Tech Brew Ride Home - Anthropic's Growth Is Slowing

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Anthropic told investors Q3 revenue hit $16.8 billion, with adjusted profitability, but growth slowed ahead of the IPO. An arrested OpenAI engineer had booked one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia. Amazon launched two Bee wearables, and Nvidia’s RTX Spark impressed. Sources: Anthropic told investors that its Q3 revenue hit $16.8B, up from $11.5B in Q2, and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis in Q3, ahead of its IPO (Financial Times) Sources: Anthropic told investors that 5% to 7% of its revenue comes from distillation, and that distillation revenue will decline and keep weighing on its numbers this period (The Information) Filing: Abdulrahman Alfozan, his wife, and a family member booked one-way tickets from the US to Saudi Arabia for October 12; the FBI arrested him on October 9 (Bloomberg) OpenAI has trained employees to resist spies, including a stranger at a San Francisco playground who quizzed an employee about their work, before federal authorities arrested an employee for planting a listening device (WSJ) Amazon launches two AI wearables, the $75 Bee Frontier wristband and $100 Bee Eclipse magnetic phone-attachment recorder, with a $12/month Bee Pro subscription (Bloomberg) Amazon’s Bee debuts its first new devices since the acquisition, the $74.99 Frontier and $99.99 Eclipse, undercutting the $159 Plaud Note and $129 Pocket, with $11.99/month Bee Pro adding Amazon.com and Alexa+ integrations (TechCrunch) Nvidia’s RTX Spark Superchip in the Surface Laptop Ultra outperforms Apple’s M5 Max MacBook Pro by ~25% in agentic AI completion benchmarks using Qwen models (Tom’s Hardware) Download Cash App Today: ⁠https://cash.app/ ⁠#CashAppPartner. Terms apply. Bitcoin services by Block, Inc. See the Bitcoin disclosures at cash.app/legal/podcast

Welcome to the tech we ride home for Thursday, October 15th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Anthropic told investors, Q3 revenue hit 16.8 billion with adjusted profitability, but growth slowed ahead of the IPO. An arrested open AI engineer had booked one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia. Amazon launched two B-AI wearables and Nvidia's RTX spark impressed reviewers. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. now you can make your voice heard too. Vanguard Investor Choice makes it easy to set your proxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds, whether you hold a Vanguard fund directly

or through another brokerage firm. All it takes is a few clicks to select your proxy voting preference and be heard on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com slash investor choice to learn more. It's your shares. It's your voice. It's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of our index funds and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in, Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Sources tell the FT that Anthropic has told investors that its Q3 revenue hit $16.8 billion up from $11.5 billion in Q2 and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis in Q3, but that would also indicate that growth is slowing. Quote, its rapid growth is slower than the blistering pace set earlier in the year and below the expectations of some of Anthropics backers, according to investors and analysts. The startup gathered investors at San Francisco office on Wednesday for a full day of presentations

with executives laying out how a safety-focused philosophy, rapid growth, and efficiency gains would position Anthropic for a successful initial public offering in November. The $965 billion startup told investors that it was profitable on an adjusted basis in the three months to September for the second quarter in a row, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter. revenues were up from $11.5 billion in the three months to June. That growth lagged behind the rate earlier this year. Revenue more than doubled between the first and second quarters from about $4.8 billion in the first three months of the year. Anthropic did not share an update to its annualized revenue, which hit $65 billion at the end of July, but semi-analysis, a research

firm projected sales grew to roughly $74 billion on an annualized basis based on the new figures. Those estimates are lower than more bullish predictions during the summer when a number of Anthropics investors told the F.T, the company would far surpass $100 billion in annualized revenue by year end. The group's revenue figures, along with those of rival OpenAI, are a crucial gauge of its growth and ability to keep spending on the infrastructure at the heart of the financial boom around AI. Rising interest rates at a more challenging macroeconomic environment could put a break on Anthropics' plans to spend more than $500 billion on infrastructure and computing power over the next decade. U.S. chip stocks fell sharply on Wednesday on rising inflation and concerns about

rampant borrowing to finance the AI boom. Anthropic told investors that it was cash flow positive and banking $1.70 in revenue for every $1.00 spent on computing power in the third quarter said the people with knowledge of the matter. Executive said its adjusted operating margins, which exclude stock-based compensation were 11%. End quote. Anthropic also apparently told investors that distillation is biting. Quoting the information. It estimated 5 to 7% of its revenue comes from distillation,

a practice that involves other companies using Anthropics AI to glean data on how it works so they can train their own models. Anthropic has repeatedly accused Chinese AI labs of distilling its models and has said it is working to fight those efforts. The company told investors Wednesday that distillation revenue will decline and continue to weigh on its numbers in the current period, the people said. Overall, the readout offered a bit of a mixed picture for a company whose record-setting growth rate this year has raised expectations to extraordinary heights. The investor meeting came as economic and market forces already are weighing on Wall Street sentiment toward AI companies. Such concerns have started to cool once hot sentiment about Anthropics' giant IPO,

Anthropics' private valuation ballooned to $965 billion in May from less than $20 billion two years ago. And while investors still expected the offering to succeed, the revenue figures were met with some disappointment by some potential investors who thought it should prompt Anthropics bankers to lower valuation expectations to perhaps even less than $1.5 trillion in the IPO rather than the $2 trillion that some bankers have floated privately, end quote. Apparently, Abdul Rahman Alfazan, his wife and a family member booked one-way tickets from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia for October 12th. The FBI arrested him on October 9th, quoting Bloomberg.

In a motion that was filed on October 8th, attorneys for the United States asked a judge to seal the criminal complaint, arrest warrant, and other filings related to its case against Al-Fazan. Attorneys for the government wrote in the motion that disclosing the documents related to the case against Al-Fazan might jeopardize the defendant. arrest. Al-Fazan, his wife, and another family member had booked one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia via Istanbul from San Francisco, according to the filing. The defendant has the means and will have an incentive to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he has arrested, the government attorneys wrote, end quote. And quoting the journal, at a San Francisco playground, a stranger tried to befriend an Open AI employee who was there with their child. The stranger also regularly showed up with a child and in the process of making small

Talk asks the OpenAI employee questions about their work. It was no idle curiosity. The stranger was a spy. That is one of the scenarios employees of the artificial intelligence companies have been presented with in attempts to raise their vigilance against attempts to steal corporate secrets, and that was before federal authorities arrested an employee for planting a listening device. In training sessions, OpenAI has warned employees that outsiders, including competitors and state-sponsored actors, could try to get access to company information. Company leaders have said that could take the form of people offering money, listening in cafes or even trying to seduce OpenAI employees people familiar with the matter said. Employees at other AI heavyweights, including Anthroping

and Google, have received similar warnings. Corporate security experts say it is likely the threat goes well beyond one hidden recording device. Catching one guy means there are half a dozen out there, said Randy Watt, president of leadership consulting firm SRW, which conducts security and threat assessments for companies. He said bad actors may be searching not only only for technical or strategic information, but for personal secrets that can be used to exploit or blackmail individuals. The rapid growth of the industry has created abundant opportunities to get inside the leading companies, which have quickly added thousands of employees to their payrolls. Open AI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google all employ large numbers of foreign nationals

with China supplying much of the world's top AI talent. A number of Trump administration officials have identified employment of Chinese nationals by AI and technology companies as a national security vulnerability, alleging that some share secrets with Beijing. Employees also frequently job hopped between companies creating an additional vector for information leakage or misappropriation. OpenAI and Apple have been engaged in litigation over claims of poached employees taking confidential files with them to their new jobs. Elon Musk's XAI made a similar claim in a lawsuit against an engineer who went to Open AI. AI companies are scaling their workforces at unprecedented speed. The question is whether their ability to manage insider risk is scaling at the same pace, said Aviv Nahum, the chief

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at least $5 to a friend in the first two weeks. Terms apply. Download cash app today. Visit our link in bio. Amazon this morning launched two AI wearables, the $75 B Frontier wristband, and $100 B-Eclipse magnetic phone attachment recorder with a $12 per month B-Pro subscription. Quoting TechCrunch, Amazon's personal AI wearable maker, B, is announcing its first new product since being acquired by the retail giant last year. The tech company on Thursday introduced the B Frontier, the next generation of its device that can be worn on the wrist or pinned to close,

along with B Eclipse, a credit card size device that magnetically attaches to the back of your smartphone. The latter puts B into more direct competition with AI devices like the Plod Note or Pocket, but at a lower price point. The B frontier is 7499 compared with 150, $19.99 for the Plaud Note or $189 for the Note Pro, or $129 for the Pocket AI device. The B frontier will come in onyx, lavender, and sage, while the 99-99B eclipse will be offered in silver, midnight, honey, and blush. Like the original B, the idea with the new devices is to leverage AI to take notes from your everyday conversations, allowing you to remember the important things

that were said, and then turn those into actionable to-do's summary. and insights. For instance, if you discussed making plans with friends, the bee would remember the date and time you agreed on, then create a calendar invite. You could also use the B to take lecture notes in class or to jot down the care plan you discussed with a doctor, among other things. All B devices can create conversation summaries and recaps for free and offers 14 days of memory. With an 1199 per month B-Pro subscription, users receive unlimited conversation summaries and and integrations with Amazon.com, Alexa Plus, and third-party applications. Pro users also get suggested to-dos, daily memories, a personal chat assistant, and conversation templates. To make all this possible, B devices use a private computing security architecture, which doesn't store the raw audio from your conversations. Instead, audio is processed in real-time and then deleted. Transcripts of the conversation are encrypted using keys that your device creates and controls, which means no one else, including Amazon employees, can access those files

unless you manually and intentionally share them. In addition, you can opt to connect the B to Alexa, allowing your echo device to use its ability to identify your voice, a feature called voice ID, to recognize when you're speaking. It can then record your conversations to provide B's insights. This aspect of B is optional, and Amazon notes you can delete transcripts and summaries at any time. With its new connections to Amazon.com and Alexa, B users can make purchases from Amazon or ask Alexa for their B insights, summaries, or to-do's hands-free. B also works with your existing productivity software like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook so it can draft emails, set up meetings, surface action items, and more.

Plus, you can upload photos to B or connect it with Apple's Health Kit to add a picture of your overall wellness to be integrated into your provided insights. The B Frontier and B-Eclipse both have just one button that turns the device off and on and includes an indicator light when it's summarizing a conversation. The frontier also offers IP-67 water resistance up to seven days of battery life, USBC charging, and dual microphones with advanced noise filtering. All B devices come with a companion mobile app, which has also been newly redesigned, plus a new desktop app, end quote. Quoting Bloomberg, unlike Apple's upcoming watch features, which drew concern over their always listening nature once users opt into the

feature, B users need to press a button to start or stop a recording. Both companies say that their devices do not store the actual recordings of users' daily conversations, which will be deleted after summaries and insights are produced. Amazon said users are prompted to gain permission from call participants each time a recording is started, end quote. And quoting the verge. It's an interesting time for Amazon to introduce these products given the recent backlash against so-called surveillance tech. On that front, Amazon told the Verge, in a press briefing that B devices encrypt transcripts, summaries, and to-dos via its private compute security architecture and don't store audio recordings. B devices can also be programmed to

automatically stop recording if no sound is detected after a certain period of time. As for whether transcripts are attributable, that depends. Upon setup, B's AI is trained on the individual user's voice. All other speakers are not automatically identified unless you ask them to also allow B's AI to train on their voice. Whether that's enough to assuage any privacy concerns, well, that depends on your definition of a recording, end quote. Finally today, the early reviews are in for that new NVIDIA RTX Spark Super Chip that NVIDIA thinks is the first wave of a coming personal computing paradigm shift, you know, the running AI locally on your own hardware shift. Tom's hardware says in the Surface Laptop Ultra, it outperforms Apple's M5 Mac's MacBook Pro by around 25% in

Agentic AI completion benchmarks using Gwen models. Quote, NVIDIA's RTX Spark is an ambitious new PC platform for the traditional workloads of today and the potential agentic AI work of tomorrow. How often do we see an entirely new player try to elbow into the crowded and competitive PC space, especially one with a sweeping vision for how the PC will be used in the years to come? an incremental move, this is not. Our general performance tests and new agentic AI tests show that despite providing merely solid CPU performance and relatively low bandwidth for a unified memory architecture on paper,

the Blackwell GPU onboard GB10 has enough AI horsepower in practice to let the RTX Spark platform come out ahead of Apple's latest top-end M5 Max and AMD's RISAN AI Max plus 395, a.k.a. Strix Halo systems on a chip. Whether you choose the high intelligent, dense Quen 3.827B model and trade raw speed for intelligence, or make the opposite trade with the lighter and faster Quen 3.635B, A3B, the RTX Spark comes out on top. That bodes well for pairing popular agents like Hermes with intelligent local models on this platform. If you're not as concerned about keeping sensitive data out of AI labs clouds or you don't expect to run a foul of acceptable usage policies, you'll get much smarter tokens much faster

than you will from a local token factory like the RTX Spark, and you can get them on most any reasonably powered traditional PC you have available. But if you're surfing the AI wave on local hardware for reasons of privacy, offline model availability, freedom to tinker or just because you think it's cool, the RTX Spark platform blends the memory capacity, compute performance, and software resources you need to get there with the familiarity and broad capability of windows on top. The fact that Nvidia, Microsoft, and their partners have delivered such a capable, compatible, and polished platform, even in its first at-bat, should put the rest of the PC industry on notice, end quote. And Gizmodo says that while the RTX Spark PCs aren't a revolution

quite yet, they may well change laptops forever, quote. That's going to make pricing extra complicated upcoming laptops like the Microsoft Surface laptop Ultra costs $2,600 at base with only 24 gigabytes of unified memory. Other RTX Spark PCs like the AISIS Pro Art P16, start at $2,800 and only get more expensive from there. The top-end Surface laptop Ultra with the max 128 gigabyte memory and one terabyte storage will set you back $5,900. Suddenly, Apple's regular nickel and diming for memory upgrades when buying its MacBook Pro don't seem so out of step with the rest of laptop kind.

AMD already made the same move with its Risen AI Max Plus 300 series, pushing its APU, accelerated processing unit architecture, as far as it would. go with a giant GPU. The chipmaker followed up these codenamed Strix Halo chips with Gorgon Halo, the Verizon AI Max Plus 400 chips. Only this time, AMD launched versions of its chip that only support a maximum of 128 gigabytes of unified memory. This means every PC running a Gorgon Halo processor is essentially built to be an Uber machine explicitly built for local AI tasks. The number of consumer and machines is so limited that I personally have not had the chance to test. them out, which means, currently,

Nvidia can claim to be the only one who's actually pushing AI-native PCs to consumers at price points more people can potentially afford. I've long been an AI skeptic, but if there's one thing I believe, it's that the future of LLMs is not going to rest on the shoulders of big, expensive, and community-destroying data centers. Local compute that keeps your data secure on device is the best case for these AI models. Invidia, ironically, the company that's chief pushing the AI data center build out worldwide may end up showing us a better way forward, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.