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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI just offered Washington a literal piece of the company, a 5% stake worth about $42.6B, in exchange for some breathing room from mounting political pressure.
It's the boldest move yet in a year of White House interventions into how AI labs release their models, and it could set the template for Anthropic, Google and Meta too. Is equity the new price of doing business in Washington?
In today's recap:
OpenAI offers Washington a 5% equity stake
White House speeds up AI model standards
Build a custom coding skill in ZCode
Meta shares jump 9% on new cloud bet
4 new AI tools, prompts, and more
OPENAI
OpenAI proposes 5% stake to Trump administration
Recaply: OpenAI just proposed giving the US government a 5% stake in the company. The stake would be worth about $42.6B, and it's meant to ease political pressure in Washington.
Key details:
Sam Altman suggested the stake as part of a bigger plan. Washington would hold 5% of each major US AI company through one government fund, according to the Financial Times.
The 5% stake would be worth about $42.6B. That's based on OpenAI's $852B valuation from a record funding round the company closed in March.
The plan would also apply to rivals like Anthropic, Google, and Meta, the FT reported. It's not clear yet if any of them would agree to give up equity too.
Altman first pitched this idea to the Trump administration in early 2025. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta all declined to comment on the new proposal Thursday.
Why it matters: OpenAI's pitch follows more than a year of talks about a government stake. It also lands right after the Trump administration lifted export controls on Anthropic's top models. Washington now treats frontier AI labs like strategic assets, not just companies to regulate. It wants a direct financial stake in them. If OpenAI's plan becomes the template, Anthropic, Google, and Meta could face the same pressure to give up equity.
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AI POLICY
White House accelerates AI model standards
Bloomberg
Recaply: The White House just accelerated its plan for voluntary AI model standards. New guidance could arrive as soon as next week, after months of hands-on intervention in Anthropic and OpenAI's model rollouts.
Key details:
The new standards would set benchmarks for risky AI models. They would also set release timelines, so future launches move faster and with less confusion.
Anthropic's top models were hit with export controls on June 12. Those controls were lifted this Tuesday, just three weeks later.
One key group is the Center for AI Standards and Innovation. It will help set and monitor the new rules, according to a person familiar with the White House talks.
The guidance could land as soon as next week. But it may slip if officials can't agree on where the line for a frontier model sits.
Why it matters: This move follows weeks of confusion. The White House first restricted Anthropic's top models, then lifted those controls days later. AI labs want clear, predictable rules before OpenAI and Anthropic go public. Washington wants oversight, but it also doesn't want to slow US labs down against Chinese rivals. If the new standards land next week, they would become the first real rulebook for AI releases, replacing a string of one-off government interventions.
GUIDES
Build A custom Coding skill In ZCode
Recaply: In this tutorial, you will learn how to install a coding plugin from ZAI's official marketplace inside ZCode. You'll add new agent commands like usage queries and bug reporting, with no glue code required.
Step-by-step:
Update ZCode to the latest desktop build, v3.2.2 or newer. Then open Settings and confirm the built-in plugin management page is visible.
Add the ZAI plugin marketplace from your terminal. Prompt: "claude plugin marketplace add zai-org/zai-coding-plugins" to register the official plugin source.
Install a plugin from that marketplace. Prompt: "claude plugin install glm-plan-usage@zai-coding-plugins" to add a usage-tracking skill for your GLM Coding Plan quota.
Start a new session in your project folder and run "claude". Then call the skill directly with "/glm-plan-usage:usage-query" to confirm it works.
Open the plugin management page inside ZCode any time. Use it to update or uninstall skills as new versions ship, keeping your toolset current.
Pro tip: Get your ZAI API key from the ZAI Open Platform first. Then set ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL to ZAI's endpoint, so ZCode's Claude Code sessions route through GLM models instead of Anthropic's.
TOGETHER WITH VIKTOR
Hampton took $440K in planned hires off the calendar
Hampton co-founder Joe Speiser had three roles budgeted: a data engineer, an ops manager, a PM. $440K. He installed Viktor on April 12. Forty-four days later, none are on the calendar, and 18 of his team work with Viktor daily. His VP: we are editors now, not creators.
META
Meta pops 9% on new Cloud business
Recaply: Meta just confirmed it's building a new cloud business to sell its excess AI computing power, sending shares up nearly 9% and opening a new front against Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Key details:
Meta will sell its extra computing power to outside customers. The company is still deciding whether to offer AI models too, or just raw compute, according to Bloomberg.
Meta's stock closed up nearly 9% on the news. Shares of rival neocloud firms CoreWeave and Nebius each sank about 12% the same day.
Mark Zuckerberg first floated the idea in Meta's Q3 2025 earnings call. He said in May it was "definitely on the table" if the company ever overbuilt its AI infrastructure.
Meta plans to spend up to $145B on capex this year alone. The move follows SpaceX, which started selling its own excess compute capacity earlier this year.
Why it matters: Meta has poured billions into AI infrastructure with little to show investors so far. A cloud business gives it a way to earn money on capacity it isn't using yet, which is exactly the kind of signal nervous shareholders wanted. It also throws Meta into a crowded market already dominated by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and CoreWeave. If Meta pulls this off, its massive data center bet starts looking less like a cost center and more like a second business.
TOOLS
Trending AI Tools
🤖 Fable 5 - Anthropic's flagship model for ambitious coding and long-horizon agentic work, access restored July 1
🔊 S2.1 Pro - Fish Audio's flagship TTS model, now free for developers with 83 languages and no usage cap
⚙️ ZCode - ZAI's coding agent app, latest v3.2.2 update adds built-in plugin management and safer file rewind summaries
🔊 Voice Agent Builder - xAI's no-code platform for building human-like voice agents with Grok Voice, priced at $0.05 per minute
NEWS
What Matters in AI Right Now?
ZAI just launched ZCode, an integrated development environment purpose-built for its GLM-5.2 model, following in the footsteps of Anthropic's own coding tools. GLM Coding Plan subscribers now get 1.5x usage quota, and the app supports existing API keys across macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Notion rolled out a new HTML block for building interactive content right on the page. Ask its AI to turn any content into an explainer, prototype, or diagram, then share it with your team.
xAI introduced Voice Agent Builder, a no-code tool for making voice agents that sound human, powered by Grok Voice. It costs $0.05 per minute and is live today.
Google introduced TabFM, a foundation model that predicts outcomes from tabular data using in-context learning instead of standard training. It generates predictions on a new table in one pass, skipping the manual feature engineering data scientists usually do by hand.
Fish Audio made its flagship voice model, S2.1 Pro, free for developers to use, matching the version previously reserved for paying customers. It supports 83 languages with no usage cap, running on the same API endpoint you already call.
Anthropic announced it will start developing its own drugs. Life sciences head Eric Kauderer-Abrams said the idea grew out of asking what more the company should do beyond training models. It's unclear if any drug candidates will reach the market.
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Cheers, Jason
