WeeklyClaw #011 - GPT-5.5 Is Here, OpenAI Just Went Cloud-Agnostic, and Anthropic Had the Best and Worst Tuesday of Its Life

Big week. Actually - probably one of the biggest in a while. GPT-5.5 landed. OpenAI broke up with Microsoft (sort of). Anthropic tried to announce something exciting and then immediately fell over. And Peter is absolutely flying. Before we get into it - if you're not already in the Discord, come join. We're building something proper over there. 👉 discord.gg/dekKpCj8 --- GPT-5.5 IS HERE - AND IT'S BETTER THAN OPUS 4.7 ON ALMOST EVERYTHING OpenAI dropped GPT-5.5 on April 23rd. Codename "Spud". Classic OpenAI. Anthropic released Opus 4.7 just a week earlier - it was supposed to be their best model yet. GPT-5.5 landed and immediately beat it on most tests. Here's the simple version of how they compare. GPT-5.5 is better at research, reasoning, maths, and scientific tasks. It's also significantly better at using tools and completing tasks autonomously - which is exactly what matters for agent setups. If you're running OpenClaw on GPT, it'll feel more reliable and finish things more cleanly than before. Opus 4.7 still has one real advantage: deep, complex coding. Long sessions, big codebases, multi-step builds - Claude still handles that better. Outside of that, GPT-5.5 is ahead. One thing worth flagging on cost: Claude is actually cheaper. GPT-5.5 is 17% more expensive per response than Opus 4.7. Worth knowing if you're running an agent at any kind of scale. GPT-5.5 is live now in ChatGPT and the API. Builders who've been on Claude are switching or testing it. That's the strongest signal of all. --- THE MICROSOFT DEAL - OPENAI GOES CLOUD-AGNOSTIC This one flew under the radar a bit. But it's huge. OpenAI and Microsoft restructured their deal on April 27th. Microsoft's exclusive API licence is gone. The model IP licence still runs until 2032 - but it's no longer exclusive. OpenAI can now offer its models to any cloud provider. Twenty-four hours later, AWS announced OpenAI models on Bedrock. That $50B Amazon investment deal? It was stuck because Microsoft had first-right-of-refusal on all API access. That's now unlocked. OpenAI is going cloud-agnostic - and doing it fast. For builders this means choice. Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, whoever. OpenAI models wherever you want them. It's a proper shift in how the infrastructure layer works. --- ANTHROPIC GOES CREATIVE - ADOBE, BLENDER, ABLETON AND MORE On April 28th, Anthropic announced Claude connectors for creative tools. Not just Adobe - a whole coalition: Blender, Autodesk, Adobe, Ableton, Splice. The idea is that Claude works inside the tools creative professionals already use. Not a separate app. Not a chat interface you copy-paste from. Actually inside the software. For Adobe specifically - that means Creative Cloud. Agentic workflows from inside Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere. Adobe had been quiet on the AI front for a while - a lot of people had written them off. This is a meaningful answer. Honestly, this is smart positioning from Anthropic. They're not trying to replace the tools. They're embedding Claude into the workflow. That's a much harder product to rip out once it's there. --- ANTHROPIC'S OUTAGE - SAME DAY, SAME AFTERNOON Then it all went wrong. April 28th, 17:51 UTC - the same afternoon as the creative partnership announcement - Claude went down. API errors across the board. Claude.ai offline. Claude Code login broken. Over 12,000 users reporting issues before it was fixed. Here's my honest take: the timing was brutal. You spend weeks setting up a big creative industry play, brief the press, drop the announcement - and then immediately can't keep the lights on. This isn't a one-off either. Reliability has become an actual pattern for Anthropic. And when you're trying to win enterprise creative clients - the kind that need uptime guarantees - this is the thing that kills deals. The fix came through same day. But the damage is the optics. They really dropped the ball on this one. --- PETER STEINBERGER IS MOVING FASTER THAN ANYONE If you've been paying attention to OpenClaw tooling this week, you've noticed the pace. wacrawl. gogcli. birdclaw. summarize. codexbar. All in the space of a few days. CodexBar is probably the one getting the most attention - a macOS menu bar app that shows your Codex and Claude Code usage stats without having to log in anywhere. The community already built a Windows port. That's how fast things move around Peter right now. On the core OpenClaw side: the update installer now uses a verified temp prefix before swapping into place. Boring to read. Very annoying when it was broken. No more mixed old/new installs mid-update. TechCrunch covered OpenClaw this week too - specifically around a Red Hat maintainer building enterprise hardening for RHEL deployments. That's a vibe shift. OpenClaw started as a personal tool. It's becoming infrastructure. --- WHY I'M BUILDING AN AGENTIC COMMUNITY If you're building with OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude Code, or anything agentic - come join the Discord. We've got builders, discussions, resources, and I'm actively in there taking suggestions for what to cover next. If you've read this far and still haven't joined, what are you doing? Join here: discord.gg/dekKpCj8 --- THIS WEEK'S LINKS GPT-5.5 - Introducing GPT-5.5 - OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-5/ - OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 - TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/23/openai-chatgpt-gpt-5-5-ai-model-superapp/ OpenAI x Microsoft - Microsoft ends exclusive licence - Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/microsoft-end-exclusive-license-openais-technology-2026-04-27/ - OpenAI brings models to AWS - CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/28/openai-brings-models-to-aws-after-ending-exclusivity-with-microsoft.html Anthropic Creative Connectors - Claude for Creative Work - Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-creative-work - Adobe for creativity connector - Adobe blog: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2026/04/28/adobe-for-creativity-connector - Anthropic releases 9 Claude connectors - 9to5Mac: https://9to5mac.com/2026/04/28/anthropic-releases-9-new-claude-connectors-for-creative-tools-including-blender-and-adobe/ Anthropic Outage - Anthropic deploys fix after major outage: https://www.asatunews.co.id/en/anthropic-claude-ai-service-outage - Claude suffers alarming outage - Rolling Out: https://rollingout.com/2026/04/28/anthropic-claude-outage-users-locked-out/ OpenClaw - Enterprise deployments - TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/28/red-hats-openclaw-maintainer-just-made-enterprise-claw-deployments-a-lot-safer/ - OpenClaw releases - GitHub: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/releases --- Thanks for reading WeeklyClaw #011. GPT-5.5 is out and the competition is real. OpenAI is going cloud-agnostic. Anthropic had a brilliant and terrible Tuesday in equal measure. And Peter is building faster than anyone. Come join the community - discord.gg/dekKpCj8. Tell me what to write about next. Same time next week. 🦞 - Jordy (@jordymaui) Sign up at weeklyclaw.com · Follow on X · WeeklyClaw on X