Everything in AI/tech this week in 5 minutes

Happy Sunday. Here's what actually mattered in tech this week, then a bit on what's been on my mind. Let's get into it.

Anthropic's CEO published an essay telling the whole AI industry to slow down. In a piece called "We Must Pace the Frontier," he argued that AI capabilities are improving faster than anyone can understand, evaluate or control them, and that labs should deliberately slow the pace of capability gains so safety and governance can catch up, with independent third-party evaluations and more coordination between labs and governments. A big part of what he is worried about is recursive self-improvement, AI that helps build the next, faster AI, and that is not abstract for Anthropic: the company has said Claude now writes around 80% of its own production code, up from almost nothing 18 months ago. Within a day Sam Altman and Elon Musk both said they agreed, a US senator floated banning superintelligence outright, and Trump called Anthropic's CEO "a perfect little angel" on Truth Social (yes really). Read more

Broadcom's AI chip revenue jumped 221% in a single year, to $16.7 billion. Its latest quarter showed AI semiconductor sales up 221% year over year with profits roughly tripling, driven by custom AI chips for the big cloud players. The picks-and-shovels layer of the AI boom is where an absurd amount of the money is quietly landing. Read more

And a startup just raised $875 million to take on Nvidia in AI chips. Positron AI raised the round at a $5 billion valuation to build inference chips that use cheap commodity memory instead of the scarce high-bandwidth kind, a bet on undercutting Nvidia on the part of AI that actually runs models day to day. Between this and Broadcom you can see the chip market finally cracking open, with new players entering a space Nvidia has basically owned. Read more

For the first time since 2023, central banks are raising interest rates again. The US Federal Reserve lifted rates by a quarter point to 3.75-4% on Wednesday, its first hike in over three years, and the European Central Bank did the same, both pointing at inflation fueled by spiking oil prices. What it means: money getting more expensive right as AI companies commit hundreds of billions to chips and data centers is a real tension worth watching, since cheap capital is a big part of what has funded this boom. Read more

First week of ETH is done and I’m pretty happy but it’s also dawning on me that the next months will be hard as I’ve got a LOT to catch up on. Most people in my cohort come from a degree with a lot more mathematics and statistics courses than I had in my undergrad which sometimes makes it hard for me to keep up with the content of lectures. But I’m also certain it’s something I can fix with a bit of self-studying. Also I regularly feel like the most stupid person in the room which i absolutely LOVE. There is just so much I learn from the people here, whether it is about business, technology or just their general life experiences. ETH just brings together a very ambitious and smart group of people which I really enjoy. Just in the first week I’ve met so many cool people and got a lot of inspiration for what I want to pursue. Definitely looking forward to the coming months and I’ll try to make some university-related videos as well!

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Have a great week,

Chris