| |  | Mar 03, 2026 | | | | | Supported by |  | | | | | | Happy Tuesday! OpenAI updates its agreement with the Pentagon with stronger surveillance protections. Apple announces a new budget-freind iPhone. Anthropic's Claude hits top spot in Apple's U.S. app store.
| | | | OpenAI said Monday it had amended a recently hashed out agreement with the Pentagon to specify that its models may not be used to conduct domestic surveillance via commercially obtained data. The change followed criticism that OpenAI's original deal contained that loophole. The new language is "critical to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and there was so much focus on this, that we wanted to make this point especially clear," said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a post on X announcing the changes. OpenAI said that the Pentagon also affirmed that OpenAI's services "will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies like the NSA." OpenAI announced its deal with the Pentagon late Friday night, after its rival Anthropic failed to reach an agreement with the Pentagon limiting use of its AI models in some situations, including for domestic surveillance. Although OpenAI said that it shared Anthropic's prohibitions on the use of its AI for lethal autonomous weapons systems and mass domestic surveillance, lawyers said the contract language allowing "all lawful uses" left open the possibility of both happening. For instance, existing laws include loopholes including the ability for government agencies to buy personal and sensitive data on the commercial market. | | | | Apple is refreshing its low-priced iPhone and iPad models. The company announced the $599 iPhone 17e, which comes equipped with Apple's A19 processor, its latest chip that was released last year alongside the flagship iPhone 17. To achieve the low price for the phone, Apple skimped on some features. The iPhone 17e has a lower-quality camera and more limited battery life compared to the flagship iPhone 17. Apple also announced a new iPad Air, starting at $599, powered by its M4 processor, an older chip that Apple originally debuted in 2024 with a prior MacBook and iPad Pro. The company is expected to announce a low-cost MacBook later this week. | | | | Anthropic's Claude on Saturday hit the top spot on Apple's U.S. App Store among downloaded free apps, overtaking OpenAI's ChatGPT. Anthropic's jump followed the Trump administration's decision to ban federal agencies from using its technology after Anthropic said it didn't agree to have its AI used for certain military purposes. Rival OpenAI then announced late Friday it made an agreement with the Pentagon to use its AI for classified systems. Anthropic is best known for selling its Claude AI models to app developers so hasn't ranked highly on smartphone app stores. Claude had been No. 42 on the U.S. App Store during Super Bowl weekend, the second week of February. Even before the dustup with the Pentagon, the company said it had seen a spike in usage of Claude chatbot. Daily signups to Anthropic's Claude chatbot have tripled since November, the company told The Information late last week. | | | | The U.S. government is considering capping Nvidia's sale of H200 chips to China at 75,000 units per customer, a move that would sharply curtail how much AI computing power China's biggest tech firms can acquire, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Alibaba Group and ByteDance had already privately told Nvidia how many chips they wanted, and the proposed cap would give them less than half of the requested amounts, according to Bloomberg. The Trump administration has already set a separate national limit, capping total H200 shipments to China at one million units, which is well below what Nvidia had originally sought, Bloomberg reported. The H200 is the most powerful chip Nvidia is currently permitted to sell to China. Beijing has been working through its own approval process. In January, Chinese regulators told domestic companies they could only purchase H200 chips when necessary, The Information reported. With regulatory hurdles piling up on both sides, President Donald Trump sees his upcoming meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a few weeks as an opportunity to seal a deal that would allow H200 chips to reach Chinese buyers, Bloomberg reported. | | | | An investor consortium led by BlackRock and EQT said Monday it has agreed to acquire energy provider AES in a roughly $33.4 billion deal, including the company's debt, continuing a streak of private equity buyouts of large utility companies. The consortium, which also included the California Public Employees' Retirement System and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, agreed to pay $10.7 billion for the company's equity. Virginia-based AES runs consumer utility businesses and power projects that sell electricity to tech companies. AES generated $9.1 billion of revenue in the first nine months of last year, down slightly from the same period in 2024, according to its most recent financial update. PE firms have been snapping up utility companies in recent years to take advantage of growing demand from AI and other sources. The acquisitions have caused some local residents to worry about potential rate hikes. Blackstone's agreement to purchase New Mexico-based TXNM for $11.5 billion last year has faced intense scrutiny from regulators. The firm has promised to provide more than $100 million in rate credits to customers. AES said in a statement the buyout would give it more flexibility to invest in clean energy generation and it didn't expect the deal would affect customer rates. | | | | SpaceX is aiming to launch a new generation of satellites next year that will use the spectrum licenses it's buying from EchoStar to offer a more powerful version of its direct-to-cell service, company executives said in a conference presentation on Monday. The new satellites, called Starlink V2s, will eventually offer speeds akin to traditional mobile service in dead zones and according to a presentation from SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell and Starlink chief Michael Nicolls at Mobile World Congress. In a separate announcement on Monday, Deutsche Telekom said it will start offering Starlink mobile service in 2028 in several European countries as a backup for its existing wireless service. SpaceX, which already has more than 650 of its original direct-to-cell satellites in orbit, plans to start launching the new satellites in mid-2027, Nicolls said. That's dependent on the company making progress on its Starship spacecraft, which Nicolls said it plans to use to launch more than 50 satellites per flight. In test flights, SpaceX has yet to demonstrate full reusability of Starship, which is critical to many of the company's plans including the expansion of Starlink. | | | | Chinese AI developer MiniMax said Tuesday that its revenue more than doubled to $79 million last year, from about $30 million in 2024, driven by the growth of its Hailuo AI video generation app and other products. In its first earnings announcement since its initial public offering in January, Hong Kong-listed MiniMax also said its net loss last year quadrupled to $1.87 billion from 2024. But the sharp widening of the loss was due mainly to a surge in the company's valuation, which increased the value of convertible preferred shares that are treated as liabilities based on accounting rules. MiniMax said its gross margin increased to 25.4% last year from 12.2% in 2024. Despite its revenue growth and improving margin, MiniMax continues to face intense domestic competition in both AI models and apps from deep-pocketed tech giants like Alibaba Group and ByteDance, as well as upstart rivals such as Moonshot AI. Last month, MiniMax launched its latest flagship open-source large language model, M2.5. The model has received positive reviews due to its coding and AI agent capabilities. Earlier this week, Notion, an AI workstation app, integrated M2.5 as the first open-source model on its platform. | | | | | Popular articles By Sri Muppidi, Anissa Gardizy and Aaron Holmes
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