May 18, 2026 — curated links and takeaways.
1. Anthropic raises $30B funding round, valuation reaches $900B
Anthropic closed a $30 billion funding round that values the company at $900 billion, surpassing OpenAI's valuation. The mega-round signals continued investor confidence in Claude as a competitive alternative to GPT models.
2. OpenAI deploys GPT-5.5 Instant as new default ChatGPT model
OpenAI rolled out GPT-5.5 Instant as the default across Free, Plus, and Pro tiers on May 5, scoring 81.2 on AIME 2025 math versus 65.4 for its predecessor. The upgrade delivers meaningful capability gains in reasoning and multimodal tasks across all subscription levels.
3. Google I/O 2026 set to unveil Gemini 3.2, Beam 3D model features
Google's I/O conference (May 19–20) will announce the next generation Gemini model and demonstrate Beam, an ambitious 3D immersive interface. The announcements position Google's AI stack against OpenAI and Anthropic's latest releases.
4. Anthropic launches Project Glasswing with $100M in Claude credits
Anthropic committed $100 million in model usage credits to Project Glasswing for securing critical software in the AI era, with Claude Mythos Preview available at $25/$125 per million input/output tokens post-preview. The initiative targets hardening infrastructure against AI-driven security risks.
5. n8n releases MCP server for workflow automation via Claude and Cursor
n8n launched an open-source MCP (Model Context Protocol) server enabling natural-language workflow automation through Claude and Cursor. The MIT-licensed tool standardizes agentic AI integration for automation platforms.