Friday, november 6, 20265 stories · updated at 08:45
An independent evaluator concludes that Anthropic is now improving its models twice as fast as a year ago, likely because AI itself is helping build the next one. Also: Anthropic signs its first deal with a news outlet, Meta buys Conductor, and Apple trims what its employees spend on AI.
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Independent evaluator finds Anthropic is now improving its AI twice as fast
METR, a Berkeley nonprofit, reviewed about 11 weeks of Anthropic’s internal data and interviewed its staff. It concluded that the company is improving its models’ capabilities on well-specified tasks roughly twice as fast as a year ago. It ruled out more training compute as the cause; its best explanation is that AI is increasingly helping improve AI. Still, it says AI can’t yet train models on its own.
◎Why it matters
AI helping build the next AI could speed progress a lot, and also make it harder to oversee. This is one of the first times an outside group has measured it with access to a company’s own data.
⌘For the technical crowd
The speedup is measured only on tasks that can be graded automatically, not on “messy” work. Anthropic redacted some information, and METR’s own team acknowledges uncertainty and internal disagreement. The report lands weeks before Anthropic’s IPO.
Anthropic pays for news for the first time in a deal with the AP
Anthropic signed its first licensing deal with a news organization, the Associated Press, according to Adweek. It let Claude show live AP election results, with attribution, on the night of the US midterms. Financial terms and the length of the deal weren’t disclosed.
◎Why it matters
Until now, Anthropic argued that using publishers’ content without paying was legal. The shift suggests AI assistants need deals with news outlets to deliver reliable breaking news.
⌘For the technical crowd
OpenAI already has more than a dozen similar deals, including with Axel Springer, News Corp., and The Atlantic. The AP was also Google’s and OpenAI’s first licensing partner.
Meta buys Conductor, a tool for running several coding agents at once
Meta acquired Conductor, a startup whose app lets developers run and supervise several AI coding agents at the same time. CEO Charlie Holtz confirmed the deal; the price wasn’t disclosed. Conductor’s cloud service shuts down on November 20, and the desktop app will stop getting new models in early 2027.
◎Why it matters
Big tech is racing to own the tools developers use, not just the models. Conductor users will need to find an alternative soon.
⌘For the technical crowd
The same day, OpenAI announced it is buying Pierre Computer. Earlier, Anthropic bought Stainless in May and SpaceX closed its $60 billion Cursor acquisition in August.
Apple cuts how much its employees can spend on AI each day
Apple lowered some engineers’ daily AI budget from $300 to $200 last month, according to Bloomberg. More cuts are planned: down to $100 a day, and as low as $25 for some non-technical teams. Employees who need more can ask for an exception, and some teams will move to cheaper or on-device models.
◎Why it matters
Even the richest companies are starting to track what employee AI use costs them. Microsoft, Tesla, Uber, and Meta have also set limits recently.
⌘For the technical crowd
Apple employees can use Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. Apple’s R&D spending rose 32% in fiscal 2026, driven by infrastructure and AI.
Box uses NVIDIA models so agents find exactly what they need in your files
Box unveiled Box Content Retrieval, a system that uses NVIDIA’s Nemotron models so AI agents pull only the useful chunks of a document instead of reading the whole thing. It searches by ideas, not just exact words, and respects each user’s permissions. It reaches Enterprise Advance customers in early 2027.
◎Why it matters
An agent that reads less answers faster and costs less. And because it respects permissions, it shouldn’t show you files you aren’t allowed to see.
⌘For the technical crowd
NVIDIA says answers should be 4 times faster, with 20% fewer errors and 90% fewer tokens; these are projections, not independently verified results.
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