Pondero Brief - MAY 25TH, 2026
Two Big Four firms standardized on Claude for client work. Here is what that signals.
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Pick on price alone and you can end up paying for a support deflection tool when what you needed was a research sidebar.
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MAY 25TH, 2026 · BY JONATHAN HILDEBRANDT
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KPMG signed a global alliance with Anthropic on May 19, embedding Claude across its workforce of 276,000+ employees in 138 countries. Claude ships inside KPMG's Digital Gateway delivery platform, starting with tax and legal tooling, with cybersecurity scope included. KPMG staff also get Claude Cowork and Managed Agents to build new AI capabilities inside the platform. Anthropic named KPMG a preferred partner for private equity client work. Why it matters. This follows Anthropic's PwC partnership, which means two Big Four firms have now standardized on Claude for client-delivery work in the same quarter. When audit and advisory shops pick a frontier model vendor for production (not pilots), it narrows the field fast for enterprise buyers watching from the sidelines. Read our coverage.
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See which one passed the 'what can't it do' test →
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Cursor 3.5 ships multi-repo Automations and Jira integration
MAY 25TH · PONDERO NEWSDESK
Released May 20, Automations now run in the IDE Agents Window (no browser tab required). Agents can span multiple codebases or run with no repo at all, monitoring tools and acting on signals. The Jira integration lets you assign work items to Cursor or @Cursor in comments, turning it into a ticket-triggered autonomous coder. Five new Marketplace templates dropped alongside it. Our take.
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Anthropic shipped self-hosted sandboxes and MCP tunnels
MAY 25TH · PONDERO NEWSDESK
Announced at Code with Claude London on May 20: self-hosted sandboxes (public beta) let enterprises run agent compute on their own infrastructure. MCP tunnels (research preview) connect internal servers to Claude without exposing them to the public internet. Enterprise security teams that blocked Managed Agents on data-residency grounds now have an on-prem path.
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From the Pondero stack: Chatbase vs CustomGPT vs Sider
MAY 25TH · BY JONATHAN HILDEBRANDT
Our new comparison breaks down Chatbase, CustomGPT, and Sider by the question that actually decides the call: where does the bot live? Chatbase is a support agent on your website. CustomGPT is a document-grounded answer engine. Sider is a browser sidebar for the user. Pick on price alone and you can end up paying for a support deflection tool when what you needed was a research sidebar. See which one passed the "what can't it do" test. Read the full comparison. Tools in this comparison: Try CustomGPT · Try Sider
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Jonathan Hildebrandt
Co-founder and primary operator of Pondero. Writes the Pondero Brief.
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