The Pope, the IPO, and the $900B Valuation: AI’s Most Historic Week
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Welcome back toAI Buzz!— This might be the most consequential week in AI history. The Pope just issued a 42,000-word encyclical on artificial intelligence. Anthropic is closing a $30 billion round that would make it the world’s most valuable AI startup. OpenAI filed its IPO paperwork. And the President scrapped an AI safety executive order after tech CEOs called him directly. Oh, and the most beloved AI researcher alive just switched teams. Let’s dive in.
🔥 TODAY’S TOP STORIES
Anthropic Closes $30B Round at $900B+ Valuation — Now the World’s Most Valuable AI Startup
Why it matters: Anthropic is closing a $30 billion funding round at a valuation above $900 billion, co-led by Sequoia, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Altimeter — each investing roughly $2 billion. This vaults Anthropic past OpenAI’s $852 billion March valuation for the first time ever. The company projected $10.9 billion in Q2 revenue and its first quarterly operating profit, up 130% from Q1. Annualized revenue is now approaching $45 billion — a fivefold increase from $9 billion at end of 2024.
💡 The takeaway: This is no longer a hype valuation — it’s backed by real revenue and profitability. Anthropic just proved that a safety-focused AI lab can also be a financial juggernaut.
Pope Leo XIV Issues First-Ever Papal Encyclical on AI
Why it matters: Pope Leo XIV today released “Magnifica Humanitas,” a sweeping 42,000-word encyclical on AI and human dignity — co-presented with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah at the Vatican. Signed on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum (the landmark teaching on workers’ rights during the Industrial Revolution), the document calls AI “the Industrial Revolution of our time” and urges governments and corporations to slow development and ensure AI serves humanity, not the powerful few.
💡 The takeaway: The Vatican choosing Anthropic — not Google, not OpenAI — as its partner is a deliberate signal about which lab it considers credible on safety. This will shape public discourse on AI ethics for years.
OpenAI Files Confidential IPO Paperwork, Targeting $1 Trillion Valuation
Why it matters: OpenAI confidentially filed its S-1 IPO prospectus with the SEC on May 22, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading the deal. The company is targeting a public listing as early as September 2026 at a valuation between $852 billion and $1 trillion. This comes as both OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to go public this fall — potentially the two largest AI IPOs in history, within months of each other.
💡 The takeaway: Two near-trillion-dollar AI companies going public simultaneously will force unprecedented financial transparency on an industry that’s largely avoided it. Watch for the public S-1 — that’s when the real numbers drop.
Trump Scraps AI Safety Executive Order After Tech CEO Phone Calls
Why it matters: President Trump abruptly canceled the signing of a landmark AI executive order, telling reporters it could “get in the way” of America’s AI lead over China. The order would have created a voluntary pre-release vetting process for advanced AI models — a direct response to cybersecurity concerns triggered by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos. Reports indicate Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and David Sacks called the president directly in the hours before the scheduled signing.
💡 The takeaway: No federal AI framework means states and the EU AI Act fill the vacuum. This is short-term bullish for AI labs (faster release cycles) but long-term uncertain (fragmented regulation).
NextEra Buys Dominion Energy for $67B — Largest Utility Merger in U.S. History
Why it matters: NextEra Energy announced a $67 billion all-stock deal to acquire Dominion Energy, creating the world’s largest regulated electric utility. The deal is explicitly driven by AI power demand — data centers are projected to consume 15–25% of US electricity by 2030. Dominion powers Northern Virginia’s “Data Center Alley,” the world’s largest data center market. The combined enterprise value of $420 billion makes it the third-largest U.S. energy company behind Exxon and Chevron.
💡 The takeaway: Power availability — not model capability — is now the primary bottleneck for AI scaling. The AI boom is reshaping industries far beyond tech.
Andrej Karpathy Joins Anthropic — The Biggest AI Talent Move of 2026
Why it matters: Andrej Karpathy — OpenAI co-founder, former Tesla Autopilot lead, and the most beloved AI educator alive — announced he’s joining Anthropic’s pre-training team. He’ll build a new team focused on using Claude to accelerate Claude’s own training — a form of recursive self-improvement. He’s the latest in a pattern: six CTOs from billion-dollar companies have taken individual contributor roles at Anthropic in the past year.
💡 The takeaway: When the most respected researcher in the field chooses Anthropic over every other option, that’s a signal every senior AI researcher will notice. Talent follows conviction.
⚡ QUICK HITS
• Google Search’s Biggest Update in 25 Years: Google rebuilt its search box with AI, now generating custom visuals, interactive graphics, and mini-apps directly on the search page. The 10-blue-links era is functionally over.
• Chinese Models Hit 60% on OpenRouter: Kimi K2.6, DeepSeek V4, GLM-5.1, and Qwen 3 now account for 60% of all AI usage on OpenRouter. The open-weights tier is now Chinese-led.
• Adobe, Canva & CapCut Integrate Gemini: Users can now generate AI content inside Gemini and refine it directly in professional editing tools. Canva is live for Gemini AI Ultra subscribers.
• Intuit Lays Off 17% as AI Restructuring Spreads: Following Salesforce, Microsoft, Google, and Meta’s 8,000 cuts — Intuit is the latest enterprise software giant restructuring around AI.
• Anthropic Eyes Microsoft’s Maia 200 Chip: Anthropic is in talks to adopt Microsoft’s custom AI chip, making it the fifth silicon partner alongside NVIDIA, AWS Trainium, Google TPUs, and SpaceX compute.
• Anthropic’s $45B SpaceX Compute Deal Revealed: SpaceX’s IPO prospectus disclosed Anthropic is paying $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for GPU compute — a $45 billion total contract.
📊 AI NUMBER OF THE WEEK
$900,000,000,000
Anthropic’s incoming valuation — surpassing OpenAI for the first time. Just 18 months ago, Anthropic was valued at $61.5 billion. The speed of this ascent is unprecedented in American technology history. We are watching the birth of a trillion-dollar company in real time.
👀 WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
The IPO race is on. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to go public between Labor Day and Thanksgiving 2026. SpaceX has already filed. These could be three of the largest IPOs in technology history, all within months of each other. The AI industry is about to face a level of financial scrutiny it’s never experienced. We’ll be covering every filing, every number, every implication.