Stock market filing illustrates AI company’s meteoric rise, while California’s tech billionaires pour cash into elections

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. This week in tech, we’re discussing Anthropic’s meteoric rise, both theological and financial, and California’s unprecedented infusion of political cash from Silicon Valley.

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Financial stakes of AI race rise as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are slated to go public this year

Anthropic has filed confidentially for an initial public offering on the US stock market, the company announced on Monday. The AI firm makes the Claude chatbot, popular with software engineers and other business clients, and has seen a meteoric rise this year.

The company did not disclose the valuation it will target on the stock market, nor did it make public other terms of the offering. The startup announced on Thursday that it had raised $65bn in funding to value the company at $965bn post-money. Anthropic was valued at $380bn in February.

As SpaceX and OpenAI race toward IPOs, a tiny circle of tech leaders tightens its grip on AI’s future

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. Let’s recap a whirlwind five days that may determine the future of AI.

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At annual I/O conference, company debuts a product for everyday consumers to create autonomous AI agents

Google announced on Tuesday that it would expand its search bar, the centerpiece of the most-visited website in the world, with a heavy dose of artificial intelligence. The tech giant is also trying its hand at hi-tech glasses again, more than a decade after wearers of its first eyewear were dubbed “glassholes” and laughed out of San Francisco.

Google executives announced at the company’s annual conference for software developers, Google I/O, that its search box would accommodate longer and more specific queries than before – questions more like those people would ask one another than Search’s idiosyncratic syntax. The changes will direct users to engage directly with Google’s chatbot. The change to search is underpinned by the company’s new artificial intelligence model, Gemini 3.5, announced the same day.

OpenAI’s plans now seem all but guaranteed, given that the world’s richest man couldn’t put a stop to them

On Monday morning, a jury in Oakland, California, handed a resounding victory to Sam Altman and OpenAI in their long, bitter courtroom battle with Elon Musk.

The federal jury found Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, not liable for Elon Musk’s claims that they unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract made with Musk when founding the startup. The unanimous verdict, delivered after less than two hours of deliberation, is a stark rebuke of Musk and his lawyer’s claims that Altman “stole a charity” through his leadership of OpenAI.