This Week in Tech (Week Ending Mar 20, 2026)
TL;DR - ⛽️ Gas is still sky-high; 🤝M&A;
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 Tech news below:
TL;DR -
🌎 The Strait of Hormuz is still closed for business and the price of fuel is skyrocketing in response.
After billions in investment, Meta Platforms is shutting down Horizon Worlds for its virtual reality headset users.
M&A from Apple, OpenAI, Amazon and Mastercard.
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🌎 President Trump is working to assemble a coalition of countries to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But U.S. allies are resisting the Trump administration’s pressure - Leaders of several countries including Germany, Italy and Japan have already ruled out sending naval vessels.
“I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it.” — President Trump
⛽️ The price of diesel fuel has surged above $5 a gallon in the U.S. — the highest in four years. Plus: Jet fuel prices are up about 60% this month, largely because the war in Iran is disrupting key refining infrastructure.
🏦 Fed chair Jay Powell seems unlikely to leave his post anytime soon, which could set the stage for more clashes between the Fed and President Trump, who has badgered policymakers to lower interest rates. Futures traders Thurs morning saw the Fed holding interest rates steady until June 2027. The prospect of fewer cuts and concerns about the economic fallout of war in the Middle East (more on that below) have prompted a global sell-off in bonds.
😭💰 The U.S. national debt passed a record $39 trillion this week. The debt hit $38 trillion five months ago — and $37 trillion two months before that
🙅🏻♀️✈️Not the best time to fly: T.S.A. officers, working without pay, are calling out from work in growing numbers as the Homeland Security shutdown wears on.
The S.E.C. is said to be preparing a proposal that would ditch the quarterly requirement and give companies the option to report only twice annually.
📈 Crypto assets have been rallying since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28, with Bitcoin up roughly 12 percent since then. Big picture: Despite the recent mini rally, crypto markets have plunged since the autumn.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🎧 Apple launched AirPods Max 2 with enhanced active noise cancellation, the H2 chip, live translation, better sound quality, and more.
⛔️ Apple has quietly prevented AI vibe coding apps such as Replit and Vibecode, which help people create games and other applications, from releasing updates to their mobile apps on the App Store unless they make modifications, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. The company confirmed it has told some app developers that the vibe coding capabilities violate longstanding App Store rules that say an app can’t run code that changes the way it or other apps function.
💰Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company now expects $1 trillion in revenue from its Blackwell and Rubin AI chips between 2025 and 2027, a huge amount for a company that in the year through January reported $216 billion in revenue.
✨Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Monday the company will offer new software tools that allow customers to build their own open-source AI agents for business use. Launch of the software, NemoClaw, follows the popularity of OpenClaw, open-source software to create personal agents that can write code, edit files and surf the web on behalf of users.
🚀Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, in an all-hands meeting with employees, said he believes customer demand for AI could propel Amazon Web Services to a $600 billion annualized sales pace within the next decade, up from around $130 billion in total sales in 2025.
Meta is rolling out new AI content enforcement systems while reducing reliance on third-party vendors: Meta believes these AI systems can detect more violations with greater accuracy, better prevent scams, respond more quickly to real-world events, and reduce over-enforcement
Meta Platforms is shutting down Horizon Worlds for its virtual reality headset users. The VR social network will continue to operate via its mobile app, but users accessing it through the Meta Quest headset will no longer be able to create, publish or update virtual environments starting in June.
Alibaba Group has moved all of its major AI businesses under one new division managed directly by the company’s CEO, in a drastic reorganization aimed at facilitating more cooperation among teams that work on AI models, apps and services.
📦 Amazon is planning to sharply cut the number of packages it ships through the U.S. Postal Service, a move that could cost the agency billions of dollars in much-needed revenue.
✨ Former Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick is preparing to launch a new self-driving car company with major backing from Uber.
PSA - disable location data unless necessary: FBI director Kash Patel told lawmakers that the agency is actively purchasing commercially available location data, which can track Americans without needing a warrant.
BuzzFeed unveiled new AI-powered social apps at SXSW, but its demos drew muted reactions.
Layoffs: Meta Platforms is planning layoffs that could affect 20% or more of the company.
🤖AI News
They are never, ever, ever getting back together: The Pentagon is developing alternatives to Anthropic’s AI. The chief digital and AI officer at the Pentagon: “The Department is actively pursuing multiple LLMs into the appropriate government-owned environments”.
🔡 Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster are suing OpenAI, saying that OpenAI violated the copyright of almost 100,000 articles by using them for LLM training.
OpenAI on Friday signed a new contract with Amazon Web Services to sell its AI to U.S. government employees for both classified and unclassified work.
The contract will allow OpenAI to support the Pentagon through the deal it won late last month.
OpenAI’s plan to release an AI agent product through Amazon Web Services last month raised concerns among senior Microsoft executives that the product would violate OpenAI’s contract to run models exclusively on Microsoft’s Azure cloud. It’s now publicly intimating that a rift is brewing.
OpenAI is in talks with private equity firms including TPG, Advent International, Bain Capital and Brookfield Asset Management to form a joint venture that would sell OpenAI’s tech to companies funded by the investment firms.
Elon Musk says he’s rebuilding xAI from the ground up after the vast majority of its founding staff left the company
AI Enterprise market share: Anthropic is now capturing over 73% of all spending among companies buying AI tools for the first time. Just 10 weeks ago, the split with OpenAI was 50/50. It was 60/40 in OpenAI’s favor as recently as early December. Between the lines: OpenAI is generating more revenue overall. OpenAI is on pace to generate $25 billion in revenue this year, versus Anthropic’s $19 billion. But Anthropic appears to be accelerating faster.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Apple acquires video editing software company MotionVFX. The move could help Apple better compete with Adobe Premiere Pro and the Adobe Creative Cloud suite.
Amazon has acquired autonomous robotics startup Rivr, a deal that could help the commerce and logistics giant deliver packages to shoppers’ doors more efficiently.
The Chinese government plans to penalize people linked to Meta Platforms’ $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Singapore-headquartered AI application startup that was originally founded in China.
Mastercard said it agreed to buy BVNK, a stablecoin payment startup, for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments, in its biggest bet that more companies will use the cryptocurrency to move money globally.
Fundraising
Bluesky announced a $100m Series B after the CEO transition. The additional funds have been used to scale Bluesky’s team, while the company continues to develop Bluesky’s app and the underlying ATProto that powers it.
Partnerships
US Army announced a contract with Anduril worth up to $20B. The Army described this as a single enterprise contract consolidating more than 120 separate “procurement actions.”
The Navy signed a five-year contract with Gecko Robotics, worth up to $71 million, to assess its fleet’s health. Gecko’s robots, drones and sensors will scour vessels to take stock of maintenance and quickly identify necessary repairs.
Nvidia said that Uber would start introducing a fleet of Nvidia-powered, Level 4 autonomous vehicles in Los Angeles and San Francisco next year. The two companies said earlier that they were planning to roll out 100,000 vehicles that would use Nvidia’s Drive Hyperion platform.
Uber is investing in Rivian with an initial $300 million investment, while Rivian will provide as many as 50,000 autonomous R2 SUV. The deal is worth up to $1.25bn
Meta Platforms struck a deal to spend $27 billion on Nebius Group’s AI data centers over the next five years.
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
Hooray! no more bland homes. Neo Deco is the new designer-approved trend of 2026. Think: reinvented Art Deco opulence.
🧴What’s the secret to La Mer’s formula? Fascinating read on how music helps unlock the $400 skin cream’s power.
🏆Oscars! from last Sunday. “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners” (and Leo Dicaprio’s ‘stache??) were the biggest winners.
Best and worst moments. And of course the lewks 💃👗. Also, this romantic…
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