This Week in Tech (Week Ending Feb 27, 2026)
TL;DR - 📉📈 Volatile markets; 📣 Earnings; ⭐️Winning bid for WBD
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 Tech news below:
TL;DR -
📉📈A single Substack report tanked the market early this week before evening out.
📣 Corporate earnings shed light on how tech companies are faring in this new AI market. Despite optimistic results from Nvidia, less than solid results from Workday, Salesforce, and Snowflake made investors wary.
⭐️ After months of back and forth, Paramount Skydance raised its bid for Warner Brothers Discovery to $31 per share — and won the bid when Netflix shared it won’t raise its bid.
M&A from Anthropic (Vercept), Google (ProducerAI, and Form Energy),
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
📉📈Markets dropped Monday due to this report by Citrini Research, in which it posed a hypothetical future two years from now with 2x unemployment and a tanked stock market due to AI displacement. But by midweek, the market rebounded following favorable tech industry news such as Nvidia’s earnings (94% increase in profit and record sales for Q4) before dropping again due to market fears. So we kind of evened out for the week?
🗣️ President Trump’s State of the Union address was the longest ever address. Here are the takeaways: 1️⃣ Heroes - Trump celebrated every day heroes like Olympians and veterans. 2️⃣ Economic stewardship - Trump lashed out at Democrats for adopting an “affordability” message — arguing their policies created the high prices they’re now campaigning against. 3️⃣ Democrats boycott - Roughly half of Democratic lawmakers boycotted the speech. Those who attended faced repeated provocations from Trump. 4️⃣ War - Trump began laying the groundwork with the American public for a potential war with Iran.
🏡 The average 30-year mortgage rate dipped below 6% this week for the first time since 2022
🩺 The next US surgeon general might be a wellness influencer. Meet Casey Means.
🇲🇽 The Mexican army killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, “El Mencho,” on Sunday. The killing set off several hours of roadblocks with burning vehicles, tactics commonly used by the cartels to block military operations. The State Department warned U.S. citizens in the area to remain in safe places due to the ongoing security operations.
❄️ The strongest NE winter storm in a decade shuttered roads and schools on the east coast this past week. Rhode Island recorded a record 33 inches of snow. Thousands of flights were canceled and officials insisted that residents stay home.
The latest in “SaaSpocalypse”: Salesforce and other software makers have been walloped by the artificial intelligence scare trade that has gripped global markets. But companies are looking to team up with or buy rivals to adapt to the changing marketplace. The latest: Anthropic gave a presentation on Tuesday that highlighted new integrations of Claude Code, its autonomous coding tool, with several software companies, including Intuit, LegalZoom and Slack. The reaction: In the face of A.I. uncertainty, software companies are turning to M&A - the acquisitions provide software executives with a product to show to Wall Street investors eager to see A.I. innovation.
💰Trend - startups are finding it easier to grow ARR faster, potentially due to the help of AI products: Stripe’s annual report revealed it had more new businesses start using its products in 2025 than ever before. 2025 saw double the number of new startups hit $10 million in ARR within three months compared to the number that did so in 2024.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
📣 Earnings - the earnings reports this week shared a sliver of the state of tech in the midst of AI developments.
Nvidia reported record quarterly results - a 94% increase in profit and record sales for the fourth quarter, helping ease concerns over a possible artificial-intelligence bubble that rippled through markets in recent months.
Workday stock fell as much as 8% in after-hours trading Tuesday as the HR software maker said subscription revenue growth would slow in the current fiscal quarter ending in April.
Salesforce shares fell more than 5% in after-hours trading as the enterprise software firm said Wednesday that excluding revenue from Informatica (an acquisition from last year), Salesforce revenue climbed 8% in the period, 1 percentage point lower than its growth in the prior quarter. Investors have been waiting for Salesforce to show that its internal AI products, namely Agentforce, will boost overall revenue.
Snowflake shares dropped more than 2% after its fourth-quarter earnings report after the cloud database provider forecast slower revenue growth for its current quarter and fiscal year compared to last year.
Meta is in a legal battle with the IRS for $15bn.
Shopify has started arranging for ads to promote its merchants to run in ChatGPT in an expansion of Shopify’s existing ad network.
Autonomous vehicles
Uber’s new autonomous vehicle division, Uber Autonomous Solutions, will see the company taking on all the tasks associated with operating a robotaxi, self-driving truck, or sidewalk delivery robot business.
Tesla has filed a lawsuit against the California DMV in the ongoing battle around Autopilot. The state DMV ruled that Tesla used deceptive marketing to overstate the automated driving capabilities of its vehicles, thereby violating state law.
Waymo is accelerating its rollout of robotaxis in the U.S., adding four new cities in Texas and Florida this week as self-driving technology begins to penetrate mainstream America
Oura launched a proprietary AI model focused on women’s health: The model supports questions spanning the full reproductive health spectrum, from early menstrual cycles through menopause.
Stripe’s valuation soars 74% to $159 billion: Stripe has conducted another tender offer.
Bytedance was valued at $550bn in a share sale.
Instagram now alerts parents if their teen searches for suicide or self-harm content.
Layoffs: eBay is laying off 800 staff; Block is laying off 4000
🤖 AI News
OpenAI
OpenAI recently raised its outlook for revenue for the next five years, predicting it would generate about 27% more than previously forecast from sales of its ChatGPT subscriptions and other business lines. However, it warned it will burn more than twice as much cash through 2030 than previously predicted, as it spends $665 billion on the costs of running and training its AI.
🔊📸 OpenAI is developing an AI-powered smart speaker with a camera that will be able to take in information about its users and their surroundings. The speaker, which will likely cost between $200 and $300, will also allow people to buy things by identifying them with a facial recognition feature similar to Apple’s Face ID.
OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap noted that ads can add to the product experience of users if they are done right. He urged to give OpenAI a few months to see how the company fares in rolling out the product.
Anthropic
The Pentagon has given Anthropic until Friday to loosen AI guardrails or face potential penalties, escalating a high-stakes dispute that raises questions about government leverage, vendor dependence, and investor confidence in defense tech. Anthropic has long stated that it doesn’t want its technology used for mass surveillance of Americans or for fully autonomous weapons — and is refusing to compromise on these points.
Anthropic’s unveiling of Claude Code Security, a new cybersecurity tool, sent cybersecurity stocks plunging—the latest part of the software sector to be hit by anxieties about AI disruption.
Anthropic unveiled its new enterprise agents program, its most aggressive push yet to integrate agentic AI into everyday workplaces.
DeepSeek didn’t give Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices early access to its upcoming flagship AI model for performance optimization. DeepSeek, meanwhile, granted domestic chip companies, including Huawei Technologies, a head start of several weeks so they can tune the software for their processors, according to Reuters. AI developers usually share pre-release versions of new models with chip companies to ensure the software runs efficiently on different processors. It is unclear why DeepSeek chose to exclude the U.S. firms this time.
Amazon said it plans to invest $12 billion in data center campuses in Louisiana, to support AI and cloud computing.
A California federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s xAI that accused archrival OpenAI of stealing trade secrets by poaching employees.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
⭐️ Warner Bros. Discovery says Paramount Skydance raised its bid to $31 per share. As of Thursday afternoon, WBD said Paramount’s offer is superior and Netflix had 4 business days to top Paramount’s offer. However, Netflix said it won’t raise its bid for WBD, allowing Paramount to emerge as the winning bidder.
Anthropic acquires computer-use AI startup Vercept after Meta poached one of its founders. Seattle-based Vercept developed complex agentic tools, including a computer-use agent that could complete tasks inside applications like a person with a laptop would
Google acquired two companies this week: AI music making platform ProducerAI, and Form Energy $1bn for its 100-hour battery.
Uber announced Monday that it agreed to acquire SpotHero, an app that enables drivers to reserve parking spaces at garages based on location.
Canva announced the dual acquisition of startups Cavalry, which works on animation, and MangoAI, which works on improving ad performance. With the new acquisitions, the company wants to bolster its position as a marketing solution by potentially adding video creation and more granular measurement.
Stripe is considering a whole or partial acquisition of struggling rival PayPal.
Fundraising
Amazon’s OpenAI Investment could link the funding to a milestone like an IPO or AGI. The proposed Amazon investment is part of OpenAI’s current funding round, which could top $100 billion at a valuation of $730 billion before the financing.
CoreWeave is nearing a deal to raise $8.5 billion in debt backed by its AI chips and contracts from Meta Platforms to purchase cloud services.
Revel, which creates software to run hardware like rocket engines and nuclear reactors, has collected $150 million in its Series B round. The round values the start-up at just over $1 billion.
Partnerships
OpenAI unveiled long term partnerships with consulting groups McKinsey & Company, Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, and Capgemini aimed at promoting its “Frontier” software for managing AI agents to businesses, in OpenAI’s latest shot at enterprise software firms. The offering will compete with similar tools from Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Snowflake, and other tech giants fighting to control the agent management software layer as AI upends traditional software-as-a-service business models.
Meta and AMD agreed to an AI chips deal worth more than $100bn.
Intuit announced a partnership with Anthropic on Tuesday to bring custom AI agents to businesses and consumers on Intuit’s service beginning this spring.
Mistral AI lands a partnership with Accenture, the consultant that has also recently announced partnerships with rivals OpenAI and Anthropic
IPO
Cerebras Systems has again made a confidential filing for a U.S. public offering. The company had aimed to go public last year, but announced last December it was withdrawing its IPO paperwork.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
Investor Bill Gurley released a career help book this week, “Runnin’ Down a Dream”.
🏒 The Olympics concluded this past weekend, with Norway, whose total population is less than Colorado’s, winning 18 gold medals and 41 total - with the US in second place at 12 golds and 33 total medals.
Apparently Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, who died in 1999, has become Gen Z’s most referenced style icon on TikTok (perhaps thanks to the release ‘Love Story’ on FX')
How young is too young to expose children to makeup? Shay Mitchell is launching face crayons for 5 yr olds 😳
What corporate jargon do people hate the most? the list is long but these are some of my favorite reactions
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