GenAI Daily - March 26, 2026: Eli Lilly's LillyPod Launches, Anthropic's Auto Mode Expands, Gumloop Scores $50M
Top Stories
Eli Lilly Launches LillyPod - Pharma's Most Powerful AI Supercomputer
Eli Lilly and Company today announced it is building the most powerful supercomputer owned and operated by a pharmaceutical company, in collaboration with NVIDIA. LillyPod was inaugurated Wednesday at a ribbon-cutting in Indianapolis.
Computational power that once required 7 million Cray supercomputers now fits inside a single NVIDIA GPU - and LillyPod contains more than 1,000 of them. As the most powerful supercomputer in the pharmaceutical industry, powered by NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD B300 and including 1,016 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, LillyPod has the potential to expand our ability to discover and develop new medicines faster.
By automating clinical trial tasks like patient enrollment and optimizing manufacturing processes, he hopes Lilly can cut the typical 10-year timeline for a new drug down to five years. Lilly leaders framed LillyPod not as IT infrastructure but as a new kind of research instrument, one that lets scientists explore billions of molecular hypotheses in parallel, compared to the roughly 2,000 a productive wet-lab team can test per target per year.
Why it matters: The $1B+ investment signals pharmaceutical companies are moving beyond cloud computing to own mission-critical AI infrastructure that could fundamentally reshape drug discovery timelines.
Anthropic Launches "Auto Mode" for Autonomous AI Coding
Anthropic has launched auto mode for Claude Code and computer use for Cowork, expanding AI agent autonomy as revenue surpasses $2.5 billion. Auto Mode: Anthropic launched an AI safety classifier for Claude Code that automatically approves routine developer actions while blocking destructive operations.
Anthropic's new "auto mode," now in research preview - meaning it's available for testing but not yet a finished product - is its latest attempt to thread that needle. Auto mode uses AI safeguards to review each action before it runs, checking for risky behavior the user didn't request and for signs of prompt injection.
Revenue Growth: Claude Code has surpassed $2.5 billion in annualized revenue, up from $1 billion in early January 2026. Claude Code auto mode is a permission setting launched by Anthropic on March 24, 2026 that allows Claude to execute file writes and bash commands without requesting user approval for each action.
Why it matters: Auto mode addresses the key friction point in AI coding tools while maintaining safety guardrails, potentially accelerating enterprise adoption of autonomous development workflows.
Gumloop Raises $50M Series B for No-Code AI Agent Platform
That's why Randle, who joined Benchmark last October from Kleiner Perkins, chose to lead a $50 million Series B investment into Gumloop. The deal, which is Randle's first at his new firm, included participation from Nexus VP, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, BoxGroup, The Cannon Project, and Shopify.
Gumloop has become the go-to place for employees to build agents and AI-driven automations within many of the most AI-forward companies on earth such as Shopify, Ramp, Gusto, Samsara, Instacart, Opendoor and more. Gumloop says its platform has become widely adopted among companies building AI-first workflows, including Shopify, Ramp, Gusto, Samsara, Instacart, and Opendoor.
Enterprise automation is a massive pot of gold," Randle said. "I think it's the biggest category in enterprise AI."
Why it matters: Benchmark's lead investment validates the thesis that democratizing AI agent creation for non-technical employees represents the largest opportunity in enterprise AI automation.
Key Developments
AMI Labs Secures $1.03B for World Models Research - UPDATE
AMI Labs, the new venture co-founded by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun after he left Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. The funding for Paris-based AMI represents the largest seed round ever for a European startup and one of the region's largest fundings for an AI startup overall, per Crunchbase data.
AMI is working on world models, or AI that learns from reality, not just from language. AMI differs from the popular generative AI startups in that it aims to develop world models, or artificial intelligence that interacts with and learns from three-dimensional reality.
LeBrun has also indicated that the startup will be targeting healthcare, robotics, wearables and industrial automation first. In contrast, it could take years for world models to go from theory to commercial applications.
Impact: The massive seed round signals growing investor conviction that world models represent a fundamental architectural shift away from token prediction toward physical reality understanding.
Kleiner Perkins Raises $3.5B to Double Down on AI Infrastructure
Kleiner Perkins, the U.S. venture capital firm, has secured $3.5 billion in new funding across two vehicles, marking a significant increase from its $2 billion previous fund. The new capital positions KP to make larger bets on enterprise AI infrastructure and early-stage companies as competition intensifies for top deals.
The fundraise comes as enterprise demand for AI solutions continues accelerating, with Kleiner Perkins historically backing companies like Google, Amazon, and more recently focusing on AI infrastructure plays.
Impact: The funding scale enables Kleiner Perkins to compete with mega-funds in later-stage AI infrastructure deals while maintaining its early-stage focus.
Claude Code Channels Launch for Enterprise Security
Channels: Claude Code Channels lets developers control the coding agent via Discord and Telegram as a managed alternative to the open-source OpenClaw project. Security is where Channels differentiates itself. Admins can manage channels centrally, and every approved channel plugin maintains a sender allow-list controlling who can issue commands to the coding agent.
Developer appetite for chat-based agent interaction drove OpenClaw's rapid spread, as testing Claude Code's Discord and Telegram bot confirmed when the integrations drew immediate interest. Major Chinese tech companies including Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent adopted OpenClaw quickly, drawn by its familiar chat interface. OpenClaw's open-source nature brought security risks alongside its popularity, with hundreds of skills found laced with malware in early 2026.
Impact: Channels addresses the security vulnerabilities that limited OpenClaw adoption in enterprise environments while maintaining the chat-based interaction developers prefer.
Product Launches
Databricks Lakewatch AI Security Platform
Databricks has unveiled Lakewatch, a new AI-driven security product designed to enhance threat detection and investigation within its data platform, while confirming two startup acquisitions. The platform provides AI-powered monitoring and anomaly detection for enterprise data lakes, addressing the growing need for intelligent security as organizations scale their data operations.
Meta Commerce AI Updates
Meta has announced a series of AI-driven updates aimed at transforming commerce across its platforms while expanding support for entrepreneurs. At Shoptalk 2026, the company unveiled new AI tools for product discovery, automated customer service, and enhanced ad targeting capabilities across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Funding & Deals
Gumloop Raises $50M Series B
Gumloop announced it has raised $50 million in Series B funding to expand its AI automation and agent platform designed to help employees automate work tasks. The round was led by Benchmark, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Box Group, The Cannon Project, and Shopify Ventures.
Founded in mid 2023 by CEO Max Brodeur-Urbas and co-founder Rahul Behal, Gumloop is headquartered in San Francisco after originating in Vancouver.
Led by Benchmark.
AMI Labs Raises $1.03B Seed Round
Advanced Machine Intelligence, a startup co-founded by computer science pioneer and former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, said Tuesday that it has raised $1.03 billion to develop "world models," or AI designed to learn from and interact with the physical world. Bezos Expeditions, Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital and HV Capital led the funding, which reportedly values AMI at $3.5 billion.
On March 10, 2026, AMI Labs announced its official launch as a company and confirmed it raised $1.03 billion (approximately €890 million) in a funding round co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital and Bezos Expeditions - resulting in a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation.
Led by Bezos Expeditions, Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital and HV Capital.
Related reading: Check out this week's Deep Insights analysis for strategic context on these developments.
