We’re Live
We're back and we’re live every day, 12-3 BST. All eyes are on Anthropic today as Dario Amodei responded to the open-weights row yesterday morning. We’re discussing it today and more, alongside a lineup that spans a leading fintech CMO and the co-founder of one of the most popular open-source product analytics platforms. Here's your Order of Play.
What else is happening
Dario Amodei has responded to the controversy swirling around Anthropic's refusal to sign the "Open Weights and American AI Leadership" letter, and it's a careful, pointed piece of writing.
Last Friday, two dozen companies including Nvidia, Meta and Microsoft signed, urging Washington not to restrict open-weight models after the shock arrival of China's Kimi K3. Organised by Nvidia's Jensen Huang, it spread off the back of his first ever tweet and doubled to 50 signatories in a day. OpenAI, Google and SpaceX added their names over the weekend.
Anthropic, notably, didn't - and people noticed. White House AI czar David Sacks led the charge, framing the closed labs' caution as regulatory capture dressed up as safety.
Amodei says he agrees with much of the letter, but not that open weights make safeguards easier to build, or that broad access helps defenders more than attackers.
His bottom line: Anthropic is "not advocating for a ban on open-weights models as a category" — the focus, he says, should be chip controls, stopping distillation, and safety testing for all capable models, open and closed.
We're getting into all of it on today's show, 12 BST.
Yesterday's moment
Regulation gets a lot of the blame for holding Europe back. Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, thinks that's the wrong target.
“In Europe, people if they fail they hardly get a second chance. In America and elsewhere, you are perceived to be even stronger to take the next chance. This risk culture has to be developed.”
But he's bullish on what's ahead — in his view, Europe's embrace of AI could see it out-pace the US. Where do you stand?
etn in the press
Yesterday's raise made the rounds. A few of the stories that ran, below.
Europe got its own TBPN-style live show, and everyone’s angling for a guest spot | TechCrunch TechCrunch • Dominic-Madori Davis
European chat show for ‘tech optimists’ wins backing from Axel Springer www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/07/27/european-chat-show-for-tech-optimists-wins-backing-from-axe
ETN steps up bid to become Europe’s TBPN with $1.6m raise: ‘We’re taking this incredibly seriously’ Sifted
Viewer takes
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