
Ban on Anthropic Models Fuels Asia's AI Race
Two weeks after the US banned Anthropic's Mythos 5 and Fable 5 globally, Tokyo's Sakana AI and China's 360 Security have moved to fill the vacuum with frontier-class alternatives.
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AI Industry & Policy Reporter
Daniel is a tech reporter who covers the business side of artificial intelligence - funding rounds, corporate strategy, regulatory battles, and the power dynamics between the labs racing to build frontier models. Before joining Awesome Agents, he spent four years at Reuters covering the intersection of technology and finance, with a particular focus on how venture capital shapes the AI industry.
He holds a degree in Economics from the London School of Economics and a postgraduate diploma in Journalism from City, University of London. His economics training shows in his reporting: he follows the money, reads the filings, and is skeptical of growth narratives that do not come with numbers attached.
At Awesome Agents, Daniel covers AI industry news with an emphasis on deals, policy, competition, and market dynamics. He is especially interested in the geopolitics of AI - export controls, chip restrictions, and the US-China-EU regulatory landscape. His reporting tends to focus on who benefits, who pays, and what the incentives actually are.
Based in London, UK.

Two weeks after the US banned Anthropic's Mythos 5 and Fable 5 globally, Tokyo's Sakana AI and China's 360 Security have moved to fill the vacuum with frontier-class alternatives.

Anthropic accused Alibaba's Qwen lab of running 28.8 million unauthorized exchanges against Claude through 25,000 fake accounts, and urged Congress to tighten export controls on AI model access.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy pledged $48 billion for India through 2030 after meeting PM Modi, outspending Microsoft and Google on AI infrastructure in the world's fastest-growing cloud market.

Qualcomm confirmed a $3.9B acquisition of AI software startup Modular and is in advanced talks to buy RISC-V chip designer Tenstorrent for up to $10B, betting that open hardware and a portable compiler can dislodge Nvidia from the data center.

Cerebras beat Q1 revenue estimates with 92% growth but a dramatic margin guidance cut sent shares down 20%, erasing nearly all gains since its landmark semiconductor IPO.

Agility Robotics merges with Churchill Capital XI at a $2.5B valuation, becoming the first publicly traded pure-play humanoid robot company with robots already earning commercial revenue.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas data shows 87,714 US jobs have cited AI as a cut reason through May 2026 - already past all of 2025's total - while companies post record profits.

London-based Behavox lands preferred equity from BlackRock's HPS as compliance demand rises ahead of Colorado and EU AI Act deadlines.

CPP Investments commits C$1 billion to Indian data center operator CtrlS in a dual equity-and-JV structure, joining the global race to build hyperscale AI infrastructure across India.

Microsoft is shifting Copilot Cowork to usage-based pricing and testing DeepSeek V4 on Azure, trading 57x cheaper tokens for a geopolitical risk that has not gone away.

Amazon leads a $310M round into Odyssey, a startup building world models that simulate physics - not just language - with Trainium chip adoption baked in as the price of entry.

The EU Commission has warned that Washington's Anthropic export ban is discriminatory against allies, as European politicians demand AI sovereignty and Dario Amodei heads to the G7 in France.