The Memo - 10/May/2026
Models Table Pro, Anthropic 80-fold growth, OpenAI phone rumors, and much more!
To: US Govt, major govts, Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Citi, Tencent, IBM, & 10,000+ more recipients…
From: Dr Alan D. Thompson <LifeArchitect.ai>
Sent: 10/May/2026
Subject: The Memo - AI that matters, as it happens, in plain English
AGI: 97%
ASI: 0/50 (no expected movement until post-AGI)The Models Table has had a significant upgrade. By request, I’ve introduced the Models Table Pro with double the data points covering confidence, compute, cost, energy, and more, available to Institutional subscribers under a commercial license.
I’ve released an album of music using the current state-of-the-art text-to-music platform, Suno v5.5. The early response has been great; crowd favourites include ‘Up the Spiral’ and ‘Sands with Minds’. Each track took less than a minute to create via prompts using Claude O4.7. Available on streaming platforms via a domain I’ve had since ~2009: LifeSound.com.
The early winner of The Who Moved My Cheese? AI Awards! for May/2026 is the Academy Awards (‘acting and writing must be performed by humans and not artificial intelligence to be eligible for the movie industry’s highest honors…’).
Next Sunday 17/May/2026 marks two years since Anthropic’s chief-of-staff published ‘My last three years of work’. That would mean we have a year left until jobs become optional (though the article was later updated to read ‘My last five years of work’, so we could have a little bit longer!).
Contents
The BIG Stuff (Anthropic 80-fold growth, OpenAI phone rumors…)
The Interesting Stuff (Pre-ASI Society, AI bubble latest, Google TPU 8…)
Policy (Five Eyes on agents, EC on Mythos, Claude Security, Musk v Altman trial…)
Toys to Play With (OpenClaw news, heart rate, 24/7 AI radio, DeepSeek-V4 setup…)
Things I’ve Been Thinking About (Projects…)
Next (Roundtable…)
The BIG Stuff
Anthropic CEO says 80-fold growth in first quarter explains ‘difficulties with compute’ (6/May/2026)
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei revealed at the company’s developer conference that Anthropic experienced 80-fold growth in Q1 on an annualized basis, far exceeding their internal planning for 10x. The explosive demand, largely driven by the popularity of Claude Code among software engineers, has strained infrastructure and prompted new compute deals including access to over 300MW of capacity at the SpaceXAI (wiki, formerly known as xAI and SpaceX) Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. Anthropic is now in talks to raise capital at a US$900B valuation, which would surpass OpenAI.
Read more via CNBC.
Sidenote: I enjoyed this chart extension, ‘The Anthropic Singularity?‘ by PoliticalKiwi (8/May/2026). While the chart is a bit of a parody, I do think we will see ‘one group’ emerge post-ASI, and my bet since ~2023 has been on Google rather than Anthropic:
OpenAI expected to produce as many as 30 million ‘AI agent’ phones early next year, says industry analyst (5/May/2026)
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports OpenAI could begin mass production of its first ‘AI agent phone’ as early as the first half of 2027, with combined shipments for 2027 and 2028 reaching around 30 million units. The device would not rely on traditional apps, instead focusing on helping users complete tasks directly through AI that constantly understands context and responds in real time. MediaTek is the leading chip partner with a customized Dimensity 9600 on TSMC’s N2P process, featuring a dual-NPU setup designed to handle AI workloads efficiently rather than chasing raw performance.
Read more via PC Guide.
The Interesting Stuff
Exclusive: Pre-ASI Society (May/2026)
My latest piece is a full speculative Wikipedia-style entry written from the other side of the artificial superintelligence transition, looking back at our current era the way we look back at child labour in coal mines. The article notes that the mid-2020s are ‘the first era in which humanity knew it was suffering unnecessarily and continued regardless.’
Read more: https://lifearchitect.ai/wiki/
The Memo features in recent AI papers by Microsoft and Apple, has been discussed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and a trusted source says it is used by top brass at the White House. Across over 100 editions, The Memo continues to be the #1 AI advisory, informing 10,000+ full subscribers including RAND, Google, and Meta AI. Full subscribers have complete access to all 25+ AI analysis items in this edition!
Exclusive: LLM release velocity (May/2026)
My latest chart shows that major LLM release cycles have compressed from months in 2017–2021 to roughly daily by 2024–2026. Last month, April 2026, the cadence reached a record of one major model every 22 hours.
Download image or PDF: https://lifearchitect.ai/models/#velocity
Samsung hits $1 trillion valuation, joining TSMC in elite club (6/May/2026)