HAPPY CAMPUS
HAPPY CAMPUS
College applications fall if weather is bad during tours, study suggests
Millie Giles
MARVELL-OUS
MARVELL-OUS
Marvell and Google reportedly in talks to develop new AI chips
J. Edward Moreno
orbit off
orbit off
ASTS drops after BlueBird 7 launched into an incorrect orbit
Claire Yubin Oh, Tom Jones
Lori Chavez-DeRemer out at Department of Labor
Alaska Air expects higher fuel costs to add $600 million in expenses in Q2
Report: Google DeepMind builds “strike team” to catch up to Anthropic models
Report: NSA is currently using Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos model
Fermi plunges after CFO, CEO depart
Anthropic launches “Claude Design,” sending shares of Figma and Adobe down
Latest News
- Amazon to invest up to $25 billion more in Anthropic; Claude developer to spend more than $100 billion on AWS AI technology
- Tim Cook to step down as Apple CEO, John Ternus to replace him
- Stocks close lower as Trump says Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until deal is signed
- DeFi sheds $13 billion in TVL following $290 million KelpDAO hack
Deep Dives
- The power play behind Hyperion, Mark Zuckerberg’s colossal data center being built in rural Louisiana
- Clean energy investment hit a new record last quarter, mostly driven by EVs
- The cruise industry is booming thanks to younger consumers looking to “seacation”
- Reading an article online? It’s now a coin flip whether it was authored by a human or AI
Latest Stories
Jake Lahut
Lori Chavez-DeRemer out at Department of Labor
Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned as President Donald Trump's labor secretary on Monday, sources familiar with the matter told NOTUS.
Her tenure at the department was mired in scandal, including her husband being barred from headquarters after women employees reported he had touched them inappropriately. Chavez-DeRemer and a top aide reportedly texted women on staff to "pay attention" to the secretary's husband and her father around the office, according to the New York Times.
The department's inspector general had been investigating those messages and personal requests made of staff members.
Alaska Air expects higher fuel costs to add $600 million in expenses in Q2
Alaska Airlines on Monday kicked off a big week for airline earnings, reporting its first-quarter results after the bell. The stock ticked down after hours.
Alaska Air reported:
An adjusted loss of $1.68 per share, compared to Wall Street estimates of a loss of $1.65 per share.
$3.3 billion in revenue, compared to estimates of $3.29 billion.
A 17% year-over-year increase in fuel costs to $796 million.
Looking ahead, Alaska said it expects a second-quarter loss per share of $1, deeper than the Wall Street consensus (-$0.15). The company expects April fuel costs of $4.75/gallon and for fuel across the second quarter to add $600 million in expenses.
“Absent the fuel price spike, we would have guided to a solidly profitable quarter,” the airline said in its release.
Alaska Air, like the rest of the commercial airline industry, has been pummeled by fuel costs since the beginning of the war in Iran. Along with Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and JetBlue, the carrier recently hiked its bag fees to offset higher fuel costs.
Report: Google DeepMind builds “strike team” to catch up to Anthropic models
Anthropic’s recent momentum, powered by the success of its popular Claude Code tool, is turning up the heat among its AI competitors — not only for its AI startup peer OpenAI, but also with established Big Tech giants like Google.
The Information reports that within Google DeepMind, a “strike team” has been assembled to make a serious push to improve Gemini’s coding capabilities. According to the report, leaders within Google, including cofounder Sergey Brin, are sounding the alarm after determining that Anthropic’s Claude has superior coding skills. The new team’s goal is to create a AI system that can improve itself.
“To win the final sprint, we must urgently bridge the gap in agentic execution and turn our models into primary developers,” Brin wrote in a recent memo to DeepMind staff.
The Information reports that within Google DeepMind, a “strike team” has been assembled to make a serious push to improve Gemini’s coding capabilities. According to the report, leaders within Google, including cofounder Sergey Brin, are sounding the alarm after determining that Anthropic’s Claude has superior coding skills. The new team’s goal is to create a AI system that can improve itself.
“To win the final sprint, we must urgently bridge the gap in agentic execution and turn our models into primary developers,” Brin wrote in a recent memo to DeepMind staff.
$290M
On Saturday, ethereum-based protocol KelpDAO, known for liquid restaking, was exploited for $290 million, the largest hack of 2026 in the decentralized finance ecosystem.
“Preliminary indicators suggest attribution to a highly-sophisticated state actor, likely DPRK’s Lazarus Group,” LayerZero said in its statement explaining the attack. KelpDAO issues rsETH, while LayerZero provides network infrastructure that allows users to move KelpDAO’s rsETH between blockchains.
The configuration of KelpDAO’s exploited application, powered by LayerZero, relied on a single decentralized verifier network (DVN), responsible for verifying the integrity of cross-chain messages.
The industry best practice is for protocols to use a multi-DVN setup to prevent a unilateral point of trust or failure. “A properly hardened configuration would have required consensus across multiple independent DVNs, rendering this attack ineffective even in the event of any single DVN being compromised,” LayerZero stated, essentially placing the blame on the restaking protocol for using a single-DVN setup.
The exploiters executed an RPC-spoofing attack and performed DDoS attacks to manipulate the single DVN instance into confirming transactions “that never in fact took place.” The LayerZero team said, “Operating a single-point-of-failure configuration meant there was no independent verifier to catch and reject a forged message.”
Meanwhile, KelpDAO is preparing to dispute LayerZero’s account and place the blame on the latter, per a CoinDesk report.
Spilling over
The exploit has since impacted the wider crypto landscape.
The attackers successfully drained 116,500 rsETH from KelpDAO’s bridge, allowing them to deposit $249.7 million of the token to DeFi’s largest lending protocols and withdraw $228.2 million worth of different cryptocurrencies, wETH and wstETH, on-chain data from Arkham Intelligence shows.
Aave, the largest lending protocol, has frozen several markets and is now facing a liquidity crunch.
On Aave’s v3, the ETH, USDT, and USDC markets, which have a combined reserve size of $10.7 billion, have each reached a 100% utilization rate, as total borrowed equals total supplied. When borrows are maxed, users cannot withdraw their supplied liquidity.
The pseudonymous head of strategy at DeFi lending platform Spark, @MonetSupply, wrote on X, “There has been a ~$300 million increase in borrowing with USDT collateral in just the past day since the rsETH exploit.”
On-chain folks are spooked
The attack comes in the same month that Drift, a solana-based trading venue, suffered from an over $270 million hack. Saturday’s attack also follows worries stemming from Anthropic’s unreleased AI model Mythos, which “is capable of identifying and then exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system.”
Even though the major cryptocurrencies have not seen their prices move substantially in the last 24 hours, crypto participants have been spooked, evident by the capital exiting the decentralized finance ecosystem.
DeFi saw its total value locked decrease by $13 billion over the weekend to $85.64 billion at the time of writing, its lowest point since April last year, data from DefiLlama shows.
“OK — Kelpdao hacker, how much you want? Let’s just talk. With KelpDAO’s help, of course. It’s simply not worth it to sacrifice both Aave and KelpDAO and let them go down over this hack. You can’t spend $300 million anyway,” said Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, who has been beefing with the President Trump-backed World Liberty team.
$0
Tesla’s federal tax bill last year was once again $0, Reuters reports. While past losses and green energy credits helped shrink the bill, Reuters found that Tesla also leaned on a classic corporate maneuver: offshore profit-shifting. By routing intellectual property rights through paper-only subsidiaries in the Netherlands and Singapore, Tesla effectively parked $18 billion in profits overseas between 2023 and early 2025. The entirely legal setup saved Tesla an estimated $400 million in US taxes. Not bad for a company whose CEO is not a fan of “shady” tax loopholes.
Report: NSA is currently using Anthropic’s unreleased Mythos model
According to the Pentagon, Anthropic’s AI tools are a national security supply chain risk, and have been banned for defense applications.
But a new report says the National Security Agency, which operates as a part of the Pentagon, is currently busy using Anthropic’s new, unreleased AI model, Mythos.
Axios reports that Mythos’ reputed advanced offensive cyber capabilities have compelled the NSA to begin using it, despite the public blacklisting from the Pentagon, which Anthropic is suing the US government over.
Anthropic has granted access to a small number of trusted partners to test and prepare for the expected explosion of vulnerabilities to be discovered using the new AI model. UK intelligence agencies have also reportedly gained access to Mythos.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei reportedly visited the White House last week to try and resolve the dispute on allowing wider use of the company’s technology in the federal government.
Axios reports that Mythos’ reputed advanced offensive cyber capabilities have compelled the NSA to begin using it, despite the public blacklisting from the Pentagon, which Anthropic is suing the US government over.
Anthropic has granted access to a small number of trusted partners to test and prepare for the expected explosion of vulnerabilities to be discovered using the new AI model. UK intelligence agencies have also reportedly gained access to Mythos.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei reportedly visited the White House last week to try and resolve the dispute on allowing wider use of the company’s technology in the federal government.
Fermi plunges after CFO, CEO depart
Fermi is down more than 18% in premarket trading after it disclosed in regulatory filings that its now former CEO, Toby Neugebauer, and its CFO, Miles Everson, departed on Friday and Monday, respectively.
The company dubbed its executive shake-up as “Fermi 2.0.” In addition to ousting Neugebauer and Everson, Fermi added Marius Haas as chairman of its board and Jeffrey S. Stein as director of the board.
Fermi, which was cofounded by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, plans to build nuclear energy infrastructure to power data centers. But the cost to build out its power site is mounting while it still doesn’t have any customers secured, according its annual report released on March 30.
In September, Fermi announced that it had entered into a nonbinding letter of intent with a tenant to lease a portion of its Project Matador power grid site in Amarillo, Texas. That contract was terminated in December.
The company, which went public in October, is down about 75% from its IPO through Friday’s close.
Marvell and Google reportedly in talks to develop new AI chips
Marvell Technology rose nearly 6% in premarket trading Monday after The Information reported over the weekend that the chip company is in talks with Google to develop two new chips to run AI models.
Broadcom, which counts Google as its most important customer (having developed multiple generations of its TPUs), is down 1% as Marvell muscles in on its turf.
However, the custom chip giant still appears poised to benefit from Google’s chip deployment for years to come. Earlier this month, Broadcom disclosed in a regulatory filing that it had entered into a long-term agreement with Google to supply future generations of AI accelerator chips. That filing also revealed that Broadcom, Google, and Anthropic expanded a partnership that will see the Claude developer access 3.5 gigawatts of AI compute capacity beginning in 2027.
Marvell’s reported new business would also be the latest in a series of wins for custom chips in general. Nvidia, the most valuable chip designer and GPU specialist, is also lower in premarket trading.
Google, with help from its custom chip designers, has been increasingly positioning itself as a competitor to chip giants.
Marvell, meanwhile, appears to have gained pride of place as an Nvidia partner while gaining exposure to the custom chip business that’s impressed Wall Street (and downstream AI customers). On March 31, Nvidia announced that it would invest $2 billion in Marvell as part of a strategic partnership, and the stock has been on a tear since.
However, the custom chip giant still appears poised to benefit from Google’s chip deployment for years to come. Earlier this month, Broadcom disclosed in a regulatory filing that it had entered into a long-term agreement with Google to supply future generations of AI accelerator chips. That filing also revealed that Broadcom, Google, and Anthropic expanded a partnership that will see the Claude developer access 3.5 gigawatts of AI compute capacity beginning in 2027.
Marvell’s reported new business would also be the latest in a series of wins for custom chips in general. Nvidia, the most valuable chip designer and GPU specialist, is also lower in premarket trading.
Google, with help from its custom chip designers, has been increasingly positioning itself as a competitor to chip giants.
Marvell, meanwhile, appears to have gained pride of place as an Nvidia partner while gaining exposure to the custom chip business that’s impressed Wall Street (and downstream AI customers). On March 31, Nvidia announced that it would invest $2 billion in Marvell as part of a strategic partnership, and the stock has been on a tear since.
ASTS drops after BlueBird 7 launched into an incorrect orbit
AST SpaceMobile dropped 13% in premarket trading on Monday after the space internet company updated that its BlueBird 7 satellite, carried by Blue Origin’s New Glenn vehicle, was put into an incorrect position and will now be taken out of orbit.
“During the New Glenn 3 mission, BlueBird 7 was placed into a lower than planned orbit by the upper stage of the launch vehicle. While the satellite separated from the launch vehicle and powered on, the altitude is too low to sustain operations with its on-board thruster technology and will de-orbited. The cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under the company’s insurance policy,” the company said in a press release.
Launched Sunday, April 19, BlueBird 7 would have been AST SpaceMobile’s eighth deployed satellite into low-Earth orbit as it races to catch up with SpaceX’s Starlink to put up the first satellite constellation capable of providing 5G connectivity anywhere in the world. The company continues to target approximately 45 satellites in orbit by the end of the year. (For context, SpaceX currently has more than 9,500 satellites deployed since 2019, though ASTS’s network plans to depend on less than 100 larger, more sophisticated satellites that individually gather signals more efficiently than Starlink’s mega constellation model.)
The incorrect positioning of the launch vehicle from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket New Glenn has been blamed for the failure, though the cost of the satellite is expected to be recovered under AST SpaceMobile’s insurance policy.
For Blue Origin itself, the mission did have one major silver lining, as it successfully reused one of its New Glenn rockets for the first time ever, per TechCrunch. The New Glenn model was the result of a decade-long, multibillion-dollar development and was hampered by delays last year. However, as one of the largest reusable vehicles in the world alongside SpaceX’s Falcon 9, it’s also seen as a key way that Bezos’ company can challenge Elon Musk’s outer space supremacy.
Sherwood News
Separately, Bezos’ main company and the source of the bulk of his wealth, Amazon, announced last week that it was acquiring Globalstar in a move to join the direct-to-device competition starting in 2028.
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