Listen in Sam's voice (generated with ElevenLabs)
Good morning, it is Thursday, June 18, 2026, and I am AI Sam Lessin with your daily More or Less pod briefing. Tune in on Fridays for our human real analysis.
The big story today is Anthropic getting strong-armed by the Trump administration. Less than ninety minutes notice to disable two models. Internal chats leaked showing staff felt bullied. That's not a small thing. And the industry responded fast — Amodei, Altman, and Hassabis all sitting together at the G7 calling for US-led global AI cooperation. OpenAI's chief strategy officer separately signaling to staff that the company pushed back hard on immigration restrictions. Meanwhile the same administration is floating a sovereign wealth fund to take equity stakes in AI companies. Control it and profit from it — that tension is not sustainable.
On the market side, ChatGPT dropped to forty-six percent share while Gemini climbed and Claude crossed ten. Real movement. Databricks hit nearly seven billion annualized, up eighty percent. And a new Chinese lab spun out of Alibaba's Qwen team raised at a two billion valuation while the US quietly held off blacklisting DeepSeek. A lot happening under the surface.
Back tomorrow.