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18 Mar 2026

Slotkin introduces bill to limit Pentagon AI use after Anthropic split costs millions

Senator Elissa Slotkin introduced the AI Guardrails Act to regulate military AI use, requiring human authorization for autonomous weapons and banning AI-enabled mass surveillance. The five-page bill aims to codify existing Pentagon guidelines into law following the costly split with Anthropic that will require millions in taxpayer dollars to unwind.

3 Sources

Snowflake unveils Project SnowWork to automate business workflows with AI agents

Snowflake has launched Project SnowWork, an autonomous AI platform that uses AI agents to automate complex enterprise workflows. The system allows business users to request tasks in natural language and have AI autonomously plan and execute multi-step tasks—from data analysis to report generation—while maintaining data governance and security controls within Snowflake's platform.

5 Sources

UK Government Plans AI Content Labelling Requirements to Combat Deepfakes and Disinformation

Britain is considering mandatory labelling for AI-generated content as part of broader copyright reforms aimed at protecting consumers from deepfakes while balancing creative industries' rights with AI innovation. Technology minister Liz Kendall announced the government has abandoned its previous approach after extensive stakeholder consultation.

3 Sources

Retailers embrace agentic commerce but warn AI shopping still faces major execution gaps

Enterprise leaders predict AI agents will shape up to half of all online transactions by 2027, with 95% already deploying AI-driven commerce capabilities. But major retailers including BestBuy and Wayfair are striking notes of caution, pointing to infrastructure gaps that prevent AI shopping from moving beyond intelligent product discovery to actual transaction completion.

3 Sources

IBM closes $11 billion Confluent acquisition to power enterprise AI with real-time data streaming

IBM completed its $11 billion acquisition of Confluent on March 17, 2026, gaining control of a data streaming platform used by over 6,500 enterprises including 40% of Fortune 500 companies. The deal positions IBM to deliver real-time data infrastructure for AI agents and models, moving beyond traditional slow data lakes to create what IBM calls a smart data platform purpose-built for AI.

3 Sources

Microsoft threatens to sue OpenAI and Amazon over $50 billion cloud deal exclusivity breach

Microsoft is considering legal action against OpenAI over a $50 billion cloud deal with Amazon that it believes violates their Azure exclusivity agreement. The dispute centers on OpenAI's Frontier multi-agent platform and whether offering it through AWS breaches the API exclusivity clause requiring all access to OpenAI models to route through Microsoft's Azure cloud platform.

10 Sources

Alibaba Cloud raises prices up to 34% as AI boom drives hardware costs higher across China

Chinese cloud providers are implementing steep price increases as the AI boom strains global supply chains. Alibaba Cloud is hiking prices by up to 34% for GPU-intensive offerings, while Tencent and Baidu Cloud follow with similar adjustments. The moves signal a shift toward monetizing AI investments amid rising infrastructure costs and semiconductor shortages.

8 Sources

Fitbit AI Coach will read your medical records next month as Google pushes deeper into healthcare

Google announced that Fitbit users can soon connect medical records to its AI-powered health coach for personalized guidance. The update includes lab results, medications, and visit history integration, alongside a 15% improvement in sleep tracking accuracy. While Google promises data privacy and says health information won't be used for ads, concerns remain about AI hallucinations and over-reliance on chatbots for medical advice.

5 Sources

Meta's Manus launches desktop app with AI agent to automate tasks on Mac and Windows

Meta's recently acquired AI startup Manus has launched a desktop app for Mac and Windows featuring My Computer, an AI agent that can organize folders, rename files, send emails, and build apps directly on personal devices. The move positions Manus to compete with free alternatives like OpenClaw, though experts warn of potential privacy and security risks.

6 Sources

Mystery AI Model Hunter Alpha Revealed as Xiaomi's MiMo-V2-Pro, Not DeepSeek V4

An anonymous AI model called Hunter Alpha appeared on OpenRouter on March 11, sparking intense developer speculation that it was DeepSeek's next-generation V4 system. The powerful model featured 1-trillion parameters and a 1-million-token context window, matching expectations for DeepSeek V4. But Xiaomi revealed it was actually their MiMo-V2-Pro, designed for AI agents and built by a former DeepSeek researcher.

6 Sources

Mistral AI launches Forge platform to let enterprises build custom AI models from scratch

Mistral AI unveiled Forge at Nvidia's GTC conference, a platform that enables enterprises to train custom AI models from scratch using their own proprietary data. The French startup is betting on privacy-focused AI to differentiate from OpenAI and Anthropic, targeting $1 billion in annual recurring revenue this year with early adopters including ASML, Ericsson, and the European Space Agency.

5 Sources

Hexaware Technologies launches Agentverse with 600+ AI agents to scale enterprise automation

Hexaware Technologies unveiled Agentverse, an enterprise AI platform featuring over 600 ready-to-deploy AI agents designed to help organizations move from pilot projects to full-scale operational deployment. The platform promises 40-60% productivity gains, 60-80% faster response times, and 20-50% cost reduction across business and technology functions.

2 Sources

NVIDIA unveils RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition with 10,496 cores in single-slot design

NVIDIA introduced the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell Server Edition at GTC 2026, a single-slot GPU featuring 10,496 CUDA cores and 32GB of GDDR7 memory. The energy-efficient accelerator delivers up to 50X performance gains for AI workloads while consuming just 165W, targeting data centers that need maximum density and efficiency.

2 Sources

Appeals court pauses Amazon's ban on Perplexity AI shopping agents in agentic commerce battle

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has temporarily halted a California judge's order that blocked Perplexity AI from using its Comet browser agent on Amazon's platform. The ruling keeps Perplexity's AI-powered shopping tool active while the court considers a longer-term pause, marking a significant development in the legal battle over agentic commerce and user rights to choose independent AI tools.

3 Sources

Ex-Datadog President's AI Startup Standard Template Labs Raises $49M to Transform IT Automation

Standard Template Labs, founded by former Datadog President Amit Agarwal, has raised $49 million in seed funding to build AI-powered software that automates IT management for large enterprises. The startup, valued at $300 million, emerged from Iconiq's first-ever incubation and aims to challenge industry giants like ServiceNow by resolving 80% of IT support tickets automatically.

2 Sources

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