Anthropic’s Claude 4 takes the AI coding crown

PLUS: Perplexity's agentic browser challenges Chrome and Meta poaches a top AI leader from Apple

Welcome back, AI’ers!

Here’s What’s On The Menu For Today

  • Anthropic's Claude 4 claims coding crown

  • Perplexity’s agentic browser challenges Chrome

  • Meta poaches top AI leader from Apple

  • AI’s growing demand for electricity

AI ON MY MIND

Happy Wednesday,

Anthropic is making a major play for the AI coding throne with its new Claude 4 model family. The company's top-tier model now outperforms competitors on key software engineering benchmarks.

The release isn't just about a new model, but a full developer platform aimed at creating an entire ecosystem.

By the way, I've been getting questions about how AI works in practice, so I'm launching a separate newsletter that dives deeper into real business applications and practical advice.

First issue drops tomorrow. [Click here if you're interested].

TODAY’S TOP STORIES

Claude 4 Claims Coding Crown

The Recap: Anthropic has launched its new Claude 4 family, positioning its top-tier Opus 4 model as the world's best for coding by outperforming competitors on key software engineering benchmarks.

Unpacked:

  • A new coding champion: Claude Opus 4 now leads on crucial software engineering tests, scoring 72.5% on SWE-bench and 43.2% on Terminal-bench, proving its ability to handle complex, real-world programming challenges.

  • More than a model: Anthropic is building a full developer platform, with Claude Code now generally available and offering native integrations with VS Code and JetBrains for seamless pair programming.

  • Building capable agents: The new models can use tools in parallel and access files to improve memory, supported by new API capabilities that help developers build more powerful and persistent applications.

Bottom line: Anthropic is intensifying its rivalry with OpenAI and GitHub by creating a comprehensive ecosystem for AI-powered software development. This heightened competition is pushing AI agents to move beyond simple chat assistance and toward autonomously handling entire coding workflows.

Perplexity's Browser Gambit

The Recap: AI search engine Perplexity is taking on Google Chrome with Comet, a new agentic browser that uses autonomous AI agents to manage complex tasks for you.

Unpacked:

  • CEO Aravind Srinivas describes Comet as a “Swiss Army knife” for your work, infusing the browser with AI agents that can operate autonomously.

  • These agents can handle a variety of practical tasks, from managing your email and calendar to analyzing documents and even comparing products to make purchases.

  • Access is rolling out this summer, with Perplexity Max subscribers getting immediate entry to the new browsing experience.

Bottom line: This move signals a significant shift, embedding autonomous AI directly into the browsing experience. Browsers are evolving from tools that merely display information into active assistants that can execute entire workflows.

🖥️ My Favorite AI Tool: Relevance AI

Relevance is my favorite AI tool right now (even more so than N8N).

Here’s why:

It’s an AI agent building tool that doesn’t require you to build out the logic using nodes. Instead, you use natural language to build out these agents. But the best thing imo is that you can build AI Agent teams.

Like agents talking to each other completing a goal until its done. It’s nuts. No other tool on the market is doing this. You have to check it out.

(Try it out →Link)

👾 AI Tools We Use Everyday

➡️ N8N for AI Agents - Literally use this everyday to write this newsletter (link)

➡️ Axiom AI - AI Browser automation to scrape anything on the web (link)

➡️ GummySearch - AI Reddit research (link)

Tools are sourced from our database and are not sponsored or affiliated.

The Great AI Poach

The Recap: The AI talent wars are escalating as Meta poached Ruoming Pang, Apple's head of foundation AI models, to bolster its new Superintelligence division.

Unpacked:

  • Pang, who led a 100-person team developing AI for Apple Intelligence, was reportedly secured with a compensation package worth tens of millions.

  • The move is part of a larger hiring spree for Meta’s new Superintelligence unit, which has also attracted top researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic.

  • This departure magnifies Apple's struggles, sparking concerns of a wider brain drain as several other engineers from the same group are also expected to exit.

Bottom line: Meta is aggressively acquiring elite talent to fast-track its mission to build advanced AI systems. This high-stakes move intensifies the competition among tech giants, where top experts are now the most critical resource in the race for AI supremacy.

AI's Insatiable Power Hunger

The Recap: The rapid expansion of AI is creating an enormous demand for electricity, pushing power grids to their limits. Recent reports highlight how states like Pennsylvania are struggling to keep up with the energy needs of new data centers.

Unpacked:

  • In Pennsylvania, the demand from new AI data centers is outpacing the development of new energy infrastructure, prompting serious concerns from state leadership.

  • This isn't an isolated issue, as warnings suggest that some regional electric grids could be overwhelmed by 2027 due to continued growth and seasonal strains.

  • The core of the problem is the immense computational power needed to train and operate large-scale AI models, which translates directly into massive energy consumption.

Bottom line: The physical limits of our energy infrastructure are becoming a critical barrier to AI's continued expansion. This pressure will likely accelerate the race to develop more energy-efficient chips and sustainable data center solutions.

OTHER NEWS YOU MAY LIKE

Anthropic activated its ASL-3 safety and security standards for the new Claude 4 models, a precautionary measure to limit misuse for developing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

Impersonators targeted high-level U.S. and foreign officials using an AI-generated voice clone of Senator Marco Rubio over the Signal messaging app.

Moonvalley released Marey, a new AI video generation model trained exclusively on licensed content to give filmmakers precise control over scenes while avoiding copyright issues.

Crunchbase reported that AI companies captured nearly half of the $91B in global venture funding raised during the second quarter of 2025.

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THAT’S IT FOR TODAY

Until next time, stay safe.

-Best of AI Team

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