Tech Pulse Daily - December 12, 2025

Anthropic Releases 3 New Claude AI Safety Upgrades

Anthropic has announced three significant upgrades to Claude focusing on AI safety, introducing new features for transparency, introspection, and safer reasoning capabilities.

• Transparency Features: New mechanisms for Claude to explain its reasoning process and uncertainty levels
• Introspection Capabilities: Enhanced ability for Claude to recognize its own limitations and potential biases
• Safer Reasoning: Improved guardrails for handling sensitive topics and edge cases
• Developer Impact: API users will see these safety improvements in all Claude models

Read Anthropic's official announcement →

George Osborne Joins OpenAI to Lead Government Partnerships

Former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has been appointed as Managing Director at OpenAI to lead "OpenAI for Countries," a new initiative focused on government partnerships worldwide.

• New Role: Managing Director and Head of "OpenAI for Countries" initiative
• Mission: Ensuring AI benefits are shared widely and developed responsibly across nations
• Focus Areas: Working with governments on local AI capacity, skills development, and public service transformation
• Background: Osborne served as UK Chancellor from 2010-2016 and has extensive experience in global policy

Learn more about OpenAI for Countries →

Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab Raises Record $2B Seed Round

Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has secured an unprecedented $2 billion seed financing round, signaling massive investor confidence in her vision for next-generation AI.

• Funding Amount: $2 billion seed round - one of the largest seed rounds in tech history
• Founder Background: Mira Murati served as CTO at OpenAI, overseeing GPT-4 and DALL-E development
• Company Focus: Building next-generation AI systems with novel approaches to reasoning
• Industry Impact: Represents growing competition in the foundation model space

Read full funding coverage →

OpenAI and BBVA Partner to Transform Global Banking

OpenAI has announced a strategic collaboration with BBVA, one of the world's largest financial institutions, to revolutionize banking services through AI integration.

• Partnership Scope: Enterprise-wide AI deployment across BBVA's global operations
• Use Cases: Customer service automation, risk assessment, and personalized banking
• Geographic Reach: Implementation across BBVA's markets in Europe, Americas, and Asia
• Developer Opportunity: Financial API integrations expected to emerge from partnership

Microsoft 365 Copilot Now Includes Anthropic Claude Models

Microsoft has expanded its AI model offerings in Microsoft 365 Copilot to include Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 alongside OpenAI models.

• New Models: Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 now available in Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Researcher Agent: Claude models power the new Researcher agent for complex research tasks
• User Choice: Enterprise users can now choose between OpenAI and Anthropic models
• Integration: Seamless switching between models within the Copilot interface