{"slug": "anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club", "title": "Anthropic just added a velvet rope to the AI club", "summary": "Anthropic has introduced a tiered access system for its AI models, creating a 'velvet rope' that limits access to certain users. The move comes as the company seeks to manage demand and prioritize high-value customers, signaling a shift in AI availability.", "body_md": "# Anthropic just added a velvet rope to the AI club\n\n## And: Long live the drone boats.\n\n**Wednesday.** I’m helping host an investor panel on ** TWiST** this afternoon, so today’s missive will be slightly shorter than usual.\n\nThis morning, we’re talking drone boats, AI cost control in the context of historical cloud expenses, AI joy and market selection, what to look for in **Oracle**‘s earnings today, and two-tier AI. To work! **— Alex**\n\n## 📈 Trending Up\n\n[SaaS hiring](https://x.com/JaredSleeper/status/2064358048932442296)…[the Iran War](https://nypost.com/2026/06/10/us-news/president-trump-readying-new-strikes-on-iranian-power-plants-bridges-have-to-pay-the-price/)…[or not](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/09/jd-vance-iran-peace-deal)? …[public corruption](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/world/europe/world-cup-infantino-trump.html)([really](https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/09/politics/ufc-trump-organization-coins)!) …[Siri, incredibly](https://www.theverge.com/tech/947432/siri-ai-apple-intelligence-ios-27-wwdc)…[the value of power generation](https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/119704/Gas-generator-provider-ERock-prices-IPO-at-$21.50-the-midpoint-of-the-range)([really](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/10/why-everyones-an-energy-company-now/)!) …[European defense startups](https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-eyes-developing-new-joint-military-capabilities-to-curb-reliance-on-us/)? …[AI compute buildout](https://about.fb.com/news/2026/06/meta-partners-with-reliance-on-ai-enabled-data-center-in-india/)…\n\n**Inflation:** May saw prices increase yet again, with the U.S. government [reporting ](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm)that the consumer price index (CPI) rose 0.5% last month, bringing inflation to 4.2% (up from 3.8% in April) compared to last year. On a core basis (excluding food and energy), CPI rose 0.2% in the month, bringing the adjusted inflation rate for consumers to 2.9% (up from 2.8% in April).\n\n- Headline numbers were in line with expectations, though core CPI gains were\n[slightly lower than the market predicted](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/10/cpi-inflation-report-may-2026.html). Still, inflation is rising, and that’s bad news for tech stocks hoping for a rate cut. - Stocks are down.\n\n**Drone bots:** We [bemoaned](https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/bending-spoons-is-the-anti-ai-play/) the state of American shipbuilding the other day, especially now that Chinese shipyards are churning out warships far faster than they used to, while the United States falls behind on submarine construction.\n\nStill, we gave a shout-out to a few drone-boat companies (both above- and underwater) that are working to ameliorate our national deficit: **Saronic**, **Blue Water Autonomy**, and **Vatn Systems**.\n\nIt seems our compliments were well-timed. The government just said that the pilots rescued in the Middle East after their helicopter was shot down [were saved by an unmanned surface vessel (USV) made by Saronic](https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2026/06/saronic-usv-rescues-two-u-s-army-pilots-downed-by-iran/). *Nice*.\n\n- I was not aware that Saronic’s boats were already in active service; consider me caught up.\n**Anduril** is also in the drone game, naturally, and has a[bunch of underwater drones](https://www.anduril.com/sea/seapower).\n\nThe fact that drone boats are now operating in several theaters of war is an indication of where the future of warfare is heading. Both ground- and water-based combat is increasingly unmanned and autonomous today, and governments are spending to stay on top. And it’s not just the United States and China. [The European drone game is strong](https://www.euractiv.com/news/german-startup-unveils-heavy-lift-drone-aimed-at-frontline-military-resupply/); they have a war on their doorstep, after all.\n\n**Startups working on AI cost control:** When **AWS** was new, [price cuts were de rigeur](https://thenextweb.com/news/amazon-web-services-cuts-s3-request-prices-by-up-to-60-making-data-retrieval-a-great-deal-cheaper). **Microsoft **had to [compete on price when bringing Azure out of preview](https://thenextweb.com/news/azure-takes-its-iaas-service-into-general-availability-makes-new-promise-to-match-amazons-aws-pricing). But over time, the costs of using cloud storage and compute rose; suddenly, this brilliant idea of using pooled, shared compute from a centralized host started looking more expensive than cheap. Entire businesses\n\n[were built](https://zesty.co/)to help AWS and Azure customers save money.\n\nThe AI era is trending along similar lines, but within a fraction of the time. Service providers are following the money. **CloudZero**, [previously focused on cloud optimization](https://www.cloudzero.com/blog/closing-our-series-b/), now pitches itself as “the AI ROI company.” It still does cloud stuff, but clearly, the largest pain point for enterprise companies today is their AI spending.\n\nTools are getting better, too. **Larridin**, which bills itself as “[the measurement and optimization layer for enterprise AI](https://larridin.com/),” just launched a product that tracks AI expenditure, providing an “attribution layer that connects [AI] spending to the teams, agents, workflows, and decisions that drive it.” I don’t mean to endorse Larridin (though [ Homebrew backed it](https://homebrew.co/blog/2025/03/31/larridin-raises-usd17-million-to-help-companies-rethink-productivity-management-for-a-world-of-ai), shout-out\n\n[Hunter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunterwalk/)). I merely want to point out that we’re seeing\n\n*many*startups tackle this problem with increasingly sophisticated tools.\n\n- The cloud got expensive; spend got smarter; the cloud has never been bigger.\n- AI is getting expensive; spend will get smarter; AI will continue to grow.\n\n[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html) Trending Down\n\n[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html)\n\n[The yen](https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/asian-currencies-weaken-against-u-s-dollar-ahead-of-cpi-data-9e112c11)…[Indian GDP growth](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/rbi-gdp-growth-forecast-fy-2026-27-mpc-meeting-india-economic-outlook-gdp-forecast-india/articleshow/131519300.cms?from=mdr)…[deflation in China](https://www.ft.com/content/6f6a385c-b9ac-47c2-a4d1-72e27bf2a8fc?syn-25a6b1a6=1)…[Nancy Mace](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/10/nancy-maces-trashing-south-carolina-governors-race-caps-rough-downfall/)…[China-Taiwan relations](https://www.wsj.com/world/china/taiwan-test-fires-u-s-supplied-missile-launcher-toward-china-c23b4f44)…[TFR in India](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/9/indias-fertility-rate-falls-below-replacement-level-why-it-matters)…[EU-Apple relations](https://apnews.com/article/siri-ai-europe-apple-5d18df90b03e4e98ac528c8802e2b531)…\n\n**AI joys:** As a daily **Notion** user, I have watched the service expand its remit during the AI era. Mostly, I use Notion to handle a dense collection of show and interview notes, schedules, assets, and other operational details that make the podcast tick. I’m but a small part of the overall team, but it lives and runs on Notion, so I am now a power user of the service.\n\nEnter complaints on **X** about Notion’s inclusion of AI. [Is the company losing its focus](https://x.com/ItzSuds/status/2064444421039587471)? But what I found magical is that, in the comments, a former investor and a founder had utterly different takes:\n\nIs Notion making a mistake by not wasting time in adopting and integrating AI? I can tell you that its [transcription tools](https://www.notion.com/product/ai-meeting-notes) are a godsend. Does that make me a Notion AI WAU? Maybe.\n\nStartups that had popular products before AI are still trying to figure out how to meet the moment. Should you redesign your entire company, [à la Intercom‘s metamorphosis into Fin](https://www.intercom.com/blog/today-intercom-becomes-fin/)? Should you add AI to your existing products without changing\n\n*how*they work?\n\nNo matter what you choose, some users will be upset. A slice of your user base (existing and potential) will want more AI; others will hate you for including it at all. But if the future is moving in one direction, which way do *you* lean?\n\nWould you trade a little gross retention today for, potentially, much more net-dollar retention tomorrow?\n\n**Market sentiment:** Cloud giant **Oracle** [reports quarterly results](https://investor.oracle.com/investor-news/news-details/2026/Oracle-Sets-the-Date-for-its-Fourth-Quarter-Fiscal-Year-2026-Earnings-Announcement/default.aspx) later today. The market expects it to post a solid improvement in revenue (~20%), but we should be paying attention to the numbers inside that headline figure.\n\nInvestors anticipate Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to grow revenue by around 90%, up from 84% in the previous quarter. How much backlog Oracle’s compute business reports will matter, too; if the company’s long-term AI compute revenue commitments look weak, the signal could wash the market red. Tech companies are currently valued quite richly, remember.\n\n- More on Oracle’s results tomorrow, but if you are around after the bell, it’s an earnings call worth tuning into.\n\n## Two-tier AI is gonna be weird\n\nYesterday, **Anthropic **[dropped ](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5)a version of its Mythos model called Fable 5 that comes lobotimized in the cybersecurity and biology niches, and a very high price tag. Fable 5 costs twice what Opus 4.8 lists for.\n\nAnd, the market is *eating it up*. Despite all the clamor about stratospheric AI costs, Claude Fable 5 is seeing [soaring demand over on OpenRouter](https://openrouter.ai/anthropic/claude-fable-5#providers)\n\n**(though the USG might be driving much of the recorded usage).**\n\nThe issue is not that Fable 5 is expensive — no one *has *to use it, after all — but that it codifies a two-tier AI market. People in tech [are worried](https://x.com/mvanhorn/status/2064524079303106890) about this new age. Before, AI labs made new models and rushed them to market, and their value was derived according to their model’s performance. Companies even [rushed](https://unusualwhales.com/news/google-employees-fear-that-their-company-is-cutting-corners-to-compete-with-chatgpt) security work to meet incentives.\n\nNo longer. After keeping Mythos under wraps and only allowing a small group of governments and companies to access it early to identify and patch cybersecurity vulnerabilities, Anthropic chose not to make the product generally available.\n\nMythos is still restricted, and even the market-friendly Fable model will fall back to Opus 4.8 if you try to use it for something it [considers spicy](https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-fable-5-mythos-5). Anthropic is one of the two best companies in the world for building AI models. It’s also the most willing to apply ethics to its release schedule rather than follow market norms.\n\nThe result is a cautious AI lab has added a velvet rope to the AI club. You must be *this *important to access the VIP Fable Room, and most people (companies included) are not.\n\nWhy is it dangerous for AI to have inner and outer circles of access? Incumbency protection. If Anthropic opens up Mythos only to companies with the most potential bugs, then smaller companies without sufficient clout to secure an invite will be less secure and relegated to second-rate AI.\n\nI’m not saying Fable 5 is not a capable model. Its benchmarks are insane, and it’s rated by **Artificial Analysis** as the [world’s smartest AI](https://artificialanalysis.ai/#intelligence). Still, no one today wants second-rate AI if their competitors are getting something better.\n\nAs AI gets better, security concerns will force more labs to follow in Anthropic’s footsteps. Would the CCP allow **DeepSeek** to release a Mythos equivalent before using it internally? Probably not, if ever, I suppose.\n\nIt appears the era of open AI releases is behind us. Here on out, us plebs will be fighting over the silver medal. Alas.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club", "canonical_source": "https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club/", "published_at": "2026-06-10 17:05:09+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-15 11:22:37.062342+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Anthropic"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/anthropic-just-added-a-velvet-rope-to-the-ai-club.jsonld"}}