Sun 17 May 2026
Weekly Brief — Curated and contextualised by Best Practice AI
Goldman Predicts Surplus, Anthropic Surpasses OpenAI, and AI Faces Scrutiny
TL;DR Goldman Sachs forecasts record current-account surpluses for South Korea and Taiwan due to AI-driven chip booms. Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in U.S. business AI adoption, while OpenAI and Microsoft cap revenue sharing at $38 billion. The global chip market is projected to hit $1.5 trillion by 2030, driven by AI. Meanwhile, a Gartner study finds layoffs driven by AI automation are not generating expected returns. Nvidia's CEO joined President Trump on a trip to China, highlighting the geopolitical significance of AI technology discussions.
Economics & Markets
General-Purpose Technology and Speculative Bubble Detection
arXiv:2604.25826v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We show that the leading bubble test suffers severe size distortion when fundamentals incorporate general-purpose technology adoption. Embedding a hump-shaped technology shock in the Campbell-Shiller present-value model, we prove that the fundamental price becomes locally explosive during adoption, contaminating the test's limit distribution wit
Anthropic signs $1.8 billion AI cloud deal with Akamai
Anthropic has entered into a significant $1.8 billion cloud computing agreement with Akamai to support its AI infrastructure.
Alphabet Plans Debut Yen Bond Sale as AI Race Accelerates
Alphabet Inc. is planning to issue yen bonds for the first time in a move that may help fund investments as artificial intelligence competition intensifies.
OpenAI-Microsoft deal includes $38 billion cap on shared revenue: Report | Meyka
Microsoft and OpenAI agree to cap revenue sharing at $38 billion, reshaping AI partnerships, Azure growth, IPO expectations, cloud competition, and investor outlook for the global AI market.
Sam Altman’s Business Dealings Under GOP Scrutiny Ahead of OpenAI’s IPO
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee says it is investigating, and six GOP state attorneys general are calling for SEC review after a WSJ article.
AI-Fueled Rally Pushes Industrials to Tech-Like Valuations, Data Show - Bloomberg
Optimism surrounding the potential for industrial companies to profit from the artificial intelligence boom has fueled record-setting momentum in the sector. Now worries are mounting that the group’s link to AI may be getting too tight.
Microsoft Spent Over $100 Billion on OpenAI Partnership
Microsoft Corp. has spent more than $100 billion on its partnership with OpenAI, a sum that underscores the significance of the software maker’s role in the AI company’s growth.
Anthropic in Talks to Raise Funding at a $950 Billion Valuation
The start-up, which recently released a powerful A.I. model called Mythos and is separately battling with the Pentagon, was previously valued at $380 billion.
Defence tech start-up Anduril doubles valuation to over $60bn
Peter Thiel-backed company raises $5bn as the US administration turns to smaller players for latest military kit
Cerebras Shares Indicated to Surge 82% After Year’s Top IPO
Cerebras Systems Inc. shares are indicated to open 82% above their listing price, after the artificial intelligence chipmaker raised $5.55 billion in an upsized and hotly anticipated IPO.
$300 Billion AI Debt Binge Spreads From Wall Street to Tokyo
Bankers were still putting the final touches on Alphabet Inc.’s blockbuster $17 billion of bond sales when word started to spread Monday morning on Wall Street: the company is already hawking more debt.
Is an AI spending plateau on the horizon?
Also in today’s newsletter: carbon capture shows promise in decarbonising data centres
Cerebras CEO Is Worth $3.2 Billion After Year’s Largest IPO
Shares of Cerebras Systems Inc. soared about 68% in Nasdaq trading in New York. It’s the year’s biggest initial public offering and gives the company a market value of roughly $67 billion. Bailey Lipschultz, Bloomberg News Senior Equities Reporter, discusses the initial offering and how the company is differentiating itself from incumbents like Nvidia. (Source: Bloomberg)
Goldman Sees ‘AI-Driven Super Surplus’ Swelling in Korea, Taiwan
South Korea and Taiwan’s artificial intelligence-fueled chip booms are set to swell both economies’ current-account surpluses to fresh records and pressure their central banks to raise interest rates later this year.
Korea Roils Market by Floating ‘Citizen Dividend’ from AI
A top South Korean policymaker said the nation should pay citizens a “dividend” using taxes on AI profits, underscoring growing pressure to redistribute gains from a boom that’s enriched chipmakers like Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc.
Anthropic finally beat OpenAI in business AI adoption — but 3 big threats could erase its lead | VentureBeat
Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in U.S. business AI adoption, with more companies paying for Claude than ChatGPT as enterprise demand reshapes the AI market.
Measuring Google AI Overviews: Activation, Source Quality, Claim Fidelity, and Publisher Impact
arXiv:2605.14021v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Google AI Overviews (AIOs) are arguably the most widely encountered deployment of generative AI, reaching over 2 billion users who may not realize the answers they see are AI-generated. Where search engines have traditionally surfaced ranked sources and left users to evaluate them, AIOs synthesize and deliver a single answer - giving Google unpreced
GPT-5.5 may burn fewer tokens, but it always burns more cash
An analysis of the economic trade-offs of GPT-5.5, noting that while token efficiency has improved, operational costs continue to rise.
Anthropic tightens Claude limits
Anthropic is introducing new usage limits for paid Claude subscribers, moving agent tool support behind a credit meter. The move comes as companies struggle with the high compute costs of autonomous AI agents.
AI pricing models are evolving—and it might cost companies more
“What good is 40 more tokens going to do when you couldn’t get it right with the first 100 tokens that I bought?” asks one COO.
Tencent admits GPUs only pay for themselves when powering personalized ads
Chinese web giant says accelerator shortage is over as local hardware arrives in volume.
Anthropic puts Claude agents on a meter across its subscriptions | InfoWorld
Anthropic’s move reflects a broader industry shift toward metered pricing for AI agents, forcing developers and enterprises to rethink the economics of large-scale automation workloads, analysts say.
Vibecoding and Digital Entrepreneurship
arXiv:2511.06545v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) automates coding tasks and expands access to technical resources, this paper examines how GenAI-enabled coding automation, colloquially known as "vibecoding," affects digital entrepreneurial entry and venture performance. We exploit ex-ante variation in ventures' exposure to vibecoding based on the p
Generative AI Fuels Solo Entrepreneurship, but Teams Still Lead at the Top
arXiv:2605.10291v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping who enters entrepreneurship, but not who reaches the top of the quality distribution. Using data on over 160,000 product launches on Product Hunt, we find that entrepreneurial entry increased sharply following the public release of ChatGPT-3.5, driven disproportionately by solo
Labor, Society & Culture
Women at the sharp end as AI takes over administrative roles
Female-dominated clerical work is among the most vulnerable to automation, and labour market losses are already being felt
Chinese court awards compensation to sacked worker replaced by AI
Case attracts widespread attention as example of China balancing enthusiastic adoption of AI with job security A court in China has ruled in favour of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation. The worker, whose surname is Zhou, joined a tech company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor
AI Alignment Amplifies the Role of Race, Gender, and Disability in Hiring Decisions
arXiv:2605.13866v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Humans increasingly delegate decisions to language models, yet whether these systems reproduce or reshape human patterns of discrimination remains unclear. Here we run a large-scale study to analyse whether language models use demographic information in hiring decisions. We show, across 27 models and 177 occupations, that language models give fema
Do Job Postings Show Early Labor-Market Effects of AI? - Liberty Street Economics
A look at AI’s impact on labor demand and whether early evidence of its effect on the labor market appears in firms’ job postings.
Technology & Infrastructure
CME plans to launch futures market for AI computing power
New contracts will allow traders and companies to bet on and hedge future price of GPU rental
TSMC says global chip market to hit $1.5 trillion by 2030 as AI drives growth | Reuters
AI and high-performance computing are expected to account for 55% of the $1.5 trillion market, followed by smartphones with 20%, and automotive applications with 10%, according to TSMC.
Big Tech goes beyond Wall Street for huge AI borrowing
US tech giants including Alphabet and Amazon are tapping foreign debt market at an unprecedented rate
SoftBank Plans to Make Large-Scale Batteries for AI Data Centers
SoftBank Group Corp.’s mobile unit said it plans to begin large-scale battery cell manufacturing at its Sakai, Osaka plant to address growing power demand for AI services.
Adoption, Deployment & Impact
Amazon staff use AI tool for unnecessary tasks to inflate usage scores
In-house MeshClaw tool enables employees to delegate jobs to AI agents and climb company’s AI leaderboard
Frontier AI models don't just delete document content — they rewrite it, and the errors are nearly impossible to catch
As large language models become more capable, users are tempted to delegate knowledge tasks where models process documents on their behalf and provide the finished results. But how far can you trust the model to stay faithful to the content of your documents when it has to iterate over them across multiple rounds? A new study by researchers at Microsoft shows that large language models silently co
Geopolitics, Policy & Governance
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