Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright lawsuit over pirated books. Now that the checks are finally going out, authors are discovering someone else already has their hand in the pot. Publishers and literary agents are filing competing claims on payments authors assumed were theirs alone, and one author's reaction, in a public post, was blunt enough that we can't print it here.

Meanwhile, Travis Kalanick's new startup Atoms told the world it has "no plans to enter the saturated robotaxi market." The same week, a separate report revealed it's staffing up and acquiring companies specifically to build one.

• Anthropic's $1.5 billion book settlement turned into a fight over who actually gets paid.

• Travis Kalanick's Atoms says it's not building robotaxis. Its hiring plans suggest otherwise.

• Robotics data startup XDOF is closing in on a $1.2 billion valuation, three months after leaving stealth.

…and a whole lot more that you can read about below.

Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement over pirated books received final court approval in July, and payments are now moving forward. This week, some authors got an unwelcome surprise: emails informing them someone else was making a claim on their share. Settlement administrator Melissa Strauss said a number of publishers are seeking cuts, and, more unusually, so are literary agents, despite agents not holding rights to the books they sell. Author Courtney Milan didn't hold back on Bluesky: "Apparently some agents are trying to claim percentages on the Anthropic settlement, and I do not REMOTELY think they should do this." The Authors Guild has published guidance on disputing these claims, with one key detail: to claim 100% of a payment, an author's rights must have reverted before August 10, 2022, the settlement's official "download date."

Atoms, the industrial robotics company Kalanick launched after raising $1.7 billion led by Andreessen Horowitz this summer, has publicly described itself as "an industrial software company" with "no plans to enter the saturated robotaxi market." A Financial Times report the same week says otherwise: Atoms is preparing a hiring spree and acquisitions specifically aimed at becoming a major autonomous vehicle player, and has discussed with Uber how its technology could power Uber's own rides. Uber has already invested $100 million in Atoms. The company's March acquisition of Pronto, an autonomous mining startup led by former Uber self-driving chief Anthony Levandowski, gave Atoms a working driverless stack well before this week's denial.

XDOF, which collects real-world teleoperation data to train general-purpose robots, is in late-stage talks for a Series B at roughly a $1.2 billion valuation led by 8VC. The company only closed a $70 million Series A in June and wasn't planning to raise again this soon, until annualized revenue approaching $50 million pulled investors back to the table. Founded in October 2024 by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu and Fred Shentu, XDOF pairs remote robot teleoperation with human collectors wearing motion sensors to capture everyday tasks, building what investors are already calling "the Scale AI for physical robotics."

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"When I think of revenue, I think of Attio." - Shreman Shrestha, Head of Business at Granola

Here's what that adds up to:

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XDOF Nears a $1.2 Billion Valuation, Three Months Out of Stealth

XDOF is in late-stage talks for a Series B led by 8VC at roughly a $1.2 billion valuation, just three months after emerging from stealth and closing a $70 million Series A.

Nscale Seeks $3.5 Billion in Pre-IPO Financing

AI compute provider Nscale is looking for $3.5 billion in financing ahead of a planned public listing, joining a wave of infrastructure providers raising big before going public.

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Give Agents the "Why" First

Agents can follow every instruction correctly and still build the wrong thing, because they never understood why the project existed in the first place.

Anthropic's AI-native software playbook, highlighted in Rob Shocks' walkthrough, starts with a tiny file called intent.md. Think of it as the note you'd leave for a smart coworker taking over the project tomorrow.

Describe the outcome and who it helps. Add the non-negotiable constraints and a concrete definition of done. Let the agent interview you until the fuzzy parts are gone. Save the answers as intent.md, then use that file to build the specification and plan.

The same habit works outside coding. Before a long research, writing, or analysis job, give the agent a one-page brief it can keep returning to.

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