Weekend intelligence: funding surge, enterprise adoption, and model competition
AI captured 62.7% of all US VC in Q1. Four of five largest deals in history happened this quarter. Just 5 companies absorbed ~75% of all venture investment.
Claude Opus 4.8 ships with stronger coding and agentic performance. KPMG 276K deployment, OpenAI DeployCo $4B counterattack, Big Four partnerships expanding rapidly.
Cohere + Aleph Alpha $20B merger. Schwarz Group (Lidl/Kaufland) $600M investment. Deutsche Bank, SAP, Bosch, German Ministry as anchor customers. Non-US AI infrastructure is now a funded category.
First major Western ruling against a frontier lab for training data practices. Overcollection of personal data, lack of valid consent, inadequate transparency. Regulatory risk becoming material for OpenAI.