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Who hates Sam Altman more—Elon Musk or Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei? If you guessed Elon Musk, our scoop today about the no-holds-barred memo Amodei sent to his staff on Friday about the Pentagon brouhaha might change your mind. Apart from calling OpenAI’s messaging over the Pentagon issue “mendacious,” Amodei explained the Pentagon’s targeting of Anthropic partly by noting: “We haven’t given dictator-style praise to Trump (while Sam has).” Ouch. No wonder Amodei and Altman didn’t want to hold hands. (I nominate “The Americans” co-star Matthew Rhys to play Amodei in the movie that will inevitably be made of this drama, by the way.)
The memo’s significance isn’t just the hostilities between Altman and Amodei, however. It’s what stating the unvarnished truth—in Amodei’s view—will do to Anthropic’s ability to manage its way out of this mess. Before the memo leaked, there were signs Anthropic was trying to negotiate a compromise with the Pentagon. Amodei told the Morgan Stanley tech conference on Tuesday night that “we’re going to try our very best” to resolve the dispute and that the two sides had more in common than they had differences. Reuters also reported on Tuesday that some Anthropic investors had contacted the Trump administration to try to calm things down. Amodei’s best hope now may be a full-throated apology, at least about the “dictator-style praise” comment. (Check out our TITV special episode on the memo.)
Alternatively, Anthropic could choose to fight it out. Amodei has made it clear that Anthropic will take the Pentagon to court if, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised on Friday, the agency designates it a supply chain risk—a designation which could threaten Anthropic’s very existence. Legal observers say the company would have a strong case. But battling the federal government in court on this issue would hardly be conducive to maintaining Anthropic’s red-hot revenue growth streak and could be an impediment to the company going public, as it was expected to do in the next year or so.
How will this episode affect Amodei’s standing with Anthropic’s investors? It’s hard to say. He has a history of candid talk, as we outlined in this story in September, so none of Anthropic’s financial backers could say it took them by surprise. Moreover, Amodei is known for long, cerebral writings on the risks of AI, such as this one from January. In that essay, he noted that “many US policymakers…deny the existence of any AI risks.” That’s a point that dovetails perfectly with the battle Amodei is having with the Pentagon. Perhaps investors will acknowledge that while he may have made life difficult for them, it’s hard to say he’s wrong.
Jensen Huang’s Revelation
It took Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to confirm what has become an open secret: that OpenAI is going public “toward the end of this year.” Speaking at the Morgan Stanley tech confab on Wednesday afternoon, Huang brought up the OpenAI IPO in the context of Nvidia’s previously announced $100 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker.
That deal, announced in September, died a quiet death. Instead, OpenAI stated last week that Nvidia would invest $30 billion in the company as part of a bigger funding round also involving Amazon and SoftBank. Today, Huang said the “opportunity to invest $100 billion in OpenAI is probably not in the cards…because they’re going to go public.”
Huang didn’t explain why OpenAI’s IPO precludes a bigger investment. Nvidia could, in fact, put tens of billions into the IPO. But perhaps Huang doesn’t want to pay the listing price. He also noted that “this might be the last time we’ll have the opportunity to invest…in a company like this,” as though Nvidia wouldn’t want to buy into a company once it goes public.
In Other News
• A Florida father is suing Google after his son died by suicide when Google’s Gemini chatbot allegedly encouraged him to kill himself, according to a complaint filed on Wednesday in federal court in California.
• Major technology companies joined President Donald Trump at the White House Wednesday to vow that the data centers they build for AI won’t increase electricity prices for Americans.
• Apple announced a low-priced laptop on Wednesday, the MacBook Neo, which starts at $599.
• The Trump administration is debating whether to allow Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings to continue owning its stakes in major videogame companies such as Epic Games, Riot Games and Supercell, The Financial Times reported.
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