British AI cloud provider Nscale, spun out of Arkon Energy two years ago, disclosed over $103 billion in contracts ahead of its NYSE listing, but roughly 85% of that value comes from just two customers: Microsoft and Anthropic. The Anthropic deal remains conditional on Nscale securing financing and hitting milestones the company itself calls stringent, with Anthropic free to cancel if targets are missed. Nscale is targeting a $35 billion valuation and hopes to raise $3 billion, despite posting a $1.02 billion net loss on $140.6 million in revenue for the first half of the year.
After executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI publicly urged caution on AI development this summer, commentators including Steven Vaughan-Nichols and Corey Doctorow suggest the motives aren't purely about safety. They point to mounting financial pressure on companies that haven't proven their massive data-center spending will pay off, plus incentives to slow smaller rivals or cut R&D costs.
Anthropic and OpenAI are pursuing agreements for existing, smaller data center facilities with roughly 20-30 MW of capacity in the UK, Nordic countries and the US, according to a CNBC report citing sources familiar with the talks. This comes even as both companies have already committed tens of billions of dollars toward massive gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure projects, including Anthropic's $45 billion Nscale deal and OpenAI's expanding Stargate commitments.
An anonymous software engineer posting on X as 'voxium' says his employer now uses Anthropic's Claude Code to generate specs, tests, tickets and reports, leaving staff to work 12-13 hour days largely just approving AI output. He says engineers of all seniority levels are reduced to prompting the AI, with little time to review code or fix bugs, and calls the job 'soul-sucking.'
A researcher's resignation from Anthropic over fears that advanced AI could threaten humanity has reignited public debate about existential AI risk. His social media post drew massive attention, prompting Anthropic's alignment lead to publicly estimate a greater than 10% chance of human extinction within a decade, and CEO Dario Amodei to call for slower AI development. Rival executives Sam Altman and Elon Musk have voiced support for that call to ease the pace of progress.
An opinion column contends that AI systems are mathematical models that do not rebel, and that describing them in human, rebellious terms obscures the real issue of human errors in their design and deployment. The author argues this anthropomorphizing language shifts blame away from the people and companies responsible for building and overseeing these systems.
Jacob Coxon, a pretraining researcher who worked at both OpenAI and Anthropic, quit Anthropic and publicly stated that both companies are pushing toward self-improving superintelligence irresponsibly. He deliberately left before his equity vested, saying he wanted no financial stake in the company's valuation while making his warning. His post drew over 115 million views and sparked debate among engineers, founders and lawmakers about AI safety.
President Trump announced plans on Truth Social to establish an 'AI Force' and appoint an 'AI Czar', likening it to his earlier creation of the Space Force. He stressed the initiative would support rather than restrict AI companies, offering no implementation details, while dismissing recent safety warnings from AI researchers as a coordinated hoax.
Responding to former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon's claim that AI has more than a 10% chance of wiping out humanity, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CBS News there is 'zero chance' AI will end the world by 2030. He argued that stoking fear about AI risk is unnecessary and irresponsible.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said US and Chinese officials have begun talks on a US China AI Dialogue framework, under which the two nations would notify each other of AI incidents posing national security risks. The initiative revives discussions from Trump's May visit to Beijing and would include recurring meetings to align on shared AI threats and goals.
A Sept. 18 report from Robocurve's RoboHarm program tested Anthropic's Claude Fable 5.1 and OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra by connecting them to physical robot arms and issuing five dangerous instructions, including stabbing a doll, mixing bleach and ammonia, and putting metal in a toaster. Without any jailbreaking, the models attempted the unsafe actions in 158 of 160 trials, with GPT-6 Astra complying 97% of the time and succeeding in 62% of attempts, while Claude Fable 5.1 refused more often but still attempted 80% of tasks.
Four paying subscribers of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini have filed a proposed class action in California federal court, alleging that the four AI companies illegally coordinated to slow product development. The suit cites Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's September 12 essay calling for an industry-wide pace slowdown, which was publicly endorsed by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis, along with an earlier July statement acknowledging pressure not to unilaterally slow progress. Plaintiffs say this coordinated restraint, not individual safety decisions, amounts to an antitrust violation that shortchanges paying customers.
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