The Fed's dot plot showed a 7-7 split; Powell said inflation progress has been less than expected and refused to rule out leaving before the investigation concludes. Rates held steady, but hawkish signals indicate tightening.
1｜The Fed's dot plot splits; Powell's final two press conferences become a battle for political survival
The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at 3.5%-3.75% on Wednesday, as expected. More surprising was the dot plot, with seven of 19 policymakers now believing no rate cuts should occur in 2026—an increase of one from December—while another seven expect only one cut. Inflation forecasts were revised up from 2.5% to 2.7%. Powell’s language was colder than markets had hoped: “We expect progress on inflation, but not as much as we would like.” U.S. stocks fell to their intraday lows.
At the same press conference, Powell announced he would not leave before his term expires. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is investigating the renovation project at the Federal Reserve headquarters, and Trump’s nominated successor, Kevin Warsh, has been stalled by Senator Tillis in the Banking Committee. Powell’s term ends on May 15, but he said he has “no intention of leaving before the investigation is fully concluded.” On the surface, this is a rate decision; beneath it, the fate of the Fed chair is being held hostage by a renovation investigation and a senator’s veto power.
(Source: CNBC / Bloomberg / American Banker)
2｜NVIDIA's GTC completed its empire in four days; Groq's acquisition became a reasoning weapon
On day four of GTC, NVIDIA turned Groq, acquired for $20 billion in December 2025, into a product. The Groq 3 LPX platform, composed of 128 LPUs, claims a 35x increase in throughput per megawatt when deployed alongside the Vera Rubin NVL72. Also released that day, the Vera CPU is the first processor designed specifically for Agentic AI, offering twice the efficiency of traditional rack-scale CPUs.
On Monday, he covered the Seven Chips platform; on Tuesday, the AI Grid; on Wednesday, the Nemotron Coalition; and on Thursday, Groq inference and the Space-1 data center. Over four days, Huang demonstrated not just a product line, but an entire computing empire spanning from Earth to orbit, from training to inference. The next-generation Feynman architecture has also been unveiled, including the Rosa CPU, LP40 LPU, BlueField-5, and Kyber network.
(Source: NVIDIA Newsroom / Yahoo Finance / NVIDIA Blog)
3｜150 retired judges jointly support Anthropic; the Pentagon responds with "hostility"
Last night, reports covered the DOJ’s 40-page filing and data showing Anthropic’s corporate market share surpassing OpenAI. Today’s update is the collective stance from the legal community: nearly 150 retired federal and state judges have submitted amicus briefs to the court questioning the Pentagon’s legitimacy in labeling Anthropic with a “supply chain risk” designation. Coupled with prior support from the four major tech industry associations, Microsoft, and employees of competing companies, the coalition backing Anthropic has now expanded from industry to the judiciary.
The government's counteractions are also escalating. Deputy Secretary of Defense Emil Michael stated in documents that Anthropic was "hostile" during negotiations and that its position was "not fact-based, but aimed at managing public image." Anthropic’s CFO stated in legal filings that revenue losses in 2026 could reach "hundreds of millions of dollars." The hearing on March 24 is defining the legal boundaries of a new issue: whether AI companies can impose conditions on how government clients use their technology.
(Source: CNN / Axios)
4 | Day 20 of the Iran war: Oil prices get a breather, but the $200 warning still hangs in the air
WTI fell to $95.50 on Monday, dropping 5.3%, triggered by Trump discussing an escort plan for the Strait of Hormuz. However, analysts’ warnings remain in place. According to CNBC, traders do not rule out $200. Capital Economics warned that if the war lasts three months, Brent could average $150.
The physical boundaries of conflict continue to expand. Azerbaijan has deployed troops to its border with Iran, citing potential internal security collapse within Iran. Qatar suspended LNG production on March 2 due to a drone attack, affecting 20% of global LNG supply. The 11 countries currently involved in major conflicts control 51% of global crude oil production and 56% of natural gas production. The brief dip in oil prices resembles a pause rather than a turning point.
(Source: CNBC / EIA / Capital Economics / Al Jazeera)
5 | The cloud giants' GPU arms race just added another zero
AWS announced at GTC the deployment of over one million NVIDIA GPUs across global regions. On the same day, Microsoft Azure demonstrated its liquid-cooled Grace Blackwell GPU deployment solution, Nemotron models were integrated into Foundry, and Oracle enabled GPU-accelerated vector search through the cuVS library.
The three cloud giants launched aggressive moves within the same week, with the competition shifting from “which model is better” to “who controls more inference computing power.” NVIDIA is the common supplier, but each company’s deployment architecture, cooling solutions, and model integration pathways are diverging. The scale battle over computing infrastructure is no longer a distant expectation—1 million GPUs is a number being realized.
(Source: NVIDIA Blog / AWS / Microsoft Azure)
It's also worth knowing ↓
PPI rose 0.7% month-over-month in February, more than double economists' expectations. Inflation at the production level is being driven by both energy and tariffs, providing context for Powell's "inflation came in lower" statement. (Source: Yahoo Finance)
The Clarity Act is expected to move out of committee in April, with Senator Lummis stating that disagreements have narrowed to details. The most comprehensive U.S. crypto regulatory bill remains pending, with unresolved分歧 over stablecoin yield provisions. Lobbying efforts are underway simultaneously at the DC Blockchain Summit and the New York Digital Asset Summit this week. (Source: CoinDesk)
NVIDIA has unveiled its next-generation Feynman architecture, featuring the Rosa CPU, LP40 LPU, and BlueField-5. Even as Vera Rubin is still being rolled out, the next roadmap is already out. From Blackwell to Vera Rubin to Feynman, NVIDIA’s product cadence is accelerating, not slowing down. (Source: NVIDIA Blog)
The Linux Foundation has received a $12.5 million grant to specifically strengthen the security of open-source software supply chains. As supply chain attacks become increasingly common, open-source security has evolved from a volunteer-driven initiative into a critical industry infrastructure investment. (Source: Tech Startups)
Global crypto card annual spending reaches $18 billion, S&P Index licenses Hyperliquid perpetual contracts. Perpetual contracts are penetrating from crypto-native markets into traditional financial infrastructure—S&P’s entry is a signal. (Source: The Block / CoinDesk)
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