Have a great weekend all; keep cool (it’s hot as hell in California as we type!). - CL

A California jury found that Elon Musk misled Twitter investors in 2022 by tweeting about bots as he tried to exit his $44 billion acquisition, contributing to an 8% drop in the stock. Damages in the case could reach up to $2.6 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

A Nevada judge issued a 14-day restraining order forcing Kalshi to halt sports, election, and entertainment contracts in the state without a gaming license, marking the first time a US state has shut down the prediction market amid a widening regulatory fight. TechCrunch has more here.

The Trump administration today unveiled a federal AI framework that would override state laws, limit platform accountability, shift child safety responsibility to parents, and give startups a single national standard with broad liability protections. TechCrunch has more here.

Alibaba and Tencent lost $66 billion in market value in about 24 hours after back-to-back earnings calls disappointed investors with vague AI strategies and no clear path to monetization despite heavy spending on infrastructure and models. Bloomberg has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

Anthropic submitted two sworn declarations to a California federal court late Friday afternoon, pushing back on the Pentagon’s assertion that the AI company poses an “unacceptable risk to national security” and arguing that the government’s case relies on technical misunderstandings and claims that were never actually raised during the months of negotiations that preceded the dispute.

The declarations were filed alongside Anthropic’s reply brief in its lawsuit against the Department of Defense and come ahead of a hearing this coming Tuesday, March 24, before Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco.

The dispute traces back to late February, when President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly declared they were cutting ties with Anthropic after the company refused to allow unrestricted military use of its AI technology.

The two people who submitted the declarations are Sarah Heck, Anthropic’s Head of Policy, and Thiyagu Ramasamy, the company’s Head of Public Sector.

Heck is a former National Security Council official who worked at the White House under the Obama administration before moving to Stripe and then Anthropic, where she runs the company’s government relationships and policy work. She was personally present at the February 24 meeting where CEO Dario Amodei sat down with Defense Secretary Hegseth and the Pentagon’s Under Secretary Emil Michael.

In her declaration, Heck calls out what she describes as a central falsehood in the government’s filings: that Anthropic demanded some kind of approval role over military operations. That claim, she says, simply isn’t true. “At no time during Anthropic’s negotiations with the Department did I or any other Anthropic employee state that the company wanted that kind of role,” she wrote.

She also claims that the Pentagon’s concern about Anthropic potentially disabling or altering its technology mid-operation was never raised during negotiations. Instead, she says, it appeared for the first time in the government’s court filings, which gave Anthropic no opportunity to respond.

Fal, a five-year-old San Francisco startup whose cloud infrastructure lets developers deploy and run AI models for generating images, video, and audio, is raising $300 million to $350 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to The Information. Techloy has more here.

GeoWealth, a 16-year-old Chicago company that operates a platform that enables registered investment advisors to manage diversified portfolios through unified managed accounts, raised a $42.5 million Series C round. Goldman Sachs provided the funding. Wealth Management has more here.

Hosted.ai, a two-year-old startup based in San Jose, CA, that is creating a platform and marketplace that pool AI workloads across shared GPU infrastructure to increase utilization for cloud providers, raised a $19 million seed round led by Creandum, with People Ventures and Repeat VC also participating. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Cleavr, a one-year-old Paris startup that uses AI to automate accounts receivable and invoice collection workflows for finance teams, raised a $1.2 million round. Investors included Kima Ventures and Better Angle. EU-Startups has more here.

Eternal Ag, a one-year-old Cologne startup that develops autonomous robots that perform greenhouse crop harvesting without human operators, raised a $9.2 million round. Investors included Simon Capital, Oyster Bay Venture Capital, EquityPitcher Ventures, and Backbone Ventures. The Next Web has more here.

Health Universe, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that provides a secure, compliant platform that enables healthcare organizations to deploy AI agents on medical records and clinical data workflows, raised a $6 million seed round led by Kleiner Perkins. The company has raised a total of $9.5 million. MobiHealthNews has more here.

Homaio, a two-year-old Paris startup that is building an investment platform to enable retail investors to access emissions allowance markets through carbon-backed financial securities, raised a $4.2 million round led by RAISE Ventures and Groupe Eren, with XAnge and Redstone also participating. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Pado AI, a one-year-old Malibu startup that provides software to orchestrate workloads and optimize energy and hardware infrastructure in data centers, raised a $6 million seed round. NovaWave Capital led the transaction. Latitude Media has more here.

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Montis VC, a Warsaw-based venture firm that invests in early-stage startups focused on energy and industrial systems, has reached a €50 million first close for a new fund backed by the European Investment Fund and other investors. Tech Funding News has more here.

Zetwerk, an eight-year-old Indian startup that manufactures and supplies contract electronics and industrial components across sectors including consumer electronics, aerospace, and defense, is preparing to confidentially file for an IPO aiming to raise up to $550 million at a roughly $4 billion valuation. The company has raised over $870 million from backers like Khosla Ventures, Greenoaks, Baillie Gifford, Accel, Lightspeed, and Avenir Growth. Reuters has more here.

X-Energy, a 17-year-old nuclear reactor developer based in Rockville, MD, that is building small modular reactors, has filed for a US IPO as it looks to capitalize on renewed investor interest in nuclear power driven by AI-related energy demand. The company has raised over $1.8 billion; investors include Jane Street, Ares Management, Amazon, ARK Invest, and Emerson Collective. Reuters has more here.

In an op ed for the Financial Times, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch proposes a revenue-based levy on AI companies to fund creators and give developers legal certainty for training on online content. More here.

OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki tells MIT Technology Review that OpenAI is “throwing everything” into building a fully automated AI researcher, starting with an autonomous research intern targeted for September. More here.

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready is calling on governments to ban social media for users under 16, arguing platforms failed to consider harms to children and urging regulators to follow countries already moving to restrict youth access. TechCrunch has more here.

The New York Times provides new details about Jeff Bezos's proposed $100 billion AI fund, including the fact that the new fund would be part of the same holding company as Project Prometheus. More here.

The Winklevoss twins say job cuts at their Gemini crypto exchange have reached about 30% this year as the company leans on AI tools to boost productivity amid losses and a broader pullback in trading activity. Bloomberg has more here.

Blue Origin is seeking FCC approval to deploy nearly 52,000 solar-powered satellites for orbital AI data centers, joining SpaceX and others in betting that space-based compute can ease terrestrial capacity and energy constraints despite steep technical and cost hurdles. TechCrunch has more here.

The SEC has approved Nasdaq’s pilot to trade and settle tokenized versions of stocks and ETFs alongside traditional shares, allowing select participants to choose blockchain-based settlement without rewriting securities law or investor protections. The Block has more here.

Google is experimenting with replacing publishers’ headlines in search results with AI-generated versions that sometimes distort meaning, extending a controversial Discover feature into core search and raising new tensions with media companies over control and traffic. The Verge has more here.

Silicon Valley is increasingly fixated on “taste” as AI makes building products easier, reframing it as a competitive edge in deciding what to create and sell even as critics see it as branding for technologies many people still distrust. The New Yorker has more here.

A cyberattack on breathalyzer company Intoxalock has left drivers across the US unable to start their vehicles because routine checks on the devices can’t be completed. TechCrunch has more here.

Tech workers are competing on internal leaderboards to maximize their use of AI tools, driving up costs as some employees rack up massive token usage and companies begin factoring AI adoption into performance reviews. The New York Times has more here.

A scientific survey of more than 500 science conference talks found that most attempts at humor fall flat, with only 9% getting broad laughs and the biggest reactions coming from technical mishaps rather than planned jokes.

A planned U.S. release of the novel Shy Girl was scrapped after suspicions it was written with AI.

Saturday Night Live is launching a British version this Saturday with a local cast and writers, testing whether the American sketch format can land in the U.K. despite different comedic sensibilities and a declining interest in TV sketch shows.

Jacob & Co. has rolled out its Billionaire III watch, which features a white gold case paired with a tourbillon movement and set with 714 diamonds totaling 129.6 carats. Limited to 18 pieces, it comes with a price tag of $3.3 million.

Jony Ive has teamed up with Balmuda to create The Clock, a minimalist aluminum timepiece that displays time through shifting light instead of hands and includes ambient sound modes. It’s currently available only in Japan for $373.

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