On Our "Virtual Route 99" (Weekly Edition): Out & About With an Eye Towards the Future

 

As a new week is before us, our team decided to feature The Story of Dyson to pay tribute to a visionary, tenacious leader who created Dyson: 

We also wanted to note this on the rise of Anthropic courtesy of the team at the Information, and as  the information also provided insights on the continued developments at Open AI and Microsoft launching Superintelligence under the leadership of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman:

OpenAI just launched its new AI-powered web browser, ChatGPT Atlas, and it's far more than a new app—it’s a strategic declaration of war against Google’s long-standing dominance of the web. This move, which sent Alphabet shares falling, is a direct challenge to the primary gateway through which billions access the internet.

OpenAI is moving to control the user relationship, forcing a high-stakes battle for distribution control and the emerging role of the browser as the operating system for AI Agents. This assault on Google's search moat comes at a moment of unique antitrust vulnerability, dramatically raising the stakes for the entire industry.

The AI race has a new set of jaw-dropping numbers. This week, we got a detailed look at Anthropic's internal projections, and they reveal a company positioning itself as an incredibly efficient, high-growth competitor to OpenAI. The scale of their ambition is now clearly defined, as is their strategy to get there.

Why it caught my eye:

• Revenue Hikes: Anthropic has hiked its most optimistic three-year growth forecasts, projecting as much as $70 billion in revenue by 2028. This year alone, their most optimistic revenue forecast is $4.7 billion, up about 26% from a March projection.
• The Cash Flow Game-Changer: Unlike its larger rival, Anthropic projects becoming cash flow positive as soon as 2027, generating as much as $17 billion in 2028. This timeline is significantly shorter than OpenAI’s projection of generating cash by 2030.
• Business-First Focus: The core of their strategy is on the enterprise. Anthropic believes its API and related apps, which sell access to its AI models, will generate more than 80% of its revenue through 2028. This focus on business customers is driving their growth, with their coding assistant, Claude Code, nearing $1 billion in annualized revenue.

Microsoft establishes new Superintelligence Team

Image source: Microsoft AI

The Rundown: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman announced the MAI Superintelligence Team, a research division dedicated to building advanced systems that solve specific problems in areas like medicine and energy over open-ended AGI.

The details:

Suleyman emphasized building “Humanist Superintelligence”, prioritizing AI that “always works for, in service of, people and humanity more generally.” The team will focus on narrow, high-impact societal challenges, highlighting AI learning companions, medical superintelligence, and clean energy advances. Suleyman’s Inflection co-founder Karen Simonyan is serving as chief scientist alongside poached researchers from DeepMind, OAI, and Anthropic. The announcement comes in the wake of Microsoft’s new arrangement with OAI, allowing both to pursue superintelligence independently of each other.

Why it matters: We’ve seen all the major AI labs forge their own unique vibe over the last few years, and it feels like Suleyman has finally crafted one for Microsoft’s AGI efforts — forging a ‘humanist’ identity and unique direction that felt missing for much of the tech giant’s initial OAI arrangement.