Trending Thursday #8

Trump's AI Action Plan Goes Full Deregulation: White House orders agencies to torch AI rules within 180 days, bans "woke AI," and threatens to defund states that dare regulate

Data Centers Will Devour 20% of Power by 2030: Companies can now build their own power plants because apparently the grid wasn't designed for AI's appetite

Japan's $550B "Signing Bonus": The U.S. scored a trade deal giving us 90% of profits from Japanese AI projects - the art of the deal meets the art of highway robbery

Defense Tech's $13B Gold Rush: VCs deployed $1.78B in Q1 alone (82% surge), with late-stage deals hogging 71% of funding as everyone races to build tomorrow's weapons

ChatGPT Gets Its Own PC: OpenAI's new agent mode lets ChatGPT think, plan, and act autonomously - Skynet says hello

Regulation Rollback: Dismantle "onerous" federal and state-level regulatory barriers. Agencies are directed to fast-track removals within 180 days.

State Compliance Theater: States that impose AI restrictions lose federal funding (subtle!) to prevent a "patchwork of 50 different state regulatory regimes." 

"Woke AI" Ban: Federal agencies are directed to use AI that promotes "truth, fairness, and strict impartiality," while avoiding AI that exhibits "partisan bias or ideological agendas."

Open Source Push: Encourage open models to make US systems the global standard, and seek industry and academic input for further deregulation.

Rapid Buildout: Expedite permitting and invest massively in data centers, chip fabs, and supporting energy infrastructure. Crusoe's CEO, Chase Lochmiller, noted that AI is "the biggest capital investment in human history."

Energy Emphasis: As Sec Bessent said, "You can't create new industries without energy," and the admin is "all in" on natural gas and nuclear. This includes allowing companies to build their own power plants and sell excess energy back to the grid.

Power Plant Free-for-All: Companies can build their own power plants and sell excess to the grid.

20% by 2030: Data centers will consume 20% of US power demand growth in 5 years.

Export Controls: Aggressive new measures to block the export of US AI tech to China and other adversaries, closing loopholes and monitoring third-country rerouting.

Allied “Coordination:” Partners are encouraged to adopt US tech standards or potentially get frozen out, while support will be given to insulate allied supply chains.

Trade Deals: Sec Howard Lutnick, a key trade negotiator, highlighted a huge deal with Japan (a $550B "signing bonus") for the US, opening Japan's market and giving the US 90% of project profits. This is seen as a blueprint for future Asian deals.

Job Creation, Not Displacement: AI is a "job creation engine," not a destroyer. Chris Power (Hadrian) demonstrated how AI-powered factories are re-industrializing America and creating "thousands of jobs" for people even without prior factory experience. 

Leveling the Playing Field: Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, stated that AI is a "great equalizer" making "everybody a programmer now" and that "if you're not using AI, you're going to lose your job to somebody who uses AI".

Talent Development: Depts of Labor and Education are promoting AI skill development, literacy, and vocational pipelines, leveraging apprenticeships and tax incentives. The SBA has rewritten rules to allow SMBs to use federal loans for AI and manufacturing.

Europe's Answer to Anduril Just Hit a €12B Valuation: Munich-based Helsing raised €600M to build AI that pilots fighter jets, swarms drones, and hunts submarines. Their HX-2 drones are already striking Russian targets, while their vision includes deploying 100,000 autonomous drones along Europe's eastern border. Co-founder Torsten Reil says Europe needs to "grow its spine back" through "autonomous mass."

Hadrian Raises $260M to Build the Future of Defense Manufacturing: The AI-powered aerospace manufacturer just closed their Series C led by Founders Fund and Lux Capital. They're expanding automated factories to meet surging demand for space and defense components, because apparently, we need robots to build our robots.

MP Materials Scores $400M DoD Partnership: The sole US rare earth magnet producer just secured a massive military deal to build "critical supply chains for physical AI." Translation: we're finally building the magnets needed for defense drones and autonomous systems domestically instead of begging China.

Anduril Alums Raise $24M to Drag Military Logistics Into the 21st Century: Rune Technologies just got funding to replace the military's spreadsheets and whiteboards with actual software. Co-founder David Tuttle notes the military still runs logistics operations like it's 1995, while everyone else obsesses over "making things go boom."

xAI Launches Grok for Government: Elon's AI company just announced a dedicated government product suite, bringing frontier AI to federal, state, and local agencies. The same week Grok went antisemitic on Twitter, they're pitching it to run government services. What could possibly go wrong?

OpenAI Opens DC Office to Court Government Clients: OpenAI is launching “The Workshop” in Washington, a showroom where policymakers can test AI tools and get early product previews. They're poaching Anduril's Joe Larson to help run it, betting that hands-on demos will win more government contracts than traditional lobbying.

Microsoft's SharePoint Zero-Day Compromises Federal Agencies: Hackers exploited a critical flaw in Microsoft's on-premise SharePoint, breaching US state and federal agencies just as Microsoft faces scrutiny over its China-based engineers working on defense cloud infrastructure. Nothing says "national security" like having your government files exposed while your cloud provider outsources to Beijing.

Trickle - Magic Canvas: The world's first agentic canvas for building apps visually with AI - co-create production-ready apps without writing code

Lovable Agent Mode: Autonomous AI that thinks, plans, and acts on its own - explores code, fixes bugs, and fetches resources while you sleep

Trae 2.0: SOLO Context Engineer that doesn't just assist with code but thinks, plans, builds, and ships complete features end-to-end

Maestro Studio Desktop Beta: Run mobile & web tests in minutes with no CLI or IDE setup - testing automation for devs and non-tech teammates

Untitled UI React: World's largest Figma UI kit and React component library - skip months of design with production-ready components

ChatGPT agent: ChatGPT now thinks and acts, proactively choosing from agentic skills to complete tasks using its own computer

Google Gemini Embeddings: SOTA embeddings built on Gemini now available at production scale - if you're doing RAG, this just became your new best friend

Jeeva 2.0: Superhuman sales powered by agentic AI - handles everything from lead discovery to personalized outreach while you focus on closing

Agents Base Phone Agents: World's first synthetic influencer network running on real phones - turn product photos into AI UGC across thousands of agents

Scrapeless–Make.com: No-code web scraping automation - unlock websites, run SERP queries, and integrate with Google Sheets, Airtable, and Notion

Deep Research in Le Chat: Mistral's chat assistant gets a major upgrade with deep research capabilities, voice mode, and advanced image editing

Levio by Jupitrr AI: AI video editing agent that makes editing as easy as chatting - no timelines or skills needed

Veo 3 API: Generate videos with audio using Google's Veo 3 - now available for scaled developer use in the Gemini API

Suno v4.5+: Swap in your own vocals or instrumentals to create personalized AI music - because sometimes you want to be the star

YouWare: World's first vibe coding community with 100K+ creators - build, share, and get inspired by AI-powered projects

the gist of: Beautiful, minimalistic personal sites you can create in minutes - because sometimes less really is more

Snack Prompt: Community-powered ChatGPT prompts - discover and upvote the best prompts right inside ChatGPT

Runway: AI hiring tool that adapts to YOUR priorities - upload 50 resumes and get candidates ranked by what actually matters

Checklist Genie: Create sharable checklists with just your voice - track daily, weekly, and monthly routines without typing

NeetoCal V2: Simplified meeting scheduling that actually works - take control of your calendar without the complexity

Krepling Pay: White-labeled checkout engine with one-click purchases - no login required to boost conversion rates

Bitchat: Jack Dorsey's anonymous Bluetooth mesh messaging - chat up to 300m away with no internet, perfect for protests and disasters

Barrier: Stop doomscrolling with forced breaks - users report 70% less screen time after 30-second unlock delays

Ash: The first AI designed specifically for therapy - available 24/7, remembers conversations, and even challenges your thinking