The Backers
A leaked memo shows Dario Amodei called OpenAI's DOD deal "safety theater." The same day, some of Anthropic's own investors pushed the company to back down. Sixty billion dollars in outside capital just opened a second front.
Apple unveils the $599+ MacBook Neo, with a 13-inch Liquid Retina display, an A18 Pro chip, side-firing speakers, a 1080p webcam, two USB-C ports, and Touch ID
Apple debuts a new entry-level MacBook at just the right time — Apple finally took the wraps off its long-rumored budget laptop.
Sources: the US used Palantir's Maven Smart System, integrated with Claude, to find and prioritize 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours of its attack on Iran
Apple refreshes the 14" and 16" MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max: up to 4x faster LLM prompt processing, up to 2x faster SSD speeds, and 1TB of base storage
The world's best pro laptop raises the bar again with blazing-fast CPU and GPU performance, plus up to 2x faster SSD speeds and 1TB of starting storage
A US lawsuit says Gemini sent a man to find an android body it could inhabit, before he died by suicide; Google says it sent him to crisis hotlines “many times”
A new lawsuit alleges Google's chatbot sent a Florida man on missions to find an android body it could inhabit.
Google announces an Android app store program and lower developer fees to resolve Epic's antitrust litigation and comply with new rules in Europe and elsewhere
All-hands: Sam Altman defends OpenAI's US DOD deal, calls the backlash “painful”, and says OpenAI is looking at a deal to deploy on all NATO classified networks
Startup's deal to do classified work with Defense Department drew backlash from staff and other AI researchers
Polymarket removes long-running markets that let users bet on if a nuclear weapon will be detonated, amid the Iran strikes; a 2025 contract had $1.7M+ in volume
Nuclear weapon-themed markets aren't new on the prediction market platform, but public outcry about the contracts has apparently forced the platform to delete them.
All-hands: Sam Altman says OpenAI does not “get to make operational decisions” regarding how the US DOD uses its tech, and the Pentagon respects its expertise
Ashley Capoot /CNBC:
Sources: Sony no longer plans to release its big single-player PlayStation 5 games on PC, a major strategy shift that sees it returning to console exclusivity
The video-game publisher no longer plans to put out PC ports of PlayStation games such as ‘Ghost of Yotei’
Sources: some investors push Anthropic to de-escalate its DOD dispute and avoid the “supply-chain risk” designation; source: some Anthropic-DOD talks continue
Authorities from 14 countries shut down LeakBase, seize its domains, and arrest multiple people allegedly tied to the cybercrime forum, which had 142K+ members
The marketplace was one of the world's largest hubs for cybercrime with more than 142,000 members.
Sources: Anthropic recently passed $19B in run-rate revenue, up from $9B at the end of 2025 and ~$14B a few weeks ago, as its clash with the US DOD casts doubt
Anthropic PBC is on track to generate annual revenue of almost $20 billion, a projection based on current performance, more than doubling its run rate from late last year …
Apple unveils the M5 MacBook Air in 13" and 15" sizes, boosting its starting price by $100 to $1,099 and doubling base storage to 512GB, shipping from March 11
You now get more storage and better performance …Forums:r/macgaming:Macbook Air M5 base storage doubled to 512GBr/technology:Apple introduces the new MacBook Air with M5r/hardware:Apple introduces the...
Broadcom reports Q1 revenue up 29% YoY to $19.31B, vs. $19.18B est., AI revenue up 106% to $8.4B, and announces a $10B share buyback program
Source: OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-5.4, with an “extreme” reasoning mode and a 1M-token context window, matching past models but up from GPT-5.2's 400K
OpenAI's next GPT model is coming—and soon, according to a person with knowledge of it.
Apple changes its CPU terminology alongside the M5 Pro and M5 Max, renaming “performance cores” to “super cores” and “efficiency cores” to “performance cores”
One of the most surprising parts of Apple's announcement on Tuesday of new M5 Pro …
The Media Trust report: online ads surpassed email as the primary malware channel in 2025, accounting for 60%+ of all observed malware and phishing campaigns
Follow Lara O'Reilly … - Online ads leapfrogged email as the primary channel for malware in 2025, per a new report.
Kraken says its banking unit won “master account” access to the US Fed's core payment systems, making it the first crypto company that can move money like banks
‘Master account’ approval gives firm access to the same payment rail as thousands of banks and credit unions
Lockheed Martin plans to follow the US DOD's Anthropic ban; lawyers specializing in tech and contracting laws say defense contractors would be quick to comply
U.S. defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), are expected to follow the Pentagon's order to purge Anthropic's prized AI tools …
Jensen Huang says Nvidia's recent $30B investment in OpenAI “might be the last time” it invests in the company, because OpenAI is “going to go public”
Corning unveils Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3 for smartphones, promising better protection against years of drops, first launching on the upcoming Motorola Razr Fold
Corning has announced Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, a new upgrade to smartphone cover glass that promises protection against years of drops …
Trump says “the GENIUS Act is being threatened and undermined by the banks”, which are holding the CLARITY Act hostage, as they oppose stablecoin yield payouts
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a post on Truth Social that the banking industry is trying to undermine the stablecoin bill he signed into law last year.
Google Pixel 10a review: long battery life and a good camera with no bump, but weak gaming performance and barely an upgrade from the Pixel 9a
Source: a16z Crypto is targeting around $2B for its fifth fund and plans to close the raise by the end of the first half of 2026
The largest player in the crypto venture world is back on the fundraising circuit. The blockchain arm of Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z crypto …
Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, and others sign a pledge at the White House to bear the cost of new electricity generation to power their data centers
Google (GOOGL.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), Meta (META.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and several artificial intelligence companies signed a pledge …
Eight Sleep, which sells smart mattress accessories to track sleep patterns and adjust temperatures, raised $50M at a $1.5B valuation, up from $500M in 2021
Sources: the White House is debating whether to allow Tencent to maintain stakes in US and Finnish video game companies; Tencent holds a 28% stake in Epic Games
Chinese company's investments in ‘Fortnite’ creator Epic Games and other creators have faced long-running US security review
OpenAI's “red lines” in its DOD agreement effectively adopt the words that the NSA has redefined over decades to permit the very things they appear to prohibit
Within hours on Friday, the Pentagon blacklisted one AI company for refusing to drop its safety commitments on surveillance …
Source: Embo, which is developing world models for robotics, is in talks to raise a $100M+ seed led by a16z, with Khosla, DST Global, and Striker participating
Embo, an AI startup co-founded by former Google DeepMind research scientists, is in talks to raise a seed round of more than $100 million led …
Analysis: since 2025's end, Polymarket users rarely bet large sums on US strikes by the next day; the day before the Iran strikes, 150+ accounts made such bets
Tencent-owned Finnish game company Supercell says it is cooperating with a CFIUS security probe of Tencent's data practices
Supercell Oy, the Finnish game company owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd., said it's cooperating with a US government security probe of its Chinese parent's data practices.
Sources: Arda, co-founded by ex-OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew to automate manufacturing using AI, is raising $70M at a $700M valuation
Sources: Neura Robotics, which is building cognitive, humanoid robots for logistics, is raising ~€1B in a funding round backed by Tether at a ~€4B valuation
Perplexity signs a multiyear deal with CoreWeave to use dedicated clusters powered by Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips for AI inference; CRWV jumps 5%+
Boston-based Whoop, which makes screenless fitness bands, says it plans to increase its staff by up to 75% in 2026, adding 600+ new roles, ahead of a likely IPO
Unlike in the West, Chinese policymakers and the public seem more optimistic about AI, likely because Chinese tech companies focus on real-world applications
A top Call of Duty leaker, TheGhostOfHope on X, says he'll stop after Activision “legally demanded” he “stop leaking and disseminating confidential information”
Sources: Walmart-backed PhonePe targets a $9B to $10.5B valuation in its Indian IPO; PhonePe raised $600M from General Atlantic at a $14.5B valuation in October
An OpenAI spokesperson says Sam Altman misspoke in saying OpenAI was looking to deploy on all NATO classified networks, adding he meant “unclassified networks”
Hyunsu Yim /Reuters:
Sources: Amazon Publisher Services, which helps websites run ad auctions, is exploring offering technology to help other apps and sites sell ads in AI chatbots
Visa and Stripe's Bridge plan to expand their partnership to issue stablecoin-linked cards in 100+ countries; the cards are currently live in 18 countries
The world's biggest fintech and the world's largest payments network are expanding their stablecoin partnership.
Sources: President Trump met with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on March 3 before publicly bashing banks for their GENIUS Act stance, echoing Coinbase's position
Jasper Goodman /Politico:
The UK government commits an initial £40M to establish an AI research lab, modeled on ARIA, seeking breakthroughs in science, health care, and transportation
Asia's smaller chip companies are hiking prices like their bigger peers as AI demand fuels capex; TrendForce: the leaders will spend $136B+ in 2026, up 25%+ YoY
Self-driving software startup Oxa raised a $103M Series D, with $50M coming from the UK government's National Wealth Fund; Nvidia's NVentures also invested
As experts warn about cyberattacks from Iran on the US, CISA is operating under a partial government shutdown and dealing with leadership changes
Amazon tells users it is shutting down the Wondery podcast app and Wondery+ subscription service “in the coming months”; some shows will be available on Audible
JetStream Security, which offers an “AI Blueprints” tool that provides real-time mapping of AI agent activity, raised a $34M seed led by Redpoint
Yahoo sold tech news site Engadget to Static Media in a deal that was signed in early February and is scheduled to close later in March
Dario Amodei says Anthropic has a better retention rate than OpenAI, reminding its employees of its “mission” while countering competitors trying to hire them
It's the fastest-growing software business ever.Reuters:State Department switches to OpenAI as US agencies start phasing out Anthropic
Sea's NYSE-listed stock fell up to 27% on March 3, its worst intraday drop since 2023, after Sea reported Q4 net income up 73% YoY to $410.9M, below $442M est.
KeyCare, a virtual care platform built on the Epic EHR, raised $27.4M led by HealthX Ventures, bringing its total funding to over $55M
The new funding brings the company's total raise to more than $55 million. — Global Investing — KeyCare, a virtual care platform built on the Epic EHR …
Security researchers successfully prompted the AI system behind a Utah prescription renewal pilot to reclassify meth as an “unrestricted therapeutic”, and more
Security researchers used relatively simple jailbreaking techniques to trick the AI system powering Utah's new prescription refill bot.
Sources: Meta has signed a multiyear AI licensing deal with News Corp for UK and US content, worth up to $50M per year and running for at least three years
Intel unveils its Xeon 6+ Clearwater Forest CPUs, its first data center CPUs built on 18A, offering up to 288 Darkmont efficiency cores, set for a 2026 release
Intel says Craig Barratt will succeed board chair Frank Yeary, who has served on the board since 2009 and will retire after its May annual shareholder meeting
Intel (INTC.O) said on Tuesday that board chair Frank Yeary plans to retire following the company's annual meeting in May and will be replaced by Craig Barratt.
TikTok says it won't add E2EE to DMs because it would prevent police and its safety teams from reading messages when needed and it wants to protect young users
TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption (E2EE) - the controversial privacy feature used by nearly all its rivals - arguing it makes users less safe.
Google details Coruna, an exploit kit used to hijack iPhones via malicious websites; iVerify suggests it may have been originally built for the US government
A highly sophisticated set of iPhone hijacking techniques has likely infected tens of thousands of phones or more.
Junyang Lin, a tech lead on Alibaba's Qwen team, abruptly steps down, and two other team members leave; one contributor says “I know leaving wasn't your choice”
Alibaba's Qwen AI project has lost one of its most visible technical leaders just a day after the Chinese tech giant unveiled its new Qwen 3.5 open-weight small models.
Source: OpenAI is building a GitHub alternative; the project is nascent, and the decision came after OpenAI engineers experienced an increase in GitHub outages
OpenAI is developing an alternative to GitHub, Microsoft's popular code repository that lets software engineers store …
CrowdStrike reports Q4 revenue up 23% YoY to $1.31B, above $1.30B est., ARR up 24% YoY to $5.25B, and a $38.7M net income, up from an $86.3M net loss in Q4 2024
Anthropic says voice mode for Claude Code is now live for about 5% of users, with a broader rollout planned in the coming weeks
Sources: Anduril is seeking to raise about $4B in a round co-led by Thrive Capital and a16z, which could nearly double the startup's valuation to ~$60B
An internal DHS document shows CBP used location data sourced from the online ad industry to track phone locations; ICE has bought access to similar tools
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples' precise movements over time …
Ziff Davis agrees to sell its Connectivity division, including Ookla and Downdetector, to Accenture for $1.2B in cash, to focus on enthusiast websites like IGN
TikTok USDS says users “may temporarily experience lags in posting content” due to an issue at Oracle's Ashburn data center, the second Oracle outage in a month
TikTok users in the US may experience lag while trying to post content until the outage is resolved.
Sources: Meta is creating a new applied AI engineering organization, which will have an ultra-flat structure, to help bolster Meta's superintelligence efforts
Google plans to move Chrome to a two-week release cycle, instead of the current four, starting with the Chrome 153 stable release on September 8
OpenAI releases GPT-5.3 Instant, which it says delivers more accurate answers and better-contextualized results when searching the web, for all ChatGPT users
Today, we're releasing an update to ChatGPT's most-used model that makes everyday conversations more consistently helpful and fluid.
Google launches Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite, which it says delivers “enhanced performance at a fraction of the cost of larger models” and outperforms Gemini 2.5 Flash
Get best-in-class intelligence for your highest-volume workloads. … Today, we're introducing Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite …
Google adds new Android features, including custom calling cards, real-time location sharing in Google Messages, and luggage tracking with partner airlines
Google will let users of its Android mobile operating system set up custom calling cards and share their live location in messages …
X announces a policy change, suspending users from Creator Revenue Sharing for 90 days if they post AI-generated videos of an armed conflict without disclosure
The new policy is the platform's first rule requiring any kind of AI content disclosure. — X will suspend creators …
Apple updates the $1,599+ Studio Display and unveils a $3,299+ 27" 5K Studio Display XDR, with a 120Hz refresh rate, a mini-LED backlight, and up to 2,000 nits
prices start at Rs 1,89,900 in IndiaTaras Buria /Neowin:Apple announces new Studio Display and $3,299 Studio Display XDRAdam Engst /TidBITS:Apple Introduces Studio Display XDR and Refreshes Studio Dis...
Apple unveils the M5 Pro and M5 Max, offering a new Apple-designed Fusion Architecture, a next-generation up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and more
new ‘Super Cores’ help deliver up to 30 percent performance boostJonathan Lamont /MobileSyrup:Apple launches MacBook Pro with new M5 Pro, Max in CanadaLuke Larsen /Wired:Apple's New MacBook Air and Ma...
Google adds a feature to let users with a Pixel 8 and newer connect their device to an external monitor via USB-C for a “desktop-like multi-window experience”
Emma Roth /The Verge:
OpenAI says GPT-5.3 Instant's tone should feel less “cringe” than GPT-5.2 Instant and the model has a smoother, more to-the-point conversational style
Marcus Schuler /Implicator.ai:
MacBook Neo hands-on: it doesn't feel budget, with an aluminum body and weighing 2.7 lbs like the Air, but it has a flimsy keyboard and no option above 8GB RAM
Devindra Hardawar /Engadget:
The MacBook Neo is $599 with 256GB of storage and $699 with Touch ID and 512GB of storage, available in citrus, silver, indigo, and blush colors
Mark Gurman /Bloomberg:
Apple's MacBook Neo uses the A18 Pro that launched in its iPhone 16 range, alongside 8GB of RAM and a headphone jack; Apple discontinued its 12" MacBook in 2019
Stevie Bonifield /The Verge:
Apple's MacBook Neo has two USB-C ports with different specs: one is USB-C 3 with up to 10 Gb/s transfer speeds, and the other is USB-C 2, limited to 480 Mb/s
but limitations abound. Most egregious is the two USB-C ports, as reported by MacRumors, are USB 3.0 (10 Gbps), and USB 2.0 (480 Mbps). Both support charging, but only the USB 3.0 port supports Displa...
Leaked Friday memo: Dario Amodei called OpenAI's DOD deal “safety theater”, said DOD dislikes Anthropic in part for not giving “dictator-style praise to Trump”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Friday told employees that a deal OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman struck …