Tech
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Jon Keegan

OpenAI’s Altman calls Anthropic an “authoritarian company” and says its Super Bowl ad is “deceptive”

Yesterday, Anthropic announced that it intends (for now) to keep its Claude chatbot free of ads. Competitors OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and Google all have expressed plans for ads in some form for their respective AI chatbots.

Anthropic also released cheeky ads depicting scenarios where people are asking questions to a personified version of their AI chatbot, only to recoil in confusion when the response transforms into a creepy ad.

It’s pretty clear that Anthropic was poking fun at the market-leading AI chatbot, ChatGPT. The characters playing the chatbot had the pitch-perfect tone of an eager-to-please ChatGPT session.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tried to be a good sport, calling the ads funny, but clearly they struck a nerve, prompting a 400-word post on X in which he called the ads “deceptive,” accused Anthropic of “doublespeak,” and said it was an “authoritarian company” that was heading down a “dark path.”

Altman pushed back on the depiction of how such creepy ads could show up in chats, saying that OpenAI has pledged to never weave ads into chat conversations, knowing it users would reject that.

Previewing how the rival AI startups might battle each other in the marketplace, Altman attacked Anthropic’s focus on paid subscription, rather than generous limits for free users (which appears to be working out pretty well for Anthropic):

“Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people. We are glad they do that and we are doing that too, but we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can’t pay for subscriptions.”

Both companies are racing to launch an IPO this year, which will only raise the stakes for this billionaire beef.

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Claire Yubin Oh

Ship-tracking app surges as Iran war continues

As Middle East peace talks stretch on, with Tehran reportedly offering to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US lifts its blockade and the war ends, the owner of shipping intelligence platform MarineTraffic revealed that the app has gained millions of new users since the conflict began.

MarineTraffic’s user count jumped to 8.5 million this April, up from 3.5 million a year ago, the cofounder of its parent company, Kpler, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Paid subscribers, often workers within companies and governments looking for more data on supply chains and commodities trading, rose 11,000 in the same period.

Kpler, which also owns shipping intelligence platform FleetMon, draws its data from a range of sources, including the Automatic Identification System, satellites, and more than 500 people on-site, like port terminal operators.

Per Appfigures data, MarineTraffic is estimated to have raked in almost $1 million across March and April in app revenue (through April 27), more than double the ~$346,500 from the same months last year. Across the full year, Kpler expects to earn between $300 million and $400 million in annual recurring revenues.

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Meta could be getting ready to post its highest revenue growth since 2021

Meta’s outlook and analyst estimates suggest more than 30% revenue growth in Q1.

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Tom Jones

Google will supply AI models to Pentagon in classified deal, per The Information

Google has become the latest tech company to ink an agreement to supply the Department of Defense (War) with AI, having reportedly closed a classified deal that allows the Pentagon to use its AI for “any lawful government purpose,” according to The Information.

The Information initially reported talks between the Alphabet-owned company and the US government around two weeks ago, following the messy breakdown of the relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration — and the rushed OpenAI deal that took its place.

The move has reportedly sparked opposition among Google employees, with The Washington Post reporting that over 600 workers signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai to ask him to bar the Defense Department from using the company’s AI models for any classified work.

Google Signs Classified AI Deal With Pentagon Amid Employee Opposition

Google Signs Classified AI Deal With Pentagon Amid Employee Opposition

The Information initially reported talks between the Alphabet-owned company and the US government around two weeks ago, following the messy breakdown of the relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration — and the rushed OpenAI deal that took its place.

The move has reportedly sparked opposition among Google employees, with The Washington Post reporting that over 600 workers signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai to ask him to bar the Defense Department from using the company’s AI models for any classified work.

Jon Keegan
20h
Altman: We do “weird” things like building massive data centers so there will be “universal prosperity”

OpenAI’s CEO spelled out the company’s principles for AGI in a blog post.

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4/27/26
Apple is on its way to becoming the biggest smartphone seller in China

The memory crunch has made iPhones a more popular alternative as competitors’ prices rise.

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