Techmeme: Internal memo: Iranian strikes have rendered two AWS zones “hard down” in Dubai and Bahrain and Amazon expects them to be “unavailable for an extended period” (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology)

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April 3, 2026, 7:40 PM

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Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg:

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap is transitioning to a special projects role as part of an executive reshuffle; Fidji Simo is taking medical leave for several weeks — OpenAI's chief operating officer is shifting into a new role and two other top executives are going on leave due to health reasons …

More: The Verge, The Information, TechCrunch, CNBC, Axios, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Futurism, CNBC, Wired, and Benzinga

X: @alexeheath, @katiemiller, @paularambles, @kate_rouch, @alexeheath, @signulll, @midnight_captl, @contrariancurse, @shiringhaffary, and @patrickmoorhead. Bluesky: @edzitron.com

Maureen Farrell / New York Times:

Sources: Musk requires banks seeking roles in SpaceX's IPO to subscribe to Grok and advertise on X; some banks are spending tens of millions integrating Grok — Mr. Musk is requiring Wall Street firms to purchase subscriptions to his A.I. chatbot if they want to advise on one of the largest initial public offerings in history.

More: Ars Technica, Engadget, Reuters, Forbes, The Verge, Newser, Fortune, and Aviation A2Z

X: @rmac18, @ikrietzberg, @larakate, @mikeisaac, @hshaban, @theo_wayt, @xlr8harder, and @andrewcurran_

Bluesky: @ianbetteridge.com, @quinnypig.com, @rmac, @paularmstrongtbd, @jasoncross.org, and @bluespacecanary

Alex Kantrowitz / Big Technology:

Internal memo: Iranian strikes have rendered two AWS zones “hard down” in Dubai and Bahrain and Amazon expects them to be “unavailable for an extended period” — Amazon tells its employees to deprioritize these regions as the Iran war deals meaningful damage to its infrastructure in the Gulf.

More: Tom's Hardware, The Indian Express, Network World, DatacenterDynamics, Business Today, Verdict, Blockonomi, and Salesforce Ben

X: @adamscochran, @edkrassen, @astuyve, @cloudflareradar, and @migueldeicaza. Bluesky: @wowbaggert

Forums: Hacker News and Slashdot

Wired:

Sources: Meta has paused its work with Mercor while it investigates a security breach at the data vendor; OpenAI says it is investigating the security incident — Major AI labs are investigating a security incident that impacted Mercor, a leading data vendor.

More: Moneycontrol and Fortune. X: @zeffmax

Miranda Nazzaro / The Hill:

Filing: Anthropic has formed AnthroPAC, a new PAC that will be funded exclusively and voluntarily by its employees and is expected to be bipartisan — The artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is launching a new corporate political action committee, becoming the latest technology firm …

More: Federal Election Commission, TechCrunch, Bloomberg Law, Axios, and Washington Examiner

X: @katiemiller, @jccoltin, @austinc3301, @jordanschachtel, @daniellefong, @alexbruesewitz, @davidsacks, and @mirandanazzaro

Alex Heath / Sources:

Interviews with Codex lead Alexander Embiricos, OpenClaw's Peter Steinberger, and others about OpenAI's upcoming superapp that combines ChatGPT with Codex — Why Codex is becoming the foundation for everything. Also: Fidji Simo's internal memo about taking a leave of absence. — ∙ Paid

More: OpenAI, The Decoder, and Telecompaper

X: @alexeheath and @alexeheath

Boris Cherny / @bcherny:

Anthropic says Claude subscriptions will no longer cover usage on third-party tools like OpenClaw starting April 4 at 12pm PT, to better manage capacity — Starting tomorrow at 12pm PT, Claude subscriptions will no longer cover usage on third-party tools like OpenClaw. You can still use these tools with your Claude login via extra usage bundles (now available at a discount), or with a Claude API key.

More: InfoWorld, Forbes, Pureinfotech, and TechRadar

X: @badlogicgames, @goodhunt, @mitsuhiko, @theo, @ttrimoreau, @bcherny, @theo, @ericbuess, @bcherny, @bcherny, @bcherny, @badlogicgames, @petergyang, @michael_chomsky, @altryne, and @vadimstrizheus. Threads: @darkzuckerberg

Katherine Bindley / Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Mercor asked professionals in fields like entertainment to sell their prior work materials for AI training, even if the IP could belong to ex-employers — AI models from the tech giants constantly need new training data. This $10 billion startup is on the hunt for fresh resources.

More: Gizmodo and Hackread

Matt Mullenweg:

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg says EmDash, while open source, is designed “to sell more Cloudflare services” and lacks WordPress' cross-platform democratization — So, two other Matts at Cloudflare announced EmDash — the spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security.

More: Implicator.ai, TechRadar, Search Engine Journal, Open Channels FM, CSO, SiliconANGLE, The Register, and The Stack

X: @eastdakota, @rmelogli, @jeffr0, @learnwithmattc, @jbenton, @mattietk, @chrislema, @andraganescu, @jeffr0, @mattietk, @syedbalkhi, @thecto, @vinnysgreen, @charafmrah, @jameswelbes, @sarahgooding, and @thewpguy. LinkedIn: Matt Mullenweg

Bluesky: @mk.gg and @jennschiffer.com

Mastodon: @photomatt@mastodon.social and @jalefkowit@vmst.io

Qianer Liu / The Information:

Sources: Huawei's Ascend 950PR chip, set for mass production soon, saw prices rise 20% after Chinese tech giants placed bulk orders to run DeepSeek's V4 model — When DeepSeek introduces its next-generation model, likely in the next few weeks, it will mark a milestone in China's yearslong quest for semiconductor self-sufficiency.

More: Reuters, Blockonomi, The Decoder, Tom's Hardware, and Trivium China. X: @amir

Financial Times:

Sources: Meta's “Project Walleye” Ohio data center seeks $3B in loans in a first-of-its-kind deal where lenders will fund both the building and the power assets — ‘Project Walleye’ lenders would be first to fund both construction and power — A data centre campus backed …

X: @edzitron

Jared Perlo / NBC News:

A US bill seeks to ban exports of DUV lithography tech to China, whose imports of chipmaking equipment reportedly grew from $10.7B in 2016 to ~$51.1B in 2025 — The MATCH Act would tighten existing restrictions on a critical choke point for the AI industry, banning exports of certain manufacturing tools across China.

Robert Hart / The Verge:

Utah launches a one-year pilot program allowing Legion Health's AI chatbot to renew prescriptions for 15 low-risk psychiatric maintenance medications — Some psychiatrists are asking what problem, exactly, this is solving. … Utah is allowing an AI system to prescribe psychiatric drugs without a doctor.

More: Gizmodo, NextDraft, and Benzinga

Meir Orbach / CTech:

Docs: Israeli AI chip startup Hailo is pursuing an urgent IPO via a SPAC merger at a valuation of less than $500M; it was last valued at $1.2B in 2024 — Israeli firm seeks critical funding through a SPAC merger amid mounting market pressures. — Israeli chip company Hailo …

More: SiliconANGLE

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:40 PM ET, April 3, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

From Mediagazer

Oliver Darcy / Status:

FCC Chair Brendan Carr says he will attend the WHCA dinner, source says as Paramount's guest; CBS News invited Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller as guests

New York Times:

Filing: The Onion proposes a new deal for Infowars, licensing Infowars.com for $81,000 per month for six months initially; the deal requires a judge's approval

Alice Brooker / Press Gazette:

Caper, a food news brand by two Puck founders and VF's Dana Brown, launches with a $2.5M seed, offering staff salary plus revenue-linked bonuses and equity

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More News

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC:

Chinese semiconductor companies like SMIC reported record 2025 revenue, driven by AI demand and China's self-sufficiency push as a result of US restrictions

CTech:

Tower Semiconductor's market cap tops $20B, four years after a near-sale to Intel for $5B; shares are up ~60% over the past month and ~525% over the past year

Rina Chandran / Rest of World:

Some startups and researchers who can't access the most advanced chips are adopting a “frugal AI” approach, building smaller models on open-weight systems

More: Silicon Canals. LinkedIn: Rina Chandran. Mastodon: @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org and @oscarjiminy@aus.social

Greg Bensinger / Reuters:

The US NLRB rules that Amazon must negotiate with the Amazon Labor Union, which represents ~5,000 workers at its Staten Island warehouse; Amazon plans to appeal

More: Washington Post, Engadget, Dow Jones Newswires, International Brotherhood …, and FreightWaves. Bluesky: @southpawjc

Raffaele Huang / Wall Street Journal:

Sources: Chinese companies move to cement their role in humanoid robot supply chains as Tesla and others turn to China for components the US sees as strategic

More: South China Morning Post, DigiTimes, and Nikkei Asia

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:

Arcee AI releases Trinity-Large-Thinking, a 399B-parameter text-only reasoning model under an Apache 2.0 license, allowing full customization and commercial use

More: Arcee AI, Implicator.ai, TheNeuron, MarkTechPost, and Decrypt

X: @arcee_ai, @willccbb, @markmcquade, @primeintellect, @xlr8harder, @arcee_ai, @designarena, @arcee_ai, @teortaxestex, @leavittron, @arcee_ai, @matthewberman, and @ivanfioravanti

Nat Rubio-Licht / The Deep View:

Anthropic researchers find that an AI model's representations of emotion can influence its behavior “in ways that matter,” such as driving it to act unethically

More: Anthropic, PCWorld, Digit, and Anthropic's Interpretability Research

X: @natrubio__, @jacksonkernion, @aryaman2020, @dorialexander, @anthropicai, @alexolegimas, @jack_w_lindsey, @hamptonism, @sofroniewn, and @anthropicai. LinkedIn: Mikhail Fetisov

Bluesky: @shannonvallor, @mizmulligan, @antihebbiann, @timfduffy.com, @birdrespecter, @isolyth.dev, and @timfduffy.com. Forums: r/ArtificialInteligence

Vaibhavi Khanwalkar / The Economic Times:

Noon, an AI-native product design tool, emerges from stealth with $44M in funding from Chemistry, First Round Capital, Scribble Ventures, and others

More: Inc42, Business Standard, and Noon

X: @gjain, @codymclain, @bandiaditya, @tjack, @soleio, and @osidenko_

Earlier Picks

Takashi Mochizuki / Bloomberg:

Microsoft partners with SoftBank and Sakura Internet to build data centers in Japan, investing $10B in cybersecurity and training 1M AI engineers through 2029

More: Microsoft, Reuters, Barron's Online, crypto.news, Blockonomi, The Decoder, Business Standard, Nikkei Asia, CNBC, and Telecompaper. X: @bradsmi

Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:

Alcatraz, which develops AI-powered facial-recognition security systems for building access, raised a $50M Series B, bringing its total funding to $100M+

More: Biometric Update, Alcatraz AI, FinSMEs, Ventureburn, and VC News Daily

Katie Roof / The Information:

Sources: Supabase is in talks to raise ~$500M at a ~$10B valuation, roughly doubling its October 2025 valuation; GIC is expected to lead the funding round

More: Cautious Optimism, Yahoo Finance, and Reuters

X: @patrickmoorhead, @jasonlk, and @katie_roof

Ian Carlos Campbell / Engadget:

Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires Cinemersive Labs, a UK-based startup developing tools to convert 2D photos and videos into 3D volumetric photographs

More: Sony Interactive Entertainment, Gameranx, Pulse 2.0, TechRaptor, Blockonomi, 80 Level, Shacknews, Push Square, DayOne, and The Verge

X: @deeketweak, @septic_sauce, @thenintendogoof, @shinobi602, and @realradec

Forums: r/PS5 and r/Games

Bloomberg:

A domestic shortage of electrical equipment such as transformers and switchgear is forcing the US to rely on Chinese imports, delaying data center construction

More: Tom's Hardware, Ars Technica, The Ankler, Futurism, and Semafor

X: @pstasiatech, @wealthymatters, @pstasiatech, @pstasiatech, and @akshatrathi. LinkedIn: Olivia Wang. Mastodon: @akshatrathi@mastodon.green

Forums: r/Maxcactus_TrailGuide, r/antiai, r/BetterOffline, and Slashdot