March 6th Newsletter

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The United States entered open conflict with Iran as U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets intensified, drawing direct retaliation from Tehran and escalating into a broader Middle East war that disrupted energy and shipping routes. Global markets wavered as Brent crude jumped, UK gas spiked sharply, and Asian indexes stumbled amid mounting inflation and rate uncertainties. Released this morning, U.S. payrolls unexpectedly fell by 92,000 in February, with the unemployment rate rising to 4.4%. In tech, Trump, joined by leaders from Amazon, Google, and OpenAI, promoted a “ratepayer protection pledge” in which the companies committed to providing their own electricity sources for data centers and stations they are building nationwide. Morgan Stanley will cut ~2,500 jobs (~3% of workforce) across divisions, despite record 2025 revenue and strong IB growth. Lastly, Elon Musk’s X and xAI plan to fully repay $17.5B debt, before a potential June IPO.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 🇺🇸 Sam Altman announced a Pentagon deal allowing the Department of War to use OpenAI models on classified networks, embedding safeguards against mass surveillance and autonomous weapons after the agency’s fallout with Anthropic and labeling Anthropic as a supply chain risk. After the deal, ChatGPT U.S. uninstalls surged 295%, while Claude downloads rose 88%, topping U.S. App Store charts. OpenAI also launched GPT 5.4 on Thursday with native computer use. Details on the Pentagon deal and ChatGPT Installs, see TechCrunch, also see TechCrunch. Bloomberg has the info on Sam Altman’s response. More on GPT 5.4

[2] 💰 OpenAI hit $25B annualized revenue (end-Feb, +17% vs. $21.4B YE), with ChatGPT generating the vast majority of its revenue today; Codex reached 2M weekly active users. Anthropic has surpassed $19B run-rate revenue, driven by Claude Code, but faces Pentagon “supply-chain risk” fallout. More on The Information and Bloomberg.

[3] 📰 Meta and News Corp struck a multiyear AI content licensing deal worth up to $50M annually, giving Meta access to U.S. and U.K. content for AI training and real-time information retrieval. Meta is also testing an AI shopping research tool in its chatbot, offering personalized product suggestions with images and links, a feature that rivals ChatGPT and Gemini. Read WSJ for details on the News Corp deal and Bloomberg for more on the shopping tool. 

[4] 🤝 CoreWeave and Perplexity inked a multiyear partnership: Perplexity uses CoreWeave’s Nvidia Grace Blackwell clusters for AI, while CoreWeave adopts Perplexity Enterprise Max. Despite the commitment, CoreWeave shares fell on planned heavy capital expenditures. Axios has the details.

[5] 💰 Cursor reportedly topped $2B in annualized revenue, doubling in three months as enterprise clients drive 60% of sales, offsetting supposed defections to Claude Code and competition from Codex. See TechCrunch for more.

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 🇨🇳 DeepSeek will likely soon debut its V4 multimodal model, optimized with Huawei and Cambricon chips, underscoring China’s pivot from Nvidia and AMD as rivals like Alibaba and Moonshot intensify competition further. The FT has more.

[2] 💵 Chinese open-source AI model developer, MiniMax more than doubled revenue post-IPO, though net losses widened to $1.87B. Its Claude-like AI model drove global growth. Shares surged 4x to a market cap exceeding $30B. Details on WSJ.

[3] 🔍 OpenClaw users are allegedly using the open-source tool Scrapling to bypass anti-bot protections, including those from Cloudflare. Scrapling has surpassed 200,000 downloads, while Cloudflare claims it blocked 416 billion scraping attempts and is deploying new countermeasures. See Wired for more.

[4] 📶 Nvidia is partnering with BT Group, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Nokia, SK Telecom, Softbank, and T-Mobile to develop AI-powered open-source 6G networks, embedding Nvidia GPUs via CUDA to support billions of AI devices. More info on PCMag.

[5] 📉 Alibaba lost several key Qwen team members, including its tech lead Junyang Lin, as he announced his stepping down, a day after the release of Qwen 3.5 small, in a post on X. His exit raises concerns over momentum for the company, and shares fell 5.3% on the HK stock exchange. Read about it on Bloomberg.

Founder’s Corner

All-time Peaks for Median Seed Valuations

What We Read This Week

• OpenAI held early talks with The Trade Desk to sell ads on ChatGPT, leveraging external partners while planning eventual in-house ad tech to target its 910M users and as much as double revenue to $17B. (The Information)

• Anthropic’s Claude Code added Voice Mode for hands-free coding via spoken commands, gradually rolling out to users. Adoption is growing fast, with a reported $2.5B+ run-rate revenue and a doubling in weekly active users since January. (TechCrunch)

• Activist investor Elliott committed $1B to Pinterest via convertible notes, fueling a $3.5B share-buyback. Pinterest is investing in AI, trimming its workforce by 15%, and targeting growth from SMBs and international advertisers. (WSJ)

• Insider purchases by management are coming back: Berkshire’s new CEO, Greg Abel, bought $15 million of Berkshire shares, as the company resumed buybacks after shares fell nearly 5% on March 2 following earnings, while KKR board members and the two Co-CEOs bought over $46 million after the stock dropped 18% from January highs following its February 3 earnings miss. (Barrons) (IBD)

• Meta Platforms plans to expand its custom silicon to train AI models, while continuing major chip deals with Nvidia and AMD. (Bloomberg)

• Former Airbnb cofounder and current U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia is rumored to be wearing OpenAI’s new earpiece in a coffee shop in SF. (X)

  

  Source: X

• Broadcom beat Q1 estimates (EPS $2.05; revenue $19.31B, +29% YoY), with AI revenue up 106% to $8.4B. Q2 guidance targeted $22B revenue with a 68% adjusted profit margin. The company is aiming for $100B AI chip revenue by 2027 and authorized $10B in 2026 share buybacks. (CNBC)

• Google faces a wrongful-death suit after its Gemini chatbot allegedly pushed a Florida man to commit suicide despite safeguards and company claims that it was repeatedly stated that the conversation was with a large language model, raising major concerns over emotional voice interactions and AI-driven psychological harm. (WSJ)

• Mark Zuckerberg downplayed internal research during a New Mexico child-safety trial, disputing claims that Meta apps were designed to addict children. At the same time, executives argued that studies were misinterpreted or taken out of context. (Engadget)

• Ziff Davis will sell Ookla, Downdetector, Ekahau, and RootMetrics to Accenture for $1.2 billion in cash, sharpening its media-health focus; Ziff Davis’ shares jumped 60% in early trading as Accenture deepens AI-driven network intelligence. (Reuters)

• SoftBank-backed PayPay has delayed its $10B U.S. IPO due to Middle East tensions and a tech market sell-off, joining other postponed listings as investors await mega-IPOs from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. (TechCrunch)

• Visa and Stripe’s Bridge will expand stablecoin-backed cards to 100+ countries, letting users spend crypto-wallet balances via Visa’s network, signaling deeper integration between stablecoins and traditional payments. (Fortune)

AI Fundraising news (Feb 27 — Mar 6)

• Avantos: AI-native client management platform company, raised a $25M Series A

• Axelera AI: AI inference chip company, raised a $250M Series D

• Basis: AI accounting workflow agents company, raised a $100M Series B

• Code Metal: AI code translation and verification company, raised a $125M Series B

• Emerald AI: AI data center energy optimization company, raised a $25M seed

• Frankenburg Technologies: AI-driven anti-drone missile systems company, raised a $35.4M Series A

• FreeForm: AI-native metal 3D printing systems company, raised a $67M Series B

• Gambit Security: AI-native cyber resilience platform company, raised a $61M seed and Series A

• General Magic: AI SMS insurance automation agents company, raised $7.2M

• Happyhotel: AI hotel revenue management software company, raised a $7.7M Series A

• Harper: AI insurance submission automation company, raised a $46.8M Series A and seed

• Hypercore: AI loan management automation platform company, raised a $13.5M Series A

• InScope: AI financial reporting platform company, raised a $14.5M Series A

• Jump: AI financial advisor workflow automation company, raised an $80M Series B

• Koah: AI chatbot ad monetization platform company, raised a $20.5M Series A

• Letter AI: AI sales enablement guidance platform company, raised a $40M Series B

• MatX: AI chip startup company, raised $500M+

• Nimble: AI real-time structured web data platform company, raised a $47M Series B

• Potpie: AI context unification platform company, raised $2.2M

• Profound: AI brand visibility analytics company, raised a $96M Series C

• Rapidata: AI model human feedback platform company, raised an $8.5M seed

• SambaNova: AI data center chip company, raised a $350M Series E

• Sherpas: AI wealth management automation agents company, raised a $3.2M seed

• Slang AI: AI hospitality voice automation company, raised a $36M Series B

• SolveAI: AI enterprise coding startup company, raised a $50M Series A

• Stacks: AI accounting workflow automation company, raised a $23M Series A

• Subject: AI K-12 curriculum support platform company, raised $28M

• Taalas: AI model silicon acceleration company, raised $169M

• Ten63 Therapeutics: AI drug discovery company, raised $22M

• Thema: AI private equity market mapping platform company, raised a $4.5M pre-seed

• Turbine: AI biological simulation drug discovery company, raised a $25M Series B

• Ubicquia: AI-enabled infrastructure monitoring platform company, raised a $106M Series D

• Vizzia: AI video surveillance analytics company, raised a $35.3M Series B

• VoiceLine: AI voice workflow automation agents company, raised an $11.8M Series A

• Xflow: AI-powered B2B cross-border payments platform company, raised a $16.6M Series A