Nothing can stop Anthropic

Top News

• Anthropic’s run rate his $30B: The headlines have been filled with obstacles and setbacks for Anthropic, but so far, they’re not slowing down the Claude maker's runaway momentum. Anthropic reports that their revenue run rate now exceeds $30 billion. That’s a massive jump from their already-impressive $9 billion run rate at just the end of 2025. In a statement, the company highlighted their recent deal with Broadcom and Google to help fuel all of this Claude use. In related news, Anthropic formally announced their latest frontier model, Mythos, after news of its existence leaked last month. They’re debuting it as part of a security initiative, “Project Glasswing,” in which a dozen select partner organizations will deploy the model and study its potential impact on cybersecurity, good and bad.

• Can ARR be trusted?: Bloomberg reports on doubts surrounding annual recurring revenue (ARR) as a key metric for startup success. As ARR is based on an extrapolation — projecting a year’s sales based on the current month’s numbers — it leaves “plenty of room for interpretation,” ranking it among “the least trusted yardsticks for gauging a startup’s growth.” Of course, we just spoke about Anthropic’s “revenue run rate,” which is even MORE let’s say flexible as a metric. It takes monthly revenue and multiplies it by 12 to get an annual figure, but doesn’t even take into account whether or not the revenue is recurring, which ARR in fact does. As token use begins to replace conventional subscription models for many AI companies, that complicates the “ARR” and “revenue run rate” calculations, as sales aren’t necessarily recurring or even reliably consistent.

• Hermeus raises $350M: The LA-based defense tech startup is developing an extremely fast unmanned aircraft. Last month, the company demoed an aircraft around the size of an F-16 which they hope to eventually push to supersonic speeds. They’ve raised $200 million in equity financing, in a round led by Khosla Ventures. They’re putting the cash toward refining their current aircraft design (which has had two successful test flights so far), and expanding their staff over its current level of just under 300 employees.

TWiST 500

A real good news / bad news situation in the T500 column today. (Depending on how you look at it, at least.)

To start, prediction market Kalshi announced a “wide-ranging” deal with Fox Corp, which will see its markets integrated into content from Fox News, Fox Business, even Fox Weather. (This will be a paid endorsement deal, not just an editorial choice.) Kalshi of course already has similar deals in place with CNN and CNBC, making it something of a cable news mainstay already.

There was another W for Kalshi this week, as a 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that New Jersey has no right to regulate Kalshi. The court instead agreed with the Trump Administration, that authority over prediction markets rests with the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). If this ruling sticks, Kalshi has a lot less to worry about in terms of regulation. CFTC chief Michael Selig has called prediction markets “exciting products.”

Then there’s AI-powered music generator Suno. The company has been trying to secure licensing deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Entertainment, but the Financial Times reports that the parties can’t seem to agree on the specifics of AI-generated song distribution. The record labels want Suno to serve as a walled garden; users can make music within the app, but can’t share them with the larger internet.

For Suno, this is clearly something of a non-starter. The ability to generate songs and share them with friends and family, put them in your ads and videos, or even secure a spot on the pop charts one day, is central to the app’s entire appeal. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2272: It’s an OpenClaw all-expert panel on TWiST, with three of our favorite developers and vibecoders: Ryan Carson, Alex Finn, and Yazin Alirhayim. They’re talking about Anthropic cutting off Claude subscriptions from OpenClaw, checking out Google’s Gemma 4 release, and demoing their latest projects: ClawChief, Agent Henry, and Sidecast.

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E2270: We’re back with a new VC roundtable, featuring special guests Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund, Salen Churi of Trust Ventures, and Larsen Jensen of Harpoon Ventures. Together they’re reacting to the SpaceX confidential IPO filing, the AI enthusiasm gap between the tech world and the American public, and Marc Andreessen’s viral “don’t be introspective” rant.

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