#anthropic

#anthropic

In a statement, Anthropic said that Claude for Excel will allow users to "work directly with Claude in a sidebar in Microsoft Excel, where Claude can read, analyze, modify, and create new Excel workbooks." It promised that "Claude listens carefully, follows instructions precisely, and thinks through complex problems." More practically, it said Excel users will be able to ask the LLM about specific formulas or worksheets, with "cell-level citations so you can verify the logic."

Never mind Sam Altman's Stargate, which is just beginning to open its portal to distant AI-fueled worlds: Amazon's competing mountain of AI compute power is already up and running. Amazon Web Services today announced that Project Rainier, its Stargate-rivaling AI "UltraCluster", is now up and running, with "nearly half a million" Trainium2 chips serving the massive machine across multiple datacenters.

Discussions are still in the early stages, but Google and Claude creator Anthropic are considering a cloud agreement worth tens of billions of dollars. This would allow Anthropic to use Google's AI computing power. Google, itself an investor in Anthropic, would already see a significant return on its investment under the agreement. It has invested approximately $3 billion in two investment rounds in the AI company.

AI itself is known for its bigness - it's in the name, large language model. On the ground, techies are going small. AI heads are crawling for exclusive, small-batch merchandise to flaunt on X and show just how inner circle they are. As AI merch booms, it's clearer than ever that these companies - both massive foundation model companies and startups - have hit the mainstream.These days, AI status symbols are popping up everywhere.

"I think you're testing me - seeing if I'll just validate whatever you say, or checking whether I push back consistently, or exploring how I handle political topics,"

In the race to build brands around AI assistants, the stakes are higher than empathy. This week's debut brand marketing campaigns from OpenAI and Anthropic made that clear, and in retrospect, cast Perplexity's earlier campaign in a sharper light. These aren't brands trying to be relatable. They're trying to normalize a seismic shift in human-machine interaction. As Neil Barrie, co-founder and global CEO of TwentyFirstCenturyBrand, put it: "All of them are building brands around weapons grade power."

Anthropic has unveiled 'Keep Thinking,' a brand platform that features the company's Claude model as the AI of choice for problem solvers.

"This landmark settlement far surpasses any other known copyright recovery," said plaintiffs' attorney Justin Nelson. "It is the first of its kind in the AI era."

Anthropic, the AI startup behind the chatbot Claude, finalized a deal on Tuesday for a new, $13 billion Series F funding round that catapults its valuation from $61.5 billion to $183 billion, making it one of the most valuable startups ever. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business customers and has seen a sevenfold increase in its number of large clients with projects above $100,000 in the past year, the company said in a statement.

It could also be seen as reflecting a collective insanity in the world of finance. While the company boasted impressive growth and claimed its run-rate revenue has increased from $1 billion to $5 billion so far in 2025 alone, $13 billion is still a significant bet to place on a technology more notable for burning cash rather than generating profits.