Sonnet 5 Drops, Fable 5 Will Return & Fusion’s First Plant Gets Licensed W/ Philip Johnston | #268
In a Nutshell
Sonnet 5 was released as a stopgap after the US government pulled Anthropic's Fable 5 flagship model for national security reasons, while fusion startup Helion secured regulatory approval for its first plant supplying Microsoft. The discussion centers on accelerating humanoid robotics scaling toward commodity pricing, massive orbital compute deployment via StarCloud's space-based data centers, and energy abundance through both fission and fusion. Key themes include experts consistently underestimating exponential growth in solar, EVs, batteries, and now robots, with incentive prizes and vertical integration (SpaceX, Rocket Lab) emerging as dominant forces across AI, energy, and space infrastructure.
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Sonnet 5 is positioned as a temporary solution to fill the gap until Fable 5 returns. It offers mediocre capability at a high price point, yet demand persists. Anthropic's flagship model Fable 5 has been offline for 15 days after being pulled by the US government. Axios reports it may return within days. Historians will view this period as marking the middle or endgame of recursive self-improvement. Helion has cleared the required Washington state regulatory approvals for its Orion Fusion power plant, signaling that fusion power is finally arriving.
If the right long-term metric or figure of merit is tracked, the timing of major technological breakthroughs can be predicted with accuracy. The discussion shifts to data centers and space topics.
Peter D. Mandis hosts the Moonshots podcast, focused on the coming singularity and age of abundance. The panel includes Dave London (managing partner of Link Exponential Ventures and top funder of MIT and Harvard AI startups), Sel (global trader and CEO of Open Exo), and AWG (in-house ASI). Philip Johnston joins as a guest.
Sel dropped his son off at camp near San Sebastian, Spain, and is currently in Barretts. He has visited five countries in the last three days. Alex reports he is GDP maxing. Peter focuses on happiness maxing and gratitude maxing. Dave is at Link Studio, noting increased activity with Northeastern and Princeton alongside MIT and Harvard.
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