This Week in Tech (Week Ending Mar 27, 2026)
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! đ Iâll be taking next week off. Tech news below!
đ Macro (Economic) and Trends
The partial government shutdown, which has left TSA officers working without pay, is colliding with an oil price spike driven by the Iran war. That means travelers face massive delays â and higher airfares. TSA officers calling out is topping at 40%+.
đŽđˇ Trump gave Iran more time to reopen the Strait of Hormuz: President Trump said Thur morning that he was giving Iran two choices: They could abandon their nuclear ambitions and negotiate an end to the war, or they could do nothing and the U.S. would âkeep blowing them away â unimpeded, unstopped.â
The FBI says Iranian hackers are using Telegram to steal data from dissidents, opposition groups, and journalists who oppose its regime in malware attacks.
The stock market is increasingly dominated by a few huge and extremely profitable âsuperstarâ companies. The big guys arenât simply the Magnificent 7 tech companies, but include Home Depot and JPMorgan Chase.
đŹ Micro (Tech Companies)
đşď¸ Apple Maps is adding ads, as Apple expands its business offerings
Google is launching Search Live globally: Search Live allows users to point their phone camera at objects to get real-time assistance, enabling back-and-forth conversations that draw on the visual context from the camera feed.
Meta is ordered to pay $375 million for violating consumer protection laws. A jury in New Mexico found that the social media giant had misled users about the safety of its platforms and enabled sexual exploitation of young users in a lawsuit brought by the state in 2023.
Meta and Google were found negligent in a landmark social media addiction case. The jury says Meta and YouTube will have to pay $3 million in damages.
OnlyFansâ owner, Leonid Radvinsky, died at 43 after a battle with cancer.
YouTube is now flooded with engagement bait and AI-generated content. The more you watch passively, the more the platform assumes you want the same. If you want better recommendations, you have to interrupt the cycle. Advice from Axios on how to change up your algo.
Tesla and SpaceX will build a âTerafabâ together in Austin that will design and manufacture semiconductors for both companies, though he did not provide a timeline for the project.
Kalshi, the prediction market, is preemptively blocking athletes, coaches and officials from betting on their sports and political candidates from trading on their campaigns.
Layoffs: Epic Games cut 1,000 jobs, saying Fortnite engagement is down. Meta is laying off several hundred employees across multiple teams, including sales, recruiting, and the Reality Labs division. Microsoft froze hiring in its Cloud and Sales groups
đ¤AI News
The Labor Department is launching a free AI literacy course aimed at skeptical Americans. The âMake America AI Readyâ course covers AIâs core capabilities and how to create clear prompts, among other basics.
Anthropic and the Pentagon: According to Axios, some leaders inside the federal government want Anthropic AI, both for warfighting and cyber defense. These officials believe Anthropic is a big reason the U.S. is probably 6-12 months ahead of China in leveraging AI for national defense. Claude is also being used extensively for the Iran war. PLUS: A U.S. federal judge halted the Trump administrationâs designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk, issuing a ruling that the government trampled free-speech protections when it classified the artificial-intelligence company as a security threat and barred government use of its models.
OpenAI
OpenAI is in advanced talks to buy electricity from Sam Altman-backed fusion startup Helion Energy. Why it matters: The move shows OpenAI is serious about tapping fusion energy to help meet the ChatGPT-makerâs massive power demands.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has relinquished direct oversight of the companyâs safety and security teams so he can focus on raising capital, supply chains and âbuilding datacenters at unprecedented scaleâ. Altman shared the company had completed the initial development of its next major AI model, codenamed Spud, and would wind down the Sora AI video mobile app.
OpenAI says itâs moving away from Instant Checkout, which allowed users to buy items directly through the ChatGPT interface.
OpenAI expects to increase its headcount to around 8,000 employees by year end, up from about 4,500 employees
Sierra, an AI startup led by ex-Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, unveiled a new product called Ghostwriter that builds AI agents for tasks such as customer service based on natural language prompts.
Shares of multiple business software providers, including Salesforce, Atlassian and HubSpot, all saw significant declines after The Information reported that Amazon Web Services is developing AI that automates sales, business development and other internal functions. This is the latest sign of investorsâ concern about the threat that AI could pose to traditional business software providers.
Meta is launching Meta Small Business, a company-wide push to support entrepreneurship and drive AI adoption. Why it matters: The plan leans into a Meta strength in the AI wars as competitors pursue large-scale enterprise. More than 250 million small businesses globally use Meta across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Cursor admits its new coding model was built on top of Moonshot AIâs Kimi
The new class divide: AI fluency. A new paper from Anthropic shows experienced AI users get better results out of an AI model than newcomers. And the gap isnât explained by what tasks theyâre doing, what country theyâre in, or what model theyâre using. People whoâve used Claude for six months or more have a 10% higher success rate in their conversations with AI. âThe longer youâve been using it, the stronger this effectâ.
đ¤ Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Lovableâs founder said the fast-growing vibe-coding startup is looking for startups and teams to join its company
Databricks acquired Antimatter and SiftD.ai to underpin its new AI security product.
DeleteMe acquired social media security tool Block Party.
Meta Platforms has hired the founders and team behind artificial intelligence agent startup Dreamer.
Fundraising
Granola raised $125M, hitting $1.5B valuation as it expands from meeting notetaker to enterprise AI app
Reflection, a start-up that makes open-source artificial intelligence models and is backed by Nvidia, is reportedly in talks to raise $2.5 billion at a valuation of $25 billion.
Partnerships
Agile Robots will incorporate Google DeepMindâs robotics foundation models into its bots while collecting data for the AI research lab.
IPO
Oura has been interviewing bankers to advise on an initial public offering that could take place as soon as this year.
SpaceX is aiming to file its initial public offering prospectus with regulators later this week or next week.
Anthropic executives have discussed an initial public offering of the AI firmâs shares as soon as the fourth quarter this year.
âąď¸ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
âProject Hail Maryâ delivered $81 million in domestic ticket sales over the weekend â the biggest movie debut so far this year and a record for Amazon MGM Studios.
They did it again: Jury Duty season 2 is back. Somehow the producers managed to convince a guy that heâs part of a company that goes on a company retreat, where the company is participating in a documentary about small businesses.
This is⌠so weird lol: Megan Thee Stallion and Nickelback teamed up to make a music video ad for Cheetos Flaminâ Hot Dill Pickle. At one point Megan Thee Stallion is twerking while surfing on a Cheeto dust? đ¤¨đ¤ˇââď¸
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