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Artificial Intelligence

Microsoft Opens a New Front in the Fight Over Data for AI Agents

By Kevin McLaughlin · May 22, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Microsoft has opened a new front in the AI data wars, blocking partners from connecting their data management tools to a popular product as it tries to defend its business software strength in the era of AI agents. The friction centers on Power BI, a Microsoft product nearly all Fortune 500 firms use to analyze data about their operations in... Microsoft has opened a new front in the AI data wars, blocking partners from connecting their...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Cursor Sees Opening as GitHub Flounders

By Rocket Drew · May 21, 2026 7:10am PDT · 1 comment

Microsoft's GitHub unit has been on the defensive lately. Amid a series of outages and other snags, Jay Parikh, who oversees the software-project management platform, recently warned deputies that coding tools from Cursor and Anthropic could eventually make GitHub obsolete, my colleague Aaron wrote this week.Parikh was right to be worried.... Microsoft's GitHub unit has been on the defensive lately. Amid a series of outages and other...

As Anthropic Costs Mount, Businesses Pressure Software Firms to Shorten Contracts

By Laura Bratton · May 20, 2026 9:00am PDT · 3 comments

Businesses are spending more on Anthropic and other AI providers, and the additional budget has to come from somewhere. One natural target for cuts is other software. While businesses aren’t abandoning their enterprise applications outright, they’re putting themselves in a better position to do so if AI makes traditional apps less important. For... Businesses are spending more on Anthropic and other AI providers, and the additional budget has...

How Microsoft, Meta, xAI Get AI Training Data From Their Employees

How Microsoft, Meta, xAI Get AI Training Data From Their Employees

By Aaron Holmes and Jyoti Mann · May 19, 2026 10:30am PDT

How Microsoft, Meta, xAI Get AI Training Data From Their Employees

How Microsoft, Meta, xAI Get AI Training Data From Their Employees

By Aaron Holmes and Jyoti Mann · May 19, 2026 10:30am PDT

Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot may have lost much of its early lead in the AI coding race to rivals like Anthropic and Cursor, but Microsoft thinks it has an advantage over those companies: roughly 100,000 software engineers who work for Microsoft. As we reported Monday, Microsoft leaders think they can develop coding models using the wealth of... Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot may have lost much of its early lead in the AI coding race to rivals...

Krishna Rangasayee. Photo By Shauna Clinton/ Getty Images

Edge Inference Chip Startup SiMa.ai Raising at $1.4 Billion Valuation

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Anissa Gardizy · May 18, 2026 7:00am PDT

Nvidia might be on a tear, but some investors are still convinced that there’s demand for another kind of specialized chips. And they’re putting their money where their mouth is. For example: San Jose, Calif.-based SiMa.ai, which develops chips that work on devices such as drones or cameras, is in talks with investors to raise more than... Nvidia might be on a tear, but some investors are still convinced that there’s demand for another...

Sunday Insights

Anthropic and OpenAI’s Share of AI Startup Revenues Rises to 89%

By Amir Efrati and Stephanie Palazzolo · May 17, 2026 7:00am PDT · 4 comments

Anthropic and OpenAI are widening the revenue gap between themselves and the rest of the AI startup field. A group of 34 leading startups in that sector, including Anthropic and OpenAI, is generating nearly $80 billion in annualized revenue, or $6.6 billion per month, from selling AI applications or access to the models that power such apps,... Anthropic and OpenAI are widening the revenue gap between themselves and the rest of the AI...

Art by Clark Miller.

Why Anthropic Costs Are Unpredictable

By Laura Bratton · May 14, 2026 12:08pm PDT · 3 comments

Anthropic customers are already feeling pinched by the company’s AI price hikes, Aaron and I reported Wednesday. Making matters harder, Anthropic customers like PagerDuty and ServiceNow—which says it already blew through its full-year budget for Anthropic AI tools—can’t predict what they’ll pay this year.One reason Anthropic costs are tough to... Anthropic customers are already feeling pinched by the company’s AI price hikes, Aaron and I...

Photo via Getty Images

AGI Is the Elephant in the Musk v. OpenAI Courtroom

By Rocket Drew · May 14, 2026 7:00am PDT

Photo via Getty Images

AGI Is the Elephant in the Musk v. OpenAI Courtroom

By Rocket Drew · May 14, 2026 7:00am PDT

Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI are set today to deliver closing arguments in their trial, which centers on Musk’s allegations that OpenAI breached a charitable trust, in part by violating its charitable mission. The two sides disagree on almost everything in the case, but one phrase is likely to be mentioned in both speeches: artificial... Lawyers for Elon Musk and OpenAI are set today to deliver closing arguments in their trial, which...

Art by Clark Miller

Artificial Intelligence

Anthropic Flexes Pricing Power as Its Customers Willingly Eat the Cost

By Laura Bratton and Aaron Holmes · May 13, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Anthropic’s revenue growth is unprecedented. Newer Anthropic customers such as PagerDuty are a big part of the reason. Eric Johnson, chief information officer at PagerDuty, which helps software engineers respond to tech outages, said he is bracing for volatile costs as his company’s 1,200 employees start using Anthropic’s AI coding and other... Anthropic’s revenue growth is unprecedented. Newer Anthropic customers such as PagerDuty are a...

Getty Images.

ServiceNow and FedEx Reflect the Great AI Pricing Divide

By Laura Bratton · May 12, 2026 12:45pm PDT

Software companies such as HubSpot and Adobe have started pricing their AI tools based on the number of tasks the AI successfully completes rather than based on flat fees or the number of AI tokens they consume. Many more firms plan to follow suit, even as the practice is still being hotly debated.Some 31% of 230 enterprise software firms... Software companies such as HubSpot and Adobe have started pricing their AI tools based on the...

image via Getty

Microsoft Has Generated More Than $30 Billion in Revenue From OpenAI’s Technology, Spending

By Sri Muppidi and Aaron Holmes · May 12, 2026 11:08am PDT · 2 comments

For three years, Microsoft was the only cloud provider to sell OpenAI’s large language models to other businesses, an exclusive right it fought hard to preserve after investing $13 billion in the startup. But businesses bought more access to those models from OpenAI directly than from Microsoft over that time, new data show. Even so, Microsoft’s... For three years, Microsoft was the only cloud provider to sell OpenAI’s large language models to...

Eran Zinman, co-CEO of Monday.com. Screenshot via YouTube/SaaStr AI.

Monday.com’s AI Hiring Lesson; BuzzFeed’s Rescue

By Martin Peers · May 11, 2026 5:00pm PDT

Eran Zinman, co-CEO of Monday.com. Screenshot via YouTube/SaaStr AI.

Monday.com’s AI Hiring Lesson; BuzzFeed’s Rescue

By Martin Peers · May 11, 2026 5:00pm PDT

Digital media historians will be intrigued by news this afternoon that media mogul Byron Allen is buying control of once-important media outlet BuzzFeed. For more on this unusual deal, see below. Meanwhile... if you’re using mass layoffs as an indicator for AI’s impact on the job market, you may be looking in the wrong place. It might be smarter... Digital media historians will be intrigued by news this afternoon that media mogul Byron Allen is...

Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras Systems. Art by Clark Miller; YouTube.

Cerebras IPO Will Test Investor Appetite for AI Chip Startups

By Martin Peers · May 10, 2026 3:00pm PDT

How many AI chip designers can the public market support? We’ll get a sense of that on Thursday when Cerebras Systems, the biggest of a new generation of chip designers dedicated to AI, is expected to go public at a valuation of $35 billion. If it follows the pattern of other AI-related IPOs, such as cloud firm CoreWeave, Cerebras will be a big... How many AI chip designers can the public market support? We’ll get a sense of that on Thursday...

Art by Clark Miller.

Can AI Tollgates Become the New SaaS Model?

By The Information Staff · May 7, 2026 11:49am PDT

AI agents are forcing enterprise software companies to defend the business model that made them rich: charging for every human user. Companies like ServiceNow and SAP are starting to redraw the boundaries around their software, with some restricting how outside agents get in. Others are testing new usage-based pricing models to reflect how AI... AI agents are forcing enterprise software companies to defend the business model that made them...

Art via Clark Miller

SAP Moves to Block OpenClaw and Other Unauthorized AI Agents

By Kevin McLaughlin and Laura Bratton · May 4, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Some enterprise software companies are worried enough about customers using AI agents to access their data that they’re planning to install tollgates to their apps. And then there are software companies like SAP. Last month, the $200 billion German firm published a policy document for customers, suggesting it would ban them from using external... Some enterprise software companies are worried enough about customers using AI agents to access...

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Photo by Getty.

Palantir’s AI Pricing Power

By Laura Bratton · May 3, 2026 3:00pm PDT

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Photo by Getty.

Palantir’s AI Pricing Power

By Laura Bratton · May 3, 2026 3:00pm PDT

Results from Google, Microsoft and Amazon last week showed AI is still fueling cloud revenues, news that helped lift the stock market to fresh records on Friday. This week, we’ll get a clearer glimpse into whether AI can also lift the lagging prices of software stocks such as Palantir and ServiceNow.Palantir kicks off the week’s wave of... Results from Google, Microsoft and Amazon last week showed AI is still fueling cloud revenues,...