For the first time in 35 years, Arm is making its own chips, while four billionaires presented four different prophecies about AI and employment on the same day.
1| Arm No Longer Just Draws Blueprints; The Landlord Is Building the House Itself
Arm has always only drawn blueprints and collected licensing fees. For 35 years, companies like Qualcomm, Apple, and Nvidia have used the Arm architecture to design chips, with Arm collecting a royalty for each processor sold. This business model made Arm the safest "rent collector" in the chip industry. Now, the landlord is building the house itself.
On March 24, Arm released its first self-developed data center CPU, the 136-core Neoverse V3 architecture, with a thermal design power of 300 watts, targeting AI inference and training workloads. Meta is the first customer, with OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare also signed on. CEO Rene Haas set a clear financial goal: by 2031, this chip is expected to bring in $15 billion in annual revenue, with Arm's total revenue reaching $25 billion.
This is not a hardware "trial" by a design company. Arm's data center CPU market share has risen from about 15% in 2024 to 21% currently, with a target of reaching 50% by the end of the year. When Amazon's Graviton, Google's Axion, and Microsoft's Cobalt are all using Arm architecture to develop their own chips, Arm's choice is: rather than waiting for super customers to bypass you, become their supplier directly. For Intel and AMD, another segment of the x86 moat has been lost.
(Source: CNBC / TechCrunch / Reuters / Tom's Hardware)
2| Anthropic Takes the Pentagon to Court, While Palantir Secures $13.4 Billion on the Same Day
Anthropic refuses to relax AI safety guardrails for the military. The Pentagon's response is to list Anthropic as a "national security supply chain risk," prohibiting all federal agencies from using its technology. This is the first time in U.S. history that this procurement regulation, originally targeting foreign spies, has been used against a domestic company.
On March 24, Anthropic filed for an emergency injunction in federal court in San Francisco. Presiding Judge Rita Lin said something in court that quieted the gallery: "I'm not sure if this is murder, but it looks like an attempt to paralyze Anthropic." She described the Pentagon's actions as "disturbing," noting a lack of reasonable connection between the restrictions and the alleged national security reasons. Judge Lin is expected to rule within the next few days.
On the same day, Palantir's Maven AI platform was officially confirmed by the Pentagon as a core military system, receiving a multi-year funding commitment. The budget soared from $480 million in 2024 to $13.4 billion. Those who refused to cooperate were blacklisted; those who fully cooperated received a 28-fold budget increase. This is not just a divergence in the fate of two companies; it is an institutional split in the path of AI militarization, and the Pentagon has voted with its money.
(Source: CNBC / Al Jazeera / Axios / Tom's Hardware)
3| Four Billionaires, One Day, Four Prophecies About AI and Jobs
In a single day, four people controlling the direction of the AI industry gave four contradictory prophecies.
Perplexity CEO Srinivas said on the All-In podcast that AI-induced unemployment is a good thing: "Most people already hate their jobs." Palantir CEO Karp was more direct: in the AI era, only two types of people will survive—blue-collar workers with skills, or the neurodiverse.
OpenAI investor Khosla gave a number at a Washington forum: 80% of jobs will be replaced by AI before 2030. He predicted that "fear of AI" will be the top issue in the 2028 election.
BlackRock CEO Fink expressed a different concern in his annual letter to shareholders. The real threat of AI is not unemployment but wealth concentration. Since 1989, the median wage increase in the U.S. has lagged behind stock market returns by 15 times, with the top 1% holding 31.7% of U.S. wealth. Four narratives, one conclusion: the existing social contract is breaking down.
(Source: Fortune / BlackRock Annual Letter to Shareholders / Axios)
4| Circle Crashes 18%, Tether Hires a "Big Four" Firm; Crypto Institutionalization and Being Institutionalized Happen Simultaneously
Circle's stock price plummeted 18% in a single day. The trigger was a clause in a new draft of the Clarity Act that prohibits stablecoin issuers from distributing "economically equivalent to interest" yields to holders. This directly strikes at the core of Circle's business model. USDC's growth relies on a profit-sharing mechanism in partnership with Coinbase, and reserve interest income is key to user retention. If this path is blocked, the competitive advantage of stablecoins relative to money market funds is significantly reduced. Circle had risen 170% over the previous two months, and the vulnerability of a high pullback was exposed by this legislative draft.
On the same day, Tether announced it had hired a "Big Four" accounting firm to conduct the first comprehensive audit of USDT reserves. The specific firm was not disclosed. Tether had previously relied only on periodic attestations from BDO Italia for years, never undergoing a full audit. Also on the same day, the NYSE partnered with Securitize to develop a 24/7 tokenized securities platform. Regulation is tightening, institutions are laying pipelines—both happened on the same day.
(Source: CoinDesk / Bankless / WSJ)
5| OpenAI Shuts Down Sora, Loses Disney's $1 Billion, and Lists Microsoft as Top IPO Risk on the Same Day
OpenAI announced the shutdown of its AI video application Sora. This TikTok-style short video product, launched last October, received good technical reviews but failed to maintain user retention. The shutdown directly led Disney to withdraw a $1 billion investment plan. The original agreement was a three-year license allowing the use of over 200 characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to generate videos. OpenAI stated the team would shift to "world simulation and robotics research."
In investor documents exposed on the same day, OpenAI listed Microsoft as its top risk. Microsoft invested $13 billion for a 27% stake and is the exclusive training cloud supplier, but OpenAI has signed a $50 billion exclusivity agreement with AWS. Microsoft believes this violates exclusive terms. Shutting down loss-making products, cutting licensing burdens, and listing the largest shareholder as a risk factor—these are not isolated decisions but a systematic narrative cleanup ahead of an IPO.
(Source: TechCrunch / Variety / CNBC / 24/7 Wall St.)
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Huawei released the Atlas 350 AI accelerator, with FP4 computing power of 1.56 PFLOPS, equipped with up to 112GB HBM, claiming performance is 2.8 times that of Nvidia's H20. On the same day, U.S. senators from both parties sent a joint letter to the Commerce Department, stating that Jensen Huang's claim that "chips were not transferred to China" "contradicts existing reports" and demanding a suspension of Nvidia's export licenses to China. Blockade on one side, accelerated substitution on the other. (Source: Tom's Hardware)
The President of the Philippines declared a national energy emergency for one year. The Middle East war has led to an "imminent energy supply danger," and the government has established an emergency committee to manage the distribution of fuel, food, and medicine. (Source: Fortune)
Qatar Energy declared force majeure on LNG contracts with South Korea, China, Italy, and Belgium. 17% of production capacity was destroyed by Iranian strikes, with repairs taking 3 to 5 years. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for nearly a month, blocking about one-fifth of global oil and LNG transportation. (Source: Al Jazeera)
Tenpoached several core members from ByteDance's Seed team, including visual AI platform head Xiao Xuefeng and Infra team member Zhang Chi, reporting to chief AI scientist Yao Shunyu. Since the end of 2025, Tencent has continuously absorbed large model infrastructure talent from ByteDance, with core members in the AI Infra Department and Large Language Model Department having ByteDance backgrounds. (Source: 36Kr)
Epic Games laid off over 1,000 people, with CEO Tim Sweeney stating that Fortnite engagement has been declining since last year. This is the second round of large-scale cuts after laying off 800 people in 2023, along with a $500 million reduction in contracts and marketing expenses. (Source: TechCrunch / The Verge)
Broadcom warned that TSMC's capacity has become a bottleneck for AI chip supply. AI accelerator demand continues to exceed wafer foundry capacity expansion, and supply constraints are difficult to alleviate in the short term. (Source: Reuters)
