AI This Week
OpenAI's ChatGPT has crossed 1 billion global monthly active app users, becoming the fastest app ever to reach the milestone, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. ChatGPT reached the mark in May, roughly three years after launch, surpassing the pace set by apps including Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The record comes amid growing competition between Anthropic and OpenAI for dominance in the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence market. But a rival is closing fast. Claude had 56 million global monthly active app users as of the second quarter to date, with year-over-year MAU growth of about 640% — significantly outpacing ChatGPT's 62%. U.S. ChatGPT users who installed Anthropic's Claude app in the first quarter of 2026 spent 5% less time on ChatGPT one month after installation. Anthropic confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO on Monday, while OpenAI is also preparing to file in the coming weeks.
Anthropic, the AI lab behind Claude, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering. The company, valued at close to $1 trillion, submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed IPO. The filing comes less than a week after Anthropic raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round that pushed its valuation to $965 billion. The company has experienced explosive growth, announcing in May that its revenue run rate has ballooned to $47 billion, up from $10 billion in annual revenue last year. The startup was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees and has since become a formidable force. Anthropic appears to have gained an early lead over OpenAI in the race to go public, signaling that one of the industry's biggest players could become the first major generative AI company to reach public markets. Anthropic has yet to list the number of shares or set the price, and the proposed IPO will depend on market conditions and other factors.
Nvidia is expanding beyond data center dominance into personal computing. At Computex in Taipei, CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the new N1X processor, incorporated into the RTX Spark superchip, debuting this fall in Windows PCs from Microsoft, Dell, HP, ASUS, Lenovo, and MSI. The chip packs up to 20 Arm CPU cores, a Blackwell GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores, 128GB of LPDDR5X RAM, and up to 300 GB/s of memory bandwidth — enough to run 120-billion-parameter AI models and context lengths stretching to a million tokens. Huang called it as transformative as the smartphone revolution, pointing to agentic AI running across all new machines. First laptops will be as thin as 14 millimeters and targeted at creators, AI developers, and gamers seeking thin, portable form factors. Performance is described as "roughly equivalent" to Nvidia's RTX 5070 laptop GPU. Confirmed devices include the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra and Dell XPS 16.
Anthropic has raised $65 billion in a new funding round that values the AI startup at $900 billion pre-money, propelling it past OpenAI as the world's most valuable AI lab. The rise is staggering in its speed. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, and comes just three months after Anthropic raised $30 billion at a $380 billion valuation. Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate crossed $47 billion this month — a more than fivefold increase since the start of the year. The company also unveiled Claude Opus 4.8, its latest flagship model, which significantly improves on previous versions in generating code and mathematics. The financing included strategic investments from Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix. Anthropic insiders have discussed a possible IPO later this year, though no timeline has been confirmed.
KPMG and Anthropic have announced a global strategic alliance putting Claude directly inside the platform KPMG's people and clients use to do the actual work. The scale is staggering. Every one of KPMG's 276,000+ employees globally will gain access to Claude. KPMG is embedding Claude inside Digital Gateway — starting with new tools for tax and legal clients. Digital Gateway is KPMG's global technology platform, built on Microsoft Azure, combining proprietary tax insights, internal tools, and client data in one environment. The deployment begins with Tax & Legal and will expand to other advisory services, with full implementation planned by September 2026. The private equity angle is equally significant. Anthropic is naming KPMG a preferred partner for private equity, and the two companies will build new Claude-powered products together for PE portfolio companies. Tasks like configuring an AI agent to adapt to changing tax laws — previously requiring weeks of manual engineering — can now be generated within minutes inside Digital Gateway.
Amazon has been using homegrown artificial intelligence to help users compare products and buy items — and now it's licensing that technology to other retailers, vying to become the backbone of AI shopping across the web. In a blog post Wednesday, Amazon said it's packaging the "architecture, starter code and learnings" from Alexa for Shopping for the broader retail industry, allowing retailers to launch their own AI shopping tools "in as little as 60 days." Earlier this month, Amazon rebranded its e-commerce chatbot from Rufus to Alexa for Shopping. The new tool is being offered via AWS, which could help reassure retailers wary of partnering with the industry giant. Amazon has already signed up Tapestry-owned luxury fashion brand Kate Spade, which used the service to launch a gifting assistant. The concierge was built on Anthropic's Haiku 4.5 model through Amazon Bedrock and went through roughly 2.5 months of testing before going live. OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have also rolled out shopping tools, though some efforts have stumbled due to technical bugs or challenges onboarding retailers.
Pope Leo XIV urged governments to slow down the development of AI systems in the first encyclical of his papacy, warning that they spread misinformation, prioritize conflict, and risk leading the world down a path of unending war. The document, Magnifica Humanitas, focuses on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. Leo decried what he called "new forms of slavery" endured by people tending AI systems and factory workers who produce technological devices. History's first U.S.-born pope, whose family history includes both enslaved people and slave owners, also delivered a historic apology for the Holy See's own role in legitimizing slavery. Speaking at the Vatican, Anthropic's Canadian co-founder Chris Olah said AI development cannot be left solely to technology companies, urging greater oversight from religious leaders, governments, and civil society. Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pontiff to the Church's 1.4 billion members.
Anthropic's powerful AI cybersecurity model is breaking out of the lab. Traces of the model have surfaced on Google Cloud and AWS through vulnerability discovery programs, and signals now point to a product called Mythos 1 — carrying the preview label "claude-mythos-1-preview" — being prepared for Claude Code and Claude Security. Some users briefly spotted the "Mythos 1" model in the UI, and new source code strings now read: "Access to the Claude Mythos model in Claude Code and Claude Security." This marks a notable shift from Anthropic's earlier framing, in which the company stated that Mythos would remain restricted. A recent Project Glasswing update notes that the model is now helping protect a wider range of organizations, including open-source projects, and adds that Mythos-grade models could reach the public once the right safeguards are in place. Meanwhile, a new Claude Security dashboard is being built that surfaces discovered vulnerabilities, seven-day and thirty-day historical charts, and deeper triage results. In parallel, Claude Opus 4.8 is rumored to be in the works, with select Anthropic partners already conducting internal evaluations — a launch in coming weeks would fit the cadence set by Opus 4.7 in April.
Spotify has struck a deal with Universal Music Group to let subscribers create AI-generated covers and remixes of songs, marking the first time the audio-streaming giant will allow users to produce AI content using its platform. The tool will launch as a paid add-on available only to Spotify's Premium subscribers, offering a revenue share with participating artists for AI-generated music based on their work. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal or which artists will participate. Universal Music is home to artists including Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Drake, and Billie Eilish. Spotify's stock surged 13% Thursday after executives unveiled the strategy alongside a slew of new partnerships and products. Suno and Udio built large consumer products around prompt-generated songs, then faced lawsuits from major labels. Warner Music Group has settled with both companies, and Universal Music Group has settled with Udio. Spotify is taking the opposite route — licensing first and launching later.
It's the stock market moment the world has been waiting for. SpaceX filed publicly for what stands to be the largest-ever initial public offering, revealing billions in losses and a super-voting share plan allowing Elon Musk to keep the company under his control. The company — officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — would trade on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticker symbol SPCX. The world's largest private company is targeting as much as $75 billion in its listing at a valuation of more than $2 trillion. The IPO could make CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. SpaceX made $18.6 billion in revenue in 2025, an increase of 33% from a year earlier, but the filing shows the company reported a net loss of $4.3 billion for the three months ended March 31. The company anticipates offering everyday retail investors the chance to buy in through platforms including Schwab, Fidelity, Robinhood, SoFi, and E*Trade.