AI This Week

The AI wars are heading to Wall Street. Anthropic, creator of the Claude chatbot, is reportedly preparing for one of the largest initial public offerings in history. The startup has engaged a high-profile law firm for a potential listing as early as next year, sparking a race to market with chief rival OpenAI. This development comes as Anthropic pursues private funding that could value it over $300 billion, backed by giants like Microsoft and Nvidia. While the company calls the talks preliminary, the potential listing presents a key test of investor appetite for expensive, loss-making AI firms. Investors see it as a chance for Anthropic to seize the initiative from OpenAI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has declared a “code red” situation inside the company. An internal memo reveals his warning to employees that ChatGPT’s quality must improve to challenge ascendant rivals like Google Gemini. The alarm follows the release of Google’s latest AI model, which surpassed ChatGPT in several benchmark tests. The new technology drew immediate high praise, with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff stating, “I’m not going back.” Altman reportedly admitted privately that ChatGPT had fallen behind but insisted the company is “catching up fast.” The internal alert signals a new intensity in the artificial intelligence race.

Amazon is accelerating its push into artificial intelligence, rushing a new chip to market to challenge hardware giants Nvidia and Google. The announcement came during the company’s annual re:Invent conference. Alongside the new hardware, Amazon revealed updates to its Nova AI models, including a multimodal version called Omni. The company is positioning its technology on price-performance, arguing that real-world application is the true test of value. Amazon also introduced Nova Forge, a new tool for sophisticated customers like Reddit to customize models with their own data. This move highlights the intense competition for AI customers, with partners like Anthropic using computing power from multiple providers.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has released two new models that reportedly match or exceed OpenAI’s GPT-5. The powerful systems are also completely free. This move could reshape the fierce AI competition between American and Chinese tech firms. DeepSeek claims its models achieve top results by using a new architecture that substantially reduces computing costs for complex tasks. One model has already won gold medals in elite international math and coding competitions, demonstrating its abilities without internet access. This technical success arrives as the company faces growing regulatory challenges in Europe and America over data security and its Chinese origins.

Virgin Australia is the first Australian airline to launch a major collaboration with OpenAI. The partnership aims to create entirely new ways for customers to plan and shop for travel. The airline is already building on OpenAI’s platform, developing a future flight search function that will operate directly within ChatGPT. This system will allow customers to describe their ideal trip in plain language and receive relevant flight options. The initiative is a key part of the airline’s digital strategy and will also equip employees with enterprise-grade AI tools. Virgin Australia CEO Dave Emerson highlighted the focus on improving the customer journey from the very start.