AI hyperscaler Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion led by Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $60 billion post-money valuation, as first reported by the WSJ.
Why it matters: This would make Anthropic the world's seventh most valuable startup, despite ongoing losses and less than $1 billion of annualized revenue.
The Biden administration's final rules for technology-neutral energy tax credits won praise from renewable energy groups but criticism from fuel cell companies.
Why it matters: The Clean Electricity Investment and Production Tax Credits — known as 45Y and 48E — apply to projects beginning construction this year. The rules were issued Tuesday.
Three massive, concurrent tectonic shifts are reordering in dramatic ways how America and the world will get, and consume, information in the years ahead:
Trust in traditional media is vanishing.
Where people are getting information instead has shattered into dozens of ecosystems.
The world's most powerful social platforms — X, Facebook, Instagram — no longer police speech or information.
Tech's rightward lurch toward anything-goes rules for the online world comes at a formative moment for AI.
Why it matters: The first debates over generative AI after ChatGPT rocketed to fame two years ago focused on "guardrails" — rules to protect humanity from runaway superintelligence and everyday users from bias and privacy violations.
Distinguishing truth from falsehood is frustrating, endless, thankless work — and now Mark Zuckerberg is walking away from it.
The big picture: Facebook's latest content-moderation pivot looks like part of a plan to win over Donald Trump as he takes power again. But the field Zuckerberg is abandoning is one he never wanted to play on in the first place.
The suspect responsible for the Tesla Cybertruck blast in Las Vegas on New Year's Day used AI to plan the explosion, authorities said Tuesday.
The big picture: Matthew Alan Livelsberger searched ChatGPT to get information on how to carry out his plot, including how many explosives he would need and what pistol would set them off, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said during a news conference.
Former NSA cyber official Rob Joyce is joining Maryland-based startup foundry DataTribe as a venture partner.
Why it matters: The foundry's portfolio companies will now have access to Joyce's more than three decades of experience fighting foreign government hackers.
Zoom in: DataTribe invests in only three seed-stage cybersecurity startups each year, and the foundry plays a hands-on role in fostering the companies.
Most of the founders DataTribe invests in have a background in the intelligence community or broader national security world.
The organization is behind several top cyber startups, most notably critical infrastructure company Dragos.
🇨🇳 A deep dive into how China-backed hackers exploited a slew of unpatched network devices to carry out some of the largest hacks of U.S. infrastructure in history. (Wall Street Journal)
🪖 U.S. officials are increasingly worried about the security of several organizations in Guam after finding multiple China-linked intrusions on the island. (Bloomberg)
👀 A Chinese government official said recent U.S. sanctions against Beijing-based cybersecurity company Integrity Technology Group are part of an effort to "defame and smear China." (Associated Press)
@ Industry
💔 Tenable CEO Amit Yoran died unexpectedly Friday after a battle with cancer. (CNBC)
Never has it been easierto spread misinformation at scale — with less concern about media meaningfully policing it, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.
Why it matters: Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are of one mind. The most powerful global information platforms should be governed by free speech — and the people — not by the platforms themselves.
Meta announced Tuesday that it will end its fact-checking program on its platforms in exchange for X-style community notes as part of a slate of changes targeting "censorship" and embracing "free expression."
Why it matters: It's part of a growing trend among online platforms, which are shifting away from policing misinformation and content amid charges of bias. The shift will have consequences for digital safety and young users.
The world has about two years to prepare for AI-powered cyber weapons capable of evading current security tools, a NATO-backed security startup warned in a new report shared first with Axios.
Why it matters: Companies need to start budgeting for better cyber defenses right now.
Technical roles — specifically those focused on artificial intelligence —are the fastest growing jobs in the U.S. according to LinkedIn's Jobs on the Rise list, out Tuesday.
Why it matters: 60% of the jobs are new to the list this year, and roughly half of these professions didn't exist 25 years ago.
TikTok's sister app Lemon8 has been sponsoring posts on TikTok encouraging users to migrate to Lemon8 amid a looming ban threat, according to sponsored posts viewed by Axios.
Why it matters: The TikTok ban law also applies to other apps owned by TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance, like Lemon8.
Mark Zuckerberg moved further in the direction of MAGA on Monday, when he appointed three white men, including UFC chief executive and Trump friend Dana White, to the board of directors of Meta.
Why it matters: We're a long way from 2022, when Peter Thiel resigned from the same board in order to be able to support Trump-aligned candidates.
OpenAI's announcement of its new o3 reasoning model has triggered another wave of anxiety among some computer science majors who fear AI will edge them out of the job market.
Why it matters: The new OpenAI model, though not yet widely available, is likely to power ChatGPT and other services eventually, and its capacity to independently tackle larger-scale projects could disrupt many professions.
