#200: Anthropic vs. the Pentagon, OpenAI's $110B Round, Interview with Claude Code’s Creator & Block’s AI-Driven Layoffs

Episode 200 arrived in the midst of a very dramatic week in AI and we recorded it live with AI Academy Mastery members for the first time! This week, Paul and Mike discuss an eventful 72 hours beginning with the Trump administration’s ultimatum to Anthropic. Eventually Anthropic refused, got blacklisted, and hours later OpenAI stepped in to take the deal. Paul and Mike unpack every twist, including why Peter Thiel's fingerprints on both sides make this even wilder. Also: OpenAI's $110B funding round, Claude Code creator Boris Cherney on why coding is "effectively solved" (and what that means for your job), Block laying off 4,000 people and naming AI as the reason, and a doomer economic essay that actually moved Wall Street. Show Notes: Access the show notes and show links here Click here to take this week's AI Pulse. Timestamps: 00:00:00 — Intro 00:03:30 — AI Pulse Survey Results 00:07:08 — Anthropic vs. US Government 00:44:55 — OpenAI Funding, Amazon Partnership, Response to DoD 00:51:19 — Interview with the Head of Claude Code 00:59:38 — Block AI Job Cuts 01:04:41 — AI Doomer Essay from Citrini 01:10:54 — Politics of Data Centers 01:15:15 — Anthropic Fluency Index 01:18:29 — Anthropic Distillation Attacks 01:21:46 — NVIDIA Earnings 01:24:19 — AI Product and Funding Updates This episode is brought to you by AI Academy by SmarterX. AI Academy is your gateway to personalized AI learning for professionals and teams. Discover our new on-demand courses, live classes, certifications, and a smarter way to master AI. Learn more here. Visit our website Receive our weekly newsletter Join our community: Slack Community LinkedIn Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Looking for content and resources? Register for a free webinar Come to our next Marketing AI Conference Enroll in our AI Academy