Markets opened on edge as the Fed voted 11-1 to hold rates at 3.5%-3.75%, pointing to sticky inflation, mixed labor data, and Iran-war uncertainty, while Fed Chair Jerome Powell warned that there is “effectively zero net job creation in the private sector”. January PCE met expectations at 2.8% headline and 3.1% core, while Q4 GDP was revised down to 0.7%. Meanwhile, President Trump is reportedly seeking de-escalation in the Middle East after strikes hit major energy assets, sending Brent above $113 and Dubai crude to $166 as Hormuz disruption squeezed Gulf flows. In tech, Meta is weighing layoffs affecting more than 20% of staff to help fund a $600 billion AI data center; Dell cut roughly 10% of its workforce despite strong AI server demand; Crypto.com is reducing headcount by 12% amid an enterprise-wide AI pivot; Amid widespread layoffs, take a look at how Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have responded. On Thursdays, WSJ reported Jeff Bezos is raising a $100 billion fund to acquire manufacturers and deploy AI automation at scale. On the policy front, Sen. Mark Warner is probing a reported $10 billion Treasury fee tied to TikTok’s $24 billion U.S. sale, while the SEC is reportedly considering ending mandatory quarterly earnings reports in favor of semiannual reporting.
Top 5 AI Highlights
[1] 💰OpenAI is reportedly forming a $10 billion pre-money enterprise AI venture with TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital, and Brookfield Asset Management. Separately, OpenAI is acquiring Python-tools startup Astral to bolster Codex; users have increased 3x since January. Lastly, OpenAI will cut back on side projects to “nail” its core business, shifting resources to coding and enterprise customers. More from Reuters, Bloomberg, and WSJ.
[2] ⚖️ Encyclopaedia Britannica sued OpenAI, alleging nearly 100,000 articles and Merriam-Webster content were copied for model training. In addition, Microsoft is weighing legal action over OpenAI’s $50 billion AWS deal, arguing it may breach Azure exclusivity. More on Reuters for the Britannica Lawsuit, and the MSFT Lawsuit.
[3] 📄 The U.S. Army awarded Anduril a 10-year contract worth up to $20 billion, consolidating 120-plus procurement actions and deepening the defense startup’s role in software-defined military systems. More from TechCrunch.
[4] 📈 Nebius’s shares jumped 17% after securing a five-year AI infrastructure deal worth up to $27 billion with Meta, underscoring hyperscaler demand for compute capacity and Nebius’s rising role in AI cloud. Separately, Nebius plans to raise $3.75 billion via 2031 and 2033 convertible notes to fund AI data-center expansion and custom chip purchases. See more from CNBC and Bloomberg.
[5] 🚀 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doubled projected Blackwell and Rubin chip demand to at least $1 trillion through 2027, underscoring surging AI infrastructure spending and Rubin’s major performance leap over Blackwell. Details on TechCrunch.
✨Open Source AI Development
[1] 🔓 NVIDIA launched NemoClaw, an open-source security layer for OpenClaw that adds privacy guardrails, local model support, and always-on deployment, aiming to make autonomous AI agents safer and easier to run. More on Nvidia.
[2] 🤝 Anthropic, AWS, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others pledged $12.5 million through Linux Foundation initiatives to bolster open-source security as AI overwhelms maintainers with vulnerability discovery and triage demands (LinkedIn)
[3] 💼 Z.ai launched proprietary GLM-5-Turbo for agentic workflows, offering lower pricing, long context, and improved tool reliability, signaling a broader shift toward closed, enterprise-focused AI models in China. See more on VentureBeat.
[4] 🖥️ Alibaba launched an invitation-only enterprise AI platform, Wukong, coordinating multiple agents for office tasks across desktop and DingTalk, as China’s OpenClaw-driven agent boom intensifies competition among major tech firms. More from Reuters.
[5] 📂 OpenSeeker launches as the first fully open-source frontier search agent, releasing model weights and training data while delivering strong benchmark results with just 11.7k synthesized training samples. (Arxiv)
Founder’s Corner
Dilution Trends by Valuation Size
Source: X
What We Read This Week
- Figma’s Stock dropped 8% after Google’s Stitch for vibe design launched, and the share price has dropped ~80% since its IPO debut in August 2025. (X)
- A new Ramp customer-data study shows Anthropic now captures more than 73% of first-time enterprise AI spend, a sharp reversal from a 50/50 split with OpenAI just 10 weeks ago and OpenAI’s 60/40 lead in early December. (Ramp)
- Super Micro’s shares plunged 28% after the U.S. charged co-founder and two others with routing $2.5 billion in AI servers to China, raising revenue, reputational, and customer-risk concerns; Dell gained 6%. (Reuters)
- Google and Accel’s India AI accelerator picked five startups from 4,000+ applicants, rejecting mostly “AI wrappers” and favoring differentiated, workflow-driven products with up to $2 million funding support. (TechCrunch)
- WSJ says OpenAI’s planned “adult mode” triggered internal backlash over teen access, emotional dependence, and unsafe content risks, delaying launch as the company weighs growth ambitions against safety concerns. (WSJ)
- Three Tennessee plaintiffs, including two minors, sued xAI, alleging Grok generated explicit images from real photos, seeking class action status, damages, and safeguards over child safety and consent failures. (Reuters)
- Nvidia-backed Reflection AI will invest billions alongside Shinsegae to build a 250MW data center in South Korea, advancing U.S. AI diplomacy, expanding Nvidia chip demand, and countering China’s open-model influence. (WSJ)
- SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won warned memory chip shortages may last until 2030, citing wafer supply lagging demand by over 20%, with AI-driven HBM demand squeezing conventional memory markets. (Bloomberg)
- Apple acquired MotionVFX, a major Final Cut Pro plugin maker with 70 employees, strengthening its professional video tools ecosystem and potentially folding premium effects, templates, and 3D workflows into Apple’s creator stack. (MacRumors)
AI Fundraising News (Mar 13 — Mar 19)
- Advanced Navigation: AI navigation hardware company, raised a $110M Series C
- Alomana: AI autonomous workflow orchestration company, raised $4.6M
- Autoscience: AI automated research lab company, raised a $14M seed
- BambooBox: AI e-commerce marketing content platform company, raised $6.6M
- BusRight: AI school bus routing platform company, raised $30M
- Carefam: AI healthcare staffing automation company, raised $10.5M
- Certiv: AI autonomous agent security platform company, raised a $4.2M pre-seed
- CiaoDott: AI clinical decision support platform company, raised a $1.7M pre-seed
- Cleafy: AI banking fraud detection company, raised a $13.8M Series B
- Corridor: AI coding security company, raised a $25M Series A
- Deeptune: AI agent training gyms company, raised a $43M Series A
- Foresight: AI infrastructure risk management platform company, raised a $25M Series A
- Frore Systems: AI chip cooling company, raised a $143M Series D
- Fuse: AI loan origination software company, raised a $25M Series A
- Great Sky: AI superconducting compute hardware company, raised a $14M seed
- Halcyon: AI utility and energy regulatory document aggregation company, raised a $21M Series A
- Hanover Park: AI fund administration automation company, raised a $27M Series A
- Laminar: AI agent observability platform company, raised a $3M seed
- Manifold: AI autonomous agent endpoint security company, raised an $8M seed
- Memories.ai: AI visual memory infrastructure company, raised an $8M seed extension
- Multiply: AI B2B advertising automation company, raised $9.5M
- Niv-AI: AI GPU power management company, raised $12M
- Nyne: AI digital footprint data company, raised a $5.3M seed
- Obin AI: AI financial analysis automation company, raised a $7M seed
- Option Circle: AI autonomous trading platform company, raised $3M
- Paraform: AI recruiting matching platform company, raised a $40M Series B
- Parallel: AI hospital agents company, raised a $20M Series A
- Qurrent: AI back-office operations automation company, raised a $15M Series A
- Ringtime: AI blue-collar hiring platform company, raised a €1.8M seed
- Rivia: AI clinical trial data platform company, raised a $15M Series A
- RunSybil: AI autonomous penetration testing company, raised $40M
- Scanner: AI cloud-native security data lake company, raised a $22M Series A
- Standard Kernel: AI GPU optimization software company, raised a $20M seed
- Standard Template Labs: AI enterprise automation company, raised a $49M seed
- Steward: AI investor onboarding and AML automation company, raised $5M
- Surf AI: AI security risk remediation platform company, raised $57M
- Tower: AI data pipeline operations company, raised $6.4M
- Upvest: AI trading API infrastructure company, raised $90M
- VerbaFlo: AI real estate leasing automation company, raised a $7M seed
- VeryAI: AI palm biometric identity verification company, raised a $10M seed
- Waiv: AI cancer testing company, raised $33M
- WeSort AI: AI waste sorting automation company, raised $11.5M
- WhiteBridge AI: AI people search engine company, raised a $3M seed
- Xbow: AI app vulnerability testing company, raised $120M
- Xscape Photonics: AI data center optical interconnects company, raised a $37M Series A
- Zero RFI: AI construction document review company, raised a $14M seed
- Zymtrace: AI workload performance optimization company, raised an $8.5M seed
Stepmark Partners 