Applied AI by The Information Staff

Two times/week

Applied AI

By The Information Staff

Applied AI focuses on deep storytelling and reporting around the application of AI in business and beyond. From how companies drive innovation, support their customers, and foster collaboration with their teams, to how CEOs are applying AI to optimize their organizations.

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Recent Editions

Art: Mike Sullivan.

Chinese Open Models Win Over One in Five of The Information’s Subscribers

By Amir Efrati · Oct 8, 2026 11:11am PDT

Nearly two-thirds of The Information’s subscribers surveyed last month said their organizations develop AI applications, and a third of subscribers said they receive a return from AI that is a “multiple of what we spend.” The result suggests enterprises have made some progress since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology study last year that... Nearly two-thirds of The Information’s subscribers surveyed last month said their organizations...

Art by Clark Miller; Getty Images.

Can Microsoft Help Customers Cut Back on Claude?

By Aaron Holmes · Oct 6, 2026 10:33am PDT

There was good news and bad news for Anthropic in our story yesterday that showed how two of its mega-customers, Microsoft and Meta, were cutting their staffs’ Claude bills.Among the bad news was that Microsoft had reduced its spending on Claude by more than 33% from its peak of over $1 billion, on an annualized basis, earlier this year. ... There was good news and bad news for Anthropic in our story yesterday that showed how two of its...

Koray Kavukcuoglu, head of Google DeepMind, at The Information’s AI Agenda Live. Photo by Erin Beach.

In Robotics, Google Goes Android to Tesla’s Apple

By Jessica E. Lessin · Oct 1, 2026 2:50pm PDT

While interviewing Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu last week, I had a flash of deja vu. In his first sit-down since taking over as CEO of Google DeepMind, Kavukcuoglu offered some of his most detailed comments yet on where the company's robotics ambitions are headed and how they differ from the rest of the industry. While interviewing Google’s Koray Kavukcuoglu last week, I had a flash of deja vu. In his...

CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella. Photo by George Chan/Getty Images

Microsoft Tears Down Its AI Data Wall

By Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 29, 2026 9:38am PDT

CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella. Photo by George Chan/Getty Images

Microsoft Tears Down Its AI Data Wall

By Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 29, 2026 9:38am PDT

Microsoft’s biggest products have generally thrived by letting other companies build on top of them. So Microsoft’s decision to join Apache Ossie, a 1-year-old software industry group aiming to make it easier for AI tools to access data from applications and databases, might not seem like a big deal. But actually it is.Just four months ago,... Microsoft’s biggest products have generally thrived by letting other companies build on top of...

EY’s Dan Diasio at The Information’s AI Agenda Live. Photo by Erin Beach.

Businesses Still Don’t See AI Returns, Consulting Exec Says

By Laura Bratton and Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 24, 2026 12:02pm PDT · 1 comment

Here’s something worth paying attention to. According to consulting firm EY, businesses are still not seeing substantial revenue gains or cost reductions from using AI.“I haven‘t met any clients that say I wanna slow down my spend on AI. But I have seen a bunch of clients say, ‘I don’t know where my ROI is today,’” said EY executive Dan Diasio... Here’s something worth paying attention to. According to consulting firm EY, businesses are still...

Art via Shutterstock; Mike Sullivan

New Data Show Anthropic, OpenAI and Other Upstarts Are Eating into Software Budgets

By Laura Bratton · Sep 22, 2026 10:38am PDT

We’ve been reporting for months about how companies are shifting some traditional software spending to Anthropic and OpenAI. New data from procurement software firm Zip provides further evidence.AI providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Sierra accounted for 8% of spending by Zip customers in the 12 months that ended in August, up from... We’ve been reporting for months about how companies are shifting some traditional software...

Art by Mike Sullivan; Getty Images

Same Flaw Found in Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and GitHub Copilot

By Aaron Holmes and Laura Bratton · Sep 17, 2026 10:32am PDT

While the AI industry ties itself in knots over models it thinks will pose security threats to the internet and perhaps to humanity itself, researchers are warning about flaws in AI coding agents from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Microsoft that pose immediate risk to businesses.For instance, a recently discovered (and now largely fixed)... While the AI industry ties itself in knots over models it thinks will pose security threats to...

Art by Getty Images; Mike Sullivan

Why Anthropic’s Data Policy Drama Is Good for OpenAI

By Laura Bratton · Sep 15, 2026 11:28am PDT

Art by Getty Images; Mike Sullivan

Why Anthropic’s Data Policy Drama Is Good for OpenAI

By Laura Bratton · Sep 15, 2026 11:28am PDT

Major Anthropic customers are still waiting to get “zero data retention” for the newest Fable AI models, meaning the AI firm would not store data related to their usage of its models. In the meantime, some are turning to OpenAI. Palantir and Booz Allen, for instance, are expanding their use of OpenAI’s Astra model, which they’ve been able... Major Anthropic customers are still waiting to get “zero data retention” for the newest Fable AI...

Dylan Field, CEO of Figma. Photo by Michael Nagle/ Getty Images

Why Salesforce and Figma Are Placing Opposing Bets on the Future of Apps

By Laura Bratton · Sep 10, 2026 12:36pm PDT

Salesforce seems unafraid of a future in which people use an AI chatbot like Claude to access Salesforce enterprise apps and underlying databases to get work done, rather than visiting those apps themselves. Figma, an enterprise design app, naturally wants a different future.Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO, said Wednesday that as the company’s in-house... Salesforce seems unafraid of a future in which people use an AI chatbot like Claude to access...

Photo via Pollen Robotics.

Hugging Face Is Making A Big Robotics Push

By Laura Bratton and Rocket Drew · Sep 8, 2026 12:06pm PDT

Nvidia is paying a steep price for Hugging Face, a repository of open source models, primarily for its strategic position in the center of the open source AI world. But it turns out Nvidia is also getting a budding robot business that could help CEO Jensen Huang fulfill the promise of “physical AI.” Hugging Face late last month launched... Nvidia is paying a steep price for Hugging Face, a repository of open source models, primarily...

Art via Shutterstock

Snowflake Results Show Enterprises’ Desire For Anthropic Buffer

By Laura Bratton · Sep 3, 2026 1:07pm PDT

Snowflake’s strong quarterly report on Wednesday said a lot about what can go right for older software firms that sell AI tools on top of their existing products. While Anthropic, OpenAI and Cursor get the lion’s share of headlines about AI coding, for instance, Snowflake, whose primary business is selling data management software,... Snowflake’s strong quarterly report on Wednesday said a lot about what can go right for older...

Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Anthropic Customers’ Bills Are 80% Higher Than They Need to Be, Glean Says

By Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 1, 2026 3:06pm PDT

Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Anthropic Customers’ Bills Are 80% Higher Than They Need to Be, Glean Says

By Kevin McLaughlin · Sep 1, 2026 3:06pm PDT

As AI search startup Glean moves into competition with rivals like Anthropic in automating white-collar tasks, its executives are zeroing in on two topics keeping corporate chief information officers awake at night: Token costs and data security.Glean last week shared internal evaluations showing its AI assistant is much cheaper to use than... As AI search startup Glean moves into competition with rivals like Anthropic in automating...

Art by Mike Sullivan; Getty Images

Visa Says Its AI ‘Harness’ Makes Anthropic Cheaper to Use For Cyber Defense

By Laura Bratton · Aug 27, 2026 1:31pm PDT

Anthropic’s AI is pricey, but customers are finding they can use it more efficiently by adding software known as a harness to control the way AI models operate.Visa in April developed a harness that reduces the cost of and time it takes for Anthropic’s Mythos AI to find and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in its codebases significantly, the... Anthropic’s AI is pricey, but customers are finding they can use it more efficiently by adding...

Art via Getty Images

Atlassian Rides the Knowledge Graph Boom

By Laura Bratton, Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 25, 2026 2:24pm PDT · 1 comment

The rise of AI agents that automate coding projects and other white-collar tasks has prompted software firms such as Atlassian to offer so-called knowledge graphs or graph databases, which help the AI analyze the relationships between different types of data inside an organization. Software firms typically promote these new data management... The rise of AI agents that automate coding projects and other white-collar tasks has prompted...

Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images

AT&T is Using Open Source Models to Curb Anthropic Bills

By Aaron Holmes · Aug 20, 2026 11:55am PDT

Anthropic and OpenAI had better hope more companies don’t follow the example of AT&T.The telecommunications firm plans to keep its employees’ spending on Anthropic and OpenAI models flat in the coming years by using more open-source models such as Nvidia’s Nemotron, according to Mark Austin, an AT&T vice president. Anthropic and OpenAI had better hope more companies don’t follow the example of AT&T.The...

Andi Gutmans, vice president and general manager, Google Data Cloud. Photo courtesy of Google

Google Says Its AI Can Do the Work of Forward Deployed Engineers

By Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 18, 2026 2:19pm PDT · 1 comment

Andi Gutmans, vice president and general manager, Google Data Cloud. Photo courtesy of Google

Google Says Its AI Can Do the Work of Forward Deployed Engineers

By Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 18, 2026 2:19pm PDT · 1 comment

Following the playbook Palantir pioneered, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to hire so-called forward deployed engineers to get newfangled AI to work in enterprises. Then there’s Google, which says AI can automate some of what these FDEs do. While Google Cloud recently said it plans to hire... Following the playbook Palantir pioneered, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon are investing...

Getty Images

Anthropic Models Can Be Cheaper to Use Than Chinese Ones, Study Finds

By Laura Bratton · Aug 13, 2026 12:03pm PDT

A recent analysis is challenging the idea that Chinese-made AI is cheaper than offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic. AlphaSense, a software firm that sells AI-powered search and market-research tools, released a study that found proprietary models from OpenAI and Anthropic are actually cheaper for performing some tasks, compared to... A recent analysis is challenging the idea that Chinese-made AI is cheaper than offerings from...

Samuel Berry, chief information officer at the Agriculture Department. YouTube.

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Taps C3 AI to Trim Salesforce Footprint

By Laura Bratton · Aug 11, 2026 11:11am PDT · 2 comments

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which spends about $3 billion a year on IT, uses Salesforce for “pretty much everything” including case management and maintaining its public facing portals and websites, according to chief information officer Sam Berry. But over the last year, the sprawling agency reduced its use of Salesforce for some tasks... The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which spends about $3 billion a year on IT, uses Salesforce...

Art by Clark Miller

Figma, Canva Showing Growing Pains of AI Pivot

By Laura Bratton · Aug 6, 2026 3:05pm PDT

Welcome back!Software companies have been at pains to flaunt the success of their AI products, as they seek to dispel investor fears that AI apps are threatening their existence. Two reports this week show that developing popular AI products is only half the challenge. Canva, the design software company popular among students and business... Welcome back!Software companies have been at pains to flaunt the success of their AI products, as...

Art via Getty Images

How Firms Like Coinbase Are Building Coding Agents to Complement Anthropic's Claude Code

By Laura Bratton · Aug 4, 2026 10:03am PDT

Art via Getty Images

How Firms Like Coinbase Are Building Coding Agents to Complement Anthropic's Claude Code

By Laura Bratton · Aug 4, 2026 10:03am PDT

Coinbase and some other tech-savvy firms such as Shopify and Ramp have built their own AI coding agents for internal use, giving their employees an alternative to pricey options from firms like Anthropic and OpenAI.Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, built an AI coding agent called Forge, which launched to all of its engineers in April of... Coinbase and some other tech-savvy firms such as Shopify and Ramp have built their own AI coding...