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Tara Lipinski’s surrogate suffers ‘devastating loss’
Tara Lipinski’s surrogate suffers ‘devastating loss’
In Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights,’ Anticipation Is Hotter Than The Actual Sex
As Anthropic Entertains Offers At $900 Billion Valuation, OpenAI CFO Swears There's A 'Vertical Wall Of Demand'
Anyone that's ever spent serious time with Anthropic's Claude - particularly after being a GPT user - can understand why the Trump administration just did a major about-face after a Pentagon spat led to the company's blacklisting as a "supply chain risk."
Two months after the Pentagon moved to several all ties with the AI wunderkind, the National Security Agency (NSA), which falls under DoW, had to have access to Anthropic's 'Mythos' model - the company's most powerful model to date - which according to internal warnings could “hack every major system." And of course, Treasury has to have it too.
So they've got a public-facing Claude that kicks GPT ass at workflow tasks and provides valuable insights (try spinning up multiple Claudes at once, assigning them jobs, and having them talk...), and a scary private ZeroCool level hacker Claude (Mythos) that the government is scrambling to get their hands on - while the Pentagon is standing around holding their dick after that "supply chain" tantrum. No wonder Anthropic was willing to call their bluff.
Don't sleep on them though...
Same guy who allegedly laundered payments to Stefan Halper as part of the illegal operation to spy on and take down President Trump? Interesting choice. https://t.co/Yiou3VruYm
— Ezra A. Cohen (@EzraACohen) May 1, 2026Anyhow - roughly a week after Bloomberg reported that Google committed to invest $10 billion - and Amazon $5 billion - at a $350 billion valuation, the outlet now reports that Anthropic is entertaining offers from investors at more than $900 billion.
Anthropic had previously resisted several inbound proposals from investors for a new round at a valuation of $800 billion or more, Bloomberg News has reported.
The new discussions, which have not been reported, coincide with a push by Anthropic to ramp up fundraising amid the breakout success of its AI software. Anthropic, which Bloomberg has reported is considering an initial public offering as soon as October, has been on the hunt for more infrastructure to meet growing demand for its products. -Bloomberg
So things are going well for CEO Dario Amodei and crew.
Meanwhile Live look a Sam AltmanOn the other side of the AI race, OpenAI is pushing back on concerns about missing internal targets.
In a Thursday interview with Bloomberg, CFO Sarah Friar insisted that was a nothingburger, and that there's a "vertical wall of demand" for their products.
"We feel like we’re beating our plan at the highest level," she said. "How we get there often moves around period to period, because this is still a young business that is not perfectly forecastable across every single metric."
Friar acknowledged that the company has ambitious internal “stretch goals” that can be different than the ones it shares publicly. But the popularity of OpenAI’s products continues to grow, she said. This month, OpenAI said its coding agent Codex hit 4 million weekly users — up from 3 million two weeks earlier.
“Every company I’ve ever been inside of in my entire CFO life, and as an analyst, always has stretch goals — always,” she said. “And if you don’t have those stretch goals, I feel like, actually, you’re not doing your job as a CFO.”
Friar has held various positions at companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Salesforce Inc., Nextdoor Holdings Inc. and Square Inc., now known as Block Inc. -Bloomberg
On Tuesday, the WSJ reported that OpenAI missed its own targets for both new users and revenue, - after which Sarah Friar reportedly told other company leaders that she is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn’t grow fast enough. In other words, that $1.5 trillion OpenAI had pledged to spend on various data centers, GPUs and memory chips... you can kiss all that goodbye.
So, Thursday was damage control for Tuesday, and Anthropic is the homecoming queen.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 14:20Top US General Signals Russia Is Helping Iran In War
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,
The highest-ranking U.S. general on Thursday signaled that the Russian government is assisting the Iranian regime in its war with the United States.
In comments before Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Dan Caine, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded in an affirmative manner to a question from the panel’s chairman, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Ala.), about whether there is Russian involvement.
“General Caine, there’s no question that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is taking serious action to undermine our efforts for success in Iran. Is there any question about that?” Wicker asked the general.
Without going into detail, Caine said, “I think there’s actions and activities. [I’m] mindful of the hearing room we’re in, but there’s, there’s, there’s definitely some action there."
Meanwhile, Iran’s regime said on Thursday it would respond with attacks on U.S. military positions if Washington renewed attacks on the country in the midst of a ceasefire and a U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports. The country’s leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said in a statement through state-run media that it would assert control over the Strait of Hormuz, which could complicate plans to reopen the key waterway.
Any U.S. attack on Iran, even if limited, will usher in “long and painful strikes” on America’s regional positions, a senior Revolutionary Guards official said. “We’ve seen what happened to your regional bases, we will see the same thing happen to your warships,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force Commander Majid Mousavi was quoted by Iranian media as saying.
Earlier this week, Iran’s foreign minister traveled to Russia to meet with Putin. “As you can see, we have always had close consultations with Russia and have had continuous and bilateral consultations on a wide range of issues, especially regional issues,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a Telegram post on April 27.
As for Beijing’s support of Tehran, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he believes the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence is limited. The CCP has long done business with the clerical regime that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.
“I think maybe helping, but I don’t think much,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on April 26 when he was asked about any Chinese aid to Iran. “I think China could have been much worse than they’ve been, so I don’t consider them having been very bad.”
Oil prices have sharply increased since the war began on Feb. 28, driving inflation and sending pump prices to painful levels worldwide. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that if the disruption caused by the closure dragged on through mid-year, global growth would fall, inflation would rise, and tens of millions more people would be pushed into poverty and extreme hunger.
“The longer this vital artery is choked, the harder it will be to reverse the damage,” he told reporters in New York on Thursday.
Inside the United States, the price for a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide reached $4.30, according to the American Automotive Association (AAA). Data from the organization show that a gallon of diesel reached $5.49.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/01/2026 - 14:00