AI Daily: Anthropic says Chinese hackers use company AI in cyberattacks

Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:

AI-DRIVEN HACKING CAMPAIGN: China’s state-sponsored hackers used AI technology from Anthropic to automate break-ins of major corporations and foreign governments during a September hacking campaign, the company said Thursday, The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Schechner and Robert McMillan report. The effort focused on dozens of targets and involved a level of automation that Anthropic’s cybersecurity investigators had not previously seen, according to Jacob Klein, the company’s head of threat intelligence. Hackers have been using AI for years now to conduct individual tasks such as crafting phishing emails or scanning the internet for vulnerable systems, but in this instance 80% to 90% of the attack was automated, with humans only intervening in a handful of decision points, Klein said.

GAIN AI ACT: Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) are supporting the Gain AI Act, which would give priority to U.S. demand for chips before exports to China and some other countries, The Wall Street Journal’s Amrith Ramkumar reports. The proposed legislation could provide preferential access to chips for leading tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, potentially giving them an advantage. Nvidia (NVDA), which controls about 80% of the AI processor market, opposes the act, arguing it is an unnecessary market intervention.

AI REVOLUTION: Baird initiated coverage of Microsoft (MSFT) with an Outperform rating and $600 price target. The firm says Microsoft is “leading the AI revolution” with infrastructure and applications, driven by its partnership with OpenAI, which provides an end-to-end artificial intelligence platform for enterprises and consumers. Microsoft is positioned to continue to grow revenue double-digits at “significant scale,” Baird tells investors in a research note. While the stock has performed well, it is off its recent highs on AI capex and cycle concerns, adds the firm.

NEW FUNDING ROUND: Thinking Machines Lab, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a roughly $50B valuation, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg’s Shirin Ghaffary and Ed Ludlow. The new financing would more than quadruple the startup’s valuation from July, the report noted.

AI SOLUTIONS: General Dynamics Information Technology (GD) announced that it has expanded its collaboration with Google Public Sector (GOOG) to accelerate innovation for the U.S. government. This collaboration will focus on bringing secure artificial intelligence and cloud solutions to the tactical edge for defense and intelligence agencies, and modernizing citizen services for civilian agencies. Through this collaboration, GDIT will combine its decades of mission and integration expertise with Google Cloud’s AI, cloud and cybersecurity offerings. GDIT will integrate its Digital Accelerators portfolio onto Google Cloud to rapidly develop and deploy solutions that will enable federal agencies to speed up decision-making, enhance security, deliver savings and advance missions. The first focus area for this collaboration is co-investment in the development of “mission edge AI” solutions.

GDIT will leverage Google Distributed Cloud to bring AI and computing to remote, disconnected environments, where communication is unreliable, restricted, or even completely cut off. Google Distributed Cloud provides a portable, ruggedized “cloud-in-a-box” that is authorized to operate securely at the Secret level and allows users to run workloads even when offline. At the recent Exercise Mobility Guardian 2025, the U.S. Air Force’s premier military exercise in the Indo-Pacific region, GDIT integrated its AI digital accelerator and successfully demonstrated this solution to support air mobility operations at the tactical edge.