NEW: Inside the 24-hrs before WH slapped export controls on Anthropic - Last Thursday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy raised concerns about Fable jailbreak to Trump admin - Friday AM, Sean Cairncross, Bessent, Susie etc. held WH call to discuss - Then White House started reaching out to Anthropic to speak with Dario Amodei, who was at a wellness retreat. - When Amodei was finally available past 1pm, he had three tense phone calls with a combo of ppl including Cairncross, Bessent, Lutnick, Kessler, Will Scharf, Richard Walters, and Walker Barrett. -Amodei tried to clear up what he assumed was a misunderstanding. He defended the guardrails and distinguished between universal and non-universal jailbreak - Cairncross and Bessent were unmoved and asked Amodei to take down Fable and work with the admin to fix the vulnerabilities. (A WH official said Amazon’s findings were run past the NSA and they felt they had “proof.”) - Amodei asked for more time and info, but he made no commitments to pull the model - Bessent told Amodei directly at one point that he was making a “bad decision” - By Friday evening, the Trump admin imposed its export controls. - “Export controls were a last resort after begging them for hours to work with us,” senior WH official said. W/ @cheyennehaslett politico.com/news/2026/06/13…

We did research when pay was low. We did research when pay was uncertain. We did research even when we were lucky enough to be paid well. One way is to figure out what to work on is to work on things that matter and not think of rewards. We are still quite early into what makes a frontier model all the way from optimization, architecture and objectives. Big token wants to convince you otherwise.

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

It was so much fun moderating the afternoon panel today with a great set of distinguished researchers today, thanks for the engaging and enjoyable discussion @AlexGDimakis @abeirami and Mohammad Alizadeh!

The fun continues 🔥 Now, we have our second panel with: @abeirami @AlexGDimakis and Mohammad Alizadeh Come by to hear more about hot takes from the field’s thought leaders!

How can we autonomously improve LLM harnesses on problems humans are actively working on? Doing so requires solving a hard, long-horizon credit-assignment problem over all prior code, traces, and scores. Announcing Meta-Harness: a method for optimizing harnesses end-to-end

Very excited about our workshop on AI Agents for Discovery in the Wild 🐾🦒🐅, happening *tomorrow*, Tuesday, May 26th 9am-5pm, as part of CAIS '26 in San Jose. We were blown away by all of the excellent submissions we got…(1/n)

Today, we are unveiling @hyperion__cap, an investment firm built to be the best strategy partner for deeptech founders. Again and again, we heard from these founders that venture capital has been failing them, even as more deeptech funds entered the market in recent years. Too many deeptech VCs lack a real command of industry history, hardware unit economics, go-to-market, and engineering nuance. Instead of rigorously evaluating complex frontier technologies, they often pass with vague references to “science risk." They overlook exceptional founders outside usual elite networks and concentrate capital based on pedigree, reducing their thinking to hand-wavy “founder bets." These VCs then prioritize promotion and social media over delivering real value to founders. In this world, LPs are also losing. And more of them continue to be disappointed by the lack of rigor that their deeptech GPs bring to evaluating these startups. We raised $35 million for Hyperion's Fund I to change this paradigm. On average, we complete 100 pages of deep research and strategy ideas that are shared with our founders. We also share this industry research with our LP base, which has already helped support our founders with additional capital and valuable introductions. We hold regular strategy sessions with our founders and obtain key connections that unlock new growth vectors for their businesses. Over the last 6 months, we’ve already invested $9 million behind founders across 7 companies: @FarisSbahi at Normal Computing, @isaiah_p_taylor @ Valar Atomics, Will Wilson @AntithesisHQ , @drauwsy @ Kunin, @abeirami & @aparandehgheibi @ [stealth], Charlie Cheng @ TC Lab, and Mike & Josh @ F-ADA. I'm deeply grateful to the senior leadership at Vista Equity Partners for their support, to the venture GPs who have advised us, and to the founders who chose to partner with us in the earliest days. We’re especially grateful to our limited partners, who put their trust in us at the firm's inception. Lastly, to build this firm alongside one of my closest friends and college teammates @henr56520 been a true privilege. We’re looking forward to working relentlessly for the founders we've backed and for those we’ll have the chance to support in the years ahead. hyperioncap.co