OpenAI Buys Neptune, Anthropic Issues Spending Warning

"Here's today's top stories in AI news." " Microsoft disputed a report that it lowered AI sales quotas after many reps missed aggressive targets tied to Azure Foundry; shares fell over 2% as the company said The Information conflated growth and quotas, while enterprise AI agent adoption remains uneven. OpenAI agreed to acquire Neptune, a model-training experiment-tracking startup, in an all-stock deal; Neptune’s tools have supported OpenAI’s experiments for more than a year. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that rivals’ YOLO-scale compute spending could backfire if demand lags, even as he said Anthropic revenue could reach $8–$10 billion this year with break-even targeted by 2028 and a potential IPO under consideration; he also urged restricting advanced chips to China. Two Wisconsin counties are rolling out AI to triage non-emergency calls: La Crosse’s “Ava” has handled 40,000+ calls, while Waukesha pilots similar tech amid staffing gaps. And a widely read essay dissects the rising, formulaic “AI voice” — think em dashes, “delve,” and rule-of-three cadences — reshaping prose across media.