Connect with us

Published

on

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, the largest in decades.

Gunman infiltrated areas of southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring: “We are at war.”

Dozens of people have reportedly been killed with hostages taken back to the Gaza Strip. Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities have been hit by rocket attacks, while Israel has responded with air strikes.

Vehicles on fire as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, Israel

An aerial view shows vehicles on fire as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel October 7, 2023. 

Ilan Rosenberg | Reuters

Palestinian militants ride an Israeli military vehicle

Palestinian militants ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip October 7, 2023. 

Ahmed Zakot | Reuters

Members of the Israeli forces take cover on the side of a street in Ashkelon

Members of the Israeli frorces take cover on the side of a street in Ashkelon as sirens wail while barrages of rockets are fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7, 2023. 

Ahmad Gharabli | Afp | Getty Images

Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, hold a Palestinian flag

Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades hold a Palestinian flag as they destroy a tank of Israeli forces in Gaza City, Gaza on October 07, 2023. 

Hani Alshaer | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu meets with the security cabinet

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (3rd L) holds a meeting with security cabinet in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 07, 2023.

Haim Zach | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Rockets are fired from Gaza City towards Israel

Rockets are fired from Gaza City towards Israel on October 7, 2023. 

Mohammed Abed | AFP | Getty Images

A building is ablaze following rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv, Israel 

A building is ablaze following rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, in Tel Aviv, Israel October 7, 2023. 

Itai Ron | Reuters

A wounded soldier arriving at the emergency entrance to the Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv 

A woman holds the hand of a wounded soldier arriving at the emergency entrance to the Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv following a Hamas incursion into Israeli settlements around the Gaza strip.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Journalists take cover as Israeli soldiers clash with Palestinian fighters near the Gevim Kibbutz

Journalists take cover behind cars as Israeli soldiers take position during clashes with Palestinian fighters near the Gevim Kibbutz, close to the border with Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Oren Ziv | Afp | Getty Images

Palestinians celebrate as they ride on an Israeli military vehicle

Palestinians celebrate as they ride on an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the southern Gaza Strip October 7, 2023. 

Staff | Reuters

Israeli soldiers work to secure residential areas

Israeli soldiers work to secure residential areas following a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel October 7, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Ammar Awad | Reuters

Palestinian militants move toward the border fence with Israel

Palestinian militants move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. 

Said Khatib | Afp | Getty Images

Palestinians inspect an ambulance hit by an Israeli strike

Palestinians inspect an ambulance hit by an Israeli strike, after Hamas gunmen launched a surprise attack against Israel, in the southern Gaza Strip, October 7, 2023.

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa | Reuters

Rocket barrages launched toward Israel from Gaza

Smoke rises following Israeli strikes in Gaza, October 7, 2023. 

Mohammed Salem | Reuters

Rockets are fired from Gaza toward Israel

A rocket is fired from Gaza toward Israel, in Gaza, October 7, 2023. 

Ibraheem Abu Mustafa | Reuters

Smoke and flames billow after Israeli forces struck a high-rise tower in Gaza City

Smoke and flames billow after Israeli forces struck a high-rise tower in Gaza City, October 7, 2023. 

Mohammed Salem | Reuters

Search and rescue efforts continue among rubbles of destroyed buildings after Israeli attacks in Gaza City,

Search and rescue efforts continue among rubbles of destroyed buildings after Israeli attacks in Gaza City, Gaza on October 07, 2023.

Mustafa Hassona | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

A man carries a crying child in front of a building destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City

A man carries a crying child as he walks in front of a building destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza City on October 7, 2023.

Mohammed Abed | Afp | Getty Images

—CNBC’s Adam Jeffery contributed to this article.

Continue Reading

Environment

Anthropic to triple international workforce in global AI push

Published

on

By

Anthropic to triple international workforce in global AI push

Pavlo Gonchar | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Anthropic is stepping up its global enterprise ambitions.

The $183 billion artificial intelligence startup has grown its business customer base from under 1,000 to more than 300,000 in just two years, as demand for Claude‘s models accelerates across industries and regions.

On Friday, the company announced it will triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold in 2025, as it scales beyond the U.S. and intensifies competition with OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

That expansion comes as international demand increasingly drives the company’s momentum.

Claude’s global usage has reached an inflection point: nearly 80% of activity now comes from outside the United States. On a per-person basis, adoption in countries like South Korea, Australia and Singapore has already surpassed that of the U.S.

In an exclusive interview, Chief Commercial Officer Paul Smith told CNBC that Anthropic’s international growth is outpacing even their most ambitious forecasts, with major customers coming online well before boots hit the ground. 

“What is amazing is we haven’t, up until recently, had significant human presence in Europe, in Japan, in our international markets, and yet we already have a very, very significant business over there,” said Smith. 

He pointed to rapid adoption in sectors like life sciences and sovereign wealth management.

At Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant behind Ozempic, Claude helped compress what’s typically a three-month analysis and reporting phase at the end of a drug development cycle into just a few days.

Smith said Anthropic is now ramping up hiring across its priority global markets.

The company is recruiting country leads for India, Australia and New Zealand, Korea, and Singapore, with broader expansion underway across the UK, northern and southern Europe, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

As part of its international push, Anthropic is opening its first Asia office in Tokyo and scaling operations across Europe — including more than 100 new roles in Dublin and London and a research-focused hub in Zurich. Additional locations are expected to follow in the coming months.

The global expansion is being spearheaded by Chris Ciauri, who recently joined Anthropic as managing director of international. A longtime enterprise veteran, Ciauri previously served as CEO of Unily and held senior roles at Google Cloud and Salesforce, where he worked alongside Smith and helped grow EMEA revenue from $200 million to more than $3 billion. 

“G20 governments are approaching us about doing really, really interesting things at a citizen enablement level,” he told CNBC, adding that large companies across Europe and Asia are also now engaging Anthropic on industry-specific use cases.

Anthropic hits $183 billion valuation

A new front in the AI wars

Anthropic’s push abroad comes as the enterprise AI race enters a more mature and competitive phase.

The company recently hit a $5 billion revenue run-rate, up from $87 million at the start of 2024, fueled by growing demand for its Claude family of models in enterprise environments.

That milestone puts Anthropic squarely in competition with the incumbents. 

OpenAI this week launched an $850 billion global infrastructure expansion with Oracle, Nvidia, and SoftBank to support continued growth. Microsoft and Google, meanwhile, are embedding AI into every layer of their productivity, cloud, and developer ecosystems — making it easier for CIOs to tack on tools like Copilot or Gemini without overhauling their stack.

Anthropic is betting that companies want more than an add-on.

The pitch is a pure-play AI experience, with direct access to Claude’s frontier models — not just a wrapper inside legacy software. That strategy has become a key point of differentiation as enterprises shift from experimentation to implementation at scale.

Across sectors, organizations are now embedding AI into core workflows, not just for summarization or chat, but for tasks like customer service, fraud detection, regulatory analysis, code review, and complex decision-making.

Still, Smith said most large enterprises are adopting hybrid strategies combining direct access to Claude with integrations through AWS, Google Cloud, and other third-party platforms, and emphasized that these partnerships are additive, not competitive.

“There’s a very good reason why, if you’re an AWS customer, you should also consume Anthropic through Bedrock — and if you’re a great Google customer, through Vertex,” he said. 

Ultimately, he said, an enterprise will have a multi-faceted relationship with a player like Anthropic.

Anthropic’s applied AI team, which helps customers deploy Claude at scale, is set to grow fivefold in the next year.

Unlike some rivals, the company doesn’t rely on productivity suite integration or a legacy install base. Its focus is on building deep, domain-specific systems tailored to verticals like telecom, pharmaceuticals, financial services, and government.

“You need the applied AI team that understands their particular industry context,” Smith said.

He explained that true enterprise deployment also requires a broader ecosystem: both large global systems integrators and niche consultancies trained to implement Claude Code and build custom agents.

Anthropic is also investing in 24/7 support and infrastructure for data sovereignty — especially important for customers in regulated sectors.

OpenAI accelerates global expansion to win enterprise deals directly from customers

“We’re meticulously working through everything that you need that removes the barriers to adoption in these very large enterprises,” Smith said, emphasizing that enterprise isn’t just one part of their business, it’s the entire focus.

At the same time, OpenAI has been aggressively scaling its international enterprise efforts.

OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap has grown the company’s go-to-market team from about 50 to more than 700 over the past 18 months, spanning sales, customer success, developer relations, and strategic partnerships. 

Last month, OpenAI opened offices in Brazil, India, and Australia — and this week in Abilene, Texas, CEO Sam Altman told CNBC that usage of ChatGPT has surged roughly tenfold over the past 18 months, thanks in large part to growth on the enterprise side.

That momentum continued on Thursday, when OpenAI deepened its enterprise reach with a formal integration into Databricks — signaling a new phase in its push for commercial adoption.

Anthropic taps Gulf wealth: $13B raise brings in Qatar’s sovereign fund at $183B valuation

Claude’s global customer base

As enterprise AI adoption accelerates, so too does scrutiny.

A recent MIT study found that many so-called deployments have shown little to no measurable impact — raising real questions about how deeply these tools are actually being integrated. But Anthropic executives say Claude is already delivering tangible results at scale.

Across Europe and Asia-Pacific, Claude is powering core enterprise operations.

At Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Claude helps analyze multi-billion-dollar investments and has already saved 213,000 hours, a 20% productivity gain across 9,000 portfolio companies.

Novo Nordisk cut clinical documentation time from more than 10 weeks to 10 minutes and halved review cycles. SK Telecom, which is deploying Claude in Korea as part of a company-wide AI overhaul, boosted customer service quality by 34%. The European Parliament made millions of historical documents searchable and translatable, and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia slashed scam losses by 50%.

“The demand signal we’ve got is unprecedented. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” said Smith. “There isn’t a single enterprise in the world where they don’t have some kind of software development backlog.”

Smith said Claude Code, launched in May, is already a $500 million product, with usage up 10x in just three months.

“It’s one of the fastest-growing products that’s ever been launched,” he said. “It’s an entry point. Happens to be an incredibly popular entry point right now.”

But the impact goes well beyond software development.

Localization — both linguistic and cultural — is part of what Ciauri sees as a key differentiator. He pointed to Panasonic’s Claude integration as an example, with the Japanese conglomerate using their models tailored to local language and cultural context.  

“That’s a super important differentiator as you think about how you really maximize results for enterprise,” said Ciauri.

“You get these pockets of success,” Smith added, “that you can then start to scale.”

WATCH: AI firms pull in $65 billion so far this year, claiming 77% of venture dollars

AI firms pull in $65 billion so far this year, claiming 77% of venture dollars

Continue Reading

Environment

XPeng (XPEV) continues global expansion, announcing entry into five additional EU markets

Published

on

By

XPeng (XPEV) continues global expansion, announcing entry into five additional EU markets

XPeng Motors is making good on previously shared plans to expand to 60 global markets this year, many of which already include countries in the EU. The Chinese automaker announced five new markets and some pop-ups in additional regions as it continues its quest to become a household name in BEVs.

As we reported in late 2024, an internal letter from XPeng Motors ($XPEV) founder and CEO He Xiaopeng outlined the company’s goals for 2025 and long-term targets to continue global growth in hopes of becoming a household name in EVs. Per the letter, XPeng is striving to become a leading global AI car company in products, business, organization, and globalization within the next ten years.

At the end of last year, XPeng Motors had already entered 30 countries and regions, but the company shared goals to boost that number to over 60 countries by the end of 2025. XPeng’s current footprint in the EU includes Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

Europe has and will continue to play a massive role in XPeng’s expansion plans, which, until today, most recently included the addition of Italy. Today, XPeng announced plans to sell its EVs in five additional EU markets, bringing the total to over 20 regional markets.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

XPeng EU
Source: XPeng Motors/Weibo

XPeng expands EU footprint with entry into Austria, more

XPeng Motors shared details of its latest EU expansion in a Weibo post on Thursday evening local time. Here’s what it said.

XPeng Motors accelerates its European expansion! It has officially launched in five markets: Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia, with the simultaneous debut of several popular new models, accelerating its globalization efforts.

Going forward, XPeng will continue its expansion into Europe, redefining the driving experience with intelligent technology and allowing more users to experience the exceptional charm of ‘Made in China.’

I could have sworn XPeng already has a presence in Switzerland, but it’s certainly official now alongside four other gorgeous markets in the EU. Per CnEVPost, the Chinese automaker has partnered with European mobility service provider Hedin Group in Switzerland. It plans to launch its 2025 G6 and G9 SUV models first, followed by the P7+ sedan in the first half of 2026.

In Austria, XPeng plans to use the same dealership network strategy it deployed in Germany. Sales will begin in October with ten locations before expanding to 20 next year. Lastly, operations in the remaining three EU markets (Croatia, Hungary, and Slovenia) will be managed by a joint venture with XPeng, AutoWallis Group, and Salvador Caetano Group.

XPeng also shared plans for pop-up stores in Budapest, Ljubljana, and Zagreb this fall, where it will showcase its 2025 G6 and G9 BEVs. Perhaps we will see official entry into those markets next. It’s very possible!

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Environment

Lucid and NFL star Travis Kelce turn EV test drives into $87 donations for a good cause

Published

on

By

Lucid and NFL star Travis Kelce turn EV test drives into  donations for a good cause

The Kelce Car Jam is back, baby. Hosted by one of the NFL’s hottest stars (and Taylor Swift’s new fiancé), Travis Kelce, Lucid Motors (LCID) will be at the event, offering the chance to test drive its luxury electric vehicles. For every EV test drive, Lucid pledges to donate $87 to Kelce’s Eighty-Seven and Running Foundation.

Lucid donates to Travis Kelce Foundation for test drives

With Gravity production ramping up at its plant in Arizona, luxury EV maker Lucid plans to put the electric SUV to good use this weekend.

Fresh off his first win of the season, Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced on his New Heights podcast that the Kelce Car Jam will kick off in Kansas City this Friday.

Kelce is promising to bring out some “new old schools,” including a ’99 Jeep Wrangler with woodgrain on the side, but a new generation of vehicles will also make an appearance.

Advertisement – scroll for more content

Lucid will be at the event offering the chance to test drive two all-electric luxury vehicles, the Air and its new Gravity SUV.

“Lucid is a technology company looking to drive change around the world,” the company’s senior vice president of marketing, Akerho Oghoghomeh, said, adding that “our tour stop with Eighty-Seven & Running at the Kelce Car Jam in Kansas City is one way we’re leaving our mark in the community.”

Lucid-Gravity-Travis-Kelce
The Lucid Gravity SUV (Source: Lucid)

For every test drive, Lucid said it will donate $87 to Kelce’s Eighty-Seven & Running Foundation, which is designed to help underserved youth in Kansas City and his hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Kelce founded Eighty-Seven & Running in 2015 to mentor disadvantaged youth, help develop their skills, and motivate them to reach their full potential. He said that after growing up in the diverse suburbs of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, he wanted to help those who weren’t fortunate enough to have the same support or opportunities as others.

Lucid-Travis-Kelce
The Lucid Air luxury electric sedan (Source: Lucid)

The Eighty-Seven & Running Foundation hosts fundraising events, athletic programs, mentoring initiatives, and outreach programs to support the cause.

Since it started offering test drives, Lucid’s interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said the Gravity SUVs’ daily order rate has nearly doubled. Winterhoff claimed this week during an interview with Brew Markets that the Gravity has “so many orders,” it’s honoring the $7,500 federal tax credit until the end of the year.

The Kelce Car Jam kicks off Friday, September 26, 2025, at 5 pm. Are you attending the event? Tag us on social media if you find the Lucid booth. You can find Lucid at the following locations:

  • Friday, Sept 26, 7 am – 11 am
    Messenger Coffee – Grand Blvd
  • Saturday, Sept 27, 8 am – 3 pm
    City Market – Farmers Market
  • Monday, Sept 29, 7 am – 11 am
    Messenger Coffee – Grand Blvd

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Continue Reading

Trending