Weekly Download #40

Notion Hiring Megadrop + Iran bombed an AI datacenter + Prediction markets want $20B

Author

Dev Chandra
March 09, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 17 minutes

Hi !

This week in Silicon Valley, startups & tech:

  • Iran struck Amazon's Bahrain datacenter: The first confirmed nation-state attack on cloud infrastructure, putting $300B in Gulf AI spending at risk

  • Kalshi & Polymarket both want $20B valuations: These rivals are racing into college, while suspicious Iran betting patterns raise insider trading questions

  • Anthropic is taking the Pentagon to court: Dario Amodei says he'll fight the supply chain designation legally, while Claude signups hit 1M per day

  • Nscale raised $2B at $14.6B: The UK datacenter dev added Sheryl Sandberg & Nick Clegg to its board as AI infrastructure funding accelerates

  • Together AI is raising ~$1B at $7.5B: The AI inference cloud tripled revenue to ~$1B annualized in under a year, making it one of the fastest-scaling AI startups

As we continue to build at Context Ventures, we've launched Startup Intros with a simple mission: to help early-stage founders find the right investors, faster and smarter.

🎁 Megadrop: The AI Startup Hiring Kit

I'm excited to partner with Notion to give you the AI Startup Hiring Kit: everything you need to make your first hires without a recruiting team!

What you get:

  • Recruiting credits from Paraform to connect with elite recruiters

  • Juicebox access to source top talent with AI-powered outreach

  • A free trial of Secret to unlock 600+ software deals

  • Up to 6 months of Notion Biz + AI to run your hiring hub

But wait, there's more:

Why Notion? They just crossed $600M in ARR (half from AI products) and are preparing for an IPO at an $11B valuation. They know what founders need to scale.

Repost & Share it & I'll jump on a 15-min call with you (for the first 20 reposts)!

🔥 Startup Intros Events Coming Up

🎟️ Want a FREE ticket? Refer Us To Your Friends!

We just launched a referral program: Every person you refer to Startup Intros counts as one entry toward a free conference pass. Winner drawn March 31st!

⚔️ AI Infrastructure Is Now a Military Target

Last week, we covered the Pentagon's use of Claude in Iran, and now, the war came for the infrastructure itself.

💥 Iran Hit Amazon's Bahrain Datacenter

On March 1, Iran struck Amazon's data center in Bahrain, and Iranian state media explicitly cited Amazon's support of "US military and intelligence activities" as the reason. This is the first confirmed nation-state attack on commercial cloud infrastructure during an active military conflict. Not a cyberattack. A physical strike.

🌍 The $300B Gulf AI Bet Is in Trouble

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and their neighbors had committed over $300B to AI infrastructure investments. That money was supposed to fund hyperscale datacenters, attract Western tech companies, and position the Gulf as a global AI hub.

Now, commercial datacenters in the UAE and Bahrain are being targeted alongside military sites, and the calculus for anyone planning to build there has fundamentally changed. Yes, the Gulf can afford to build AI infrastructure, but can the infrastructure survive a conflict?

🤖 AI Is Accelerating the War Itself

Meanwhile, AI's role in the conflict continues to deepen. The WSJ detailed how the US and Israel are using AI for unprecedented speed and precision in Iran strikes. US Central Command confirmed that AI tools are actively accelerating operations data analysis. And cheap GPS jammers are proliferating, prompting research into quantum-based magnetic sensors as alternatives.

Translation: The thesis that AI infrastructure is "just cloud" is dead. Datacenters are strategic military assets. The countries racing to host them are learning that proximity to conflict carries real physical risk. And the companies building on them need to start thinking about geopolitical exposure the way they think about uptime.

🎰 Prediction Markets Are the New Asset Class

Six months ago, prediction markets were a crypto-native curiosity. This week, they started looking like the next trillion-dollar financial product.

📈 The $20B Race

Kalshi was valued at $11B in December, while Polymarket was at $9B in October. Both are now in fundraising talks at roughly $20B. The growth is being driven by the Iran war, political betting, and aggressive user acquisition.

The Rivalry: NPR profiled the rivalry as the CEO’s have competing visions for how the industry should evolve:

  • Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour wants a regulated exchange

  • Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan wants a decentralized protocol.

Campus Wars: Both platforms are aggressively targeting college students through frat partnerships and campus influencers. Kalshi is simultaneously enlisting female influencers to broaden its user base: women now make up 26% of users, up from 13% in May 2025. This is a classic consumer fintech playbook.

Going International: Kalshi made its first international move this week, partnering with Brazil's XP, the country's largest brokerage firm with 4.8M active clients, to list event contracts.

⚠️ The Iran Betting Anomaly

The growth story isn't without a dark side. NYT analysis found that 150+ Polymarket accounts made large bets on US strikes the day before the Iran attacks, a pattern rarely seen since late 2025. Polymarket also pulled its nuclear detonation markets after public outcry.

Translation: Prediction markets went from a crypto side project to a legitimate asset class in about six months. But betting on war outcomes is a very different product than betting on elections. The regulatory and ethical scrutiny is going to catch up, and how these platforms handle it will determine whether they're finance's next big thing or its next big scandal.

🏛️ Anthropic Update: From Banned to Platform

We covered the Pentagon standoff, but this week, the story shifted from crisis to strategy.

⚖️ Dario Goes to Court

Dario Amodei announced plans to fight the supply chain designation legally and publicly apologized for a leaked internal memo in which he called OpenAI's Pentagon deal "safety theater" and claimed the DOD dislikes Anthropic partly because it hadn't "given dictator-style praise to Trump." 

The Takeaway: The apology is notable. The lawsuit is more notable. This is Anthropic betting that the courts will side with a private company's right to set usage limits on its own product, even when the customer is the US military.

📱 The Consumer Explosion

The ban turned out to be the most effective marketing campaign in AI history. Claude's daily signups grew 4x since the start of 2026, with over 1M users signing up every day.

Memory Import: Anthropic leaned into the moment by launching a memory import tool that gives users a prompt to paste into ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot, extract everything those AIs know about them, and port it straight into Claude. It cleverly bypasses OpenAI's lack of a memory export API, turning accumulated ChatGPT context from a lock-in moat into a switching ramp.

Claude Marketplace: Anthropic launched Claude Marketplace, letting companies buy third-party software using their committed annual Anthropic spend. It's an Amazon-style platform play: once you're spending millions on Claude, you can now route some of that spend to the ecosystem.

🤝 Big Tech Picks a Side (and Microsoft Goes Further)

Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all publicly said they'll keep Anthropic's products available for non-defense projects.

Copilot Cowork: But Microsoft went further than anyone expected: it launched Copilot Cowork, integrating Anthropic's Claude Cowork tech directly into Microsoft 365 Copilot. At the same time, Microsoft launched its new E7 bundle at $99/user/month, a 65% price increase.

The Contrast: While Microsoft doubled down on Anthropic, OpenAI's own robotics leader, Caitlin Kalinowski, resigned over concerns about domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons after OpenAI's DOD contract. The Pentagon named ex-DOGE employee Gavin Kliger as its new Chief Data Officer to lead AI efforts.

Translation: The playbook is becoming clear. The ban made Anthropic a consumer brand. The memory import tool is the conversion funnel. The marketplace makes it a platform. The court fight makes it a cause. And Microsoft just embedded Claude into the productivity suite that runs corporate America. Whatever you think of Anthropic's politics, they're converting a political crisis into a business moat in real time.

⚡ Startup Quick Hits

  • Nscale: $2B Series C at $14.6B valuation for the UK datacenter developer; adds Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg to its board

  • Together AI: In talks to raise ~$1B at $7.5B pre-money valuation; annualized revenue hit ~$1B, up 3x+ from mid-2025

  • Neura Robotics: Raising ~€1B backed by Tether at ~€4B valuation for cognitive humanoid robots for logistics

  • Science Corp.: $230M at $1.5B valuation for brain implants to treat blindness; total funding now $489M

  • Embo: In talks to raise $100M+ seed led by a16z for world models for robotics, from ex-DeepMind founders

  • KAST: $80M led by QED and Left Lane at $600M valuation for stablecoin payments; expects $100M ARR in 2026

  • Nominal: $80M Series B extension at $1B valuation led by Founders Fund for defense, space, energy, and automotive software

  • Arda: $70M at $700M valuation from ex-OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew to automate manufacturing with AI

  • ZyG: $58M seed co-led by Bessemer, Viola, and Lightspeed for agentic e-commerce for DTC brands

  • Isembard: $50M Series A for AI-powered factories helping hardware makers in defence, aerospace, and robotics

  • Cylake: $45M seed from Palo Alto Networks' Nir Zuk for AI cybersecurity that doesn't rely on the public cloud

💰 Investor Quick Hits

  • SoftBank: Seeking a bridge loan of up to $40B, its largest-ever dollar-denominated borrowing, to finance its OpenAI investment

  • a16z Crypto: Targeting ~$2B for its fifth crypto fund, aiming to close by the end of H1 2026

  • ICE / NYSE: NYSE parent invested in crypto exchange OKX at $25B valuation, taking a board seat

  • Robinhood: $658M private markets fund dropped 16% in its NYSE public debut; offers retail access to private companies like Databricks

💸 IPO & M&A Quick Hits

  • Cerebras IPO: AI chipmaker could raise ~$2B as soon as April, after withdrawing its previous filing nearly a year ago

  • OpenAI IPO: Picked law firms Cooley and Wachtell to prepare; could come as soon as Q4 2026. Hit $25B annualized revenue by February's end

  • Stargate Fracture: Oracle and OpenAI abandoned plans to expand their flagship Texas datacenter amid financing disputes; Meta may lease the site

  • Victory Giant: Chinese AI circuit board maker plans a Hong Kong IPO as soon as April that may raise $2B+

  • Anduril: Shared financials with investors: expects revenue to double to ~$4.3B in 2026, with operating losses rising to $1.2B

  • Quince: DTC luxury brand in talks to raise at $10B+ valuation, up from $4.5B in July; annualized revenue hit ~$2B

  • Nasdaq / Kraken: Partnering to develop a framework for 24/7 tokenized stock trading, targeting a 2027 launch

🌟 Editor's Note

At Startup Intros, our mission is to bring the latest founder-investor news straight to your inbox, keeping you ahead in the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley.

🎁 AI Startup Hiring Kit Giveaway

Partnering with Notion to give you: recruiting credits from Paraform & Juicebox, 6 months of Notion Biz + AI, hiring strategy prompts from a16z, YC & Sequoia, and free templates for job boards and candidate tracking.

💭 Parting Thoughts: This Week was about Boundaries

This week made something concrete that was previously abstract:

  • AI infrastructure is now a geopolitical asset. Iran bombed a data center. The Gulf's $300B AI investment plan is suddenly a security question.

  • Prediction markets doubled their valuations by letting people bet on war.

  • And Anthropic, the company the Pentagon tried to kill commercially, had its best week ever for user growth.

The founders I talk to are building on top of these models and this infrastructure. The ones stress-testing their stack for more than just uptime are the ones I'd bet on.

Forward to a friend or hit reply to let me know what you're seeing in your world.

Till next time!

Dev Chandra
CEO @ Startup Intros
Associate @ Context VC
LinkedIn: /in/devchandra

P.S. Raised this week, and we missed you? Want to be featured? Have tips or funding questions? Reply or DM us as we’re here to help.

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