Welcome to the newest edition of ID Tech’s AI Update. Here’s the latest big news on the shifting landscape of AI and identity technology:
Anthropic is reportedly finalizing a $20 billion funding round that would value it at roughly $350 billion. The round is thought to be led by GIC and Coatue, with Sequoia also participating, and investor demand is five or six times Anthropic’s original goal. The company has been riding high on the success of Claude Code, its agentic AI tool. According to The Information, Anthropic has raised its internal 2026 revenue forecast by 20 percent, to as much as $18 billion, and is anticipating revenues of up to $55 billion the year after. But it doesn’t expect to be cash-flow positive until 2028.
A former OpenAI researcher is looking to raise $500 million – $1 billion in funding for his startup just weeks after launching it. Jerry Tworek’s firm, Core Automation, is working on a different approach to AI development that turns its focus from the transformer approach that has brought about the current AI revolution to instead build AI models that “learn continuously from experience” and need 100 times less data than conventional AI systems. The Core Automation team will center its work around a model called “Ceres”.
Apple has acquired Q.ai, an Israeli startup developing technology that lets users silently communicate through devices that interpret whispered speech and even “silent speech” via facial skin micromovements. The technology can also reportedly identify a person and assess emotions as well as physiological indicators like heart rate and respiration rate. The deal’s financial terms have not been officially disclosed, but different reports give it a valuation in the range of $1.6 billion – $2 billion.
OpenAI is reportedly developing a biometrics-backed social media platform for humans only. It could leverage the iris-scanning Orb devices of its affiliate World platform, but OpenAI is also considering the use of third-party biometric systems to verify the humanness of users, including Apple’s Face ID system. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has previously expressed concern and frustration about the growing prevalence of AI-powered bots on social media platforms.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $100 billion in a new funding round, with potentially huge strategic investments from Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft. Amazon alone could contribute up to $50 billion, according to reports. If the funding materializes, OpenAI would be valued at about $830 billion.
ASML has lifted its sales outlook for 2026 from €34 billion to €39 billion as chipmakers expand capacity to meet booming demand for AI logic and memory chips. The Dutch firm is in a unique position in the AI supply chain as the only company in the world that can ship at scale the extreme ultraviolet lithography machines needed to print the smallest transistor patterns onto silicon wafers used in advanced AI chips. And it’s in kind of a weird business situation: analysts have been pressing ASML management about its capacity to address the €39 billion in backlog orders at the end of 2025, and the management have now announced that they will stop reporting quarterly order intake after this latest report, saying it drives “unnecessary” volatility.
Finally, we’re going to give the last word this week to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has published a long-form essay, “The Adolescence of Technology”, laying out his views on the huge opportunities and risks that AI now poses to humanity. Here’s a bit of what he had to say about the regulatory question:
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By Alex Perala
