Actualités — 2026-06-18

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch has long warned that U.S. firms could be forced to disable their AI models at the behest of Washington. When the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to cut foreign users from its most advanced models, the warning turned into a viral joke about a fictional "fat cat" model. The meme, which spread across tech forums, underscored Europe’s push for AI that cannot be switched off by another country. Mistral, now courting French civil servants and courting a €3 billion funding round, says its open‑weight models are the answer, even as it trails rivals on capability and safety scores. Lire la suite

Jeff Bezos’s family office, Bezos Expeditions, is spearheading a $400 million financing round for Cambridge‑based CuspAI, a two‑year‑old startup that uses artificial intelligence to design new materials. The deal, valued at $2.6 billion, would lift the company’s worth fivefold since September, signaling Bezos’s shift toward physical‑world AI applications. Lire la suite

A wave of cost‑cutting measures is sweeping through large technology firms as the once‑celebrated practice of "tokenmaxxing"—maximizing AI usage at any expense—gives way to "tokenminimizing," where companies cap employee access to tools like GitHub Copilot and Anthropic. AT&T, Meta, Uber, Walmart and Amazon have all introduced spending limits or scrapped internal leaderboards that encouraged wasteful AI consumption. The shift follows reports that some firms were spending as much as $7,500 per employee each month, prompting a rapid reevaluation of AI budgets and the rollout of monitoring tools to keep costs in check. Lire la suite

Anthropic rolled out new features for Claude that let users blend design assets with code generation, including a brand‑kit administrator role and a "/design" command that pulls visual elements into the coding terminal. The upgrades aim to keep AI‑generated content on brand and streamline workflows. At the same time, the company withdrew its latest model, Fable 5, following a U.S. export‑control directive that barred non‑U.S. users after a security breach was discovered. Anthropic also faces a lawsuit alleging it misrepresented usage limits for paid Claude subscriptions. Lire la suite

London‑based regtech firm Behavox announced a $175 million preferred‑equity investment from HPS Investment Partners, the private‑credit arm acquired by BlackRock. The fresh capital will fund the expansion of the company’s unified AI compliance suite and enable further acquisitions. The deal also retires a $70 million venture‑debt facility used to buy Mosaic Smart Data. Behavox, which counts ten of the world’s 24 Global Systemically Important Banks among its clients, is its first equity raise since SoftBank’s $100 million infusion in 2020. Lire la suite

Anthropic announced its membership in Frontier, the carbon‑removal collective backed by tech giants, marking the AI firm as the first pure artificial‑intelligence company to join the group. The partnership adds a new $915 million tranche to Frontier’s funding pool, pushing total pledges to $1.8 billion and supporting projects that aim to strip 1.8 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Frontier’s expanded capital will fund fewer, larger‑scale removals, while Anthropic’s move signals a shift toward climate‑focused spending amid growing scrutiny of AI firms’ energy use. Lire la suite

At the G7 summit, French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned that the United States could abruptly block foreign access to cutting‑edge artificial‑intelligence models. Their concerns follow a recent Trump administration order that barred Anthropic from exporting its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models on national‑security grounds after Amazon flagged potential safety gaps. The move has sparked a debate over digital sovereignty, prompting G7 officials to discuss a “trusted partners” framework that would let non‑U.S. nations use advanced AI while avoiding sudden cut‑offs. Lire la suite