News — 2026-06-17

Anthropic took its latest AI models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5, offline this week after the White House issued an export‑control order barring foreign nationals from accessing the services. The directive, announced Friday, cites the models’ ability to locate software vulnerabilities and devise exploits as a national‑security risk. Anthropic, which has been negotiating with officials since the order’s release, says the models were launched under strict guardrails but could be stripped of those protections. Industry experts warn the move signals a broader clash between rapid AI advances and government regulation. Read more

OpenAI’s ChatGPT subscriptions have stayed at $20 for Plus and $200 for Pro since their launch, even as the chatbot’s capabilities have expanded dramatically. A growing chorus of users now argues the service is underpriced, pointing to the massive compute power and data‑center expenses required to run the models. OpenAI executives have acknowledged that the Pro tier loses money, fueling the debate about whether the current pricing reflects true costs or a market‑share strategy. Read more

SpaceX announced an all‑stock deal to buy AI startup Cursor for $60 billion, finalizing a partnership first outlined in April. Cursor, known for its eponymous AI‑driven coding assistant, had been courting $2 billion in fresh capital from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and NVIDIA, though that money would not have covered its operating shortfall. The acquisition gives SpaceX a foothold in the artificial‑intelligence arena as it seeks to revamp its troubled xAI division, which has faced ethical controversies and a mass exodus of senior staff. Read more

SpaceX announced an all‑stock transaction to buy AI‑driven coding tool Cursor for $60 billion, with the deal slated to close in the third quarter. The acquisition follows SpaceX’s recent IPO and its merger with xAI, marking a major restructuring move for the aerospace firm. Cursor, a Visual Studio Code‑based IDE that embeds large‑language‑model features, has seen rapid revenue growth but faces stiff competition from rivals such as Anthropic’s Claude Code. The deal gives Cursor access to xAI’s compute resources and joint model‑training initiatives. Read more

Newly obtained financial statements show OpenAI’s revenue climbing from $3.7 billion in 2024 to $13.07 billion in 2025, yet research and development costs, sales and marketing spend, and compute expenses pushed its operating loss to $20.92 billion. The data, supplied to journalist Ed Zitron and reviewed by the Financial Times, arrives as the company files SEC paperwork ahead of an anticipated initial public offering, highlighting a business still far from profitability despite rapid top‑line growth. Read more

AI startup Probably announced a $9 million seed investment led by Andreessen Horowitz. Founder Peter Elias says the funding will fuel development of a data‑science platform that pairs large language models with a deterministic validator, aiming for near‑perfect accuracy and the ability to run on desktop hardware. The approach promises to curb hallucinations and lower token costs for precision‑sensitive use cases such as accounting and medical analytics. Read more

For the first time since its launch, OpenAI’s ChatGPT slipped below the 50% market‑share threshold, according to Sensor Tower’s State of AI Report for 2026. The shift follows a surge in Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude, which together lifted the competitive landscape to a more fragmented state. While ChatGPT still tops the global rankings with more than 1.1 billion monthly users, its share dropped to 46.4% by the end of May, reflecting a broader trend of users switching between AI assistants and a growing emphasis on monetization across the sector. Read more