The Iran-Israel conflict is dominating markets this morning — Brent crude hit $114/barrel and European natural gas spiked 35% after Iranian strikes on Gulf LNG infrastructure. On the AI front, Anthropic is outcompeting OpenAI in enterprise despite Pentagon friction: Claude business subscriptions grew 4.9% MoM in February while OpenAI dropped 1.5%. Stripe-backed Tempo launched its mainnet today with a Machine Payment Protocol built specifically for autonomous AI agents — a milestone for the AI+crypto stack. China's OpenClaw frenzy continues to accelerate with Tencent now fielding its own wave of agent products via WeChat and QQ. Paul Graham's retweet of an OpenAI employee implicitly setting 2028 as the AGI deadline is generating significant chatter. Garry Tan is shipping native Codex support to GStack tomorrow, deepening the Claude Code + agent workflow integration.
Trump's directive — following a breakdown in negotiations over safety guardrails — has agencies like GSA and HHS pulling Claude within hours. Other agencies are still reviewing. The Hill reports the situation is fluid and "nobody really knows" what's allowed. Meanwhile, Claude's enterprise momentum is actually accelerating despite the political friction.
Claude business software subscriptions grew 4.9% month-over-month in February while OpenAI's fell 1.5%, per Ramp fintech data. The Register says Anthropic's refusal to soften safety guardrails for the Pentagon is resonating with enterprise buyers who want trustworthy AI. Anthropic also raised the media limit to 600 images or PDF pages per request and expanded 1M-token context window access.
Tempo — incubated by Stripe and Paradigm — went live with a stablecoin payment system and an open standard allowing AI agents to pay autonomously. Visa and Coinbase are building competing approaches. This is the infrastructure moment the AI+crypto convergence story has been waiting for.
The Register argues agentic systems have crossed from demo into production infrastructure. Multi-step workflows, cross-team decision support, and autonomous execution are becoming table stakes. The $7.36B agentic automation market projection is now looking conservative — the companies building operational muscle around agents now will compound durable advantages.
Alibaba led early, but Tencent is now shipping hard: several new agent products in a single week, all tapping OpenClaw fever and distributing through WeChat and QQ's 1.4 billion user base. Bloomberg says this is Tencent's bid to own the agent interface layer in China the way OpenClaw owns it globally.
Selected posts from the edition, with links to the originals.
"Algorithm is better today than 3 months ago?" []
View post on X ↗"Try Grok Imagine Chibi template. Super cute!" [] — Grok Imagine continues to dominate the AI image generation conversation; Elon posting about it directly drives massive engagement and adoption.
View post on X ↗"Anything made before 2028 is going to be valuable." — an OpenAI employee implicitly discloses their timetable [] — Paul Graham amplifying this is signal. AGI by 2028 is the internal OpenAI view.
View post on X ↗"I added a /codex skill that does plan and code review in Claude Code and it has found so many more bugs and helped with far more elegant architectural designs. And tomorrow I will launch native Codex support so you can use GStack on Codex" [] — GStack + Codex is becoming the power dev workflow.
View post on X ↗"Rippling is going to be one of the main companies where AI meets organizations. They're still young enough to embrace AI thoroughly, but they're also big enough that they touch organizations in many places." [] — Paul Graham calling Rippling the AI + enterprise nexus.
View post on X ↗"New: TrustMRR's bot posts every time a new startup is listed on the platform" [] — Marc Lou shipping agent-native product distribution; agents building the audience loop.
View post on X ↗"$0 to $4.5M in ARR in less than two months. Without hiring a SINGLE human being. Ben is proving that AI agents provide the ultimate leverage." [] — The solo-operator AI company is no longer theoretical.
View post on X ↗"A 15 year old with no CS degree can ship a real product. Not because he codes better than you. Because he asks Claude better questions. 5 vibe coding prompts. Idea to deployed product. Zero code." []
View post on X ↗"LATEST: Senator Bernie Moreno warns that if the crypto market structure bill does not pass by May, it will stall indefinitely." [] — May deadline for crypto regulation is a hard wall; stakes just went up.
View post on X ↗"OpenClaw's rise draws phishing campaign targeting developers' crypto wallets" — As OpenClaw adoption surges, attackers are targeting developer wallets. Malicious skills and phishing campaigns are the leading threat vectors. Stay vigilant with skill installs.
View post on X ↗