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Anthropic said there has been "virtually no progress" on talks with the Pentagon
OpenAI and Google employees have signed a petition opposing the military's AI use
Netflix shares soars as walked away from the Warner Bros $83 billion deal, clearing the way for rival bidder Paramount Skydance Corp to clinch its $111 billion deal
Amazon halts Blue Jay robot project amid strategic shift in warehouse technology. Amazon refocuses on the "Orbital" system
2 founding members of Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab quietly left for Meta
Block shares surge on bet AI is ready to replace swath of workforce
CoreWeave shares slide after heavy spending alarms investors
The U.S. dollar’s dominance just slipped to its lowest level in over three decades. It now accounts for about 56.9% of global foreign exchange reserves, down from roughly 72% at its high point
Okay, friends, buckle up, because this was that kind of week.
AI companies went against the Pentagon. Netflix lost with the deal with Warner Bros. The stock market threw a tantrum, then a party, then questioned its life choices. And through all of it, Nvidia just kept printing money like it always does.
No fluff. No slow buildups. Let's get into it.
Nvidia Posted the Biggest Quarter in Chip History
NVIDIA Earnings Report
Key Points:
Hyperscalers (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon) now make up 50% of data center revenue, they're buying chips faster than Nvidia can make them
Jensen Huang declared "the agentic AI inflection point has arrived" and is already shipping next-gen Vera Rubin samples to customers
Gaming revenue dropped 13% QoQ. Nvidia is prioritizing AI over consumer GPUs right now, and if you're a gamer, you've definitely noticed
Nvidia reported Q4 FY2026 results Wednesday evening and blew the doors off expectations — again. Revenue hit $68.1 billion, up 73% YoY, crushing the $66.2 billion Wall Street expected. Data center alone pulled in $62.3 billion. Then CEO Jensen Huang dropped Q1 guidance of $78 billion, which is basically Nvidia saying "hold my beer" to every skeptic who thought the AI wave was cresting.
James Demmert, CIO at Main Street Research, said investors were "extremely hungry for confirmation that AI is still a positive storyline for stocks, and Nvidia's blowout earnings did just that." Wedbush analyst Dan Ives had a $250 price target heading into the print, more than 30% above where the stock was trading.
What does Nvidia's quarter tell you?
Anthropic vs The Pentagon
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (Chesnot/Getty Images)
Key Points:
The "supply chain risk" label is the real threat, it could push Anthropic's enterprise clients to cut ties entirely
The Pentagon says it has zero interest in surveillance or autonomous weapons but won't put that promise in writing
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) broke with the administration, saying Anthropic was "trying to do their best to help us from ourselves"
Anthropic struck a $200 million contract with the Pentagon last summer. Claude became the first AI model cleared for use on classified military networks. Solid deal until the Pentagon decided it wanted to use Claude for anything legal, which Anthropic fears includes mass surveillance of American citizens and fully autonomous weapons (drones that decide to fire without a human in the loop). Anthropic drew two hard lines. The Pentagon called them unacceptable. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to label Anthropic a "supply chain risk," a designation normally reserved for foreign adversaries and even floated invoking the Defense Production Act to force compliance. On Thursday, CEO Dario Amodei rejected the Pentagon's "final offer," saying it contained loopholes that would let safeguards be bypassed "at will." Pentagon spokesman Emil Michael responded by calling Amodei a "liar" with a "God complex."
Gregory Allen of CSIS noted that inside DoD, "the user base loves Anthropic, loves Claude, and says that their restrictions on usage have never been triggered." This fight isn't about what already happened; it's about who controls what comes next.
OpenAI & Google Push Back on Military AI
Li Hongbo/VCG via Getty Images
Key Points:
OpenAI and Google employees have signed a petition opposing the use of their companies' AI tools for mass surveillance
OpenAI and Google have both signed contracts under the "all lawful purposes" standard, exactly what Anthropic is refusing, and their own employees are asking hard questions
Anthropic staffers went public on X supporting Amodei; one wrote that "history is unfolding in front of us"
The Anthropic/Pentagon clash didn't happen in a vacuum. Employees at OpenAI, Google, and other major AI firms have been circulating petitions opposing military AI, particularly autonomous weapons, and the volume got noticeably louder this week as the standoff went public.
The deeper question the whole industry is wrestling with: once AI is powerful enough to change battlefield outcomes, can the companies building it really stay neutral? Or does building it mean owning what it does?
Should AI employees have a say in military contracts?
Netflix Blinked. Paramount Takes Warner Bros
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos visited the White House Thursday afternoon to discuss his company's bid for Warner Bros (Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)
Key Points:
Trump publicly backed Paramount, met with David Ellison at the White House days before the outcome, and Paramount settled a $16M lawsuit with Trump mid-process. Sen. Warren called it "crony capitalism"
Netflix walks away with $2.8 billion in termination fees, no DOJ antitrust headache, and its stock up — as exits go, that's a clean one
CNN's editorial independence is the big unknown — Paramount already installed Bari Weiss as CBS News head, and the industry is watching whether that model spreads
In one of the most dramatic reversals in Hollywood deal history, Netflix walked away from its $82.7 billion agreement to acquire parts of Warner Bros. Discovery and made that call in under two hours. Here's how it happened: Paramount Skydance raised its bid for all of WBD to $31 per share on Thursday.
Warner's board declared it a "superior offer" and gave Netflix four days to respond. Netflix responded in two hours. "This was always a 'nice to have' at the right price, not a 'must have' at any price," co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said. Netflix stock popped 10% after hours. Paramount jumped 5%. WBD fell 2%. If the deal closes as expected, Paramount-Skydance will own HBO, CNN, Warner Bros., "Harry Potter," "Succession," "The White Lotus," "Top Gun," "Titanic," and "The Godfather" under one roof.
WBD CEO David Zaslav called the combined company "tremendous value for shareholders." Industry veterans are less celebratory, combining two legacy studios means overlapping libraries, redundant networks, and a lot of decisions about what gets cut.
AI to Replace SaaS
Forbes
Key Points:
Capital is rotating fast, from "software AI replaces" to "hardware and infrastructure AI runs on."
IBM, down 22% in 2026 as Anthropic touts Cobol tool
The S&P 500 fell to 6,908.86 on Thursday (down 0.54%) and Nasdaq dropped 1.18%.
A phrase started circulating on trading desks this week that sounds like a Netflix thriller but carries real weight: "Software-mageddon." The thesis is that agentic AI might make the traditional per-seat subscription model obsolete.
If an AI agent can do the work of a dozen people, why are you paying Salesforce per employee? The market asked that out loud this week, and it wasn't pretty: the S&P 500 dropped roughly 15% in February, wiping out over $1.2 trillion in market value. Salesforce, ServiceNow, Cloudflare, and Zscaler all fell hard before a partial mid-week recovery driven largely by Nvidia's blowout results.
UBS CIO Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi wrote ahead of Nvidia's results: "Whether market confidence can be sustained in the coming days will partly depend on NVIDIA's earnings."
Bottom Line
Here's the thread connecting all six stories this week: power is being renegotiated in real time.
Who controls AI: the companies building it, or the governments that want to use it? Who owns the future of entertainment: the streamers who disrupted Hollywood, or the studios that survived it? Who actually sets trade policy when the Supreme Court and the executive branch disagree? And who captures the economic upside of AI: the chip makers, or the software platforms that are quietly being replaced by the very thing they helped create?
None of these questions got a clean answer this week. But they all got louder. And that matters, because markets, careers, and policy are all moving in response to how these power shifts settle out.
The takeaway? The story of 2026 is being written right now. Weeks like this are the chapters that tend to matter most.
Stay informed, and don't let the noise drown out the signal.
