Good morning. Colleague Jason Del Rey has a beautiful merchandise within the upcoming subject of Fortune journal about robot-driven automation on the No. 2 firm on the Fortune 500. It’s price your time.
At Amazon, he studies, the rise of automation has been “complicated.” On the one hand, the ‘bots have “eliminated miles of daily walking” for some warehouse staff. On the other hand, the machines have raised the bar so high for workers who pick and stow items that it pushes them to their physical limits.
For a company that delivers 67,000 packages per hour in the U.S. alone, though, there’s a extra existential consideration to make: “If automation boots too many people out of the workforce too quickly,” he writes, “the economic fallout from that could be even bigger than the gains from automation.” Touché.
Today’s tech information beneath. —Andrew Nusca
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Trump order creates ‘Genesis Mission’ AI initiative
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U.S. President Trump’s long-rumored government order about synthetic intelligence is lastly actual.
Sort of!
The order, signed on Monday, establishes a government-wide effort to construct “an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets” to “train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs.”
It’s known as, merely, “Genesis Mission.” (It will not be, notably, an order difficult states’ capacity to manage AI.)
The order directs Trump’s Energy Department and the National Laboratories to create “one cooperative system for research” encompassing the aforementioned datasets, plus supercomputers, basis fashions, and robotic laboratories.
The objective, in keeping with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy chief, Michael Kratsios, is to speed up the speed of scientific breakthroughs.
“This is, I would argue, probably the largest marshaling of the federal government scientific apparatus since the Apollo Project,” he advised Fox Business.
The clock is ticking. According to the order, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has 270 days to reveal “an initial operating capability” of the platform for a minimum of one of many recognized science-technology challenges. —AN
Anthropic launches Claude Opus 4.5
Anthropic, the DC Comics to OpenAI’s Marvel, has taken the wraps off its newest frontier AI mannequin.
It’s known as Claude Opus 4.5. The San Francisco firm describes it as “intelligent, efficient, and the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use,” including that it’s “meaningfully better at everyday tasks.”
(Everyday duties in AI land, anyway. Your groceries and laundry will proceed to attend.)
After a stretch the place it appeared like each new AI mannequin launch outperformed its predecessors by way of uncooked brainpower (for lack of a greater description!), the newest fashions appear to be one-upping their former selves by way of extra sophistication in how they react to customers.
Anthropic says Claude Opus 4.5 “handles ambiguity and reasons about tradeoffs without hand-holding.” Ars Technica adds that it’s “less prone to abruptly hard-stopping conversations because they have run too long.” It additionally seems to be higher on the agentic duties that organizations the world over hope will assist them run their companies extra effectively.
It’s additionally cheaper. The Opus 4.5 API will now run builders $5 (enter) and $25 (output) per million tokens, down from $15 (enter) and $75 (output). —AN
Revolut is now Europe’s most precious startup
Revolut, the 10-year-old London fintech firm, is now probably the most helpful personal agency in Europe.
The firm announced on Monday that it had accomplished a share sale at a $75 billion valuation—fairly the premium on the $45 billion valuation it loved final yr.
Participants within the sale included Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Dragoneer, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Greenoaks, the Nvidia enterprise arm NVentures, and others.
The startup didn’t disclose how a lot it raised within the sale.
The new price ticket places Revolut properly forward of extremely valued friends Checkout ($40 billion, funds, London), FNZ ($20 billion, fintech, London), Mistral ($14 billion, AI, Paris), Helsing ($14 billion, protection tech, Berlin), and Celonis ($13 billion, enterprise software program, Munich).
Revolut has formidable plans to take its digital banking companies throughout the globe. Today, it has about 65 million clients who use it for checking and financial savings accounts, worldwide cash transfers, crypto and inventory buying and selling, and extra; it hopes to super-size that determine to 100 million by way of its entry into “30 new markets in almost every major geography,” as Bloomberg puts it.
That’s to not say there isn’t unfinished enterprise at house. CEO Nik Storonsky has made it clear that the corporate wishes a full banking license within the U.Okay., even when regulators stay involved about how its international ambitions will have an effect on its threat administration construction. —AN
More tech
—Amazon makes a $50 billion commitment to U.S. authorities AI and supercomputing infrastructure.
—OpenAI can’t use the word “cameo.” A courtroom blocks the corporate from utilizing a phrase that’s additionally the identify of a well-liked video app.
—Google takes on Nvidia by reportedly pitching its home-grown AI chips to clients.
—India’s new labor law provides authorized standing to gig employees, however particulars about profit eligibility stay unclear.
—Money is flowing out of U.S.-listed Bitcoin ETFs at near-record quantities.
—Apple lays off sales staff. A shock (and uncommon) minimize that’s not restricted to at least one nook of the org.
—Spotify prices in the U.S. are going up starting in Q1. The final hike got here in July 2024.