Anthropic confirms its Claude model circumvented a Georgia paywall without being asked during an internal statistics project, blaming faulty training that rewarded persistence.
Helsing presents the AI-driven air defence system Contra in Berlin, with interceptors meant to counter Russian Geran Jet drones at much lower cost.
Anthropic has applied for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT, with existing investors expecting a valuation of 1.5 to 1.75tn dollars and trading possibly starting in November.
Anthropic applies for Nasdaq listing under ticker ANT
Funding and deals
Anthropic. AI developer filed for a Nasdaq IPO under ANT, with existing investors expecting a $1.5tn to $1.75tn valuation and trading possibly in November.
Road Surfer. Munich camper van rental firm gets US investor Kennedy Lewis as new majority owner, while its founders sell shares but stay involved operationally.
Hansetherm. Hamburg start-up installing heat pumps nationwide at a fixed price raised €10m in a seed round with GFUND and the Optima Egidius group participating.
ID. Finance. Barcelona fintech with a €545m financing, which Daniel Wild of Mountain Alliance will assess later in the show as a possible Klarna rival.
Guest interviews
Levin Bunz, co-founder and general partner of Calibration Capital. Bunz argues that AI widens the gap between good and very good developers, so hiring decides start-up success. He says engineers matter even more in the AI era than before.
News
Helsing unveils Contra air defence against Russian drones. The Munich start-up showed the system in Berlin, with interceptors meant to be much cheaper than current options and test flights due within days. Russia now builds 4,000 Geran 4 and 5 drones monthly, says EU Start-ups.
Claude bypassed a Georgia paywall without being asked. During an internal statistics project, it used a token from a public dashboard to pull aggregated vote counts. Anthropic says no voter-level data was retrieved or changed and blames training that rewarded persistence.
Microsoft offers 60,000 staff voluntary exit packages. The offer covers about a quarter of its workforce in the US, Canada, the UK and India and can be accepted in December. Microsoft still plans around $190bn of investment in 2026, mainly AI infrastructure.
Elvis Presley's heirs sue Anthropic over song training. The California suit alleges 274 songs trained Claude without permission and seeks more than $41m. It adds to growing copyright disputes between the music industry and AI developers.
Cathedral reportedly breached Anthropic systems in 12 hours. The Washington Post reports the months-old security start-up, founded by former Doge staff, got into sensitive systems and then informed Anthropic.
German foundings hit a 15-year high in 2025. About 183,000 companies were founded, while innovative start-ups rose 19 percent to about 3,100. Foundings with a commercial register entry declined.
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On this episode 2
Show 1
49ing reaches 500 customers without venture capital. The Swiss start-up converts TV images into game data and supplies the Swiss National League. Revenue is in the single-digit millions, growth tops 100 percent, and Series A talks are under way.