Anthropic said it is launching The Anthropic Institute, which will bring together research from the AI company to examine the challenges more powerful AI systems will bring. The effort is led by Jack Clark, Anthropic co-founder. Clark will become Anthropic's Head of Public Benefit. The staff is ramping up and will include interdisciplinary engineers, economists and social scientists.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang penned a post on the 5 layer cake of AI. No one following Nvidia will be surprised by what Huang had to say, but the bigger picture is that GTC is likely to feature a lot of architecture talk. Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said the post is a good set up for future discussion.
CoreWeave launched two new consumption models designed for AI workloads that may differentiate the neocloud from the pack.
The first model is Flex Reservations, which guarantees peak capacity for workloads that ramp or scale unevenly. Customers buy a capacity ceiling with a lower 24/7 holding fee and only pay full usage rates when instances are active. Flex Reservations are in preview.
In addition, CoreWeave launched Spot, which is a lower-cost option for batch analytics and backfills that can tolerate interruptions. Spot is generally available.
Separately, CoreWeave announced a preview of Dedicated Inference, which gives customers the ability to run custom models in production on chose GPUs.
Nexthop AI, which is focused on efficient AI networking, raised $500 million in a Series B round and is now valued at $4.2 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Ventures and joined by Andreessen Horowitz and existing investors.
The company also launched switches designed for neoclouds and hyperscalers. Nexthop said the switches were part of its Disaggregated Spine architecture. The Broadcom-powered switches include NH-4010, NH-4220 and NH-5010. Those switches are engineered for scale-up and scale-out infrastructure, but the theme is that they are more efficient and save power.
Ahead of Oracle’s earnings report, the company put out a statement countering a Bloomberg article noting OpenAI pulled back on a deal because facilities didn’t have the latest Nvidia GPUs. Bloomberg reported that the companies ended plans to expand a data center in Abilene, TX. Oracle reportedly secured the site, ordered the hardware and spent on construction and staff with the expectation of expansion in the future.
Oracle shot back in a post on X and said the Bloomberg report, followed by CNBC, was false and incorrect. Oracle said existing projects were on track but didn’t address the expansion plans. Oracle said:
“Recent media activity about the Abilene site are false and incorrect. First, Crusoe and Oracle are operating in lockstep to deliver one of the world's largest AI Data centers in Abilene at record-breaking pace. Two buildings are completely operational and the rest of the campus is on track. Second, Oracle has completed leasing for the additional 4.5GW to deliver on our commitments to OpenAI.”
Constellation Research analyst Michael Ni on LinkedIn covered CData's Software's latest news and how it applies to moving AI from pilot to production. He also analyzed Nimble's latest round of funding.
Qualcomm launched the Arduino Ventuno Q, a single board computer designed for AI and robotics. Qualcomm acquired Arduino in October 2025 in move to bolster its embedded AI and IoT efforts.
Arduino Ventuno Q is powered by the Qualcomm Dragonwing IQ8 chips and has 16GB RAM and 64 GB of storage for AI inference and multitasking. Arduino Ventuno Q will be available in the second quarter.
Anthropic has sued the Department of War over a long running flap over using Claude in war scenarios where it is used autonomously and for surveillance of Americans.
In the lawsuit, Anthropic said:
"Anthropic brings this suit because the federal government has retaliated against it for expressing that principle. When Anthropic held fast to its judgment that Claude cannot safely or reliably be used for autonomous lethal warfare and mass surveillance of Americans, the President directed every federal agency to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic’s technology”—even though the Department of War (Department) had previously agreed to those same conditions."
Anthropic argues that the decision to make the company a supply chain risk to national security is "unprecedented and unlawful" and the Constitution doesn't allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech."
Anthropic vs. SaaS: A nuanced view
OpenAI said it has acquired Promptfoo, an AI security platform that identifies and remediates security vulnerabilities. Promptfoo's technology will be a native capability in OpenAI Frontier.
UK data center company Nscale raised $2 billion in a Series C round of venture capital. The AI infrastructure company is now valued at $14.6 billion. The funding was led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries.
MariaDB said it will acquire GridGain, an in-memory computing specialist and creator of Apache Ignite. According to MariaDB, the purchase will help it close the AI latency gap.
ABB launched ABB Ability Building Pro Suites, a "building intelligence layer" that brings HVAC, energy, IT and IoT systems together for integrated insights. The suite is aimed at real estate owners and operators.
