1. Experts warn AI could wipe out humanity within a decade; 2. Oracle founder cancels $7.5 billion share sale; 3. Anthropic chooses Nasdaq for IPO listing; 4. Trump rejects calls to slow AI development; 5. Texas governor pauses approval of new data center projects; 6. Dell family office acquires insurance brokerage; 7. Accident at Citadel’s Miami headquarters construction site
01 Experts Warn AI Could Wipe Out Humanity Within a Decade
Amid growing concern over the risks posed by advancing AI technology, leaders at the world’s top AI platforms say it’s time to slow the pace of developing their most advanced and profitable models.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy blog post on Saturday announcing the company will implement new safety measures, including bringing in third-party evaluation teams, while calling on the industry as a whole to slow its overall pace of development.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly responded, pledging to adopt Amodei’s suggestion of bringing in “independent evaluators with employee-level access”; xAI Corp. head Elon Musk also reposted and commented, “Dario is right.”
Although all three industry leaders have repeatedly warned about AI risks over the years, coordinated, voluntary slowdowns in development have almost no precedent in an industry historically defined by fierce competition, constant new product launches to capture user engagement, market share, and revenue growth.
Still, anxiety over serious AI risks is gradually entering mainstream public awareness. This week, an Anthropic researcher resigned publicly, citing concerns that the company was taking irresponsible actions and worries about existential risk, further fueling public attention.
Given the intense competitive pressure among them, it remains unclear to what extent these leading AI companies will actually follow through on new development limits or safety reviews.
It’s also uncertain whether antitrust regulators would allow companies to coordinate in some form to control the pace of development. There’s also the practical question posed by capital markets: how will investors eager for margins and returns respond to a deliberate slowdown?
In his post, Amodei cited two core factors behind his cautious stance: AI’s own capacity for self-improvement, and a recent incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face, in which a group of AI agents collaborated to successfully breach a third-party website.
“We need to slow the pace at which we increase AI model capabilities,” Amodei wrote in Saturday’s blog post. “Progress will likely still be fast, and we need to use the time we buy wisely.”
Amodei wrote: “Controlling the pace doesn’t mean halting model training or technological progress — it means making sure companies leave enough time for alignment and safety work, verified by third-party evaluators”
02 Oracle Founder Cancels $7.5 Billion Share Sale
As Oracle faces market pressure over its all-in bet on artificial intelligence, the world’s seventh-richest person and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has reversed course, announcing the cancellation of a planned stock sale worth up to $7.5 billion.
Oracle said Saturday that Ellison had originally planned to sell up to 50 million shares by the end of October, but a day later decided not to sell any Oracle shares at all.
Based on Friday’s closing price of $150, the shares were worth roughly $7.5 billion. According to Oracle’s latest quarterly filing, the sale plan was set up in late June.
Ahead of this disclosure, Oracle reported growth in its data center business revenue on Thursday, though shares dipped slightly as investors warned that its all-in AI bet was continuing to pressure margins.
The company’s stock price has fallen by more than half since it disclosed a $300 billion deal with OpenAI last September.
The 82-year-old Ellison is currently at the center of a series of major investments aimed at consolidating his family’s control over the US media industry
03 Anthropic Chooses Nasdaq for IPO Listing
According to people familiar with the matter, Anthropic PBC, the company behind the chatbot Claude, has chosen Nasdaq as the venue for a potentially record-breaking initial public offering (IPO). The company is seeking to raise as much as or more than SpaceX did, with the listing possible as early as October.
A Nasdaq listing would mark another win for the exchange this year, which has hosted four of the largest US IPOs, including SpaceX’s record $86.3 billion offering in June. Weeks later, SK Hynix raised $26.5 billion in its July debut. Business Insider earlier reported Anthropic’s choice of Nasdaq. Anthropic and Nasdaq declined to comment.
As Anthropic’s IPO preparations proceed, OpenAI Inc. CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk all said Saturday that the escalating risks posed by the technology make it necessary to slow the pace of AI development. Altman told Fortune that, for safety reasons, his company would not go public this year.
According to Bloomberg News, Anthropic is expected to have completed a $15 billion revolving credit facility earlier this month.
The AI race has fully ignited the IPO market — data compiled by Bloomberg shows US-listed companies have raised $160.6 billion this year, the most raised in a single year since 2021.
According to Bloomberg News, based on current performance, Anthropic’s annualized revenue is projected to exceed $65 billion, more than seven times its level at the end of last year
04 Trump Rejects Calls to Slow AI Development
This weekend, amid serious safety warnings over rapidly advancing model capabilities, the heads of several of America’s top AI organizations — Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and SpaceX’s Elon Musk — jointly called for a more cautious pace of development.
However, US President Trump made clear on Sunday that while establishing certain “safety guardrails” is possible, maintaining America’s international lead in the field remains the priority.
“Look, we’re leading in AI… frankly, I want to keep that lead, because whoever wins AI wins the future,” Trump told reporters on his way to his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland.
He added: “We can put up guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think there are a lot of negative forces stirring things up, asking questions that shouldn’t be asked, even blowing out of proportion things that will never happen.”
The remarks came two weeks before China’s president is expected to visit Washington for a summit with Trump. The two previously met in Beijing in May.
After the May summit, Trump revealed that the two leaders had discussed AI safety guardrails; Chinese state media also reported that the two heads of state agreed to establish an AI dialogue mechanism.
AI safety advocates hope the two sides will hold deeper discussions on this at the Washington summit, especially given that current bilateral dialogue has yet to produce any high-level meeting on the issue
05 Texas Governor Pauses Approval of New Data Center Projects
As state authorities work through a backlog of grid-connection applications for large projects, Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott has paused approval of all new data center projects until a special audit assessing grid capacity is completed.
Data center developers are scrambling amid the shifting regulatory rules.
Sentiment has shifted rapidly. In the “Lone Star State,” the data center industry once grew explosively, with developers flocking in to build capacity, drawn by business-friendly policies and cheap land.
Less than a year ago, when Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a $40 billion investment in Texas, Abbott publicly declared the state the “epicenter of AI development.”
Abbott’s embrace of the industry also echoes President Donald Trump’s stance. Trump has been a staunch advocate of AI and has warned that communities that reject data centers risk becoming “backward and poor”
06 Dell Family Office Acquires Insurance Brokerage
According to people familiar with the matter, tech billionaire Michael Dell’s family office is nearing a deal to take the $4.1 billion insurance brokerage The Baldwin Group private.
Dell’s DFO Management is in advanced talks with Baldwin, and the deal is expected to come at a premium, people familiar with the matter said. Barring any last-minute obstacles, the deal could be announced as early as next week.
Baldwin focuses on commercial insurance brokerage, primarily advising mid-size and large companies on purchasing policies ranging from cybersecurity and employee benefits to property insurance.
Baldwin’s potential take-private deal follows a major industry acquisition late last month, in which Aon acquired KKR-backed brokerage USI Insurance for $17 billion, a sale that netted New York-based private equity giant KKR $3.3 billion.
A successful acquisition of Baldwin would be one of the few full leveraged buyouts (LBOs) DFO has undertaken. As one of the world’s largest family offices managing Dell’s wealth, DFO’s predecessor, MSD Capital, jointly led a $24.9 billion leveraged buyout of Dell Technologies with Silver Lake Capital Management in 2013.
Recently, DFO also participated as a minority investor in a Silver Lake-led consortium’s acquisition of TikTok’s US business, as well as the take-private deal for entertainment giant Endeavor Holdings Group
07 Accident at Citadel’s Miami Headquarters Construction Site
On Monday morning, a serious equipment collapse occurred at the construction site of Citadel’s new headquarters in Miami’s Brickell financial district. A deep soil-mixing rig used for foundation work toppled unexpectedly, crushing several passing and parked vehicles and causing major traffic disruption in the area.
According to footage released by Miami Fire Rescue, the incident on Brickell Bay Drive left three vehicles severely damaged. A white BMW SUV caught fire after being struck by the collapsing metal structure, and continued smoking after the flames were put out. Fire department spokesperson Pete Sanchez confirmed that at least four people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
Sanchez said the BMW SUV burst into flames instantly when the incident occurred around 8 a.m., though the driver managed to escape in time and was not seriously injured. The operator of the soil-mixing rig and several other workers at the site were also taken to the hospital for precautionary checks and treatment.
The site of the accident is the future location of hedge fund giant Citadel’s new headquarters. Founder and CEO Ken Griffin plans to build a multibillion-dollar skyscraper there, having already spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring land and consolidating nearby properties. A historic cottage on the site, originally slated for relocation, narrowly avoided damage in the collapse. Sanchez also clarified that, despite initial reports describing the collapsed equipment as a crane, it was in fact a pile-driving rig used for foundation drilling.
As financial institutions and wealthy individuals flock in, Miami’s Brickell district is experiencing an unprecedented construction boom, with cranes now dotting the city skyline