The Leverage
Oracle abandoned the Stargate Texas datacenter on the same day it announced thousands of layoffs from a "cash crunch." SoftBank needs its largest bridge loan ever. Fourteen months of borrowing tell the story the $500 billion headline never did.
Dario Amodei says Anthropic plans to fight the DOD's risk designation in court, claims the DOD's letter has a “narrow scope”, and apologizes for his leaked memo
Yesterday (March 4) Anthropic received a letter from the Department of War confirming that we have been designated …
Google and Amazon join Microsoft in saying they will keep working with Anthropic on non-defense projects after DOD designated Anthropic a supply chain risk
Google said it will continue offering Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology for clients, excluding for defense work …
Mozilla says Claude Opus 4.6 found 100+ bugs in Firefox in two weeks in January, 14 of them high-severity, more than the bugs typically reported in two months
New AI-powered tools are increasingly adept at spotting flaws. Hacking experts worry they will be good at exploiting them, too.
Sources: Oracle and OpenAI abandoned plans to expand a Stargate Texas data center amid financing disputes; Meta considers leasing the planned expansion site
Oracle Corp. and OpenAI have scrapped plans to expand a flagship artificial intelligence data center in Texas after negotiations dragged …
Q&A with Block CEO Jack Dorsey on laying off 40% of the company's workers, wanting Block to “feel like a mini AGI”, his take on Elon Musk's X, and more
In an exclusive interview with WIRED, Block's cofounder and CEO says he axed 40 percent of his workforce so that he can rebuild the company “as an intelligence.”
OpenAI says it is delaying the launch of ChatGPT Adult Mode, originally planned for Q1, to focus on higher priorities, like gains in intelligence
“People's habits are not solidified” Liz Reid has one of the hardest jobs in tech. She runs Google Search, arguably the best business ever built …
How Cursor is evolving through its Composer coding models built on Chinese open models, as coding agents like Claude Code threaten to make code editors obsolete
After becoming the hottest, fastest growing AI coding company, Cursor is confronting a new reality: developers may no longer need a code editor at all.
Anthropic launches Claude Marketplace, letting companies buy third-party software using some of their committed annual spending on Anthropic's services
Anthropic PBC is launching a new platform for its corporate customers to purchase third-party software, broadening the AI developer's offerings …
President Trump signs an EO aimed at fighting cybercrime, directing officials to identify robust tools to combat transnational criminal organizations
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at fighting cybercrime, including fraud and extortion …
Marvell stock jumps 20%+ after the chip company reported Q4 revenue up 22% YoY to $2.2B and issued strong guidance citing growing AI demand
Marvell shares ripped 20% higher on Friday as the company posted an earnings beat and issued strong guidance, expecting robust artificial intelligence demand to continue.
Nintendo of America sues the US government, seeking a refund with interest for tariffs that the company says Trump implemented in “unlawful” EOs
Nintendo filed a lawsuit in the United States Court of International Trade — Nintendo of America is suing the United States government …
Sources: SoftBank is seeking a bridge loan of up to $40B, its largest-ever borrowing denominated solely in dollars, to help finance its investment in OpenAI
SoftBank Group Corp. is seeking a loan of as much as $40 billion to mostly help finance its investment in US tech giant OpenAI …
How prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket are aggressively targeting college students through fraternity partnerships and student influencers
Kalshi and Polymarket pour money into deals with social-media influencers and students, who try to parlay rumors, insider information into cash; 'We know this shouldn't be allowed'
OpenAI rolls out Codex Security, an AI agent that evolved from its research project Aardvark to automate vulnerability discovery, validation, and remediation
OpenAI is rolling out Codex Security, an AI-powered application security agent that finds, validates and proposes fixes for vulnerabilities.
US regulators say banks don't need to hold extra capital against losses when dealing with blockchain-based securities, calling their rules “technology neutral”
U.S. banking regulators clarified on Thursday that banks should not have to hold additional capital against losses …
Indonesia says it will ban “high-risk” platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, and Roblox, for children under 16 from March 28
Indonesia will ban social media for children under 16, Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid said Friday.
Sources: AI chipmaker Cerebras could raise ~$2B in its IPO as soon as April; it withdrew its previous IPO registration in October, nearly a year after filing
Cerebras Systems Inc. has picked Morgan Stanley to lead its initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter …
IDC: India's PC market had its strongest year on record in 2025, with shipments up 10.2% YoY to 15.9M units; commercial buyers accounted for 52.9% of shipments
India's PC market had its strongest year on record in 2025, surpassing the surge in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic as millions …
Pentagon names ex-DOGE employee Gavin Kliger as Chief Data Officer to lead its AI efforts; Kliger previously reposted white supremacist Nick Fuentes' content
The Pentagon on Friday named as Chief Data Officer a computer scientist who aided billionaire Elon Musk's efforts to overhaul …
Filing: the US SEC settles with Tron founder Justin Sun over a 2023 case that alleged securities fraud; Tron-affiliated company Rainberry will pay the $10M fine
Rainberry, a company affiliated with the Tron network, will pay a $10 million fine. Charges against Sun will be dismissed.
Source: the 2024 cyber-attack by the Scattered Spider group on Transport For London resulted in the theft of personal data of ~10M people
Around 10 million people had their data stolen when Transport for London (TfL) was hacked in 2024, the BBC has discovered, making it one of the biggest hacks in British history.
Robinhood's $658M venture fund drops 16% in its public market debut on the NYSE; the fund offers retail investors access to private companies like Databricks
Robinhood (HOOD.O) debuted its flagship $658.4 million venture fund on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday …
Hayden AI, which raised $180M for its traffic management system, sues its ex-CEO Chris Carson Jr. for allegedly using its data to start a competitor and more
A San Francisco AI startup best known for giving drivers tickets for bus lane infractions has filed an explosive lawsuit …
A look at SpaceX's potential IPO, which reportedly aims to raise up to $50B at a $1.75T valuation, more than 7x higher than its ~$200B valuation in October 2024
Star Trek's warp drive allows a starship to bend space-time and exceed the speed of light without breaking Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Rozana, which offers rural e-commerce and logistics services to 21,000 villages across India, raised a $31.6M Series B led by Bertelsmann India Investments
Rural omnichannel retail platform Rozana has raised Rs 290 crore ($31.6 million) in a Series B funding round led by Bertelsmann India Investments.
Sources: the UK plans to delay making copyright rule changes for AI training after responses to its two-month consultation did not favor any of its proposals
Government goes back to drawing board after its proposals triggered backlash from creative industries
An interview with Tim Sweeney on the Google-Epic settlement, how the Play Store changes impact developers, why Epic's case against Apple is different, and more
It's been 2,030 days since Fortnite was put in jail, with both Google and Apple pulling it down worldwide on August 13, 2020 …
Cursor launches Automations, a tool that lets developers automatically launch agents, triggered through an addition to a codebase, a Slack message, or a timer
As agentic coding spreads, the working life of a software engineer has become dazzlingly complex.
Heavy Seedance 2.0 demand is straining ByteDance's compute capacity, creating a bottleneck that is causing the AI model to take hours to generate a single video
ByteDance's new Seedance 2.0 AI video model seemed unstoppable—until heavy demand strained the company's compute capacity and copyright complaints began piling up.
X revamps its Creator Subscriptions with exclusive threads, a refreshed subscriptions paywall, a new dashboard, a shareable subscriptions card, and more
Sources: the US has drafted a rule that would require countries whose companies buy large volumes of Nvidia and AMD AI chips to invest in US AI infrastructure
Draft rule would require countries to invest in America in exchange for advanced semiconductors — The US commerce department …
Anthropic debuts an early-warning system for potential AI-driven destruction of white-collar jobs and says it shows “limited evidence” of AI-led job loss so far
- An occupation's specific tasks; — An estimate of which of those tasks can be performed by large language models.
Sources: OpenAI employees claim the DOD tested Microsoft's Azure version of OpenAI's models before OpenAI lifted its blanket ban on military use in January 2024
Sources allege the Defense Department experimented with Microsoft's version of OpenAI technology before the ChatGPT-maker lifted its prohibition on military applications.
Sources: Together AI is in talks to raise ~$1B at a $7.5B pre-money valuation, up from $3.3B in 2025; its annualized revenue has hit ~$1B, up 3x+ from mid-2025
Together AI, one of several up-and-coming cloud providers renting out Nvidia chip servers to AI developers …
Meta says it hired the engineering team from Atma Sciences, the startup that makes the vibe coding app Gizmo, earlier in 2026 to join its Superintelligence Labs
OpenAI launches GPT-5.4, saying it is its “most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work” and its first with native computer use capabilities
The latest model comes with native computer use capabilities, allowing it to take on jobs across your device and applications.
The US Senate passed COPPA 2.0 again, which would create new protections for young users online; the bill now heads to the House, where it has struggled to pass
The measure for protecting children and teens' personal data could once more fail in the House. — Today the US Senate unanimously …
Sources: Oracle is planning to cut thousands of jobs as soon as March, among its moves to handle a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion effort
Oracle Corp. is planning to ax thousands of jobs, among its moves to handle a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion effort.
Anthropic says Claude's daily signups have grown 4x since the start of 2026, and 1M+ users now sign up every day; Apptopia: Claude downloads jumped 220% WoW
The Claude maker gains new traction with everyday users while its enterprise business is under pressure — Anthropic is gaining ground …
Iran's state media says Iran targeted Amazon's Bahrain data center on March 1 because of the company's support of “US military and intelligence activities”
A look at Seattle-based Cloverleaf, which signs deals with utility companies and secures land for AI companies' data center needs; the startup has raised $300M
Brian Janous, a former Microsoft executive, and his firm Cloverleaf have become modern-day land men, packaging electricity and land for data centers.
Apple implemented geoblocking in January 2026 to prevent US-based users from downloading or updating ByteDance's Chinese apps, even with a Chinese Apple account
Google quietly releases an unsupported Workspace CLI, making it easier for agentic AI tools to access Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, and its other apps
A new command-line interface for Google Workspace greases the wheels for personal AI assistants like OpenClaw to tap directly into Workspace documents.
Cluely's CEO, Roy Lee, says he lied about its $7M annual recurring revenue in 2025 and that it “is the only blatantly dishonest thing I've said publicly online”
The $7 million in annual recurring revenue that Cluely co-founder and CEO Roy Lee shared with TechCrunch last summer was a lie …
Roblox launches “real-time chat rephrasing”, an AI feature that replaces banned words with “more respectful language”, instead of showing profanities as “####”
Microsoft's new gaming CEO, Asha Sharma, teases the next-gen Xbox, codenamed Project Helix, saying it “will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games”
The new Xbox boss Asha Sharma revealed the codename as one of her first big announcements.
Canada says Sam Altman agreed to take immediate steps to strengthen OpenAI's safety protocols around notifying police about potentially suspicious ChatGPT use
Sage, whose AI tools scan for distress and alert caregivers in nursing homes, raised a $65M Series C, bringing its total funding to $124M
Match eliminates the role of COO, putting Hesam Hosseini out of a job after 18 years with the dating app giant, as part of changes under CEO Spencer Rascoff
The FBI arrests the son of a federal contractor who managed critical services and charges him with stealing ~$46M in crypto from the US Marshals Service
John Daghita was publicly accused of the crime by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT in January. — In brief
Netflix acquires InterPositive, a 16-person startup founded by Ben Affleck that builds AI models based on a production's dailies for later use in postproduction
In a rare acquisition, Netflix has bought InterPositive, a start-up founded by Ben Affleck that makes AI-powered tools for filmmakers.
Stockholm-based Validio, whose agentic platform autonomously detects and resolves data quality issues, raised a $30M Series A, bringing its total raised to $47M
AWS launches Amazon Connect Health, an agentic AI tool that automates clinical documentation, billing and procedure coding, and patient identity verification
Revolut, which has about 70M clients in 40 markets, applies for a US bank charter and appoints former Visa executive Cetin Duransoy as its new US CEO
Brain tech startup Science Corp. raised $230M, a source says at a $1.5B valuation, taking its total funding to $489M, to commercialize its implant for blindness
Apple's MacBook Neo is a serious threat to OEMs like HP, Lenovo, and Dell, as their $599 laptops seem inferior and Windows 11's reputation is at an all-time low
China's new five-year blueprint introduces an “AI+ action plan”, mentions AI 50+ times, and outlines investments in quantum computing, 6G, embodied AI, and more
Nominal, which makes software for the defense, space, energy, and automotive sectors, raised an $80M Series B extension led by Founders Fund at a $1B valuation
NYSE parent company ICE invests in crypto exchange OKX at a $25B valuation, without sharing the investment's size or terms, and will take a seat on OKX's board
GPT-5.4 is available in Pro and Thinking versions; its API version has improved tool calling and will be available with context windows of up to 1M tokens
Russell Brandom /TechCrunch:
OpenAI says GPT-5.4 produces presentations with stronger, more varied aesthetics and makes more effective use of its image generation tools
Igor Bonifacic /Engadget:
GPT-5.4 is priced at $2.50/1M input and $15/1M output tokens while GPT-5.4 Pro is $30/1M input and $180/1M output tokens, more than GPT-5.2 and GPT-5.2 Pro
and You Can Interrupt It When It Goes Off TrackOpenAI Developers:Pricing — Text tokens Prices per 1M tokens. Batch Flex Standard Priority Model Input …Forums:BeauHD /Slashdot:OpenAI Releases New Ch...
OpenAI says GPT-5.4's “individual claims are 33% less likely to be false and its full responses are 18% less likely to contain any errors, relative to GPT-5.2”
David Gewirtz /ZDNET:
OpenAI says users can now use ChatGPT directly in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets and debuts a suite of financial-services tools to better tackle office work
Rachel Metz /Bloomberg:
The US DOD says it has “officially informed Anthropic leadership the company and its products are deemed a supply chain risk, effective immediately”
The Pentagon said it has formally notified Anthropic PBC that it's determined the company and its products pose a risk to the US supply chain …
Sam Altman takes swipes at Anthropic, saying it's “bad for society” if companies abandon their commitment to the democratic process based on who is President
Ashley Capoot /CNBC:
Sources: US officials propose expanding AI chip export controls globally, requiring Commerce Department approval for Nvidia and AMD shipments for each country
worldwide licensing system would give Trump admin broad authority to block global salesIan Lyall /Proactive:US moves to require approval for all AI chip exportsAnanya Gairola /Benzinga:Trump Admin Wei...
Microsoft says it will keep Anthropic's AI tools embedded in its client products, after its lawyers concluded the DOD's designation is only for defense projects
Microsoft said Thursday that it will keep startup Anthropic's artificial intelligence technology embedded in its products for clients, excluding the U.S. Department of War.
An interview with Pentagon AI head Emil Michael about Anthropic leaking to the media to win anti-Trump users, dealing with Amodei and his “politburo”, and more
Pirate Wires:NEW
The Pentagon is right in trying to coerce Anthropic as AI may become a superweapon and nation-states must have a monopoly on the use of force
Noah Smith /Noahpinion: