Today in AI — 27 May 2026

Sam Altman says the jobs apocalypse he once predicted probably won't happen. Intuit has cut over 3,000 jobs to "refocus on AI." The industry is learning to modulate its message: softer rhetoric for the IPO roadshow, harder decisions in the restructuring memo.

IPO-era messaging

Both Altman and Amodei have walked back their job-displacement warnings as OpenAI and Anthropic eye blockbuster IPOs. Anthropic's $900 billion valuation would make it more valuable than OpenAI for the first time. Funny how the displacement talk gets quieter when you're courting public markets.

• Sam Altman says AI 'jobs apocalypse' he predicted probably won't happen — Time
• Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back their AI jobs apocalypse prophecies as they eye blockbuster IPOs — Fortune
• Anthropic's $900 billion valuation would make it more valuable than OpenAI for the first time — The Decoder

The actual workforce

Intuit is cutting over 3,000 employees to refocus on AI, while Glean's CEO says he gets thousands of AI job applications daily but still can't find candidates with strong work ethic. The restructuring memos and the hiring complaints paint different pictures of the same labour market.

• Intuit to lay off over 3,000 employees to refocus on AI — TechCrunch
• Glean CEO gets thousands of AI job applications daily but still can't find candidates with strong work ethic — Fortune

Specialised and sovereign models

BNP Paribas is working with Mistral on a European answer to Anthropic's Mythos, while Corti's new Symphony model beats OpenAI at medical terminology accuracy. General-purpose models win on breadth, but domain-specific systems are pulling ahead where accuracy carries regulatory weight.

• BNP Paribas works with Mistral on a European answer to Anthropic's Mythos — The Next Web
• Corti's new Symphony beats OpenAI at medical terminology accuracy — VentureBeat

Infrastructure keeps compounding

OpenRouter more than doubled its valuation to $1.3B, and Exa Labs raised $250M at a $2.2 billion valuation for AI search tools. The layer between models and applications is becoming a business category of its own.

• OpenRouter more than doubles valuation to $1.3B in a year — TechCrunch
• Exa Labs raises $250M at $2.2 billion valuation for AI search tools — SiliconANGLE

Safety and provenance

Researchers stripped guardrails from Google and Meta models in minutes, while OpenAI and Google aligned on C2PA and SynthID to make AI-generated images verifiable. The safety conversation is splitting: content you can trace versus models you can't control.

• Researchers strip AI guardrails from Google and Meta models in minutes — eWeek
• OpenAI and Google align on C2PA and SynthID to make AI-generated images verifiable — OpenAI

Hardware and platforms

Apple's 'GenAI' subdomain surfaced ahead of WWDC, and Huawei claims a sanctions-busting breakthrough with 1.4nm-class chips by 2031. The AI stack is being rebuilt at every layer.

• 'GenAI' Apple subdomain surfaces weeks ahead of WWDC — Apple Insider
• Huawei claims sanctions-busting breakthrough with 1.4nm-class chips by 2031 — Tom's Hardware

Watch what companies do with their headcount and their chequebooks, not what their CEOs say on stage.

---