Amazon Launches AI-powered Shopping Tool 🛍️!

AI-powered shopping just took an interesting turn, and who better than Amazon to lead the scene? 

Forward thinkers, welcome to another issue (#123) of the Neural Frontier.

This week, we’re unpacking Amazon’s new AI shopping tool, Anthropic’s latest funding round, and OpenAI’s plans for a hiring platform. 

Ready or not, here we go! 😉

In a rush? Here's your quick byte: 

🛍️ Amazon launches AI-powered shopping tool!

💸 Anthropic raises $13B in its Series F.

💼 OpenAI takes on LinkedIn with its new hiring platform!

🎭 AI Reimagines: Welcome to Paint World!

🎯 Everything else you missed this week.  

⚡ The Neural Frontier’s weekly spotlight: 3 AI tools making the rounds this week.

🛍️ Amazon launches AI-powered shopping tool!

Amazon is taking AI-powered shopping into the real world with the launch of Lens Live, an upgrade to its Amazon Lens visual search tool. Unlike the traditional Lens, which lets users scan images, upload photos, or scan barcodes, Lens Live allows shoppers to point their camera at products in real time and instantly see matching items on Amazon. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

📱 How Lens Live Works: Lens Live brings a dynamic, real-time experience to visual shopping. Users can:

• Pan around a room or focus on a specific product

• See matching items in a swipeable carousel at the bottom of the screen

• Add products to their cart with a tap or save them to their wishlist

This functionality is powered by Amazon SageMaker and AWS-managed OpenSearch, which allows Amazon’s machine learning models to detect and match objects instantly and at scale.

🤖 AI Shopping Assistant (Rufus): Lens Live integrates Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant. Rufus provides:

• AI-generated product summaries

• Suggested questions shoppers can ask about an item

• Quick insights to make smarter purchasing decisions

This combination of real-time detection and AI guidance lets users compare products on the spot without leaving the store.

Currently, Lens Live is rolling out on iOS for “tens of millions” of U.S. shoppers. Amazon plans to expand access to more users in the coming weeks, though no global rollout has been confirmed yet.

💸 Anthropic raises $13B in its Series F.

Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude, has closed a $13 billion Series F funding round, boosting its post-money valuation to $183 billion. The company plans to use the new capital to expand enterprise adoption, deepen safety research, and accelerate international growth.

This marks a huge leap from its last round in March 2025, where Anthropic raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation.

Here’s the lowdown:

💰 Who’s Investing: The Series F round was co-led by ICONIQ, Fidelity Management & Research, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other backers include a mix of VCs, institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers such as:

• Altimeter

• Baillie Gifford

• BlackRock

• Blackstone

• Coatue

• D1 Capital Partners

• Insight Partners

• Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan

• Qatar Investment Authority

Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao highlighted that the round reflects “investors’ extraordinary confidence” in the company’s financial performance and growth trajectory.

📈 Rapid Growth: Anthropic has experienced explosive growth in less than a year:

• Annual recurring revenue jumped from $1B to $5B between January and August 2025

• Business customers now exceed 300,000

• Large accounts (customers generating $100K+ in run-rate revenue) grew nearly 7x in the past year

• Claude Code, the vibe-coding product, now generates $500M+ in run-rate revenue, with usage increasing over 10x in just three months

The surge in enterprise adoption and API usage has been a key driver of this growth, positioning Anthropic as a major rival to OpenAI, Cursor, and other AI startups.

🌍 Challenges & Plans: While the funding provides more runway, CEO Dario Amodei recently noted the difficulties of raising capital without compromising on investor ethics, mentioning that excluding certain sovereign wealth funds is not always feasible.

With this capital injection, Anthropic aims to:

• Meet growing enterprise demand

• Deepen AI safety and research initiatives

• Expand internationally

💼 OpenAI takes on LinkedIn with its new hiring platform!

OpenAI is expanding beyond ChatGPT with a new AI-powered hiring platform, the OpenAI Jobs Platform, aiming to connect businesses with employees in smarter, faster ways. The company expects to launch the service by mid-2026, positioning itself as a direct competitor to LinkedIn.

Here’s what’s happening:

🌐 Expansion Beyond ChatGPT:  OpenAI is broadening its offerings beyond its consumer-facing chatbot:

• OpenAI Jobs Platform for recruitment

• OpenAI Certifications through the OpenAI Academy, an online program teaching AI fluency

• Potential future products, including a browser and social media app

Sam Altman has put OpenAI's CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, in charge of several of these initiatives, signalling a strategic push into enterprise applications and professional services.

💼 Competing With LinkedIn: Launching a hiring platform puts OpenAI in direct competition with LinkedIn, co-founded by Reid Hoffman—one of OpenAI’s earliest investors—and owned by Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest backer. LinkedIn has been enhancing its AI capabilities to better match job candidates with businesses, setting the stage for a high-stakes rivalry.

OpenAI’s platform aims to:

• Use AI to match candidates and employers efficiently

• Help individuals build AI skills and credentials through certifications

• Support workforce transitions amid AI-driven disruptions

📚 AI Fluency & Certification: OpenAI plans to certify millions of people in AI skills, starting with a pilot of OpenAI Certifications in late 2025. The company is working with major partners like Walmart, aiming to certify 10 million Americans by 2030.

The initiative aligns with White House goals for AI literacy, as Altman and other tech executives engage with government leaders to expand access to AI education.

⚠️ Navigating Job Disruption: Tech leaders have warned that AI could disrupt many traditional roles. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei estimates that AI may eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs by 2030.

Simo acknowledged these risks but emphasised that OpenAI’s mission is to:

• Help people become fluent in AI

• Connect them with businesses seeking AI-ready talent

• Support smooth transitions into new roles

OpenAI’s hiring platform is thus as much about workforce development as it is about job placement—a move to shape the future of AI in the workplace.

🎭 AI Reimagines: Welcome to Paint World!

Another week, another masterful display of AI video gen. This week, dive (or fly) with us into a world of vibrant colours, elegant brush strokes, and the beauty of imagination. 

Have a look! 🎨

🎯 Everything else you missed this week.

👗 Fashion retailers REVOLVE and FWRD partner to offer an AI styling tool.

🤳 Veo 3 is coming to Google Photos.

🤝 Atlassian to buy The Browser Company for $610M. 

🧑‍⚖️ Warner Bros. Discovery sues Midjourney. 

👨‍💻 WordPress unveils new AI development tool.

⚡ The Neural Frontier’s weekly spotlight: 3 AI tools making the rounds this week. 

1. 🎯 Ruby AI: Ruby AI is an intelligent sales assistant that automates account research and strategy development for sales teams. 

2. 🎨 anyimg.ai: anyimg.ai is a comprehensive AI image generation platform that transforms text descriptions into high-quality visual artworks using multiple cutting-edge AI models, including DALL-E 3, Flux, and Stable Diffusion. 

3. 📝 FlashPaper: FlashPaper is an AI-powered academic writing platform that provides specialised assistance for research papers, essays, and scholarly work across different educational levels. 

Wrapping up…

If this week’s taught us anything, it’s that AI is becoming even more integrated into our daily lives. From chatbots to shopping assistants, just how far will this tech go?

Only one way to find out: hit that Subscribe button, and we’ll catch you next week on the Neural Frontier ✨.