Arm Designs Its First Chip in 35 Years, Four Billionaires Hand Over Four AI Employment Predictions on the Same Day
1｜Arm Is No Longer Just Making Blueprints; The Landlord Is Building the House Themselves
Arm has always just made blueprints and collected licensing fees. For 35 years, hundreds of companies such as Qualcomm, Apple, and NVIDIA have used Arm architecture to design chips, with Arm taking a royalty for each processor sold. This business model has made Arm the chip industry's safest "landlord." Now, the landlord is building the house themselves.
On March 24, Arm released its first self-designed data center CPU, the 136-core Neoverse V3 architecture, consuming 300 watts, targeting AI inference and training workloads. Meta is the first customer, and OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare have also signed up. CEO Rene Haas has set clear financial goals, expecting this chip to bring in $15 billion in annual revenue by 2031, with Arm's total revenue reaching $25 billion.
This is not a design company "dabbling" in hardware. Arm's data center CPU market share has increased from about 15% in 2024 to the current 21%, with a target to reach 50% by the end of the year. As Amazon Graviton, Google Axion, and Microsoft Cobalt are all using Arm architecture for their self-designed chips, Arm's choice is clear: rather than waiting for super customers to bypass you, it's better to become their direct supplier. For Intel and AMD, the moat around x86 just got a little shorter.
(Source: CNBC / TechCrunch / Reuters / Tom's Hardware)
2｜Anthropic Heads to Court Against the Pentagon, Palantir Takes Home $13.4 Billion on the Same Day
Anthropic refuses to relax AI safety guardrails for the military. The Pentagon's response was to classify 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 such procurement regulations, originally aimed at foreign spies, have been used against a domestic company.
On March 24, Anthropic filed an emergency injunction in a San Francisco federal court. Presiding Judge Rita Lin made a statement in court that silenced the gallery, "I'm not sure if this is attempted murder, but it does look like an attempt to cripple Anthropic." She described the Pentagon's actions as "unsettling," stating that the restrictions lacked a reasonable connection to the so-called national security reasons. Judge Lin is expected to make a ruling in the coming days.
On the same day, Palantir's Maven AI platform was officially designated as a core military system by the Pentagon, receiving a multi-year funding commitment. The budget skyrocketed from $480 million in 2024 to $13.4 billion. Those who refused to cooperate were blacklisted, while those who fully cooperated received a 28-fold budget increase. This is not just a divergence in the fate of two companies but a systemic split along the path of AI militarization, as the Pentagon has now put its money where its mouth is.
(Source: CNBC / Al Jazeera / Axios / Tom's Hardware)
3｜Four Billionaires, Four AI Employment Prophecies in One Day
Within a single day, four individuals shaping the future of the AI industry offered four mutually contradictory prophecies.
Perplexity CEO Srinivas said on the All-In podcast that AI unemployment is a good thing, stating that "most people already hate their jobs." Palantir CEO Karp was more direct, claiming that in the AI era, only two types of people will survive: skilled blue-collar workers or neurodiverse individuals.
OpenAI investor Khosla provided a figure at a Washington forum, suggesting that by 2030, 80% of jobs will be replaced by AI. He predicted that "fear of AI" will become the top issue in the 2028 election.
BlackRock CEO Fink expressed different concerns in his annual letter to shareholders. He argued that the real threat of AI is not unemployment but wealth concentration. Since 1989, median wages in the U.S. have lagged 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 no longer tenable.
(Source: Fortune / BlackRock Annual Letter to Shareholders / Axios)
4｜Circle Plummets 18%, Tether Enlists the "Big Four," Crypto's Institutionalization and Deinstitutionalization Simultaneously Occur
Circle's stock price tumbled by 18% in a single day. The catalyst was a provision in the Clarity Act, a new bill that prohibits stablecoin issuers from distributing "economically equivalent to interest" benefits to holders. This directly impacts Circle's core business model. USDC's growth relies on a revenue-sharing mechanism with Coinbase, and interest income from reserves is a key factor in supporting user retention. If this path is blocked, the stablecoin's competitive advantage over money market funds will significantly diminish. Circle had previously surged by 170% over two months, and the vulnerability of this high retracement was exposed by this legislative provision.
On the same day, Tether announced hiring a "Big Four" accounting firm to conduct the first-ever full reserve audit of USDT. The specific firm was not disclosed. Tether has relied on periodic attestations from BDO Italia for years and has never undergone a complete audit. On the same day, NYSE partnered with Securitize to develop a 24/7 tokenized securities platform. Regulation is tightening, institutions are laying pipelines, and two significant events occurred 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 the AI video application Sora. This TikTok-like short video product, launched in October last year, received good technical reviews but did not keep up with user retention. The shutdown directly led to Disney withdrawing its $1 billion investment plan. The original agreement was a three-year licensing deal, allowing the generation of videos using over 200 characters from Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars. OpenAI stated that the team will pivot to "world simulation and robotics research."
In investor documents unveiled on the same day, OpenAI listed Microsoft as the top risk. Microsoft invested $13 billion, holding a 27% stake, and is the sole cloud provider for training. However, OpenAI had already signed a $500 billion exclusive agreement with AWS, which Microsoft believes violates the exclusivity clause. By shutting down the loss-making product, cutting off licensing baggage, and including the largest shareholder in the risk factors, this is not an isolated decision but a systemic narrative cleanup before the IPO.
(Source: TechCrunch / Variety / CNBC / 24/7 Wall St.)
Also Worth Knowing ↓
SK Hynix placed an $8 billion order with ASML for EUV lithography machines, around 30 units, setting ASML's largest single order record to date. The equipment will be delivered by the end of 2027, deployed in the Yongin new fab and Cheongju M15X fab, serving HBM and advanced DRAM production. The demand for storage chips by AI is pushing equipment vendors' order books to the limit.
(Source: Tom's Hardware / TrendForce)
Huawei launched the Atlas 350 AI accelerator, FP4 computing power of 1.56 PFLOPS, equipped with up to 112GB HBM, claiming performance 2.8 times that of Nvidia's H20. On the same day, bipartisan U.S. senators wrote to the Department of Commerce, stating that Ren Zhengfei's claim of "chips not being transferred to China" is "contradictory to existing reports," and requesting a halt to Nvidia's export license to China. Blocking on one side, accelerating substitution on the other.
(Source: Tom's Hardware)
The President of the Philippines has declared a state of national energy emergency for one year. The Middle East conflict has led to an "imminent energy supply danger," prompting the government to establish an emergency committee to oversee fuel, food, and medicine distribution. (Source: Fortune)
Qatar Energy has declared force majeure on LNG contracts to South Korea, China, Italy, and Belgium. 17% of production capacity has been damaged in the Iran strike, with repairs expected to take 3 to 5 years. The Strait of Hormuz has effectively been closed for nearly a month, disrupting about one-fifth of global oil and LNG shipments. (Source: Al Jazeera)
Tencent has poached several key members of the ByteDance Seed team, including Visual AI Platform Head Xiao Xuefeng and Infra Team Leader Zhang Chi, reporting to Chief AI Scientist Yao Shunyu. Since the end of 2025, Tencent has been continuously absorbing talent in large-scale model infrastructure from ByteDance, with core members from ByteDance background in both the AI Infra and Big Language Model teams. (Source: 36Kr)
Epic Games has laid off over 1,000 employees, with CEO Tim Sweeney citing a sustained decline in Fortnite engagement since last year. Following a second large-scale reduction after laying off 800 employees in 2023, the company is also cutting $500 million in contracts and marketing expenses. (Source: TechCrunch / The Verge)
Broadcom warns that TSMC's production capacity has become a bottleneck for AI chip supply. The demand for AI accelerators continues to outpace the expansion of wafer fabrication capacity, and the supply constraint is unlikely to ease in the short term. (Source: Reuters)
