPO prep and after Musk’s lawsuit accused its leaders of abandoning the nonprofit mission.
The Illinois legislature passed SB 315, the first US law requiring third-party audits of frontier AI labs’ safety protocols, as well as 72-hour critical-incident disclosure, whistleblower protections, and AG-enforced penalties of up to $3M per violation, effective in 2028.
Meta unveiled paid Meta AI plans under a new “Meta One” brand, with the Plus plan at $7.99/month and the Premium plan at $19.99/month, with testing starting next month in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia as Meta seeks AI revenue beyond ads.
Polymarket began rolling out identity-verification measures, including a portal for passports, licenses, and proof of residence, in response to Congressional scrutiny of insider trading and sanctions compliance, as well as Dutch regulators’ threats regarding unlicensed gambling.
Samsung Electronics’ chip union approved a wage-and-bonus deal with 73.7% support, averting a threatened strike and creating a special pool worth 10.5% of semiconductor operating profit (plus 1.5% cash), paid in stock over 10 years contingent on profit targets and averaging ~$340K per chip-division worker.
Elon Musk claimed US military “kamikaze” drones improperly used the civilian Starlink network instead of the government Starshield system, a “direct violation of terms of service,” while disputing a Reuters report that SpaceX hiked per-drone Starshield connection fees from $5K to $25K during the Iran war.
The US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.3 billion contract to build the Space Data Network Backbone for missile targeting without ground-based relays as part of Trump’s Golden Dome, with an operational prototype due by end-2027; the Pentagon says it intends to name a second supplier by summer.
ETH Zurich physicists generated certifiably perfect random numbers for the first time, using two entangled superconducting qubits linked by a 30-meter cryogenic tube and an improved Bell test to “amplify” imperfect randomness into bias-free output.
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