AI DAILY COMICS

THE STORY OpenAI is in early talks to give the U.S. government a 5% equity stake — worth roughly $42.6 billion at its current $852B valuation — as a goodwill gesture ahead of a planned 2027 IPO. Sam Altman is reportedly floating the idea of an Alaska Permanent Fund-style vehicle that other frontier labs could also pay into, though any deal would need congressional sign-off first.
Sources: CNBC · Bloomberg / Financial Times

THE STORY Newly unsealed court emails reveal what really broke down between the Pentagon and Anthropic: not access to Claude, but whether the military could use it for fully autonomous weapons and domestic mass surveillance. After Defense official Emil Michael called Anthropic’s guardrails “just not workable” and gave Dario Amodei a final ultimatum, talks collapsed — and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk the very next day, barring contractors from working with the company.
Sources: Wikipedia: Anthropic–DOD dispute · Federal News Network

THE STORY Google’s 11th annual Environmental Report shows electricity consumption jumped 37% in 2025 — its largest single-year increase ever, pushing total usage up more than 250% since 2019 — almost entirely driven by AI data centers, which alone consumed over 42 million megawatt-hours, rivaling countries like Denmark. Google still matched 100% of its electricity with renewables for a ninth straight year, but admits its AI buildout is now accelerating faster than the grid can decarbonize.
Sources: Axios · Data Center Knowledge