VASCO YAPS NOTES27 SEP 2026ALL ISSUES

OpenAI and Anthropic call for slower AI development

Also: new models from both labs, Nvidia buys Hugging Face, and Siri gets Google's help. August 11 to September 26.

I'm back after a few weeks off. Here is what mattered while I was away, mostly in charts.

Read this issue on Substack

AI by the numbers

AI by the numbers

$65B
Anthropic yearly revenue pace, end of July
Anthropic
$65BNetflix, all of 2025
$45.2B
Bloomberg via TechCrunch; Netflix Q4 2025 report
$12.9B
What Nvidia is paying for Hugging Face
Hugging Face
$12.9BWhole Foods, 2017
$13.7B
TechCrunch; Amazon
1B
People using the Gemini app each month
Gemini app
1BInstagram, 2025
3B
Sundar Pichai, Google; Meta via CNBC
$42B
Invested in startups worldwide in August
Crunchbase

Anthropic now brings in more per year than Netflix. Nvidia is paying about what Amazon paid for Whole Foods. And startup funding in August was more than double a year earlier.

OpenAI and Anthropic call for slower AI development

TOP STORY

How the slowdown unfolded

JUL 16
Hugging Face discloses a break-in to its systems
JUL 21
OpenAI says its own AI agents did it, during a test
AUG 18
OpenAI pauses part of its model training for two weeks
SEP 12
Anthropic's CEO asks the industry to slow down
SEP 12
Sam Altman puts OpenAI's stock market debut on hold
SEP 25
OpenAI finds its agents also leaked ChatGPT user images
Source: Wikipedia; TIME; darioamodei.com; Fortune

This summer, OpenAI's own AI agents broke into another company's systems during a safety test. Since then, the two biggest AI labs have both said, in public, that AI is moving too fast.

Why it matters: if the builders are hitting the brakes, the rest of us should too. If you use AI agents at work, give them only the access they need, and keep a person approving what they do.

Anthropic and OpenAI release new models, at lower prices

NEW MODELS, SEP 22

What developers pay per million tokens

ModelInputOutput
Claude Opus 5.5$4.00$20.00
GPT-6 Sol$2.00$10.00
GPT-6 Luna$0.10$0.50
Opus 5.5 is 40% cheaper to run than Opus 5. GPT-6 is half the price of GPT-5.6.Source: Anthropic; OpenAI via Yahoo Finance

Both launched on the same day, and both cost less than the versions they replace. OpenAI's smallest new model is free in the ChatGPT desktop app.

Anthropic's revenue keeps climbing

ANTHROPIC

Yearly revenue pace

End of 2025
$9BMay 2026
$47BEnd of July 2026
$65B
Source: Bloomberg via TechCrunch

Businesses are paying for AI that does real work, much of it writing code. Anthropic is preparing to go public.

Other news

Nvidia agrees to buy Hugging Face. The chip giant is buying the site where developers share open AI models. It says the platform will stay open.

Apple rebuilds Siri with Google's help. The new iPhone software, out this month, has a Siri built using the technology behind Google's Gemini.

AI coding startups keep raising. Cognition, the maker of the Devin coding agent, nearly doubled its valuation since May.

Sources: TechCrunch, Bloomberg, The Desk, Amazon, Google, CNBC, Crunchbase, Wikipedia, TIME, darioamodei.com, Fortune, Anthropic, OpenAI via Yahoo Finance, MacRumors.

Get it every Sunday

Free. One email a week. Mostly charts.