by Raphael Dudler | Jun 15, 2026 | gafam watch
From today through Wednesday, the G7 Summit in France hosts an unprecedented event: Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind appear together before the leaders of the world’s largest democracies — for the first time in history. Three rival frontier AI lab CEOs. Seven world leaders. Three days. And simultaneously: Anthropic’s senior staff is in Washington trying to reverse the US export ban that locked European users out of Claude Fable 5 last Friday. gafam.ai’s European analysis of the diplomatic moment that defines AI governance for the rest of the decade.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 13, 2026 | gafam watch
Late Friday June 12, 2026, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a letter ordering the company to block all foreign nationals — including European users, including Anthropic’s own non-American employees — from accessing Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5. Anthropic chose to disable both models entirely rather than implement selective discrimination. The European AI dependency that gafam.ai has warned about for weeks is no longer theoretical. It just became reality. By executive decree. Without explanation. gafam.ai’s European analysis of the moment American AI sovereignty became European AI vulnerability.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 12, 2026 | gafam watch
The Pentagon confirmed this week it is actively testing OpenAI and Google AI models as replacements for Anthropic’s Claude in classified military networks — after Anthropic refused to waive safety guardrails for warfare use. Simultaneously, the EU AI Act enforcement deadline moved to 55 days away. Two irreconcilable AI governance visions — Washington’s safety-optional military AI and Brussels’ mandatory risk-based framework — are converging on a single deadline. gafam.ai’s European analysis.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 10, 2026 | gafam watch
The acronym that defined Big Tech for a decade is being replaced. Industry executives and observers are adopting “MANGO” — Meta, Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI — to describe the dominant players of the AI era. Apple has been dropped. Amazon and Microsoft have been sidelined. And Apple placed near the bottom of the Wall Street Journal’s AI readiness ranking, trailing Nvidia, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon. The intelligence era has new power centres. gafam.ai examines what this means — and why the publication named after the old acronym is perfectly positioned to cover the new one.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 8, 2026 | gafam watch
On June 5, 2026, President Trump said the US government may take direct equity stakes in leading AI companies — naming OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. Bernie Sanders wants 50% plus a 50% stock tax. Sam Altman pitched the idea to Trump in 2025 and has been advancing it since. Anthropic refused — and is not in the conversation. The strangest political convergence of 2026: the populist right, the democratic left and the CEO of OpenAI all agree that AI profits are too large to stay entirely private. gafam.ai’s European analysis of the AI governance story nobody saw coming.
by Raphael Dudler | Jun 5, 2026 | gafam watch
Demis Hassabis — CEO of Google DeepMind, the most important AI research organisation in the world — broke publicly with the industry consensus this week. In a rare direct statement, Hassabis said AI productivity gains should benefit workers rather than simply being captured by shareholders through headcount reduction. From inside Google — the company that just announced Gemini Spark and AI Mode at 1 billion users — this is the most consequential internal dissent in the AI era.
