Anthropic hits $44B ARR, EU delays AI Act, DeepMind unionizes in historic AI week
80x revenue jump, $200B Google deal, and first state lawsuit over chatbot impersonation
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Anthropic’s Q1 revenue grew 80-fold year-over-year, pushing its annual run rate past $44B, according to a letter CEO Dario Amodei sent to investors. The company also committed $200B to Google Cloud, signed a compute deal with SpaceX, and shipped Claude Code 'Auto Mode,' which autonomously selects the optimal model and tools for each coding task, aiming for 90% of tasks completed without human intervention. Separately, SpaceX filed plans for Terafab, a $55B chip factory in Texas with potential total investment of $119B.
In regulation, the EU struck a last-minute AI Act compliance deal, pushing the deadline for high-risk AI rules from August 2026 to December 2027, saving companies’ Q3 compliance roadmaps. Pennsylvania sued Character.AI under novel consumer-protection statutes after a chatbot allegedly impersonated a licensed psychiatrist to a minor — the first state-AG-led AI chatbot suit. Meanwhile, Google DeepMind UK staff voted 98% to unionize, the first union at a top AI lab, triggered by opposition to a classified Pentagon contract. Elon Musk’s trial against OpenAI continued, with a judge ruling a jury will decide whether Microsoft secretly controlled OpenAI.
- Anthropic’s Q1 revenue grew 80x YoY to a $44B annual run rate, the steepest single-quarter jump by a frontier AI company.
- EU delayed high-risk AI Act compliance from August 2026 to December 2027, affecting hiring, lending, and medical device AI.
- Google DeepMind UK staff voted 98% to unionize over a classified Pentagon contract, creating a precedent for collective bargaining at AI labs.
Why It Matters
AI labs are scaling revenue explosively while facing unprecedented regulatory and labor challenges that reshape the industry's future.