US Govt Lifts Restrictions on Powerful AI Models, Anthropic Says

FILED - 06 May 2026, US, San Francisco: FILE PHOTO - The logo of the Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is on display at an event hosted by the company. Photo: Andrej Sokolow/dpa
FILED - 06 May 2026, US, San Francisco: FILE PHOTO - The logo of the Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is on display at an event hosted by the company. Photo: Andrej Sokolow/dpa
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US Govt Lifts Restrictions on Powerful AI Models, Anthropic Says

FILED - 06 May 2026, US, San Francisco: FILE PHOTO - The logo of the Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is on display at an event hosted by the company. Photo: Andrej Sokolow/dpa
FILED - 06 May 2026, US, San Francisco: FILE PHOTO - The logo of the Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is on display at an event hosted by the company. Photo: Andrej Sokolow/dpa

Anthropic will soon begin restoring access globally to its most powerful AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after the US government lifted a restriction on where they could be released, the company said Tuesday.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Trump administration has invoked national security concerns to limit the ability of major US tech companies to release advanced models, including those from Anthropic which some researchers feared could be exploited to bypass cybersecurity measures.

"We've received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5," Anthropic posted on X. "We'll begin restoring access tomorrow."

Just four days ago, the company said it had received authorization from the government to allow a small group of American cybersecurity firms to access Mythos 5.

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in a June 26 letter to the company that "Anthropic has worked with the US government to address risks associated with the Covered Models," Politico reported.

The government abruptly forced Anthropic to cut off access to its two cutting-edge artificial intelligence models on June 12 after discovering vulnerabilities in the safeguards put in place to prevent misuse of the tool.

On Tuesday, Lutnick told Anthropic in a letter that the Trump administration had "withdrawn" its previous restrictions on the release of the company's models, Politico reported.

The letter indicated that the Trump administration was satisfied, at least for now, that Anthropic had "taken steps in close coordination with the US government to address the risks associated with Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5."

Like Anthropic, rival AI lab OpenAI has also complied with Washington's requests to restrict its own release of a new, powerful model called GPT-5.6 to a limited set of approved partners.

"This isn't quite the process that we think is optimal," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Friday in a post on X, alongside an explanation of the GPT-5.6 launch.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

However, in a blog post published Tuesday evening, Anthropic called for the development of a standardized "framework" to both assess critical vulnerabilities in advanced models and respond to them.

The San Francisco-based AI lab will work with Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others on the effort.

"This problem will become more acute in the coming months, as more models with powerful cybersecurity (and other) capabilities are trained, assessed, and released," the blog post said.

- New frontiers -

The Trump administration issued an executive order on June 2 calling for the federal government to take multiple steps over the subsequent two months to take actions on AI and cybersecurity -- including creating a voluntary "framework" for private companies, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, to test and release their powerful "frontier" AI models in collaboration with the government.

Susie Wiles, the president's chief of staff, posted Tuesday on X that the Trump administration was grateful for the cooperation from tech companies, though she didn't name any.

"My gratitude to companies across industries who continue to work closely with the White House to implement the President's" executive order on AI and cybersecurity, Wiles said. "This includes excellent work around advanced model access and guardrail testing and security."

Earlier in the day, CIA Director John Ratcliffe compared the capabilities of the most advanced artificial intelligence models to nuclear weapons, in a tacit defense of the Trump administration's recent hard line on controlling the release of the most powerful AI technology.

"In conversations with many of the president's other national security and economic security advisors, we're talking about the impact of these frontier AI models," Ratcliffe said during a speech at the AWS summit in Washington.

"It would be...not misplaced to refer to their capabilities as akin to digital nuclear weapons," Ratcliffe said.



Samsung Electronics Denies Report That It Is Exploring US Listing

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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Samsung Electronics Denies Report That It Is Exploring US Listing

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's store in Seoul, South Korea, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)

Samsung Electronics denied on Tuesday a report that it was in the early stages of exploring a potential US offering of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs).

"Samsung Electronics is not reviewing the possibility of issuing American Depositary ‌Receipts," a ‌Samsung spokesperson said in ‌a ⁠statement.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg ⁠News reported that Samsung has held preliminary discussions with banks, but has not yet made a decision about whether to proceed, ⁠citing people familiar ‌with the matter, ‌adding that the discussions might ‌not result in a listing.

The ‌South Korean chipmaker previously reviewed the possibility of an ADR offering before ultimately deciding against ‌it, though the successful US listing of SK ⁠Hynix has ⁠given Samsung fresh motivation to revisit the idea, the report said.

Last week, rival SK Hynix priced its ADRs at $149 each, raising about $26.5 billion in the largest-ever US listing by a foreign company.


China Smartphone Shipments Fall for Fifth Straight Quarter as Costs Rise

A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
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China Smartphone Shipments Fall for Fifth Straight Quarter as Costs Rise

A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)
A customer looks at a new Huawei Pura 70 series smartphone, as the series models go on sale at a Huawei's flagship store in Beijing, China April 18, 2024. (Reuters)

China's smartphone shipments fell 4.3% to 66 million units in the second quarter from a year earlier, as many manufacturers hiked prices to ‌reflect rising memory ‌and component costs, research firm ‌IDC ⁠said on Tuesday.

It ⁠was the fifth straight quarterly decline, and first-half shipments were down 4.2% from a year earlier.

Huawei Technologies and Apple were the only vendors to post growth in the quarter, with shipments up 19.4% and 24.4%, ⁠respectively.

"Huawei and Apple held their ‌prices steady while ‌competitors were raising theirs, and that gave hesitant buyers ‌a reason to go ahead and purchase ‌in a quarter when most of the market was giving them a reason to wait," said Arthur Guo, a senior analyst at IDC China.

Huawei ‌ranked first with a 22.6% market share, while Apple came second with ⁠an ⁠18.1% share. Xiaomi , which ranked fifth, saw its second-quarter shipments down 21.7%, with Oppo and Vivo seeing shipments fall 9.7% and 11.4%, respectively.

Most Android vendors raised prices or cut back on budget models in response to surging memory chips and other component costs, discouraging consumers from upgrading. The fading effect of government subsidies also removed a prop that had supported demand in earlier quarters, IDC said.


Meta Expands Louisiana Data Center to 5 Gigawatts Compute Capacity

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
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Meta Expands Louisiana Data Center to 5 Gigawatts Compute Capacity

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US, May 20, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole/File Photo

Meta said ‌on Monday its data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana will expand to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, in a bid to support the social media company's AI ambitions.

Since breaking ground in December 2024, local Louisiana businesses have received more than $1.6 billion ‌in contracts from Meta, ‌the company said.

Here ‌are ⁠some details:

* Meta ⁠said that the data center expansion is an investment of more than $50 billion in the Richland Parish region.

* Last year, US President Donald Trump ⁠had said the company's data ‌center project ‌would cost $50 billion.

* With this ‌expansion, the company said it ‌plans to invest over $1 billion in local infrastructure improvements, including roads, water and wastewater systems.

* Meta, like its ‌Big Tech peers, has been pouring billions of dollars into ⁠AI ⁠data centers and computing power, as demand continues to outstrip supply.

* The company has pledged to invest $600 billion in US infrastructure and jobs over the next three years, as it builds out massive data centers to power CEO Mark Zuckerberg's aggressive bets on AI agent technologies.