• Apple's new iPhone Duo is inspiring viral internet memes.
• Social media is buzzing about cracked screens and doomscrolling potential.
• Here are some of the most creative memes about Apple's latest creation.

Apple's long-awaited iPhone Duo is here, and while a folding phone is nothing new, it's the company's first, and it has a waitlist a mile long.

However, Apple diehards with Duo already in hand are reporting issues with the folding screen, and some have posted about their buyer's remorse online.

The cracking screen

Early owners have reported cracks along the Duo's center fold, sometimes accompanied by a bright line of stuck pixels across one side of the inner display. Apple said the issue affects a "small number" of units and directed affected customers to AppleCare for replacements.

The reports have also generated crack-themed jokes and wallpapers online — though some widely shared images of damaged Duo screens have been altered or AI-generated.

One X account made a wallpaper for those who could not afford the Duo but would like to experience the crack.

In a statement to Business Insider, Apple said that the response to iPhone Duo from early users has been "incredibly positive."

"If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement," Apple said.

The crypto memes

The crypto world made a connection to the iPhone Duo when the official Crypto.com account posted earlier in October about how the folding phone would be perfect for traders.

The association soon became memes playing on the stereotype that crypto traders are delusional and unemployed.

The multi-screen design

Many believe that the iPhone Duo's multi-screen design will be hazardous to our already short attention span by allowing multiple activities at once.

While the Duo's 7.6-inch inner display supports two apps side by side, its 5.4-inch outer display can be used when the phone is closed.

That setup has also prompted jokes about what is known as a "performative male," referring to men publicly pretending to enjoy certain niche genres of books and music in order to attract women.

Another post, more of a real video than a meme, demonstrated the iPhone Duo's potential to exacerbate doomscrolling.

For anyone worried that one screen wasn't enough for your nightly scroll, Apple has a $1,999 solution.

• OpenAI said its models found that a commonly held computer science hypothesis was wrong.
• Hours later, Anthropic agreed.
• Here's how techies and mathematicians in the internet's nerdiest corners are responding.

Turns out, OpenAI might be really good at computers.

On Monday, the company said it punctured the Exponential Time Hypothesis, or ETH, the nearly 30-year-old belief in the computer science community that some logic problems get overwhelmingly time-consuming as they grow. Hours later, Anthropic released its own research refuting ETH.

OpenAI said it had asked a group of outside computer scientists to organize an open review of its claim. The researchers have highlighted that their involvement is not an endorsement.

If the AI labs' announcements hold, they would likely reopen the hunt for increasingly capable algorithms — something that computer scientists had largely assumed couldn't get much better.

The ultra-nerdy claim has been a huge topic of conversation across social media and in techie circles. Here's how some of the thought leaders have reacted to OpenAI's announcement:

Ryan Williams, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT

Williams, one of the three independent algorithm design experts who are researching OpenAI's claims, has not certified the company's results.

He wrote on X that, if OpenAI's claim turns out to be true, the fresh findings "should make every computer scientist put at least a little more weight on the possibility of P = NP," making the company closer to another potential $1 million Millennium Prize Problem.

In more practical terms, Williams said the claimed breakthrough could lead to "faster algorithms."

He has previously said that he doesn't believe in ETH.

Gary Marcus, emeritus professor at NYU

Marcus, a frequent AI skeptic, wrote that this could be "a big deal if correct," on X.

John D. Cook, Ph.D. and tech consultant in applied mathematics

In a blog post, Cook said OpenAI's claims — while impressive — didn't finally answer computer science's biggest open question.

"The status of P = NP is still unknown," he wrote. "While 3-SAT does not take exponential time, it still takes more than polynomial time as far as anyone knows."

Joshua Fonseca Rivera, AI Safety Research Fellow at Anthropic

Rivera wrote on X that OpenAI's fresh claim was a reminder that humans could have underestimated a computer's intelligence.

"The bitter lesson should make this unsurprising," he wrote. "I know this logically, but... wow, we really don't know anything."

Timothy Gowers, professeur titulaire at Collège de France and Fields Medal-winning mathematician

Gowers wrote a blunt take on X about the development: "Very surprising and consequential that it is false."

Dan Shipper, CEO at Every

Shipper, the AI-pilled chief executive at a tech startup, wrote on X what everyone else was thinking…

"I regret not getting a Ph.D. in frontier math," he said. "(Not that I ever considered getting one but still)."

• Amazon shifts AI focus to business impact, not just raw usage, in new developer guidelines.
• The company warns that AI metrics can create bad incentives, including “tokenmaxxing.”
• Managers are told to examine teams at both the highest and lowest levels of AI adoption.

Amazon just issued new guidelines for software engineers in the AI era: Prioritize business outcomes over raw usage.

Terk Terkowitz, Amazon's vice president and distinguished engineer, said in a memo published Tuesday that AI is changing software development more quickly and fundamentally than earlier shifts such as cloud computing. But engineers should be judged by their impact on customers and the business, he wrote, not simply how much they use AI.

"We all need to embrace this change and take the time to learn, or we risk being left behind," Terkowitz said.

AI coding tools and agents are upending the software industry and changing what it means to be a coder. Amazon calls this the "era of the Renaissance Developer," where human judgement and machine intelligence combine to create new products and services faster and more efficiently.

"This is a time of change for our industry, and a time of change for what it means to be a software engineer," Terkowitz wrote in the memo.

The updated guidelines reflect Amazon's growing effort to make AI adoption part of how it assesses engineers and engineering managers. The company has tracked measures including AI usage, token consumption, and lines of code internally, and used leaderboards to rank teams by some of those metrics.

But the memo warns that using such measures as targets can produce bad outcomes, including "tokenmaxxing" rather than better software or customer experiences.

"Using these metrics could, if used as a target instead of a measure, drive negative outcomes," Terkowitz wrote in the memo.

Amazon has been experimenting with ways to measure and encourage AI use across its engineering organization.

Earlier this year, the company was tracking engineers's use of internal AI tools and some teams used leaderboards tied to measures such as token consumption. The programs created friction among some employees, who worried that pressure to use AI could reward wasteful activity rather than productive work.

The new guidance offers Amazon's clearest public acknowledgment of that risk. Rather than lay out a detailed AI playbook that could quickly become obsolete, Amazon said its revised developer guidelines focus on long-term impact on customers and the business.

Still, the company said AI should be "at the center of software engineering practice" and urged engineers to incorporate the technology into their daily work.

Leaders are expected to use AI tools on production work themselves, understand where they help and where they fall short, and explain that judgment to their teams, according to the memo.

Terkowitz said Amazon has found that metrics such as token use, AI-tool adoption, and code reviews can correlate with the outcomes it values. But he said the measures must be used carefully. More token use can raise costs, while a focus on lines of code can create unnecessary complexity.

He also recommended that managers pay particular attention to teams at both ends of the AI adoption spectrum: those in the bottom 10%, to understand why they are not using AI effectively, and those in the top 10%, to determine whether heavier use is translating into faster delivery.

Terkowitz said Amazon's most AI-forward "frontier teams" have shown stronger productivity and delivery. He also said teams and individuals that are not adopting AI or increasing output metrics are falling behind.

But his memo left room for engineers whose work may not yet benefit from current AI tools. In those cases, he said, employees should document why and work toward a solution by sharing their findings with peers and managers.

"An engineer who can explain where AI does not yet help their work is demonstrating the judgement we are asking for," the memo said.

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One morning in June, the head of export at Ukrainian drone company Stellarion found himself unexpectedly in need of a U-Haul outside the Detroit Metro Airport in Michigan.

Stellarion was set to test its drones in front of American soldiers at a competition organized by the Pentagon at Camp Grayling,

• Anthropic is touting its ability to use different AI chips in its initial public offering filing.
• Analysts say a multichip strategy could weaken Nvidia's pricing power.
• Switching chips is hard and expensive, putting it out of reach for smaller players.

Anthropic is hedging its bets by using multiple chips to handle its AI work — a strategy that could eventually erode Nvidia's dominance.

The AI lab says it manages compute "as a single, fungible pool from multiple strategic partners" — with software that can direct its work to different chips depending on where they're most productive, according to Anthropic's S-1 filing, which came out Monday as the company prepares to go public.

Anthropic says it uses hardware from four chip families: Amazon Trainium, Google TPUs, Nvidia GPUs, and AMD GPUs.

That flexibility, which Anthropic said "took years and significant investment to build," could make major AI companies less dependent on Nvidia over time and give them more negotiating leverage, analysts said.

"The real exposure could be Nvidia's pricing power," said Patrick Moorhead, founder and CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy, "because a customer that can shift work across four platforms negotiates very differently than one that can't."

Ashish Nadkarni, an analyst at IDC, added that a multichip approach also makes Anthropic less vulnerable to fluctuations in Nvidia's chip supply.

Breaking Nvidia's grip isn't easy

Although Anthropic's chip mix isn't new, the company is now pitching it as a core advantage to investors, Moorhead said.

The threat has its limits. Switching between chips is still difficult — especially when it comes to training AI models as opposed to running them, Moorhead said — and only the biggest AI companies have the resources to do it.

Anthropic also continues to spend billions on Nvidia compute, Moorhead said.

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said that while other major companies like OpenAI likely take a multichip approach, it may not be worth the effort and investment for smaller players.

Brad Gastwirth, global head of research and market intelligence at Circular Technology, said Anthropic's strategy doesn't represent a major near-term threat. Having more chip options doesn't erase Nvidia's advantages in performance, networking, and software, he said.

There's a broader risk for Nvidia if AI compute becomes more of a commodity.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has warned that if supply overtakes demand, it could drive down rental prices.

"GPUs, like airlines, have a very low marginal cost to run," he told Bloomberg last week. "The moment you have overcapacity, pricing goes into freefall."

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

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• Microsoft recently offered voluntary exit packages to some employees. It's the company's second buyout offer this year.
• Some Google workers have said they want buyouts offered before layoffs, and to more employees.
• Buyouts might soften job cuts, though broad offers could also send top talent out the door.

Voluntary buyouts are gaining momentum in Big Tech.

On Monday, Microsoft offered the exit packages to some of its employees for the second time this year, its latest attempt to slim its workforce without layoffs. In April, the company launched its first broad voluntary retirement program, offering packages to thousands of longtime US employees.

Separately, workers at Google pressed the search giant this past summer to make voluntary buyouts a standard first step whenever it plans job cuts — and to extend them to all members of affected teams, regardless of tenure.

Outside tech, Skydance, the company formed by the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, told employees Monday that it would require five days a week in the office. Employees unwilling to comply might be eligible for a buyout.

The developments are raising broader questions in tech, where many once-scrappy startups are now sprawling corporations — and where repeated rounds of layoffs have eliminated scores of jobs in recent years.

Now that many tech companies have workforces that include employees with decades of service, are buyouts — long part of the workforce-reduction playbook at legacy companies from Boeing to General Motors — a fairer, less painful way to reduce head count than layoffs? And should they remain reserved for veteran employees, as they traditionally have been, or be offered more widely?

"Buyouts are becoming increasingly compelling for older Silicon Valley companies," said Laszlo Bock, a former Google head of human resources who now advises CEOs. "They have more eligible people, and it's a softer message for morale."

A 'more humane' approach

Nearly 100 Google employees rallied in July outside the company's Mountain View headquarters, arguing that the company's past use of selective exit offers should be made a broader, more consistent policy. As part of the event, the union presented a petition signed by more than 4,500 Googlers calling for improved layoff protections.

Voluntary buyouts "provide agency to workers," Emma Jackson, a Google employee of more than 20 years and a leader of the Alphabet Workers Union, previously told Business Insider. Alphabet is Google's parent company.

Jackson said workers nearing retirement might have accepted buyouts in earlier rounds of layoffs at Google, reducing the number of cuts needed. She called the approach "more humane."

Google didn't respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Alphabet said in July that its workforce had grown by nearly 12,000 employees over the prior year, reaching about 199,000 at the end of June.

With Microsoft's latest voluntary buyouts, the company said around 60,000 employees — or more than a quarter of its workforce — will be eligible and that the terms will be similar to its standard severance. They will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year, and there are no plans for another buyout at this time, a spokesperson said.

Microsoft made its voluntary retirement program available to employees whose age and years of service added up to at least 70, meaning some could qualify well before a conventional retirement age.

At 47, retirement wasn't on Marisela Cerda's radar. Yet Cerda, a principal customer experience manager at Microsoft who joined the company after college in 2001, was among those who received an exit offer this past spring.

Although she ultimately decided to stay, Cerda previously told Business Insider that she stuck around as long as she has because of the opportunity to keep learning about emerging technologies and the relationships she has built with colleagues. The offer prompted Cerda to think more urgently about the next phase of her career.

"You move toward what you want more of, versus moving away from things you don't want," she previously said.

Why the calculus may be changing

As Silicon Valley companies grow older alongside their workforces, buyouts may grow more attractive, said Josh Bersin, an HR analyst and consultant. Forcing veteran employees to leave through layoffs "creates a lot of bad blood," he said.

Peter Rahbar, a New York employment attorney and cohost of the "Across the Bar" podcast, said buyouts might not reduce staff as quickly as layoffs, but they don't carry the same "huge" morale costs for those who remain — or for potential future hires.

"How you treat people on the way out is certainly something people look at on the way in," he said.

There are downsides for employers, however. Offering buyouts can make labor reductions less predictable, said Jay Zagorsky, a professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business. If too few employees accept, a company may still need to make cuts to reach its target.

"With a layoff, there's certainty," he said.

Extending buyout offers to everyone, including those who've logged only a few work anniversaries, also carries drawbacks.

"People whom you would prefer to stay might leave," and they could go to a competitor, said Bock, the former Google executive.

The risk is especially concerning for companies with what he calls "spiky talent," where a small number of employees create disproportionate value.

For workers who receive a buyout offer, Rahbar, the employment attorney, said they should understand how accepting it would affect their retirement benefits, stock awards, deferred compensation, and healthcare coverage. Depending on a company's plans, employees who retire may continue vesting in certain benefits or retain those they have already earned, he said.

Buyout packages also tend to be more generous than the severance offers, Rahbar added, and there's an emotional difference between choosing to leave and being told to go.

"People are feeling good about leaving on their own terms," he said. "With a layoff, they're clearly not."

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An earlier version of this story appeared on July 27, 2026.

Anthropic, the AI startup known for its Claude chatbot and its doomer CEO Dario Amodei, has filed for an IPO that could value the company at up to $2 trillion. The company's IPO filing devotes nearly 100 pages to the dangers its own technology could pose.

The post Hacking & Blackmail: 6 Risks Anthropic Flags in Its IPO Documents appeared first on Breitbart.

• Sam Bankman-Fried's Anthropic stake was liquidated in bankruptcy court two years ago.
• The feds seized shares belonging to two co-conspirators, Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh.
• The government quietly sold those Anthropic shares last year. It's unclear where the money will go.

A little over a year ago, the federal government acquired a stake in Anthropic without paying a penny.

The shares were seized from associates of the crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. From there, they disappeared into a legal black hole.

As Anthropic rockets toward what could be the biggest IPO in history, those shares could now be worth billions of dollars.

Bankman-Fried's own Anthropic stake was liquidated in the bankruptcy of his failed cryptocurrency exchange. The Anthropic equity owned by Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two associates who invested alongside him, took a different path. The government seized those shares and sold them to existing Anthropic shareholders, according to a person familiar with the sale.

It's still unclear whether the proceeds will be paid out to victims of the $11 billion fraud case, or if the feds will just keep the money.

It also remains a mystery which investors bought Singh's and Ellison's stock and how much they paid, but Anthropic shares have been on such a dizzying climb that it's likely those investors made a killing on them.

Bankman-Fried was convicted in 2023 on fraud and money laundering charges and sentenced to 25 years in prison after the collapse of his cryptocurrency empire. Prosecutors said he used his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research, to siphon billions of dollars from customers of FTX, his crypto exchange.

The story of the crypto criminals' Anthropic shares is a tale with extraordinary elements, including one of the biggest financial frauds in modern history, a messy bankruptcy docket, and a company that experienced one of the fastest appreciations in business history as the world suddenly realized AI's existential importance.

An intelligent investment

Bankman-Fried, Singh, and Ellison each invested in Anthropic's 2022 Series B funding round. Bankman-Fried bought $500 million worth, which according to court records represented 13.56% of Anthropic at the time. Singh acquired $40 million in shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million in shares, court records reviewed by Business Insider show.

The artificial intelligence company's valuation has soared over the past four years. On the secondary market, Anthropic has been valued at $1.5 trillion. It is the most valuable private company in the world, according to Crunchbase.

The Anthropic shares purchased by Singh and Ellison could together be worth between $4.17 billion and $5.03 billion today, based on the $965 billion valuation the company announced this May, according to Olav Sorenson, who teaches venture capital strategy at UCLA. Harrison Rolfes, an analyst at PitchBook, put the combined figure at $2.62 billion. If Anthropic went public at a $2 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth about $5.44 billion, Rolfes said.

Four of Bankman-Fried's close friends and executives at his companies pleaded guilty as co-conspirators. Three of them, including Singh and Ellison, testified against him.

Ellison was the CEO of Alameda Research, which traded and invested funds that belonged to FTX depositors. She was also Bankman-Fried's on-and-off romantic partner. Singh, an FTX executive and early employee, misrepresented the exchange's revenue to investors.

After the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried's Anthropic shares — which were owned by Clifton Bay, an entity affiliated with Alameda Research — ended up in bankruptcy court along with the other dredged-up remains of his companies. His Anthropic shares were liquidated to pay FTX's creditors.

The estate in 2024 sold Bankman-Fried's Anthropic shares to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion, more than double what he paid. The largest stake went to an entity affiliated with a United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund, bankruptcy court filings show.

The feds take a stake in Anthropic

As part of their sentences, a judge required Singh and Ellison to forfeit their Anthropic shares, which prosecutors said could be considered proceeds of their crimes.

At Singh's sentencing hearing, one of his attorneys, Andrew Goldstein, said Singh purchased his shares before participating in the criminal conspiracy and "he actually may have had a legitimate legal claim" to the shares but agreed to give them up as part of his plea agreement "because it was the right thing to do."

Reached for comment for this story, Goldstein told Business Insider that Singh hopes the government is able to quickly distribute proceeds of the sale to FTX victims. An attorney for Ellison declined to comment.

A federal judge ordered Ellison's and Singh's Anthropic shares to be transferred to the federal government, which took ownership of Ellison's shares in February 2025 and Singh's in April of that year, according to previously unreported court records.

Ordinarily, victims of crimes are compensated through a restitution process, which is overseen by courts. But the number of potential FTX victims could be in the millions, prosecutors said in court filings. As a result, the judge ruled, victim compensation would be handled through a process called remission, which is overseen by the Justice Department.

During Ellison's sentencing hearing, Justice Department prosecutors told the judge that the DOJ would either set up its own claims administration process to compensate victims, or work with the FTX bankruptcy process to identify victims and provide forfeited funds to them.

At the time, FTX's bankruptcy process was in full swing. A Delaware court appointed Sullivan & Cromwell, the elite Wall Street law firm, to untangle the company's assets, figure out who was owed money, and pay them.

The creditors in the FTX bankruptcy, prosecutors noted, largely overlapped with FTX's victims. They were generally depositors, lenders, and investors who were defrauded by Bankman-Fried and other executives. Prosecutors said the Justice Department could work with the bankruptcy estate's lawyers to get money back to them, as it had in previous large-scale financial frauds such as Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

There was an unusual twist that set the FTX bankruptcy apart. Bankman-Fried's investments — especially the Anthropic shares, along with some cryptocurrency — had grown substantially in value since FTX's collapse. Earlier in 2024, the Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers who'd taken over FTX projected that all the creditors would be repaid in full, with interest.

The Marshals take control

While prosecutors said they intended to use Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares for remission, the Justice Department could technically do whatever it wanted with them, according to Duncan Levin, a white-collar defense attorney who teaches a course on forfeiture at Harvard Law School.

"It's a very opaque process," he said. "It's completely at the discretion, by law, of the attorney general of the United States."

Typically, when the feds seize shares of private companies through criminal asset forfeiture, they send the shares to the US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit for liquidation. The unit tries to value the shares as any other investor would, said Michael Bachner, a white-collar criminal and securities litigation attorney.

"They may look to: What would an institutional purchaser pay for these securities?" Bachner said. "Are there funds that are valuing the securities? Is there a secondary market already out there?"

For the sale of the Anthropic shares, timing was crucial. The Marshals Service is supposed to preserve as much value as possible, Bachner said. By the time the feds got hold of the shares, Anthropic had become an economy-shifting AI giant. In its March 2025 Series E fundraising round, Anthropic was worth $61.5 billion. By its Series G round at the start of 2026, it was worth $380 billion.

At the same time, each fundraising round diluted the Series B shares. The FTX estate told the bankruptcy court that Bankman-Fried's shares, which in 2022 represented 13.56% of Anthropic, represented 7.84% of the AI company in January 2024.

The Marshals Service sold Singh's and Ellison's shares to existing Anthropic investors sometime last year, according to the person with knowledge of the sale.

It's not clear when exactly the agency sold the shares, to which investors, how those investors were chosen, at what price the shares were sold, or how much money the government made in the sale. Depending on when they were sold in 2025, the combined shares could have been worth between $300 million and $1.1 billion, according to Sorenson, the UCLA professor. Rolfes, the PitchBook analyst, estimated a range between $250 million and $630 million, depending on the timing.

The Marshals Service declined to comment. A representative for the Justice Department said information about asset sales and victim compensation is confidential.

The revenue from the sale of Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares doesn't appear to have been transferred to the FTX estate as of the end of June this year, according to bankruptcy court filings from the estate, which continues to compensate victims and creditors.

The FTX estate received $638 million last year from assets seized by the Justice Department, according to the estate's annual report for 2025. It's not clear from the filings where those funds came from. The estate expects to receive about $400 million more from the government at some point in the future, according to the annual report. That would include proceeds from cryptocurrency and other investments made by Bankman-Fried.

One of Bankman-Fried's victims, Sunil Kavuri, told Business Insider that the Justice Department should use the proceeds of Ellison's and Singh's Anthropic shares to compensate victims. It would be "diabolical" for the government to hold onto the proceeds, he said.

Victims haven't actually been made whole, he said, because the bankruptcy court calculated the losses of FTX depositors using the time of FTX's bankruptcy declaration, when crypto prices were at a low ebb. Kavuri previously argued in bankruptcy court that the FTX estate should have held on to its Anthropic shares for longer to take advantage of the company's swift growth.

Representatives for the FTX estate declined to comment. The Justice Department spokesperson said the matter was ongoing, and that the DOJ "prioritizes victim compensation from forfeiture and takes all steps to ensure forfeited funds are provided to victims."

The government could end up just keeping the money, Bachner said.

"They've invested millions and millions and millions of dollars in prosecuting Bankman-Fried. And they want to get at least reimbursed for their costs, so sometimes they'll do that," he said. "It's really a unilateral government decision."

Jack Newsham and Katie Roof contributed reporting for this story.

Correction: August 31, 2026 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of co-conspirators who testified against Sam Bankman-Fried. It was three.

Update: August 31, 2026 — This story has been updated to reflect Singh's role in the FTX fraud case.

Correction: October 27, 2026 — FTX bankruptcy court filings don't make clear where the Justice Department obtained the $638 million it transferred to the estate. A previous version of this story mischaracterized the filings.

‘Robots should not merely replicate human forms but surpass human physical limits,’ says NeodraDynamics founder

• Anthropic's IPO paperwork shows the AI giant has some unusual approaches to governance.
• One of those is an agreement with a separate entity, Anthropic Founders LLC, controlled by seven of its cofounders.
• Those seven cofounders, including CEO Dario Amodei, can submit a secret list of successors to inherit their voting power.

Anthropic has devised an unusual way for its founders to pass on their power.

In its IPO filings, Anthropic outlined how seven of its cofounders, who collectively have 50.1% of voting control, will be able to create a ranked list of who they'd like to inherit their power in the event of their death or incapacitation.

What's particularly notable is that while the names would be shared with the other LLC members and Anthropic's Nominating Committee, they are otherwise contractually confidential and generally not public.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Anthropic President Daniela Amodei, and the five other LLC members will review and vote on whether to approve their fellow founders' proposed successors, but the names will likely never be seen by other shareholders. (The agreement allows for the publication only in narrow circumstances, such as a court order or other legal requirement.)

Under the agreement, which was first highlighted by Forbes, each member of the Founders LLC may name up to 10 potential successors, ranked in order of preference. The other LLC members must then vote to approve the secret lists.

While succession plans are not unusual, Anthropic's approach is unusual in how it ranks potential successors. It also underscores how, thanks to the Founders LLC, Anthropic's leaders will be able to maintain control as shareholders begin to offer input post-IPO.

Facebook's 2012 IPO paperwork suggested that if Mark Zuckerberg were in control of the company at the time of his death, then control could be transferred to someone he designated. (Meta has since tweaked this plan.) In 2020, Airbnb's three cofounders agreed to transfer their voting power to their other cofounders if one of them died or became disabled, but that arrangement (which still exists) only lasts for nine months.

The succession plan does not establish CEO succession. Anthropic's board of directors would handle such a chief executive appointment.

There are also some limitations to who the Anthropic founders can name on their lists.

Eight of their 10 potential successors are subject to eligibility requirements, including that the person named is a current or former employee of Anthropic or one of its subsidiaries, or has worked for "a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization or a national or international organization whose primary purpose is research, education, or the promotion of public benefit." In either case, the person must have worked there for at least three years.

If the person worked for Anthropic, they must have held a specific role, such as a member of the technical staff or the company's internal think tank, or another role approved by the board and a majority of the other members. If they worked outside Anthropic, they must have held a senior role at the nonprofit. These successors must also be US citizens, have permanent residency, or have valid work authorization.

The other two names, if a founder names all 10 potential successors, are not subject to the eligibility requirements, but they must also receive the required approval.

The succession plan doesn't last forever.

Under the agreement, a successor member generally would cease to be a member on the 10th anniversary of Anthropic's IPO. After that point, successor designees may be admitted only in limited circumstances during a transition period.

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees, or roughly 27 percent of its entire workforce as the software giant reconfigures its staff for the AI era.

The post The Impact of AI: Microsoft Slashes 27% of Workforce with Voluntary Buyout Offer appeared first on Breitbart.

Apple’s first foldable iPhone has made me excited about smartphones again, but is it worth £1,999?

• United CEO Scott Kirby says that so far he has found AI most useful for vibe coding.
• "I can read my calendar. I don't need to summarize my day," he told the "Cheeky Pint" podcast.
• Kirby said he had an "epiphany" after vibe-coding a sports-gambling tool.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby loves gambling, and now he's using AI as an ace up his sleeve.

Speaking on the "Cheeky Pint" podcast, Kirby said that over the past eight months, he's had an "AI epiphany" about the tech's best uses, which was triggered by one of his favorite pastimes — sports betting.

"Summarizing documents and all that crap, I think it's ridiculous," Kirby said. "I can read my calendar. I don't need to summarize my day."

Instead, he has found vibe coding far more valuable.

Kirby told "Cheeky Pint" host and Stripe cofounder John Collison that he hired a tutor for three hourlong sessions, then used AI to make a webpage for sports gambling.

"I've always been into gambling. For better or worse," Kirby said.

Between sets in a two-and-a-half-hour gym session, he typed prompts on his iPad to vibe-code a page with "four or five" drop-down menus for different sports, dates, and bets. Kirby said it links to four sportsbooks and pulls up the best odds; then he can enter a dollar amount, and it places the bet for him.

"I could do it with three hours of tutoring on my own, could write a program to do that, was an epiphany for me," Kirby said. "I think I called them on that Saturday, our team, and like, 'We're all in on this.'"

His appetite for risk has helped Kirby make bets on airline strategy that have paid off. For example, when carriers around the world retired their airplanes during the pandemic, United instead ordered hundreds of new jets — buoying the airline when travel demand boomed after lockdowns ended.

The United CEO previously spoke about his love for gambling in an April interview with The Wall Street Journal, where he described being kicked out of casinos for counting cards before he started in the airline industry.

He told "Cheeky Pint" that he went back to Las Vegas when the Super Bowl was held there in 2024.

After setting up a credit line to play poker, he had to hand over his ID.

"It was like 15 years ago that I got barred at the Bellagio last time," he said. "The manager comes over, and he's like, 'Mr. Kirby, you're welcome to play any game in the casino, but just so you know, still no blackjack.'"

The S5 and S7 were part of a Berlin showcase focused on lawn mapping and a wider connected garden plan

• Dario and Daniela Amodei said trust is key to operating Anthropic with seven cofounders.
• Operating with honesty and in good faith makes it easier to disagree, Dario Amodei said.
• Anthropic's S-1 filing outlined how the cofounders will steer the company after it goes public.

Many people told Dario and Daniela Amodei that starting Anthropic with seven cofounders was a terrible idea.

Yet, more than five years later, the duo said that setup is crucial to their success. The siblings made the comments in an episode of the podcast The Builders, released on Tuesday and recorded in July.

"They all have equal stakes in the company, and they all carry the vision. We have inherent trust in all of them," Dario Amodei, the CEO, said.

He said later in the episode that mutual trust is crucial to resolving his frequent disagreements with other cofounders on high-stakes questions, like what safeguards to apply to a model and how to lobby for regulations.

"These are all good-faith disagreements, but they always get resolved because there's always trust that everyone is trying to get to the right answer and everyone is being honest," he said, drawing a contrast to what he said was his previous experience working at OpenAI.

Daniela Amodei, Anthropic's president, said the focus on honesty also extends to how the leaders communicate with employees.

"Honesty and integrity and how we treat each other and our employees is also reflective of how we want the technology to be built," she said.

The podcast was released one day after Anthropic released its S-1 paperwork as it prepares to go public. As Henry Chandonnet wrote for Business Insider, the paperwork was chock full of language about honesty being central to the company's public persona.

Under a unique governance structure, as outlined in the S-1, the company's seven founders will control 50.1% of all shareholder votes, meaning the seven cofounders will have more voting power than all other shareholders combined. In addition to their voting power, the cofounders also hold significant stakes in the company and stand to earn billions. Each of the cofounders has pledged to donate 80% of their personal equity in the company to philanthropy.

Anthropic's highly anticipated S-1 paperwork also revealed key financial statistics: The company had a net loss of $42 billion and revenue of $4.6 billion last year, five customers drove around a quarter of revenue in the first nine months of the year, and the Amodeis together had total compensation packages valued at around $35 million last year. More than 90 pages of the S-1 outline risk factors, and Anthropic warned that a "catastrophic AI-related incident" could overwhelm the entire insurance industry.

The AI behemoth is expected to target a $1.5 to $2 trillion valuation when it debuts on the Nasdaq in November, potentially making it the largest IPO ever. Some investing experts have expressed concern that the market may struggle to absorb another blockbuster IPO.

Microsoft is offering employees across several parts of its global operations the opportunity to take a voluntary exit deal, as it seeks to contain costs while ramping up investment in AI.

The offer being made is time-limited and includes financial support and career planning resources. Reuters reported the programme is targeting around 60,000 employees.

Microsoft’s FY26 annual report showed it had 223,000 full-time employees worldwide as of 30 June, putting the potential pool of eligible staff at more than a quarter of its global workforce.

In a statement, Microsoft chief people officer Amy Coleman explained the programme is available to eligible employees in Canada, India, the UK and the US at level 70 and below of its employee hierarchy.

Participation is limited to selected business units with eligibility varying according to “each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs”.

A source told Reuters the offer covers teams including Copilot, AI experiences, finance, human resources, Xbox and Windows + Devices. Marketing, commercial business and security are apparently excluded.

“This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Coleman said, adding “these are a few of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs” and that “we’ll learn from it”.

Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to around 9,000 US employees earlier this year and announced 4,800 job cuts in July, as it restructured its Xbox gaming business and planned to divest four studios.

The latest initiative comes as Microsoft commits substantial sums to AI infrastructure, including data centres and chips. The company forecast capital expenditure of $175 billion for calendar year 2026, drawing scrutiny over whether returns will justify the scale of spending.

The post Microsoft eyes staff cuts under voluntary exit programme appeared first on Mobile World Live.

• "The Big Short" investor Michael Burry says Anthropic's IPO filing has fueled his worries about AI.
• Burry said a dense web of AI deals has made the industry "catastrophically vulnerable."
• Writing on Substack, Burry described AI financing arrangements as "garish and audacious."

Michael Burry says Anthropic's IPO filing this week has reinforced his concerns that the entire AI ecosystem is at risk of disaster.

The investor of "The Big Short" fame wrote in a Substack post on Tuesday that the first in-depth look at Claude's parent company, ahead of what could be the biggest IPO in history, threw up a bunch of red flags.

Burry pointed to Anthropic's huge spending commitments, slowing revenue, and tangled ties.

He said that Anthropic has struck deals to buy about $537 billion of compute from the likes of Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, and reached preliminary agreements worth hundreds of billions more with others such as SpaceXAI, putting its total commitments at about 12 times its current annual run-rate revenue.

"This is not stated clearly in the S-1, and in my view it is the most deserved headline from it," Burry wrote in a Tuesday Substack post.

He underscored how hyperscalers like Amazon and Alphabet act as Anthropic's "lenders, vendors, channel providers, and shareholders." He also outlined its deal with Broadcom, which involves Apollo and Blackstone and includes convertible notes and structured credit tranches.

"Just remember, the reason this is so complex is because too much debt is needed, and it must be unloaded from the balance sheets of those involved," Burry wrote.

"While some may see all the circularity and connectedness as security on the way up, and that is not wrong, it does leave the entire organism catastrophically vulnerable either on a pause or on the way down," he added.

He also described financing arrangements in the AI space as "garish and audacious," and said hyperscalers aren't generating enough cash to fund the AI buildout so they're resorting to "Byzantine" deals.

Burry said it was a "very similar" situation with vendor financing during the dot-com bubble, saying "people keep making the same mistakes with every new thing."

Burry's worries

In its filing, Anthropic said its revenue surpassed $16 billion for the first six months of this year, a 14-fold increase from the first half of 2025. Its operating loss narrowed by about two-thirds to below $700 million, and it generated nearly $4 billion in operating cash flow.

Burry initially commented on Anthropic's filing in a Substack chat thread on Monday.

He said that revenue was "slowing," citing Anthropic's claim that third-quarter revenue was 86 times the $197 million it generated in the fourth quarter of 2024, or about $16.9 billion.

That would mean Anthropic's revenue grew by about 46% between the second and third quarters of this year, after soaring 144% between the first and second quarters.

"Overall slowing of growth is not attributed to a decline in tokenmaxxing, but I did not expect that to be mentioned," Burry wrote.

Burry was referring to the trend of maximizing AI token consumption, which has fallen out of favor in recent months given its costs.

In another comment, Burry wrote that large language models (LLMs) like Claude are "improving" and "already being used more efficiently and that trend will continue, to the detriment of their growth rate."

Burry said he's focused on the complexity and fragility of the debt financing many AI deals, hurdles to installing new graphics chips shoring up demand for older chips, a potential crash in memory chip prices once the shortage eases, compression and small language models (SLMs) reducing the need for computing power, and the "fundamentals behind not just companies but the deals they are doing."

Responding to a subscriber who said that Big Tech companies are shifting from Anthropic's AI models to their own, and that tokens are rapidly being commoditized, Burry wrote: "Yes, that is what I hear."

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Burry's posts.

The contrarian investor shot to fame after his massive wager against the mid-2000s housing bubble was chronicled in the book and movie "The Big Short." He pivoted from running a hedge fund to writing about his personal investments on Substack last winter.

A recurring theme of his work since then has been deep skepticism of the AI boom. He's flagged slowing growth, overinvestment in microchips and data centers, aggressive accounting, hidden liabilities, and circular financing deals.

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