THE SWELL #2
SAIL Weekly Digest January 26 – 30 | Issue #2
This week, SAIL contributors tackled the hard economics of AI—from OpenAI’s cost structure to how large models are changing who gets hired. We explored China’s fast-moving AI ecosystem from several perspectives. On Thursday Live, Jasmine Sun, Irene Zhang and Kai Williams unpacked Dario Amodei’s essay, the Claude Constitution, and the growing debate around Claude Code. →Watch the replay.
The Week in AI
Chinese AI firms accelerate model releases — One year after DeepSeek’s R1 shook markets, Moonshot AI unveiled Kimi K2.5 claiming to outperform leading U.S. models; Alibaba and others racing to keep pace
OpenAI, Anthropic IPOs expected in 2026 — Market watchers anticipate floats at $500B and $350B valuations respectively, with OpenAI rumored to target $1T
Anthropic donates MCP to Linux Foundation — Model Context Protocol, the “USB-C for AI,” moves to new Agentic AI Foundation; OpenAI and Microsoft have publicly embraced the standard
This Week from SAIL Authors
AI Economics & Talent
Inside OpenAI’s unit economics — Forensic analysis finds OpenAI likely failed to recoup GPT-5 development costs during its 4-month lifetime. Exponential View [→ Read more]
China & Global AI
“DeepSeek Moment” Anniversary in a Nashville Snowpocalypse — Reflections on what the past year’s AI developments mean for U.S.-China competition. Interconnected [→ Read more]
Arcee AI goes all-in on open models built in the U.S. — A 72-minute deep dive on building competitive open-source models domestically. Interconnects [→ Read more]
AI in Practice
Could Claude Code Work for ChinaTalk? — Testing whether AI coding assistants can handle real podcast production workflows. ChinaTalk [→ Read more]
An unlikely ally for open-source protein-folding models: Big Pharma — Drug companies funding open-source AI to avoid dependency on tech giants. Understanding AI [→ Read more]
Analysis & Essays
The end of the fictions — The operating system of civilization is upgrading. Exponential View [→ Read more]
Exponential View #558: Davos & reinventing the world; OpenAI's funk — Weekly roundup on global affairs and AI industry dynamics. Exponential View [→ Read more]
How “95%” escaped into the world — and why so many believed it — Tracing the origins and spread of a viral AI statistic. Exponential View [→ Read more]
Data to start your week — Companies embrace AI; bots read the documents. Exponential View [→ Read more]
Full Library
How “95%” escaped into the world — Azeem Azhar & Hannah Petrovic | Exponential View
Inside OpenAI’s unit economics — Azeem Azhar & Hannah Petrovic | Exponential View
An unlikely ally for open-source protein-folding models: Big Pharma — Kai Williams | Understanding AI
The end of the fictions — Azeem Azhar | Exponential View
Exponential View #558: Davos & reinventing the world; OpenAI's funk — Azeem Azhar & Nathan Warren | Exponential View
Arcee AI goes all-in on open models built in the U.S. — Nathan Lambert | Interconnects
“DeepSeek Moment” Anniversary in a Nashville Snowpocalypse — Kevin Xu | Interconnected
Could Claude Code Work for ChinaTalk? — Irene Zhang | ChinaTalk
($) Data to start your week — Azeem Azhar & Hannah Petrovic | Exponential View
Join us next Thursday for our weekly Substack Live!
