# Dodo Digest: Even Anthropic Has To Answer To Governments > Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models are back after the U.S. government lifted restrictions, a reminder that even the largest AI companies operate within regulatory boundaries. Building a product is one challenge; selling it globally is another, which is why Merchant of Record models matter for startups. Plus, we shipped Dodo Payments v1.105.0 with Bring Your Own Processor (BYOP) and decimal-aware currency handling. - **Author**: Rishabh Goel - **Published**: 2026-07-02 - **Category**: Newsletter - **URL**: https://dodopayments.com/blogs/newsletter-july3rd --- ## Even Anthropic Has To Answer To Governments ### TL;DR - Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models are back after restrictions were lifted. - The release is another reminder that even the largest AI companies operate within regulatory boundaries. - Building a product is one challenge. Selling it globally is another. - That's exactly why Merchant of Record models are becoming increasingly important for startups. - We shipped Dodo Payments v1.105.0 with Bring Your Own Processor (BYOP), improved decimal-aware currency handling, and more. ## Hello everyone, I was reading about Anthropic earlier this week. After months of restrictions, the U.S. government cleared the release of its Mythos and Fable models, allowing Anthropic to make them broadly available again. At the same time, the company also introduced Claude Sonnet 5, a lower-cost model designed to make AI agents cheaper to run. Most people looked at it as another AI announcement. I think it's something else. It's another reminder that even the biggest AI companies don't just build products. They operate within governments, regulations, and global markets. And eventually, every company that wants to sell internationally runs into that reality. Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 5 launch artwork ## The Signal For most founders, the hardest part feels like building the product. Finding product-market fit, shipping features, and acquiring those first customers usually take up all of their attention. But once the product starts selling globally, an entirely different set of challenges begins to emerge. Founders suddenly find themselves navigating taxes, compliance, local payment methods, currency handling, consumer protection laws, and regulations they never expected to learn about. None of these make the product itself any better. Yet they often determine whether you can actually sell that product in another country. As businesses grow across borders, these operational challenges quickly become growth challenges. Claude's post announcing that Fable 5 is back ## Why This Matters Anthropic has teams of lawyers, compliance specialists, and policy experts working through these issues. Most startups don't. A two-person AI startup shouldn't have to become an expert in international tax law just to sell software globally. That's exactly why the Merchant of Record model has become so important. Instead of every startup building a global payments and compliance operation from scratch, they can rely on infrastructure that's already built for it. The goal isn't just accepting payments. It's removing the operational complexity that comes with selling internationally, so founders can stay focused on building great products. ## How To Think About This If you're building globally: 1. **Building and selling are different problems.** Getting users is only half the journey. Getting paid globally is the other half. 2. **Regulations don't scale with your team size.** A two-person company can face the same tax and compliance requirements as a much larger business. 3. **Infrastructure compounds.** The earlier you build on reliable infrastructure, the fewer operational problems you'll have later. 4. **Focus on your competitive advantage.** Your product should differentiate you. Your payments stack shouldn't become another product you have to maintain. ## What We Shipped Speaking of infrastructure, we've been continuing to invest in making Dodo more flexible for businesses as they grow. In [v1.105.0](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.105.0#1-bring-your-own-processor-byop), one of the biggest additions was Bring Your Own Processor (BYOP). For businesses that already have relationships with payment processors, BYOP allows them to continue using those processors while taking advantage of Dodo's billing, subscriptions, tax handling, and Merchant of Record capabilities. Instead of forcing businesses to replace existing infrastructure, we let them build on top of it. We also introduced [decimal-aware currency](https://docs.dodopayments.com/changelog/v1.105.0#5-decimal-aware-currency-handling) handling, ensuring currencies like JPY, KRW, VND, CLP, XAF, and XOF are handled with the correct precision across payments, invoices, payouts, emails, analytics, and adaptive currency conversions. It might sound like a small change. But getting currency precision right removes an entire class of rounding issues and makes global payments significantly more reliable. That's the kind of infrastructure work users rarely notice, but always benefit from. ## Builder Spotlight One company I've enjoyed watching recently is Indilingo. They're building an AI-powered language learning platform that helps people learn Indian languages like Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit from their own native language. As demand for regional language learning continues to grow, they're making that experience much more accessible for learners around the world. As their user base expanded across more than 90 countries, they needed a payment setup that could scale globally without adding operational complexity. That's where [Dodo came in](https://dodopayments.com/case-studies/indilingo). Instead of spending time managing taxes, compliance, and global payments, they could stay focused on helping more people learn Indian languages through AI. It's always exciting to see builders preserving culture through technology, and we're happy to be powering payments as they continue to grow. Indilingo, an AI-powered platform to learn Indian languages ## One Last Thought Building software has never been easier. Selling software globally has never been more complicated. The companies that succeed over the next decade won't just build remarkable products. They'll build on infrastructure that lets them reach customers anywhere in the world without getting buried in operational complexity. Sometimes the best technology isn't the part users see. It's the part that quietly makes everything else possible. Also, join our loving [Discord community](https://discord.gg/dodo-payments-1305511580854779984)! Best, **Rishabh Goel** **Co-Founder, Dodo Payments** --- - [More Newsletter articles](https://dodopayments.com/blogs/category/newsletter) - [All articles](https://dodopayments.com/blogs)