Claude introduces a new $200-a-month plan

Hi AI enthusiasts! Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

👉 Anthropic’s new Max plan can cost up to $200-a-month 

👉 xAI launched an API for Grok 3

👉 Google wants to add MCP support to Gemini

and many more!

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Read time: 5 minutes

What’s going on: Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has launched a new high-tier subscription plan for its Claude chatbot, called "Max," targeting power users with prices up to $200 per month. The plan comes in two options: $100 monthly for five times the usage of the existing $20 Claude Pro plan, and $200 monthly for twenty times the usage. This positions Claude Max as a direct competitor to OpenAI’s $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro tier, though Anthropic’s offering lacks an unlimited usage option.

What does it mean: The expensive Max plan promises priority access to new features and models, including the upcoming Claude voice mode. Anthropic’s product lead, Scott White, indicated the company might explore even pricier tiers later, driven by user feedback and the need to fund costly AI development. Anthropic aims to appeal to professionals who rely heavily on AI for tasks like coding, financial analysis, and marketing, where the $20 Pro plan’s limits have frustrated users.

More details:

• Unlike ChatGPT, Claude still doesn’t support video or image processing, and its top price has sparked some skepticism among users.

• While the company reports strong revenue growth, estimated at $1 billion annually, development costs remain high, pushing this premium tier as a way to sustain its ambitions.

• Interested in Claude’s new “Max” plan? Read Anthropic’s official blog post to learn more.

What’s going on: Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has finally launched an API for its flagship model, Grok 3, making it available to developers. This move comes months after Grok 3’s initial debut, positioning it as a rival to models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini. The API offers two versions: the full Grok 3 and a lighter Grok 3 Mini.

What does it mean: The Grok 3 API integrates with xAI’s acquisition of Musk’s social network X, enhancing features like image analysis and question-answering on the platform. However, it falls short of the model’s advertised potential, offering only a 131,072-token context window, far below the 1 million tokens xAI claimed in February. Critics on X and Reddit have noted this discrepancy, alongside accusations of inflated benchmark results.

More details:

• Pricing starts at $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens for Grok 3, while Grok 3 Mini is cheaper at $0.30 and $0.50 respectively.

• Compared to competitors, Grok 3’s higher costs and smaller context window could limit its appeal, especially as Google and Anthropic offer more efficient alternatives.

• Faster premium options are also available, costing up to $25 per million output tokens for Grok 3.

• This pricing aligns with Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet but exceeds Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, which outperforms Grok 3 on benchmarks while being more affordable.

• Interested in full pricing details, tutorials, and benchmarks? Visit this page.

🤖 Google will add support for Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) to its Gemini models and SDK, following OpenAI's lead, to enable its models to draw data from various sources and build two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications.

💰 Incident.io, an AI-based platform that speeds up IT incident management, raised $62 million, bringing its valuation to around $400 million.

⚖ OpenAI's attorneys have requested that Elon Musk be stopped from taking further "unlawful and unfair action" against the company and be held accountable for the damage he has already inflicted, alleging that his attacks, including a "fake takeover bid," are disrupting OpenAI's future.

🤝 Ilya Sutskever's AI startup, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), has partnered with Google Cloud, utilizing its TPU chips to drive AI research towards building safe, superintelligent AI.

📃 Ominimo, an AI-insurtech startup based in Poland, secured its first investment of $11 million from Zurich Insurance Group for 5% of the company, valuing Ominimo at $220 million, to expand its AI-driven car insurance model to over 10 new markets, starting with Poland, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

📊 OpenAI has launched the Pioneers Program to create domain-specific AI benchmarks in collaboration with various companies, aiming to improve evaluations for AI models in sectors like legal, finance, and healthcare.

🎥 YouTube is expanding its AI likeness detection technology to a select group of top creators, including MrBeast and Marques Brownlee, to identify and manage AI-generated content that features their likenesses, while also supporting the NO FAKES Act to combat AI-generated replicas.

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