Enterprise AI

Voice AI company ElevenLabs on Nov. 9 announced "ElevenAgents Campaign Manager," a new feature of its voice agent service "ElevenAgents" for "outbound campaigns" in which companies call customers to drive sales, contract renewals, collections and other work. Given contacts and a goal such as qualifying a lead or confirming an appointment, the agent places calls, calls back later if it does not get through, and carries the content of earlier conversations into the next contact. Calling hours, maximum attempts and do-not-contact lists can be set, and progress is recorded for each contact. Existing customers can use it from the same day. It supports voice and messaging on phone and WhatsApp, and the company said email and SMS will be supported in the future. The official blog does not state pricing.

Voice AI company ElevenLabs unveiled "ElevenAI," an AI assistant that helps employees with their work, at the "ElevenLabs Summit" it held in New York on Nov. 11, and opened free early access the same day. It lets users dictate into any app, takes meeting notes and provides live assistance during calls. For "ElevenAgents," its customer-facing voice agents, the company said it will add "Memory," which keeps records for each customer, and "Routines," which automatically handles tasks before and after conversations. It showed "Interaction Engine," which manages the flow of conversations, as a preview. It also launched a partner program and introduced a "Marketplace" listing agents built by partners. Purchases on the Marketplace will be possible from next year. The same day, it announced an expanded partnership with NVIDIA and made NVIDIA's model "Nemotron 3.5 Super VL" available in ElevenAgents. ElevenLabs' own evaluation found its cost 70% lower than other major open models.

Anthropic said on Nov. 10 it has begun its roadshow presenting to institutional investors ahead of a Nasdaq listing. It is offering 825 million Class A shares at an expected price of $70 to $78 per share. According to an amended registration statement filed the same day, seven companies including Google and NVIDIA will buy a total of $26 billion of non-voting shares at the offering price immediately after the listing. The company's net proceeds are expected to be about $84.6 billion at $74, the midpoint of the price range. The registration statement has not yet become effective, and no listing date has been given.

OpenAI on Nov. 5 (Nov. 6 Japan time) introduced "Private Safety Processing," a safety review system for its API, on its official X account for developers. It says OpenAI does not retain prompts or responses, that an automated safety agent reviews records while they stay in the user's environment and that employees cannot access the content. All of this is OpenAI's description, and no third-party audit or verification could be confirmed. According to official materials, customers must keep encrypted records in their own clouds for at least 30 days, and there are exceptions, such as images suspected of depicting child sexual abuse. Pricing, which models require it and availability in Japanese regions are unconfirmed.

Austin Lau, who helped build Anthropic's "growth" function, which works to increase users and revenue, said on X on Nov. 4 (Nov. 5 Japan time) that he had recently joined OpenAI. The post came about an hour and a half after Cat Wu announced the same day that she had joined OpenAI. The post did not give his title or responsibilities at OpenAI, and his start date and any connection to Wu's move are unconfirmed. Anthropic is preparing for an IPO expected in the week of Nov. 16, and key members of the Claude Code team have continued to leave.

Colin Jarvis, who leads OpenAI's "FDE" team that sends engineers to client companies to support adoption, said on X on Nov. 4 (the evening of the same day Japan time) that in vehicle design research with Mazda, FDE engineers used GPT-6 Astra in Codex to create dozens of variations on the shape of a car's nose and simulate airflow. He expressed hope that AI could also be used to optimize manufacturing and supply chains. In materials OpenAI published on Nov. 3, the research with Mazda is described as vehicle design research with aerodynamics and crash safety engineers, and applications to manufacturing or supply chains are not mentioned. No results figures are available yet; they will be published over the coming months.

OpenAI announced on Nov. 3 (Nov. 4 Japan time) that it will bring on Jill Hazelbaker, president and chief corporate affairs officer of Uber, as its chief corporate affairs officer. She will oversee global communications and how the company presents itself, reporting directly to President Greg Brockman, and will start in early December. The top communications post had been vacant for about 10 months since her predecessor left in January. OpenAI had also approached her in the spring, but she declined at the time. OpenAI, which filed confidentially for an initial public offering in June, is moving quickly to build a structure to win public trust as anxiety about and criticism of AI grow.

China's ByteDance will, from November, keep outside AI such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex from accessing code repositories and internal documents in its internal confidentiality category "L4," TokenPost reported on Nov. 3. Use through AI accounts that employees bought personally will also be banned, with some parts of its own AI unit Seed exempt, the report said. The move is said to be aimed at preventing information leaks. ByteDance has made no official announcement.

Anthropic on Oct. 26 made public its registration statement (S-1) for a listing on the Nasdaq market in the United States. The ticker symbol is "ANT." Revenue for January through June 2026 was $16.3 billion, about 14 times the same period a year earlier, and the company posted its first operating profit in the April-June quarter. Meanwhile, a company owned by the seven founders controls 50.1% of ordinary votes through a single share, so investors who buy shares in the listing cannot sway votes. A U.S. newspaper reported that the listing would come in the week of Nov. 16, and the amount raised could exceed $100 billion.

Anthropic on Oct. 22 made generally available its self-operated Claude developer platform, "Claude Platform," in a form that can be used with Google Cloud authentication and billing. Customers can draw down their committed Google Cloud spend directly and can use the same features as Anthropic's own platform on the same day, including "Managed Agents" for running agents, code execution and a fast version of its top model. It can be chosen separately from the existing Google-operated offering, and Anthropic handles the processing of data.

Canada's Cohere, which makes AI for businesses, released "Rerank 5," an AI that reorders documents gathered by a search according to how relevant they are to a question. It comes in two types, the high-accuracy "Pro" and the fast "Fast," with a context window of 32,000 tokens and support for more than 100 languages. It adds "Context Focus," which returns only the parts of a document relevant to the question, reducing the text passed to generative AI and keeping costs down. It appeared in the changelog on Oct. 20, ahead of the official announcement.

OpenAI and Google Cloud said on Oct. 21 that OpenAI's models, including "GPT-6 Astra," would be offered on a trial basis to some businesses through "Model Garden," Google Cloud's model service. Availability will be expanded to the general public within a few weeks. The AI coding tool "Codex" can also be connected to Google's infrastructure. Businesses can buy OpenAI's models under their Google Cloud contract commitments, with billing consolidated into one. Following Amazon, OpenAI's models will be available on all three major U.S. clouds.

Anthropic announced on Oct. 18 that it will contribute 5% of its shares to a newly created "Anthropic Public Benefit Fund." For every 50% increase in the company's valuation, the board can add 2% at its discretion. Besides donations to nonprofits, the money may also be used for direct distributions to specific groups, such as people who lose their jobs to AI. The plan requires shareholder approval, and the recipients and size of distributions, as well as the governance structure, have not yet been disclosed. The announcement came ahead of the company's planned November listing, and U.S. media estimated the value of the contributed shares at no less than $50 billion.

OpenAI on Oct. 30 (Oct. 31 Japan time) unveiled "OpenAI Private Intelligence," a set of initiatives that let companies use its top AI models for highly sensitive work, on its official X account and a business page. In addition to "zero data retention," which leaves no data behind for covered work, it is accepting applications for an API preview of "Private Inference," which runs AI in an environment where data cannot be seen from outside even during processing. Input and output data belong to the customer, and customers also set the permissions of AI agents. OpenAI has not disclosed pricing, supported models or timing for Private Inference. While Anthropic requires even enterprise customers using its top models to accept 30-day data retention, OpenAI, which has been losing share of enterprise spending, put its no-retention policy front and center.