Edition, Mon, 19 Oct 2026.

Anthropic commits 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund

The Claude maker is carving out a slice of the company to fund work for societal good, a direct answer to the growing AI backlash.

The Claude maker is carving out a slice of the company to fund work for societal good, a direct answer to the growing AI backlash.

Anthropic said Sunday it will commit 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund, structured as a wholly owned entity within the company and designed to give it "increased flexibility and scale" to support projects for societal good. The company can contribute an additional 2% for every 50% increase in Anthropic's value, and it sketched out possible uses such as "large donations to traditional nonprofits or direct distributions to specific populations," noting that given the pace of AI progress, bolder approaches may be needed.

The fund builds on Anthropic's earlier $200 million commitment to study AI's impact on the job market, and it lands as the AI industry faces increasingly negative public sentiment. CEO Dario Amodei has described the backlash as fundamentally a crisis of trust, and Anthropic says it will share more about the fund's structure and governance in the coming months.

Disney to hire the majority of Character.AI's workforce

Days after the chatbot startup filed for bankruptcy, most of its staff get a soft landing at the Mouse House.

Days after the chatbot startup filed for bankruptcy, most of its staff get a soft landing at the Mouse House.

A legal filing spotted by Bloomberg reveals the shape of the deal between Character.AI and Disney: the studio will make employment offers to at least 60 Character.AI employees, the majority of the workforce, paying an estimated $60 million in annual compensation in total, and the "vast majority" of those offered jobs have accepted. Disney had previously agreed to acquire some Character.AI assets for $20 million, and the startup's former CEO Karandeep Anand became Disney's first CTO in September.

The arrangement is a stalking horse bid, so another company could still come forward with a higher offer. Character.AI, which filed for bankruptcy on October 13, has been hobbled by high costs and potential litigation-related liabilities and regulatory engagement, including government investigations over child safety on its chatbot platform.

Musk pledges a SpaceX share to every kid in America

Elon Musk says he will hand one SpaceX share to each of the 70 million kids in America in 2027, a gift worth more than $10 billion.

Elon Musk says he will hand one SpaceX share to each of the 70 million kids in America in 2027, a gift worth more than $10 billion.

Musk posted on X that in 2027 he plans to give "every kid in America" one of his SpaceX shares, which at the company's current $146 share price works out to a gift worth more than $10 billion, roughly 1% of his $1 trillion net worth. He said he wants to give the shares "directly to the public" and called it the "first of many" donations he will make. With more than 70 million Americans under 18, the mechanics remain unclear, but Trump Accounts, the Treasury-created bank accounts for children that can accept stock donations, offer a plausible vehicle.

The announcement came just hours after Anthropic promised to put 5% of its shares into its new public benefit fund. Musk replied to Anthropic's post on X suggesting the company give "directly to the public" instead, then followed through with his own SpaceX pledge. A recent review by The Economist found that most money laid out by the Musk Foundation has gone to entities tied to Musk in some way, with nearly 60% going to a charity run by his money manager Jared Birchall.

Anthropic gives outside AI watchdog "employee-like" access

A team from the nonprofit evaluator METR is moving into Anthropic's offices, the first concrete step in the frontier labs' pledge to embed external auditors.

A team from the nonprofit evaluator METR is moving into Anthropic's offices, the first concrete step in the frontier labs' pledge to embed external auditors.

Anthropic has granted METR, a nonprofit evaluator that has worked with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta, "employee-like access" to assess the risks of its models. METR now has a team embedded in the Claude maker's office with access to its hardware and internal systems, and it can publish its findings without Anthropic's approval.

The arrangement follows a rare September moment of unity when Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk rallied behind the proposal to embed external auditors in the leading labs. The announcement marks the first step in implementing those pledges, while OpenAI has yet to lay out plans of its own. Anthropic compared the setup to bank supervision, in which regulators assign resident examiners to work inside the largest banks, though critics argue the arrangements could create conflicts of interest and that greater government regulation is required.

Microsoft walks away from its UK AI supercomputer

Power grid delays are forcing a rethink of Britain's flagship AI data center in Essex, with the project possibly not switching on until the 2030s.

Power grid delays are forcing a rethink of Britain's flagship AI data center in Essex, with the project possibly not switching on until the 2030s.

Microsoft has walked away from its UK AI supercomputer project at Loughton, Essex, the centerpiece of Britain's AI strategy, as the grid struggles to keep up. UK Power Networks has told project company Nscale that the 90 MW connection needed for the facility is not feasible within the original timeline because of severe congestion on Britain's power grid, with revised availability now pushed out to the early to mid 2030s.

The site was announced in 2025 under the government's AI Opportunities Action Plan and designed to host thousands of Nvidia GPUs deployed by Microsoft, the anchor tenant, with capacity of 50 MW set to scale to 90 MW, yet as recently as March 2026 it was being used as a scaffolding yard. Nscale is evaluating on-site power options including solid-oxide fuel cells from Bloom Energy, and more than 100 UK data center projects are reportedly considering on-site generation instead of waiting for grid connections that can stretch beyond a decade.

ServiceNow's AI Control Tower faces reality check at enterprise scale

A deep-dive analysis of ServiceNow's AI Control Tower reveals it's a powerful governance orchestration layer but falls short as a universal runtime enforcement platform.

A deep-dive analysis of ServiceNow's AI Control Tower reveals it's a powerful governance orchestration layer but falls short as a universal runtime enforcement platform.

TheCUBE Research, interviewing 15 large enterprises in September 2026, found that while every respondent recognized ServiceNow's workflow and incumbent advantage in governance, 14 of 15 described runtime enforcement as external, custom, or unproven at scale. Only one financial services pilot had successfully tested blocking for a model or agent. The gap spans Azure OpenAI, custom agents, SaaS copilots, third-party models, shadow AI, and multiple clouds — with one practitioner estimating only 30 to 40 percent of AI activity could realistically pass through ServiceNow control paths today. ServiceNow's moat is its CMDB, ITSM, and IRM systems that know assets, services, owners, and dependencies, but customers generate model validation, lineage, and bias evidence elsewhere with tools from IBM, Credo AI, and Fiddler AI.

ServiceNow pulls ahead of Workday with 24 percent revenue growth

ServiceNow's revenue is rising faster than Workday's, reflecting stronger pricing power and an AI adoption curve that's crossing the $1 billion annual contract value milestone.

ServiceNow's revenue is rising faster than Workday's, reflecting stronger pricing power and an AI adoption curve that's crossing the $1 billion annual contract value milestone.

ServiceNow reported second-quarter revenue of $4 billion for the period ending June 30, 2026, a 24 percent year-over-year increase. Workday's revenue for its comparable fiscal quarter was $2.7 billion, up 13 percent. ServiceNow's AI offerings crossed the $1 billion mark in annual contract value during Q2, and the company expanded its base of customers with more than $5 million in ACV by 23 percent year over year. Workday's AI also contributed, driving more than 25 percent of its new ACV in fiscal Q2. ServiceNow also entered a multi-year technology agreement with TeamViewer to integrate digital employee experience tools, while simultaneously reducing its global workforce by approximately 1,000 employees during a recent restructuring.

ServiceNow CFO says 14-hour workdays set a terrible example for employees

President and CFO Gina Mastantuono pushed back against hustle culture at the executive level, calling recovery part of performance.

President and CFO Gina Mastantuono pushed back against hustle culture at the executive level, calling recovery part of performance.

ServiceNow President and CFO Gina Mastantuono made remarks criticizing the expectation that leaders must work 14-hour days and survive on four hours of sleep to be effective. "Recovery is part of the performance," she said, framing sustainable working hours as a leadership standard rather than a weakness. The comments reflect a broader conversation in enterprise software about burnout, talent retention, and what leaders model for their teams.