Anthropic Raises $13B Series F at $183B Valuation as Run-Rate Revenue Surges to $5B ↗
Anthropic closed a $13B Series F at a $183B post-money valuation after run-rate revenue jumped from ~$1B to over $5B in under nine months. The Claude maker now serves 300,000+ businesses, with Claude Code delivering over $500M run-rate and 10x usage growth. Led by ICONIQ, Fidelity and Lightspeed, funds will support enterprise demand, safety research, and international growth.
WordPress Debuts Telex, an AI-Powered Gutenberg Block Generator ↗
WordPress debuted Telex, an experimental AI that turns prompts into Gutenberg blocks and returns a .zip plugin users can install. CEO Matt Mullenweg demoed it at WordCamp US; early testers found the tool promising but flaky. Telex is a prototype in Automattic’s broader push to make publishing easier with AI.
Gaia Labs Opens Pre-Sale for $1,399 AI Smartphone: 7,000 Units, On-Device LLM & Web3 Wallet ↗
Gaia Labs opened a pre-sale for a 7,000-unit limited AI smartphone built on Galaxy S25 Edge hardware running the Gaia AI Platform. Priced at $1,399, the device offers on-device decentralized AI, a local LLM runtime, Web3 identity and wallet, a pre-loaded $199 domain, and options to earn GAIA tokens by sharing compute. Early buyers (first 3,000) get a Korea Blockchain Week ticket; waitlist exceeded 10,000.
Five Platforms Dominate Essential AI Training: Certificates to Cloud Labs ↗
AI training is now essential. Five platforms—Coursera, edX, Hugging Face, Kaggle, and Google Cloud Skills Boost—dominate distinct learning tracks: recognizable credentials, academic depth, open-source model practice, competition-driven benchmarking, and hands-on cloud labs. Serious builders mix certificates, public projects, contests, and live labs to prove skills and stay production-ready.
‘Clanker’ Slur Highlights Public Anxiety Over AI ↗
“Clanker,” a slur rooted in Star Wars fandom, is trending as a put-down for robots and AI chatbots blamed for hallucinations and lazy output. Critics warn its casual use normalises dehumanising language and echoes historic bigotry; linguists say it reveals public anxiety about intrusive, job‑threatening tech. The piece urges caution, noting the term says more about people’s fears than about machines.
Readers See ML’s Forecasting Promise but Warn of AI’s Social and Educational Risks ↗
Two readers acknowledge machine learning’s benefits—Murray Dale notes ML could revolutionise weather forecasting—but warn of social costs: outsourcing personal writing and emotions to AI, lack of audit trails and source bias. Ignacio Landivar adds concern for education, arguing overreliance on tools like ChatGPT risks eroding students’ critical thinking and creativity from an early age.
Alex Proyas: Generative AI to Revive a ‘Broken’ Film Industry ↗
Filmmaker Alex Proyas argues the film industry is 'broken' by streaming economics and that generative AI can rebuild it by cutting costs and speeding production. His new film RUR uses virtual production and AI tools (via a Dell partnership) to slash environment design time and budgets, allowing smaller teams to retain ownership while retraining streamlined workforces.
OpenAI Unveils GPT-Realtime Speech API Out of Beta with New Voices and 20% Price Cut ↗
OpenAI released gpt-realtime and moved its Realtime API out of beta: a low-latency, single-model speech-to-speech system that supports images, remote MCPs, SIP phone calling, reusable prompts and async function calls. New voices (Cedar, Marin) and voice updates improve naturalness. Trained for better instruction-following, function-calling and audio reasoning, the Realtime API is production-ready and priced ~20% lower than the previous preview.
Gamified, Data-Driven EdTech Risks Inequality and Erodes Teacher Autonomy ↗
Velislava Hillman warns commercial tech is quietly reshaping classrooms—gamified apps, data-harvesting and dashboards reduce learning to clicks, widen inequality, and prioritize profit over pedagogy. Evidence for educational benefit is weak; tools nudge screen time and erode teacher autonomy. Parents’ unease is legitimate. She calls for enforceable obligations, audits and for parents and teachers to hold edtech firms to account.
Nine AI Tools Transform Finance, Automating Invoicing, Forecasting and Risk Monitoring ↗
AI has moved from experiment to essential in finance — automating invoicing, audits, forecasting and real-time risk monitoring to cut days-long tasks into minutes. The article highlights nine practical AI tools (Runway, Basis, Elucidate, Numeral, Docyt, Tactyc, Zeni, Trolley, Digits) and guides finance teams on choosing and deploying tools to reduce manual work, speed close cycles, and improve decision-making.