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IBL News | New York

Anthropic’s Claude for Education offering was made available in AWS Marketplace as a software-as-a-service solution this month.

Claude for Enterprise and the Financial Analysis Solution were also released at the same space.
AWS Marketplace’s main advantage is the streamlined procurement and billing process.

According to the company, “Claude for Education equips every student with an adaptive study companion, faculty with an AI assistant for creating engaging teaching materials, and staff with an AI collaborator for tracking and analyzing student progress.”

Claude for Education uses Socratic questioning to guide students toward answers rather than providing direct responses.

It includes single sign-on (SSO), native integrations with GitHub, Google Workspace, and Canvas LTI (with Panopto and Wiley integrations coming soon), and custom integrations through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). The pre-built MCP integrations include Atlassian (Jira/Confluence), Zapier, Linear, and Asana.

It adds a 200K token context window, primarily for analysis of complex academic materials and research tasks in a single conversation, enterprise-grade security, and compliance.

For example, a research team can upload multiple academic papers, datasets, and their own notes into a single Claude conversation. Claude maintains full context across all documents, enabling comprehensive analysis and synthesis that would typically require hours of manual work.

Antropic highlighted that its key use cases include:

• Academic instruction and learning: Socratic questioning through Learning Mode
• Faculty support: Course development and content creation
• Research support: Literature review and data analysis assistance
• Student success support: Progress tracking, early intervention strategies, and personalized learning paths

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• Claude for Education in AWS Marketplace

• Kim Majerus’s keynote at the AWS Imagine: Education, State, and Local Government conference.

IBL News | New York

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, rationalized the 9,000-employee layoff through a 1,150-word memo that highlighted how the company is thriving in terms of market performance, strategic positioning, and growth, while the AI-based disruption is taking place in the software industry.

Progress isn’t linear. It’s dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding. But it’s also a new opportunity for us to shape, lead through, and have greater impact than ever before.

In a double corporate language, Nadella tries to reconcile two contradictory realities: How can a company be “more successful than ever” while still eliminating jobs?

“This narrative framework captures the harsh reality that AI, in theory, will make companies more profitable while employing fewer people,” wrote San Francisco-based writer, photographer, and investor Om.

Microsoft’s CEO [in the picture above] implies that the laid-off employees are not due to financial struggles, but rather because those workers didn’t align with the company’s AI-focused strategy, suggesting that some employees’ skills have become outdated.

Rather than invest in retraining, the company opted to hire fewer workers with more relevant expertise.

“The Microsoft memo portends the new reality of the technology industry. For years, the sector has been generous to its employees, offering unheard-of perks and placing a premium on skills such as software development. AI, however, inverts that relationship,” said Om.

IBL News | New York

Figma announced that its AI coding tool, Figma Make, for building prototypes and apps, is now available to all users, with limitations depending on the subscription plan.

Figma Make, still in beta, features the ability to include design references.

Users can upload an image alongside the description of what they want to create, and elements like formatting and font style can also be adjusted using additional prompts.

Figma has introduced a credit system for using the platform’s AI tools.

According to the company, View, Collab, and Dev Seat users can use AI features with lower credit limits.

In addition to Figma Make, the company is promoting two other AI features: Make and Edit Image and Boost Resolution. These products are transitioning from beta to general availability.

IBL News | New York

OpenAI introduced “Study Mode” for ChatGPT, a new way to learn that offers step-by-step guidance instead of quick answers, designed to act more as an always-on tutor and less like a lookup tool. It aims to prevent—or at least discourage—students from taking homework shortcuts.

The company defined this new feature as “a new learning experience that helps you work through problems step-by-step instead of just getting an answer.”

This mode transforms the AI from an answer engine into a Socratic tutor, a pedagogical approach, developed after consulting with experts from over 40 institutions, that asks guiding questions to help students work through problems themselves instead of providing direct solutions.

OpenAI states that it is currently partnering with learning experts from Stanford “to study and share how AI tools, including study mode, influence learning outcomes in areas like K-12 education.”

The company aims to address educators’ concerns about academic integrity and cheating.

The feature is available to logged-in users on Free, Plus, Pro, and Team, with availability in ChatGPT Edu in August.

These are the key features, according to OpenAI:

• Interactive prompts: Combines Socratic questioning, hints, and self-reflection prompts to guide understanding and promote active learning, instead of providing answers outright.

As ChatGPT becomes a go-to tool for students, we’re committed to ensuring it fosters deeper understanding and learning.

Introducing study mode in ChatGPT — a learning experience that helps you work through problems step-by-step instead of just getting an answer. pic.twitter.com/B8VbRYJH6r

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) July 29, 2025

IBL News | New York

The Trump administration’s deal with Columbia University in New York City has put leaders at Ivy League universities and other college campuses nationwide in a tough spot. Institutions are facing the possibility of seeing research funding paused.

President Donald Trump has made it clear he won’t tolerate a liberal imposition at America’s most prestigious colleges and intends to reshape them accordingly.

On July 23, Columbia University agreed to pay fines of over $220 million and signed on to a list of other concessions related to admissions, academics, and hiring practices.

The White House, which has halted billions in research grants to several schools, said it envisions the Columbia deal as the first of many such agreements.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon called it a blueprint for other institutions to follow.

“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to regain the confidence of the American public,” Linda McMahon said in a statement.

In addition to Columbia University, other Ivy League schools are striking deals with the Trump administration.

On July 1, the University of Pennsylvania entered into an agreement ending a civil rights investigation brought by the U.S. Department of Education.

In February, the agency accused Penn of violating Title IX, the primary sex discrimination law governing schools, when it allowed Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, to compete in 2022.

As part of the deal, the White House said it would restore Penn’s research funding. In return, the university apologized to cisgender athletes who swam against Thomas. The university also agreed to ban transgender women from sports.

This month, President Trump hinted he believes Harvard University may still be open to coming to a deal.

At Cornell, the government paused more than $1 billion. At Brown, it froze $510 million, and at Princeton, it stopped more than $210 million.

Of the eight Ivy League schools, only two – Dartmouth College and Yale University – have avoided targeted federal funding freezes.

IBL News | New York

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude.ai chatbot, introduced this month Claude for Financial Services, a solution for financial professionals to analyze markets, conduct research, and make investment decisions.

The so-called Financial Analysis Solution unifies users’ financial data—from market feeds to internal data stored in platforms like Databricks and Snowflake—into a single interface. It allows access to critical data sources with direct hyperlinks to source materials.

It also comes with pre-built MCP connectors to access financial data providers and enterprise platforms.

Developers can build custom applications via the company’s API.

Anthropic said it includes the company’s Claude 4 models, Claude Code, and Claude for Enterprise with expanded usage limits, implementation support, and other features.

“Claude provides the complete platform for financial AI—from immediate deployment to custom development,” Anthropic said in a release.

According to Anthropic, these real-time financial data providers include:

• Box enables secure document management and data room analysis.
• Daloopa supplies high-quality fundamentals and KPIs from all public filings, disclosures and presentations.
• FactSet provides comprehensive equity prices, fundamentals, and consensus estimates.
• Morningstar contributes valuation data and research analytics.
• Palantir builds AI-driven platforms that help governments and enterprises integrate, analyze, and act on large-scale data to make critical operational decisions.
• PitchBook delivers industry-leading private capital market data and research, empowering users to source investment and fundraising opportunities, conduct due diligence and benchmark performance, faster and with greater confidence.
• S&P Global enables access to Capital IQ Financials, earnings call transcripts, and more–essentially your entire research workflow.
• Databricks offers unified analytics for big data and AI workloads.
• Snowflake provides an easy, connected, and trusted data and AI platform that allows global enterprises to unlock value across all of their data – including structured, unstructured, and semi-structured.

The solution is available on AWS Marketplace for streamlined procurement and consolidated billing, while Google Cloud Marketplace availability is coming soon.

> Mike Dion: The 3 Best Ways to Use Claude For Finance

IBL News | New York

OpenAI debuted ChatGPT Agent yesterday, joining the hyped trend of agents —tools that autonomously complete multi-step tasks and workflows.

This new agent, still in beta, can perform tasks, following users’ instructions, on its own OpenAI virtual computer by intelligently navigating websites, filtering results, requesting secure logins when needed, running code, conducting analysis, and even delivering editable slideshows and spreadsheets that summarize its findings.

Some examples of handled requests provided by OpenAI include:

• “Look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news.”
• “Plan and buy ingredients to make a Japanese breakfast for four.”
• “Analyze three competitors and create a slide deck.”

IBL News | New York

The American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union in the U.S. (representing 1.8 million members), will create a National Academy for AI Instruction, with $23 million in funding from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

This training hub for educators is planned to open this fall in the union’s headquarters in New York City. It will offer hands-on workshops for teachers on how to use AI tools for instructional tasks safely and ethically.

The initiative is expected to reach approximately 400,000 educators, that is, roughly one in ten US teachers, by 2030.

This academy was inspired by other unions, such as the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, which has established high-tech training centers in collaboration with industry partners.

Microsoft will provide $12.5 million over the next five years. OpenAI will contribute $8 million in funding and $2 million in technical resources. Anthropic will add $500,000 for the first year of the effort.

In February, California State University, the largest university system in the U.S., announced that it would provide ChatGPT to approximately 460,000 students.

This spring, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the third-largest U.S. school district, began rolling out Google’s Gemini AI for 100,000 high schoolers.

The Trump administration has called on the industry to provide AI education. (IBL News: Sixty-Eight Organizations Support Trump’s Pledge to Educate K-12 Students on AI).

Some experts have warned that tech firms can use AI deals with schools and the teachers’ union as marketing opportunities to make students lifetime chatbot customers.

“It’s a long-game investment by companies to turn young people into consumers who identify with a particular brand,” said to The New York Times Dr. Griffey, a vice president of University Council-A.F.T. Local 1474, a union representing University of California librarians and lecturers.

This month, approximately 200 New York City teachers received a glimpse of what the new national training effort might look like, as reported by The New York Times. A presenter from Microsoft showed an explainer video featuring Minecraft, the popular game owned by Microsoft.

Additionally, teachers attempted to generate emails and lesson plans using Khanmigo, an AI tool designed for schools, for which Microsoft has provided support. They then experimented with Microsoft Copilot for similar tasks.

On its side, OpenAI has launched programs like OpenAI Academy, ChatGPT for Education, and the OpenAI forum. The company is also co-sponsoring the AFT AI Symposium on July 24 in Washington, DC.

IBL News | New York

The approved Trump administration domestic policy bill will expand taxes on endowments that universities often use for financial aid (typically about 5%), cap the federal amount students can borrow for graduate programs, and allow students in short-term work training programs in community colleges to become eligible for Pell Grants.

Also, the bill would “make college less affordable,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

Meanwhile, republicans said that the bill — dubbed “The Big, Beautiful Bill — imposes accountability on a sector that has failed to police itself.

More heavily taxed university endowments fulfill a Trump campaign promise to target the nation’s wealthiest schools, like Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. To date, this campaign has resulted in reduced research grants and made it more difficult for international students to enroll.

Universities like Harvard and Princeton, which have endowments of $2 million or more per student, would face an 8 percent tax on investment income. It’s a smaller amount than the 21 percent proposed initially in the House bill or the 35 percent that Vice President JD Vance suggested in 2023 as a senator.

The student loan changes are expected to save the government over $300 billion in a decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate. “By reducing borrowing availability, we break the cycle of debt, making higher education more accessible for all Americans,” the Trump administration said in a statement.

The bill places restrictions on how much money graduate students can borrow from the federal government to pay for school.

Students won’t be able to take out more than $100,000 for a master’s degree and over $200,000 for doctoral, medical, or professional degrees.

Mikel Amigot, IBL News | New York

OpenAI is selling premium AI services to universities trying to “become part of the core infrastructure of higher education,” said Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education and former manager at Coursera, in an interview with The New York Times [in the picture above].

At the same time, it’s running a marketing campaign targeting students and courting them as future customers — essentially as rivals like Google and Microsoft have been doing for years, pushing their computers and software into schools.

The startup envisions students graduating with their AI assistants and utilizing them throughout their careers in the workplace, like they do with their school-issued Gmail accounts.

On their side, Elon Musk’s xAI and Google have been offering free AI services for college students during the exam period.

Overall, OpenAI aims to embed its AI technology within universities by providing students with AI assistants to help tutor and guide them from orientation through graduation, featuring tools such as chatbots, practice job interview tools, voice model tools, and tools to quiz aloud ahead of a test.

Meanwhile, faculty members can build custom chatbots for their students by uploading course materials, such as lecture notes, slides, videos, and quizzes, into ChatGPT.

OpenAI’s sales pitch has been named “AI-native universities.”

Three of its clients are the University of Maryland, California State University (with 460,000 students across its 23 campuses), and Duke University (through a platform called DukeGPT).