IBM stock was down 10% on Monday afternoon after Anthropic published a blog post about how its Claude Code tool can be used to modernize software written in the COBOL language, which handles large-scale batch transactions. Many of the software systems used by the federal government, banks, and airlines are written in COBOL (“Common Business-Oriented Language”), and most of those systems run on IBM mainframes.
IBM also generates revenue from servicing, modernizing, and consulting on those mainframes. If COBOL code were converted to a more modern language, the systems would likely migrate to newer cloud servers.
But modernizing COBOLwhich was developed 67 years agois a slow and expensive process, largely because the code can be difficult to understand and easy to break. It often reflects decades of institutional knowledge and workflows, and is frequently poorly documentedmeaning its true intent can only be uncovered through close analysis. These challenges are compounded by the shrinking pool of programmers who know COBOL. Most university computer science programs no longer teach it.
Anthropic says this analysis phase is the most time-consuming and costly. Thats where Claude Code comes in. The tool can uncover and document workflows hidden within the code, identify dependencies across different parts of a code base, and give engineers insights into how to redesign systems.
With AI, teams can modernize their COBOL code base in quarters instead of years, the company writes in the blog post.
IBM says the analysis phase is not the hardest part. “Translating COBOL is the easy partthe real work is data architecture redesign, runtime replacement, transaction processing integrity, and hardware-accelerated performance built over decades of tight software and hardware coupling,” an IBM spokesperson said in an email. “That is the problem IBM has spent decades learning to solve, and AI is the most powerful tool we have ever had to do it.”
COBOL was developed in 1959 via a public-private partnership that included the Pentagon and IBM, with the goal of creating a universal, English-like programming language for business applications. But private-sector companies have largely moved away from it. The code is difficult and costly to maintain and was designed for batch processing, making it poorly suited for modern cloud-based and real-time applications. (Anthropic and IBM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)
The U.S. government, despite repeated modernization efforts, continues to rely on COBOL-based mainframe systems to manage a wide range of financial transactions, including tax payments and refunds, Social Security benefits, and Medicare reimbursements.
Anthropics blog post comes in the middle of a separate dispute between the company and the government. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is expected to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to explain why the company has not removed all safety guardrails from its AI models for Pentagon use. Anthropic has drawn the line at providing AI for autonomous weapons or systems that mass-surveil American citizens. At the moment, Anthropics models are the only ones approved for government use with classified information.
Anthropic says its blog post about COBOL modernization is unrelated to its friction with the government. “The timing here isn’t related to a new product or any events,” a company spokesperson said in an email. “This is part of an ongoing series of content we’ve been publishing around code modernization and Claude Code.”
And Anthropic’s blog post may not be the only factor affecting IBMs stock. Investor concerns about the speed and breadth of AI deployment have depressed enterprise software stocks more broadly. The market may also be reacting to uncertainty surrounding new global tariff announcements, which could affect tech companies and their supply chains.
The Big Gulp might have some new competition in the realm of giant beverages from an unlikely dark horse: Dunkin‘.
Over the weekend, Dunkin’ customers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts began posting head-turning images of giant coffee buckets on the menu at their local stores.
While some commenters doubted the veracity of these reports, a Dunkin’ spokesperson confirmed in an email to Fast Company that the donut chain is indeed testing out a 48-ounce collectible bucket at select stores after noticing buzz around coffee buckets taking off on social media.
A coffee bucket is exactly what it sounds like: a giant iced latte served in a plastic container that looks more like a garden tool than a cup.
The novelty beverage took off this summer and appears to have been sparked by several different small businesses, including Noctua Coffee in Missouri, Dulce Vida in Oklahoma, and Wicked Southern Coffee in Connecticut, all of which attracted thousands of views on social media.
Dunkin’ is no stranger to jumping on a trend, so it makes sense that the brand would arrive at this moment in the social media zeitgeist with a bucket in tow. In the past few years, Dunkin has experimented with wacky concepts like an alcoholic drink line, a donut deodorant, and a horny Halloween donut. Heres what to know about its latest launch:
Where can I find the Dunkin bucket?
Dunkin’ told Fast Company that the coffee bucket test is taking place at select stores in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, but the company did not provide an official list of locations.
Internet sleuths and coffee fanatics have uncovered a few stores that reportedly carry the bucket, according to a cursory search of social media. We have requested the full list of participating stores from Dunkin’ and will update this story if we hear back.
What comes in the bucket?
According to the Dunkin’ spokesperson, guests can fill their coffee buckets with classics like iced coffee, iced lattes, or Dunkin’ refreshers.
Also available are three featured drinks: the blueberry cobbler iced latte, caramel coco iced coffee, and strawberry dragonfruit lemonade refresher. (We shudder to imagine the nutritional contents of these creations.) Customers report paying between $7 and $10 for their buckets.
How are customers reacting?
So far, customers main complaint for this behemoth of a beverage appears to be the impossible prospect of transporting it.
One Instagram Reel with almost 85,000 likes from creator Elijah Boivin shows Boivin cradling the bucket above the caption, Me holding my Dunkin bucket because I dont know where to put it because it doesnt fit in the cup holder.
A modern conundrum, indeed.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has defended the resource-intensive use of AI by comparing it to all the energyand foodthat humans require, sparking a wave of backlash across social media.
That comparison, experts in climate and tech spaces say, is misguided, downplays the climate risks associated with AI, and illustrates the disconnect between tech CEOs and the rest of society.
Altmans comments came while speaking to the Indian Express at the India AI Impact summit. The outlet asked him to address some of the common criticisms of AI, including the amount of energy and water the technology requires.
One of the things that is always unfair in this comparison is people talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model relative to how much it costs a human to do one inference query, Altman says.
But it also takes a lot of energy to train a human, he continues. It takes like 20 years of life, and all of the food you eat during that time, before you get smart. And not only that, it took the very widespread evolution of the 100 billion people who have ever lived.
When considering the energy needed to train a human, Altman claims in the interview that AI has “probably already caught up to humans in terms of energy efficiency.
Misguided comparison
But the tech CEO’s blunt comparison is misguided, says Sasha Luccioni, climate lead of the AI platform Hugging Face.
On a fundamental level, humans and AI models don’t use energy and natural resources in the same manner, and comparing the two makes no sense, she says in an email to Fast Company.
AI models are trained on human data, Luccioni points out, so if comparing the two, you should also take into account the time and resources that went into writing the books and creating the data used to train AI models.
To Luccioni, Altmans comments illustrate a “fundamental disconnect” between Big Tech leaders and broader society.
These billionaires have built their fortunes on exploiting human knowledge and the earth’s natural resources, and continue taking both for granted while getting richer by the day, she adds.
Fast Company reached out to OpenAI for comment.
AI’s water and energy use
Altmans comparison has drawn particular ire from those in the climate space, including Michael Mann, a climatologist and coauthor, with scientist Peter Hotez, of the 2025 book Science Under Siege: How to Fight the Five Most Powerful Forces That Threaten Our World.
Indeed, the CEO’s statements tie into the very themes of the book. According to Mann, the book argues that forces like plutocrats, pros, petrostates, phonies, and the press promote anti-science rhetoric, which then hampers humanity’s ability to tackle everything from pandemics to the climate crisis.
Exact calculations about AIs water and energy use vary, but many experts have raised alarms about its enormous power and resource needs.
A 2026 report from Global Water Intelligence projects that water demand from the AI-driven New Economy will surge 129% by 2050, putting even more pressure on strained utility systems alongside climate threats.
The International Energy Agency has likewise projected that total data center consumption, driven by AI, will double by 2030.
Though Altman dismissed concerns over AI’s water use, he did say that energy consumption is a concern, and that because the “world is using so much AI . . . we need to move toward nuclear or wind and solar very quickly.”
So far, the AI boom has led to an increase in natural gas power plants, even though it’s cheaper to build and run new clean energy projects.
Longtermism and techno-utopianism
According to Mann, Altman’s comments reek of controversial and potentially dangerous viewpoints that he says are common among tech executives, like longtermism and techno-utopianism.
Longtermism promotes the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral imperative; its a belief that has been linked to the effective altruism movement.
Looking long-term would suggest caring about climate change, because the effects of sustained fossil fuel emissions will have disastrous impacts on humans for years to come.
But “longtermists” dont tend to regard climate change as an existential risk. Instead, they focus on threats that they say technology can solve.
Techno utopianism, similarly, is a belief that technological advances are the way to achieve a perfect future society.
As Mann sees it, Altman along with other tech CEOs promote an idea that society should focus on the benefits of AI and other technologies while “implicitly downplaying the risks and threats posed in the immediate term, including the climate crisis.”
There is, as I would remind Altman and his ilk, no economy on a dead planet, Mann adds.
As AI use continues to grow, so is frustration with the technology. From strange responses that don’t make any sense to learning curves to how its implemented at work, there’s no shortage of AI quirks to get used to.
However, how users are responding to those annoyances is vastly different.
According to a new report from Adobe Acrobat and Firefly, frustrations are not few. In fact, of the 1,008 AI users survey, 91% said they have abandoned generative AI tasks in favor of non-AI methods over said emotion.
Mostly, that’s because writing quality AI prompts is a key strategy in effectively using the tool, but it’s not always totally intuitive. There’s a definite learning curve when it comes to writing prompts that lead to the best output.
However, most users have a breaking point.
For example, when it comes to using AI tools that generate images, respondents said they expect a quality result after four attempts. By the seventh try, most simply give up.
For text tasks, users aren’t quite so patient. When it comes to prompting AI to write emails or social media posts, users want a solid response after two attempts and give up altogether by the fourth.
Some users do more than just give up on writing prompts, however. Some users actually take to yelling at the technology.
When it comes to responding in anger, the response is fairly gendered: Men are overwhelmingly more likely to scold AI. Per the report, men said they shouted at the technology in all caps 80% more often than women, believing it may somehow help to improve the result.
Meanwhile, the trend of being polite to AI is more common in certain industries.
Those in finance and banking reported using pleasantries like “please” 43% of the time. Similarly, those who work in education, transportation, and logistics did so 42%. Creative arts and healthcare workers only did so at 38% and 36%, respectively.
Interestingly, regardless of the fact that men are more prone to yelling at AI, they also seem oozing with confidence at their ability to use the technology well. Per the report, men were 15% more confident in their prompting abilities than women. However, their confidence did not match their genuine skill level: The prompts were only better 5% of the time..
Confidence aside, per the report, some helpful strategies to keeping frustrations at bay and getting better results include breaking the tasks into steps, saving your strongest prompts to reuse, fact-checking and giving solid examples.
Unfortunately, pleasantries won’t help with better output. Likewise, neither will yelling at it. (Sorry, guys.)
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Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just +0.2% year-over-year between January 2025 and January 2026. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlierthough national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking a tad higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025.
In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up.
31 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Jan. 2024 to Jan. 2025 window.
42 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 14% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Feb. 2024 to Feb. 2025 window.
60 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 20% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the March 2024 to March 2025 window.
80 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 27% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the April 2024 to April 2025 window.
96 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 32% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the May 2024 to May 2025 window.
110 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 36% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the June 2024 to June 2025 window.
105 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 36% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the July 2024 to July 2025 window.
109 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Aug. 2024 to Aug. 2025 window.
105 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Sept. 2024 to Sept. 2025 window.
105 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Oct. 2024 to Oct. 2025 window.
98 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 33% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Nov. 2024 to Nov. 2025 window.
106 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 35% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Dec. 2024 to Dec. 2025 window.
100 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 33% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading in the Jan. 2025 to Jan. 2026 window.
As you can see above, in the first half of 2025, there was a notable increase in the number of housing markets slipping into year-over-year price declines as the supplydemand equilibrium (as measured by inventory) shifted more quickly toward homebuyers. Over the past seven months, however, the list of declining markets has begun to stabilize and inventory growth has also decelerated.
Home prices are still climbing a little year-over-year in many regions where active inventory remains well below pre-pandemic 2019 levels, such as pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. In contrast, some pockets in states like Texas, Florida, and Coloradowhere active inventory exceeds pre-pandemic 2019 levels by a solid clipare seeing modest home price pullbacks or flat pricing.
Click here for an interactive version of the chart below
Many of the housing markets seeing the most softness, where homebuyers have gained the most leverage, are primarily located in Sun Belt regions, particularly the Gulf Coast and Mountain West.
Many of these areas saw even greater price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home price growth outpacing local income levels. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose in 2022, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices.
That Sun Belt softening was further compounded by an abundance of new home supply in the Sun Belt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives to maintain sales, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market. As a result, some buyers who might have previously opted for existing homes are instead choosing new construction with more attractive dealswhich added further upward pressure to resale inventory growth over the past few years.
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Of course, while 100 of the nations 300 largest metro area housing markets are seeing year-over-year home price declines, another 200 are seeing year-over-year home price increases.
Where are home prices still up on a year-over-year basis? See the map below.
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Below is a historical chart showing the year-over-year change in home prices across the 50 largest metro housing markets, with the yellow line representing the national aggregate, dating back to 2000.
While the range [see chart above] between the strongest and weakest metro area housing markets right now is fairly normal historically speaking, the bifurcation (i.e., direction) itselfthe share of markets with rising home prices versus those with falling pricesis wider than normal, given that national appreciation has stabilized into a softer market with growth barely above +0.0%. And the longer some markets remain in the rising camp while others stay in the falling camp, the wider the gulf can become between the relatively more resilient markets and the weaker ones.
For example, home prices in the Hartford, CT metro area are now +21.2% above their 2022 peak, while home prices in the Austin, TX metro area sit -27.8% below their 2022 peak. Some of that bifurcation boils down to mean reversion, with many of the outright home price declines occurring in markets that overheated further during the Pandemic Housing Boom.
Note: For the historical chart below, we analyzed the 200 largest markets rather than the 300 used above, as some markets ranked 201 to 300 lack complete data going back to 2000. When weighted by population (not visualized), the housing market appears slightly weaker than the chart below suggestswhich aligns with the fact that, among just the 50 largest housing markets, 25 (roughly 50%) are currently posting negative year-over-year price growth, and nationally aggregated home prices are up just +0.2% year-over-year using the Zillow Home Value Index.
On a snowy Friday in January, dignitaries from both political parties braved the chill of a central New York winter for the groundbreaking ceremony of Micron Technologys planned $100 billion manufacturing complex in Clay, a town not far from Syracuse. Over the next 20 years, Micron is promising the region thousands of jobs and the revitalization of a community hard hit by the decline of manufacturing.
Since President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, billions of public dollars have flowed into domestic semiconductor manufacturing as the United States seeks to revitalize an industry that was born in the U.S. before it was largely outsourced to East Asia. Both Democrats and Republicans have argued that domestic chip production is essential to national security, citing the role advanced semiconductors play in military systems as well as in critical infrastructure like financial and telecommunications networks.
In order to expedite the development of up to four fabrication plants in central New York state, Micron may receive as much as $25 billion in public subsidies, including $6.1 billion from the federal CHIPS Act, $5.5 billion from New York state and billions more in refundable manufacturing tax credits.
But some residents and advocates question whether the Micron project, as its currently planned, will bring more harm than good. The facility will consume vast amounts of water and energy while producing substantial hazardous waste, according to the companys environmental impact statement. Emissions and contaminated wastewater and soil from the notoriously dirty semiconductor industry pose potential environmental and health risks for surrounding areas, while exposure to its toxic chemicals has been linked to cancers and reproductive harm. Community members want enforcement measures to ensure the company follows through on promised environmental safeguards and its pledge to create 9,000 jobs.
Were not trying to stop any progress, but we dont want this just bulldozed into our area, said Gracia Roulan, a nurse practitioner who has lived in Clay all her life and is part of the local group Neighbors for a Better Micron. Roulan said advocates like her want to ensure the project is truly better for the community, and raised concerns about potential pollution of the local water system and the clearing of the beautiful marshes all around the area, which provide a home to endangered species. To make way for the new structures, the project will fill more than 200 acres of wetlands.
For its part, the company touts the projects benefits to the region, including a promise to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in education, worker training and affordable housing over the next two decades. Micron is committed to being a great member of the community and a responsible environmental steward, Anna Newby, a Micron spokesperson, said in an email to Capital & Main. The company has committed to developing new wetlands to offset those that will be destroyed. Newby said the environmental review process Micron undertook for its central New York project was thorough.
Yet just hours before Micron broke ground, Neighbors for a Better Micron, alongside national worker advocacy group Jobs to Move America, filed a lawsuit against the project in New York Supreme Court for Albany County, arguing that the state permitting process was unnecessarily rushed and did not adequately consider public input.
The suit names Micron along with state and local agencies, contending that despite the states reputation for having some of the strongest environmental laws in the country, the review process fell short, particularly given the size and scope of the project.
The lawsuit points to the agencys failure to balance economic benefits and environmental harms, said Meredith Stewart, litigation director at Jobs to Move America. She said the court should reverse the environmental approval and require agencies to revisit the impact of the project in order to ensure harms are adequately addressed.
But in New York and elsewhere around the country, proponents of semiconductor projects would like to see less, not more, environmental review. Lawmakers in famously eco-friendly California recently approved legislation allowing semiconductor companies to bypass environmental impact studies.
In 2024, President Biden signed a law exempting most publicly funded semiconductor projects from federal environmental review, a move supporters said would speed construction and help the U.S. compete with China. Microns project nonetheless underwent federal as well as state scrutiny, with the federal review triggered by its impact on wetlands. Under the new law, the Commerce Department oversaw the federal process, and at Microns groundbreaking, Secretary Howard Lutnick praised his agencys rapid pace.
See, this groundbreaking only got scheduled at the end of December because the Trump administration cleared out all of the environmental and other things that tend to get in the way, Lutnick said.
The lawsuit brought by advocates asserts that community members were given insufficient time just 32 business days to review and provide public comment on an environmental impact statement that exceeds 700 pages or roughly 22,000 pages including supportive materials.
Environmental review is one of the only levers that the public has to learn what the impact [of a project] might be on their community, said Judith Baish, director of CHIPS Communities United, a coalition of unions and community groups advocating for a safer and more equitable semiconductor industry.
Some residents worry that the project will strain local infrastructure. When the project is completed, the company expects it to use 48 million gallons of water from Lake Ontario each day, enough to supply more than 585,000 homes. The county is developing a new wastewater treatment plant, and upgrading an existing one, to deal with the increase in volume.
The project also poses risks to resident and worker health, advocates say, as the semiconductor industry has a well-documented history of toxic pollution. In order to transform raw silicon into the advanced components that power nearly all modern devices, chipmaking relies on hundreds of chemicals, many of them harmful.
One of the biggest culprits, according to advocates, is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), so-called forever chemicals that do not easily break down in the environment and are central to semiconductor manufacturing. Communities near semiconductor manufacturing facilities have faced contamination of soil and groundwater, while workers in chip fabrication plants have reported elevated rates of cancers and reproductive health issues.
Beyond environmental risks, many activists say that Microns claims about the projects benefits are vague or lack the teeth of enforcement. They would like to see the billions of dollars in subsidies awarded to the company conditioned on whether it delivers on its promise to create thousands of jobs. Advocates also want the company to hire from the community and are concerned they may simply import workers into the area.
A 2023 study found that more than a third of projects subsidized by state governments between 2004 and 2015 failed to meet their job creation goals. Researchers said the true figure may be higher because many states have weak disclosure requirements.
Roulan pointed to a history of industrial projects in the region that came with pledges to improve the community but instead left behind pollution, the most famous example being the now defunct Allied Corporations contamination of Syracuses Onondaga Lake, which contributed to the lake being designated a Superfund site. We want development, we want to see jobs come here, Roulan said. But not at any cost.
Last month, a separate coalition of advocacy groups in the Syracuse area, including Jobs to Move America, launched an effort to urge Micron to sign a legally binding community benefits agreement, a contract negotiated between a private company and community stakeholders that outlines benefits and mitigations that the company agrees to provide. The group, Central New York United for Community Benefits, sent a letter to Microns CEO just days after the groundbreaking ceremony, requesting a meeting.
A community benefits agreement, the group said, could help ensure strong wages and benefits for the projects permanent workforce and protect residents access to clean air and water.
Micron has pledged to hire 80% of its initial construction workforce locally and to use a project labor agreement, ensuring unionized construction labor. Newby said in an email that the company had already invested more than $15 million in local organizations and educational institutions as part of its pledge to invest $250 million over 20 years in a state fund aimed at developing the semiconductor manufacturing workforce in central New York state as well as supporting community needs such as affordable housing.
Meanwhile, Roulan is already seeing changes following the groundbreaking giant trees going out by the truckful and tons of traffic changes around the area, which she said were signs of major disruption to come.
Kalena Thomhave, Capital & Main
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, will head to the Pentagon on Tuesday to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about how the military uses the companys artificial intelligence models. And its likely to be a tense meeting, as sources first told Axios.
Contract talks between the AI startup and the Department of Defense have gone off course in recent weeks as Anthropic has insisted on some safeguards for how its technology will be used. While the San Francisco-based company is willing to loosen some of its usage restrictions for the Department of Defense, it doesnt want its models used for at least two specific purposes: spying on Americans or developing autonomous weapons.
Heading into Tuesdays meeting, the two factions seem to have differing views on how those contract talks have been proceeding. While a spokesperson for Anthropic said in a statement Monday that the company is having productive conversations, in good faith with the Pentagon, a Defense Department spokesman said last week that Anthropics relationship with the Pentagon is under review.
Anthropic knows this is not a get-to-know-you meeting,” a senior Defense official told Axios. “This is not a friendly meeting.”
ANTHROPICS ROLE IN NATIONAL SECURITY
Anthropic is currently the only AI company available in the militarys classified networks and was among several companies awarded a $200 million contract with the Defense Department to in July advance U.S. national security.
The company has repeatedly reiterated its commitment to supporting national security, including again on Monday. In June, it announced Claude Gov, a suite of models it built exclusively for U.S. national security customers.
And yet, Amodei has become vocal about balancing the opportunities that AI presents with the concerns that it poses. In a lengthy piece published last month, the Anthropic co-founder warned: Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.
At the India AI Impact Summit last week, Amodei that hes concerned about the autonomous behavior of AI systems and the potential for misuse of AI by individuals and governments.
THE MADURO FACTOR
Another factor thats strained the relationship between Anthropic and the Pentagon came to light last week: Claude was used in the U.S. militarys operation at the start of the year to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as The Wall Street Journal reported. That mission would seem to violate Anthropics usage guidelines that prohibit, among other things, that Claude not be used to incite violence or for criminal justice and surveillance.
The companys usage policy, most-recently updated in September, is intended to strike an optimal balance between enabling beneficial uses and mitigating potential harms.
But Anthropic also notes that the company may enter into contracts with certain governmental customers that tailor use restrictions to that customers public mission and legal authorities if, in Anthropics judgment, the contractual use restrictions and applicable safeguards are adequate to mitigate the potential harms.
POKING THE BEAR
Anthropic has tried to set itself apart from the rest of the universe of AI developers with a safety-first approach thats even seen it take a swipe, via a Super Bowl ad, at OpenAIs recent decision to incorporate ads into the ChatGPT platform.
While Amodei has emerged as a contrarian of sorts, at times, by pushing back on unrestricted use of its Claude AI model for the U.S. military, Amodei is effectively poking the bear that is Hegseth.
As Axios reported last week, Hegseth has threatened that the Pentagon could declare Anthropic to be a supply chain risk, which would void its contracts and force other companies that work with the Pentagon to certify they arent using Claude in any related workflows.
Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told media outlets last week. Ultimately, this is about our troops and the safety of the American people.
Fridays news of a major shake-up at Microsofts Xbox division caught the gaming world by surprise. Phil Spencer, who has run Xbox for almost 12 years, announced his retirement, effective immediatelyjust months after Microsoft insisted he was not retiring anytime soon.
Asha Sharma, the president of Microsofts CoreAI product, was tapped to run the division. Once a powerhouse earner, Xbox has seen its profitability and influence shrink in recent years. (Xbox president Sarah Bond, long seen as Spencers heir apparent, was passed over and also left the company.)
Sharma may face an uphill battle.
Microsoft has not reported updated Xbox console sales or Game Pass subscription numbers in years. The available figures havent been encouraging. Xbox hardware revenue fell 32% year over year in the recent holiday quarter. Overall gaming revenue dropped 9%, and Xbox content and services, which includes Game Pass, declined 5%.
Sharma has already taken some knocks online for lacking a deep history in video games. Some of that online blowback reflects the sexism that often runs rampant in gaming. (Sharma will be the first woman to run a major console manufacturer.) But criticism of her gaming pedigree also reflects a kind of gatekeeping.
Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, has said he was not a gamer when he took chargeand still isnt. Yet Take-Two has delivered a string of hits under his leadership, most notably the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and its share price has increased fifteenfold since he took the job. I don’t think anyone wants or needs my specific creative expertise, such as it is, Zelnick once said. It’s my job to attract, retain, and provide the resources to the best creative talent in the business.
Dwindling sales and a divided focus
Time will tell if Sharma follows that same path. But if she does, instead of focusing on big individual launches, shell have to persuade gamers to buy both the hardware and a subscription service that increasingly makes that hardware feel optional.
The Xbox Series X and Series S have faced inventory issues in recent months and remain expensive when available. With memory shortages affecting a wide range of consumer technology products, a price cut anytime soon appears unlikely.
At the same time, Microsoft has been pivoting away from consoles, expanding Game Pass across multiple platforms, including as an app on Samsung TVs. (An Xbox mobile store was planned but never launched.)
Despite that shift, Microsoft has also been working on a next-generation Xbox, once expected to debut next year, though that timeline could slip due to component shortages.
Starting over?
Sharmas promotion could mark a reset, shifting focus back to consoles and exclusive titles rather than the Xbox anywhere strategy of recent years. Even then, some hurdles remain.
Microsofts hands are tied with its biggest franchise, Call of Duty, which it acquired through the Activision-Blizzard takeover three years ago. Under its agreement with regulators, Microsoft must continue offering those games and features to Sony through 2033. Still, the company has deep development resources, even after steep layoffs.
The Halo franchise has struggled but could rebound with a strong release. Bethesda Softworks, acquired in 2021, is developing a new Elder Scrolls title and also controls proven franchises such as Fallout and Doom. Microsoft also has Gears of War, Fable, and Forza, and enjoys strong relationships with independent developers.
Refocusing on consoles could require changes to Game Pass. The services appeal lies in offering new titles on day one without requiring individual purchases. But with AAA games now costing $200 million or more to develop, Game Pass will need either a surge in subscribers or structural changes to remain viable. (A price increase could be challenging, as the top tier already costs $30 per month.)
Whatever direction Sharma chooses, she faces a steep climb. Spencer may have been beloved by gamers, but Microsofts biggest bets of the past six years have largely fallen short. And as headwinds gather across the gaming industry, Microsoft is no longer the dominant force it was in the Xbox 360 era.
Regaining that ground will require steady leadership.
It’s a good day to be the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.
This morning, the company unveiled its latest innovation in the weight-loss drug wars: the KwikPen. Per a press release , the KwikPen contains a months-worth of Zepbound, Eli Lillys GLP-1 designed to combat obesity, and it’s designed to make taking the medicine more convenient. Alongside the announcement of this new innovation, Eli Lilly’s main competitor, Novo Nordisk, dropped the news that its experimental drug, CagriSema, perfomed worse for patient weight loss in a head-to-head trial against Eli Lilly’s proprietary drug, tirzepatide.
A November study from the health policy non-profit KFF found that about one in eight American adults were using a GLP-1 for weight loss or to treat a chronic condition. And as the weight-loss drug market soars, its two most dominant playersEli Lilly and competitor Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempicare battling it out to offer the most convenient, most effective, and least expensive iterations of their respective drugs.
Right now, Eli Lilly appears to be the leader in the GLP-1 race amidst multiple difficult headwinds for Novo Nordisk. As of this writing, Novo Nordisk stock is down nearly 16% since market open, while Eli Lilly is up by nearly 5%.
Weight-loss drugs take new, more convenient forms
Over the past several months, both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have invested in novel drug formats to retain customers and reach new audiences.
Back in December, Novo Nordisk received FDA approval for a first-of-its-kind, once-daily pill for weight loss. The pill, which is an oral form of Novo Nordisks GLP-1 Wegovy, offers a less invasive way for users to administer weight-loss drugs, which are typically delivered via an injector. Eli Lilly is currently in the testing phases of its own oral GLP-1, but it does not yet offer anything similar to the Wegovy pill.
In the meantime, the KwikPen will presumably make taking Zepbound a bit easier for Eli Lillys customer base. Currently, patients use a separate autoinjector for each of their weekly doses of the drug. Each KwikPen, by contrast, comes pre-loaded with four doses, meaning one pen lasts for a full month. Its available in six strengths, ranging from 2.5 mg to 15 mg. For cash-paying patients, the KwikPen will be available via Eli Lillys direct-to-consumer website, LillyDirect.
Eli Lilly pulls ahead
Eli Lilly may be lagging behind Novo Nordisk in GLP-1 pill design, but its notched several more significant wins against its top competitor in recent months.
Novo Nordisk has been fighting an uphill battle as the weight-loss drug market becomes more crowded, including by the proliferation of compounded (aka copycat) versions of Ozempic and Mounjaro made by smaller manufacturers.
In its fourth quarter report, released in early February, Novo Nordisk announced strong revenue of $12.34 billion, but warned that its sales and profit growth would decline by between 5% and 13% in 2026 amidst growing competition and lower U.S. prices. These same struggles have caused the companys stock price to plummet by more than 55% year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Eli Lilly has been buoyed by the major success of Zepbound since its 2023 debut, as customers opt for the medicine given its greater effectiveness for weight loss than Ozempic. In its February fourth quarter report, Eli Lilly boasted revenue of $19.3 billion and guided for its sales to grow by a whopping 25% in 2026. The companys stock has risen by more than 25% year-over-year.
Now, Novo Nordisk is taking yet another blow, as a Feburary 23 report showed that its new experimental drug CagriSema could not demonstrate non-inferiority against Eli Lilly’s tirzepatide. Based on Novo Nordisk’s report, “if all people adhered to treatment, people treated with CagriSema 2.4 mg/2.4 mg achieved a weight loss of 23.0% after 84 weeks compared to 25.5% with tirzepatide 15 mg.”
As GLP-1 usage continues to become more mainstream, pharmaceutical giants will be fighting an increasingly competitive battle for market share.
Boom Supersonic wants to build the worlds first commercial supersonic airliner. Founded in 2014, the company set out to make air travel dramatically fasterup to twice the speed of todays passenger jetswhile also aiming for a smaller environmental footprint. For years, Boom has focused on developing the high-performance engine technology needed to sustain supersonic flight.
Though the company has not yet debuted its revolutionary jet, last year it identified a new and potentially lucrative application for its novel technology: generating electricity for the data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom.
Many of these data centers want the kind of flexible, around-the-clock energy associated with combined-cycle natural gas turbines. These heavy-duty machines burn gas to spin turbines and generate electricity, then capture the associated heat and use it to spin the turbines some more. As far as fossil fuel generation goes, they are among the most efficient options for dispatchable baseload power. But with demand for these turbines surging and supply increasingly tight, developers are turning to creative alternatives.
The upshot of all this creativity is clear: Much of the data center build-out is poised to be powered by natural gasand the climate consequences that come with it.
Boom Supersonic inked a $1.25 billion agreement with a developer called Crusoe, which is building a suite of data centers for the artificial intelligence startup OpenAI. The turbine company agreed to provide Crusoe with 29 jet-engine gas turbines that the developer could position at data centers across the U.S.
The deal is just one example of developers and tech companies straining to find power sources for the data centers sprouting up nationwide. Metas data center in El Paso, Texas, will draw fuel from more than 800 different mobile mini-turbines. Meanwhile, the construction equipment company Caterpillar has supplied gas engines to a data center in West Virginia. And the developer Crusoe used aeroderivative turbines based on airplane models for its massive Stargate data-center campus in Abilene, Texas, where power demand is a whopping 1.2 gigawatts.
Its not just the U.S. New proposed natural gas capacity has surged worldwide over the past year. The energy analysis firm Global Energy Monitor reports that projects totaling more than 1,000 gigawatts of gas-fired power are now in development worldwidea roughly 31 percent jump in just the last year. The United States leads the pack, accounting for about a quarter of that pipeline. More than a third of the new U.S. capacity will power data centers. The analysis also notes that two-thirds of gas project developers in the U.S. have yet to identify who will manufacture their natural gas turbines.
This rush to build out natural gas generation will have serious consequences for the climate. Early boosters of the data center boom suggested that new AI facilities would draw power from renewable sources such as solar and wind farms. While that has happened in some cases, developers are also rapidly locking in years of additional fossil fuel usage. An analysis from researchers at Cornell University found that the build-out could add as much as 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to the annual emissions of around 10 million passenger cars.
This is a huge proposed build-out, said Cara Fogler, deputy director of research, strategy, and analysis at the nonprofit Sierra Club, which has been tracking gas plant expansions by utilities. Existing coal thats not coming offline and planned gas thats trying to come online are potentially boxing out clean energy.
As Silicon Valleys AI boom drives demand for ever more computing power, data center developers have struggled to keep up, largely because securing the massive amounts of electricity needed to run these facilities has become so difficult. The rush has led to long wait times to secure power from traditional utilities. As a result, developers and tech companies are increasingly taking matters into their own hands by generating power on-site. According to an analysis by Cleanview, a data firm tracking the energy transition, at least 46 data centers with a combined capacity of 56 gigawattsequivalent to that of roughly 27 Hoover Damsare using this behind-the-meter approach, as its known in industry parlance.
The chief executive of Bloom Energy, a startup that builds behind-the-meter fuel cells for data centers, said in a recent call with investors that the startups order backlog has more than doubled over the past year.
On-site power has moved from being a decision of last resort to a vital business necessity, said company executive K.R. Sridhar. He noted that while most of the companys previous business was in states like California with high electricity costs, now states where we are growing fastest have robust natural gas infrastructure and favorable regulatory and policy frameworks for on-site power generation.
One of those states is Texas, which is the epicenter of the build-out so far. Unconventional gas power will anchor campuses like that of Titus Low Carbon Ventures, which is building half a dozen data center parks across the Lone Star State. In September, the company signed a deal with power developer Gruppo AB to source Jennbacher gas generating engines, each of which provides just a few megawatts of power. The company will plug in hundreds of these boxy generators to provide baseload power alongside solar and wind.
We couldve elected to go with gas turbines, said Jeff Ferguson, the president of Titus, in an interview with Grist. Instead of sourcing traditional gas turbines, he opted to buy reciprocating engines, which are smaller gas-powered generators that are similar to passenger car engines.
We think that reciprocating engines are a better solution for data centers, he said, adding that the difference is in the ability to manage transient loads, or rapid fluctuations in power demand that are very common at the facilities.
Not only is it unlikely that 200 generators will ever go offline all at once, but the engines are also much faster to start up and stop than turbinesthey can come online in around a minute, as opposed to an hour for a traditional power plant. Ferguson likened it to the difference between accelerating in a Corvette and a jet plane.
But experts say these substitute gas sources are even worse for the climate than traditional power plants, which use more efficient combined-cycle turbines that employ both gas and steam. The worst offenders are not turbines at all but rather internal-combustion engines like the ones in most automobiles.
Internal combustion [engines] have better ramp up/down time[s] but are less efficient when compared to a gas turbine, said Jenny Martos, a researcher who runs the gas plant tracker for Global Energy Monitor. All gas-power technologies produce emissions, but generally engines produce more emissions than the others.
Texas has almost 58 gigawatts of natural gas power in various stages of planning and construction, according to the latest estimates from Global Energy Monitor. Thats more than the next four states combined, and more than every country on Earth except for China. Nearly half of the power plants under construction in Texas will provide power exclusively to data centers, without connecting to regional energy grids. hese projects span the state, from OpenAIs Stargate campus in central Abilene to Metas data center in El Paso, where the company has contracted with a Houston-based microgrid developer to set up 813 modular generators.
The projects are also popping up in rural areas of the country with few other economic development prospects. A developer called BorderPlex is proposing a $165 billion data center campus called Project Jupiter in southern New Mexico, powered by two microgrids that operate on simple-cycle gas turbines, which just burn gas to generate energy without capturing and deploying their waste heat. The projects 2,880 megawatts of generation are more than the entire generation capacity of central New Mexicos main utility.
Ive never seen something quite this big before, dollar-wise, scale-wise, said Colin Cox, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, which is opposing the project. To call this a microgrid defies common sense. Remaining behind the meter allows the project to avoid seeking approval from regulators who would enforce compliance with the states climate lawseven though Project Jupiters carbon emissions alone could outweigh the actions that New Mexico has taken to lower emissions over the past several years.
The projects developer has promised jobs and tax revenue to rural Doa Ana County, but the future is murky. It remains unclear whether demand for artificial intelligence products will keep up with the historic capital expenditures being made by companies like OpenAI. If the bubble were to pop, the state would be left with a gas turbine that didnt serve any usersan asset that the state would not need and that, under its climate laws, it would not be allowed to use.
Theyll just be stranded assets, said Cox. You cant do anything with a gas turbine besides run gas through it to make it spin.
