the dam brief #5

The Headline

the week's biggest story

OpenAI tops up to $120B+ as valuation reaches $850B

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar confirmed on March 24 that the company added $10B to its existing fundraising round, bringing the total to "north of $120B." new investors include a16z, D.E. Shaw, MGX, TPG, and Coatue. the addition pushes OpenAI's valuation to approximately $850B - more than double where it stood a year ago.

(Source)

The Build

tools, models, and dev releases

• Claude Code ships Auto Mode, an AI classifier that auto-approves 93% of permission prompts - a dual-layer system (prompt-injection scanner plus a Sonnet 4.6 transcript classifier) decides which agent actions are safe to run without human confirmation; currently in research preview for Enterprise and API users (More)

• JetBrains launches Central, a governance and orchestration layer for AI coding agents across teams - the system connects agents from Claude, Codex, and Gemini CLI to existing dev infrastructure via shared semantic context, policy enforcement, and cost attribution; Early Access opens Q2 2026 (More)

• Ai2 open-sources MolmoWeb, a visual web agent that outperforms GPT-4o-based agents at 4-8B parameters - released with weights, 36K human trajectories, and a self-hostable inference library; MolmoWeb-8B scores 78.2% on WebVoyager without distilling from proprietary models (More)

• OpenAI Agents SDK v0.13 ships MCP resource primitives - `list_resources()`, `read_resource()`, and `list_resource_templates()` now let agents pull file contents and structured data directly from MCP servers; the update also sets gpt-realtime-1.5 as the default realtime model (More)

• Google launches Gemini 3.1 Flash Live in preview via the Live API - lower latency than 2.5 Flash Native Audio, improved tool-calling during live conversations, and 90+ language support; available now in Google AI Studio for voice agent and companion app builders (More)

Founder Fuel

funding, acquisitions, and market moves

• Granola raises $125M Series C at $1.5B valuation, expanding from meeting notes to enterprise AI platform - Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins led the round; Granola is adding Spaces team workspaces, a developer API, and enterprise SSO/SCIM controls, with customers including Cursor, Mistral, and Asana (More)

• Meta cuts approximately 700 jobs as it redirects budget toward AI infrastructure - Reality Labs, recruiting, and social media teams were hit first; the cuts follow Zuckerberg's January pledge to flatten management layers as Meta targets $115-135B in 2026 capex (More)

• Shield AI closes $2B Series G at $12.7B valuation, up 140% in one year - led by Advent International and JPMorgan, the round funds Shield AI's acquisition of simulation software maker Aechelon Technology and scales its Hivemind autonomous combat pilot software after winning a US Air Force contract (More)

• Databricks acquires two cybersecurity startups to launch Lakewatch, an agentic SIEM platform - the Antimatter and SiftD.ai acquisitions announced March 24 anchor a new AI-driven security product powered by Anthropic's Claude, targeting 80% lower TCO than legacy SIEM tools (More)

Longevity & Health

aging, biotech, and health research

• UC Berkeley builds a chip that ages human tissue 40 years in four days - the miniaturized organ model tested known anti-aging drugs head-to-head; the surprise result is that oxytocin - the "bonding hormone" - beat rapamycin at reducing inflammation and restoring insulin response (More)

• a single stem cell injection reversed frailty in a third of elderly patients - 148 adults aged 70-85 walked significantly further and nearly a third were reclassified as non-frail after nine months; the first trial evidence that a one-time treatment can meaningfully roll back age-related physical decline (More)

• Rubedo Life Sciences' drug clears "zombie cells" linked to aging in first human trial - the topical treatment selectively killed senescent cells that accumulate with age and drive chronic inflammation; a larger US trial for pre-cancerous skin lesions is already underway (More)

The World

regulation, policy, and geopolitics

• EU Parliament votes 569-45 to fix high-risk AI compliance deadlines and ban nudifier apps - the Digital Omnibus plenary vote on March 26 replaces the Commission's flexible timeline with fixed dates: December 2027 for biometrics, employment, and law enforcement AI; August 2028 for regulated-product AI; the Council adopted its position on March 13 and trilogue now begins (More)

• EU Parliament approves EU-US tariff deal with automatic suspension triggers - two votes (417-154 and 437-144) endorsed a 15% tariff framework with an "emergency brake" clause that lapses EU concessions in March 2028 if Washington threatens member-state territory or applies economic coercion, a direct legislative response to Trump's Greenland threats (More)

• EU abolishes €150 de minimis customs exemption for Chinese e-commerce parcels - from July 1, 2026, each parcel from Temu, Shein, and AliExpress under €150 incurs a flat €3 duty; platforms face fines of 1-6% of EU import revenue for safety violations, and a new EU Customs Authority will be headquartered in Lille (More)

Go Deeper

long reads, podcasts, and documentaries

• Jensen Huang: NVIDIA - the $4 trillion company & the AI revolution - Lex Fridman Podcast | Lex Fridman. a 2.5-hour conversation on rack-scale engineering, AI scaling bottlenecks, and why Huang thinks AGI has already arrived - essential for anyone building on AI infrastructure. (Listen)

• thousands of people are selling their identities to train AI - but at what cost? - The Guardian | Guardian Technology desk. a ground-level investigation following gig workers in Cape Town, Ranchi, and Chicago who sell their voices, faces, and phone calls to AI companies for cents on the dollar. (Read)

• this startup wants to change how mathematicians do math - MIT Technology Review | Will Douglas Heaven. Axiom Math's open-source tool runs on a Mac Pro and matches what previously required a Meta supercomputer for three weeks, pointing toward AI-assisted mathematical discovery that's actually accessible. (Read)

• how bad could the Iran oil crisis get? - The Ezra Klein Show | Ezra Klein with Jason Bordoff. with Iran's shutdown cutting over 10% of global oil supply, Columbia energy policy expert Jason Bordoff walks through escalation scenarios and why energy independence is a myth - a 62-minute briefing on the macro risk every founder should understand. (Listen)

The Colony

events and community

• this tuesday: OpenClaw Setup Night, March 31 at 5:30 PM CEST - bring your laptop, get OpenClaw running with hands-on help, no AI experience needed; every participant gets a free OpenAI Codex subscription (RSVP)

• on april 9: Cursor Meetup Hamburg #3 - for engineers, founders, and builders already using Cursor to ship faster; focused on practical workflows, automation tricks, and real team setups (RSVP)

• on april 10: build fridays at SPACE Hamburg, Am Sandtorkai 27 - 4-11pm, open door, come when you can, don't miss 7pm intros (RSVP)