Technology

Amazon-backed Anthropic debuts AI agents that can do complex tasks, racing against OpenAI, Microsoft and Google

Published

1 year ago

October 22, 2024

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Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.

Chesnot | Getty Images

Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup founded by former OpenAI research executives, announced Tuesday that it’s reached an artificial intelligence milestone for the company: AI agents that can use a computer to complete complex tasks like a human would.

Anthropic is the company behind Claude — one of the chatbots that, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, has exploded in popularity. Startups like Anthropic, alongside tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, are all part of a generative AI arms race to ensure they don’t fall behind in a market predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.

Anthropic’s new Computer Use capability, part of its two newest AI models, allows its tech to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing.

The tool can “use computers in basically the same way that we do,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview, adding it can do tasks with “tens or even hundreds of steps.”

Amazon had early access to the tool, Anthropic told CNBC, and early customers and beta testers included Asana, Canva and Notion. The company has been working on the tool since early this year, according to Kaplan.

Anthropic released the feature Tuesday in public beta for developers. The team hopes to open up use to consumers and enterprise clients over the next few months, or early next year, per Kaplan.

Anthropic said that future consumer applications include booking flights, scheduling appointments, filling out forms, conducting online research and filing expense reports.

“We want Claude to be able to actually assist people with all sorts of different kinds of work, and we think the chatbot setup is fairly limited because you can ask a question and [get] context but it stops there,” Kaplan told CNBC.

What is an AI agent?

After the viral popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the industry quickly moved past text responses into AI-generated photos, videos and voice. Now, startups and Big Tech alike are going all in on AI agents.

Rather than just providing answers — the realm of chatbots and image generators — agents are built for productivity and to complete multistep, complex tasks on a user’s behalf. And though the term isn’t neatly defined across the tech sector, AI agents are viewed as a step beyond chatbots, in that they’re typically designed for specific business functions and can be customized on large AI models. Think of J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony Stark’s multifaceted AI assistant from the Marvel Universe.

Grace Isford, a partner at venture firm Lux Capital, told CNBC in June that there’s been a “dramatic increase” in interest among tech investors in startups focused on building AI agents. They’ve collectively raised hundreds of millions of dollars and seen their valuations climb alongside the broader generative AI market.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on an earnings call earlier this year that he wants to offer an AI agent that can complete more tasks on a user’s behalf, though there is “a lot of execution ahead.” Executives from Meta and Google have also touted their work in pushing AI agents to become increasingly productive.

Anthropic is competing with OpenAI on multiple fronts

Anthropic has become one of the hottest AI startups since it released the first version of Claude in March 2023, a product that directly competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in both the enterprise and consumer markets, without any consumer access or major fanfare. Backers include Google, Salesforce and Amazon, Since January, it has introduced iOS and Android apps, a Team plan for businesses, and an international expansion into Europe.

″[We’re] moving to a world where these models will behave much more like virtual collaborators than virtual assistants,” Scott White, a product manager at Anthropic, told CNBC in September.

Anthropic’s Tuesday announcements are the latest step in its long-term strategy to build those virtual collaborators, or agents.

Last month, Anthropic rolled out Claude Enterprise, its biggest new product since its chatbot’s debut, designed for businesses looking to integrate Anthropic’s AI. The enterprise product’s beta testers and early clients included GitLab, Midjourney and Menlo Ventures, according to the company.

Claude Enterprise allows clients to upload relevant documents with a much larger context window than before — the equivalent of 100 30-minute sales conversations, 100,000 lines of code or 15 full financial reports, according to Anthropic. The plan also allows “activity feeds” for super-users within a company to show those newer to AI how others are using the technology, White said.

The Claude Enterprise launch followed Anthropic’s June debut of its more powerful Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and its May rollout of its “Team” plan for smaller businesses.

In June, Anthropic also announced “Artifacts,” which it said allows a user to ask its Claude chatbot to, for example, generate a text document or code and then opens the result in a dedicated window.

Artifacts, or “workspaces” that allow users to “see, edit and build upon Claude’s creations in real time,” White told CNBC in September, will allow Anthropic’s enterprise-level clients to create marketing calendars, feed in sales data, make dashboards or forecasts, draft code for features, write legal documents, summarize complex contracts, automate legal tasks and more.

Shortly after Anthropic’s debut of Teams in May, Mike Krieger, co-founder and former chief technology officer of Meta-owned Instagram, joined the company as chief product officer. Under Krieger, the platform grew to 1 billion users and its engineering team increased to more than 450 people, according to a press release. OpenAI’s former safety leader, Jan Leike, joined the company that same month.

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Technology

SpaceX aims for $800 billion valuation in secondary share sale, WSJ reports

Published

5 hours ago

December 6, 2025

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SpaceX aims for 0 billion valuation in secondary share sale, WSJ reports

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is initiating a secondary share sale that would give the company a valuation of up to $800 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

SpaceX is also telling some investors it will consider going public possibly around the end of next year, the report said.

At the elevated price, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor would be valued above ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which wrapped up a share sale at a $500 billion valuation in October.

SpaceX has been investing heavily in reusable rockets, launch facilities and satellites, while competing for government contracts with newer space players, including Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin. SpaceX is far ahead, and operates the world’s largest network of satellites in low earth orbit through Starlink, which powers satellite internet services under the same brand name.

A SpaceX IPO would include its Starlink business, which the company previously considered spinning out.

Musk recently discussed whether SpaceX would go public during Tesla‘s annual shareholders meeting last month. Musk, who is the CEO of both companies, said he doesn’t love running publicly traded businesses, in part because they draw “spurious lawsuits,” and can “make it very difficult to operate effectively.”

However, Musk said during the meeting that he wanted to “try to figure out some way for Tesla shareholders to participate in SpaceX,” adding, “maybe at some point, SpaceX should become a public company despite all the downsides.”

WATCH: What retail investors should know about OpenAI and SpaceX

Technology

Judge finalizes remedies in Google antitrust case

Published

6 hours ago

December 5, 2025

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Judge finalizes remedies in Google antitrust case

The logo for Google LLC is seen at the Google Store Chelsea in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 17, 2021.

Andrew Kelly | Reuters

A U.S. judge on Friday finalized his decision for the consequences Google will face for its search monopoly ruling, adding new details to the decided remedies.

Last year, Google was found to hold an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search, and in September, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most severe consequences that were proposed by the Department of Justice.

That included the proposal of a forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser, which provides data that helps the company’s advertising business deliver targeted ads. Alphabet shares popped 8% in extended trading as investors celebrated what they viewed as minimal consequences from a historic defeat last year in the landmark antitrust case.

Investors largely shrugged off the ruling as non-impactful to Google. However some told CNBC it’s still a bite that could “sting.”

Mehta on Friday issued additional details for his ruling in new filings.

“The age-old saying ‘the devil is in the details’ may not have been devised with the drafting of an antitrust remedies judgment in mind, but it sure does fit,” Mehta wrote in one of the Friday filings.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company has previously said it will appeal the remedies.

In August 2024, Mehta ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act and held a monopoly in search and related advertising. The antitrust trial started in September 2023.

In his September decision, Mehta said the company would be able to make payments to preload products, but it could not have exclusive contracts that condition payments or licensing. Google was also ordered to loosen its hold on search data. Mehta in September also ruled that Google would have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data, though “not ads data.”

The DOJ had asked Google to stop the practice of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.

The judge’s September ruling didn’t end the practice entirely — Mehta ruled out that Google couldn’t enter into exclusive deals, which was a win for the company. Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to be the default search engine on iPhones. It’s lucrative for Apple and a valuable way for Google to get more search volume and users.

Mehta’s new details

In the Friday filings, Mehta wrote that Google cannot enter into any deal like the one it’s had with Apple “unless the agreement terminates no more than one year after the date it is entered.”

This includes deals involving generative artificial intelligence products, including any “application, software, service, feature, tool, functionality, or product” that involve or use genAI or large-language models, Mehta wrote.

GenAI “plays a significant role in these remedies,” Mehta wrote.

The judge also reiterated the web index data it will require Google to share with certain competitors.

Google has to share some of the raw search interaction data it uses to train its ranking and AI systems, but it does not have to share the actual algorithms — just the data that feeds them.” In September, Mehta said those data sets represent a “small fraction” of Google’s overall traffic, but argued the company’s models are trained on data that contributed to Google’s edge over competitors.

The company must make this data available to qualified competitors at least twice, one of the Friday filing states. Google must share that data in a “syndication license” model whose term will be five years from the date the license is signed, the filing states.

Mehta on Friday also included requirements on the makeup of a technical committee that will determine the firms Google must share its data with.

Committee “members shall be experts in some combination of software engineering, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, economics, behavioral science, and data privacy and data security,” the filing states.

The judge went on to say that no committee member can have a conflict of interest, such as having worked for Google or any of its competitors in the six months prior to or one year after serving in the role.

Google is also required to appoint an internal compliance officer that will be responsible “for administering Google’s antitrust compliance program and helping to ensure compliance with this Final Judgment,” per one of the filings. The company must also appoint a senior business executive “whom Google shall make available to update the Court on Google’s compliance at regular status conferences or as otherwise ordered.”

This is breaking news. Check back for updates.