AI Furnace Newsroom: Anthropic's New Model Redefines Coding, CIO's Bullish with Enterprise AI Implementation Increasing 282%, Trump's AI 'Manhattan Project'

Welcome to this week’s AI Furnace Newsroom

In today’s insights we cover:

1. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5 Rollout Changes the Coding Curve

2. Google Nears $4T on TPU Heat

3. CIOs Bullish on AI as Full Implementation Increases by 282%

4. Trump’s AI ‘Manhattan Project’ - The Genesis Mission

Read time: 5 mins

💡 Furnace Insights

Anthropic

Anthropic Claude Opus 4.5 Rollout Changes the Coding Curve

Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.5 last week, a brand new LLM that further accelerates Anthropic’s lead in code generation. The model beat analysts’ expectations, achieving a record 80% on the SWE verified benchmark and the no. 1 spot on the ARC AGI test (known to be the hardest test for an AI model). It is said that this model can do nearly any of the work required of a talented entry level software engineer, and in some cases even an advanced one.

Anthropic’s strategic positioning over time is a masterclass to watch, lodging itself as a supreme leader in AI coding tools - the most sought after applied AI use case we see today, and specifically taking the lead in the enterprise customer segment, beating out OpenAI. This alone puts them on a path to profitability in 2028, projecting $70B in revenue.

Google

Google Nears $4T on TPU Heat

Google’s share price soared to a new 52-week all-time high on reports that Meta is in talks for a multi-billion dollar deal to bring in Google’s specialized TPUs to train and enhance their AI models, as supply constraints continue to hit Nvidia.

If confirmed, the Meta partnership would be Google’s third major TPU deal after Anthropic’s 1 million TPU deal to train the next version of Claude, and Google’s major agreement with NATO.

Google’s TPUs are specifically designed for niche use-cases, a perfect fit for Anthropic’s focus on coding for example. Their most recent TPU, Ironwood, is rumored to have unlocked a whopping 1.5-2x performance improvement per dollar spent on training.

These partnerships further fuel the narrative that Google now presents the ultimate threat to Nvidia’s $5T market cap, despite Google’s TPUs having more niche use-cases.

Enterprise AI

CIOs Bullish on AI as Full AI Implementation Increases by 282%

CIOs are adding new skills and feeling more confident as they adopt AI, according to Salesforce’s second annual study that surveyed 200 global CIOs from 24 countries. Here are the key takeaways:

• Implementation: Full AI implementation has increased 282% since 2024, from 11% to 42%, which shows that leaders are now in the process of scaling AI projects across the organization.

• Budgets to agentic AI: CIOs report that they are dedicating 30% of their budget to agentic AI. 96% of CIOs surveyed said their company is either currently using AI agents or plans to within the next two years.

• Confidence: 75% of CIOs now report feeling more confident in their role than they did a year ago. They also report that they’ve personally improved their leadership, storytelling, and communications skills, and, amid the move toward agentic, report working more closely with C-suite leaders like the CEO, CFO, and COO.

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U.S.

Trump’s AI ‘Manhattan Project’ - The Genesis Mission

Trump’s administration launched the Genesis Mission - an initiative that opens up government scientific data (including 70 years of classified data) to AI labs to enhance scientific research and speed up progress in areas like fusion, next-gen nuclear designs, quantum research, and advanced materials.

OpenAl, Anthropic, and Google received petabytes of experimental data from 17 U.S. National Laboratories, with research spanning 1953 to 2025 in physics, energy, fusion, chemistry, materials science, weapons adjacent-technologies and more.

The order directs the U.S. Department of Energy to build a “closed-loop AI experimentation platform” that integrates national labs’ supercomputers, large federal scientific datasets, AI foundation models, and physical lab infrastructure including “robotic laboratories”. A fully autonomous scientific AI that can run research in labs via both software and hardware may not be the thing of sci-fi fantasies only.

On the one hand, some are seeing this as secretive experiments being run in government labs not accessible to the public. On the other hand, it completely changes the game for the technical research field, i.e. energy startups could test new reactor designs on national lab-grade supercomputers, pharma teams may cut months off early-stage discovery. One thing is for sure, by labelling this as the “AI Manhattan Project”, the U.S. government is signalling that it views AI as a national strategic frontier.

📈 AI Venture Deals of the Week

• Black Forest Labs, an AI image-generation company, raised its $300 million Series B.

• Allie AI, a manufacturing-intelligence company, raised its $5.2 million Seed round.

• Zinit, an AI-driven procurement platform, raised its $8 million Seed round.

• Procure AI, an AI-native enterprise procurement automation company, raised its $13 million Seed round.

• Beside AI, a startup building an AI voice receptionist for small businesses, raised its $32 million Series A.

• Fastbreak AI, an AI-driven sports operations software company, raised its $40 million Series A.

• Quantum Systems, a German drone-manufacturer specialising in unmanned aerial and defence systems, raised a €180 million Series C.

• Harmonic, an artificial-intelligence lab focused on mathematical reasoning, “Mathematical Superintelligence,” raised its $120 million Series C.

⚒️ New AI Product Launches You Don’t Want to Miss 

• Recraft, an AI-powered image generation and design tool.

• Huxe, a personal audio companion tool that transforms content (news, newsletters, feeds) into interactive, on-demand audio/podcast-style briefings.

• Google released Nano Banana Guide.

• Z‑Image‑Turbo, by Tongyi‑MAI, a high-efficiency text-to-image generation tool that produces photorealistic visuals and supports bilingual text rendering.

• DeepSeek‑Math‑V2, by DeepSeek‑AI, a math-focused AI tool designed for solving and self-verifying complex mathematical problems and reasoning tasks.

Upcoming Events 📅

• AIF Founder Supper Club @ Sicily Osteria - Tuesday, December 9

• AIF Founder Supper Club @ Whiskey Club - Wednesday, January 21

• AIF Founder Supper Club @ Wine Bar - Wednesday, February 18

Interested in meeting the Who’s Who of AI?

The AI Hot 100 Summit is back for its third edition on May 7th, 2026 in New York City. The only AI Summit built for real connections where startup innovation meets enterprise implementation. Join over 500 AI Executive Leaders, Founders and Investors for a jam packed day of enterprise AI lightning talks, innovation showcases, and curated networking.

Get ready to meet and greet speakers and attendees from OpenAI, NVIDIA, Haleon plc, Legora, Anthropic, Cursor, Eleven Labs, Adobe, Walmart, Insight Partners & more.

🗓️ May 7, 2026

📍New York City