Today in AI — 14 March 2026
Today's top AI news — curated links and commentary on the stories that matter for product builders.
AI is moving from something you open in a tab to something that runs in your infrastructure. Persistent agents shipped from three companies this week, backed by $650 billion in planned data centre spending.
Agents go persistent
Perplexity, Microsoft, and Amazon each shipped agents that maintain persistent access to user data, not chatbots you visit between tasks.
- Perplexity launches Personal Computer — a $200/month always-on AI agent running on Mac mini — The Decoder
- Microsoft launches Copilot Cowork, a persistent cloud agent powered by Anthropic's Claude — Fortune
- Amazon scales Health AI assistant beyond One Medical to all US customers — TechCrunch
The $650 billion build-out
Morgan Stanley projects $650 billion in data centre spending as Nvidia pitches CPUs as the bottleneck for agentic workloads. Atlassian cut 1,600 jobs to redirect cash toward AI. The infrastructure race is expensive enough to reshape org charts.
- Morgan Stanley warns AI breakthrough is imminent as Big Tech plans $650B in data center spending — Fortune
- Nvidia previews agentic CPU pivot ahead of GTC 2026, teases 'world-surprising' chip — CNBC
- Atlassian cuts 1,600 jobs to 'self-fund' AI and enterprise expansion — TechCrunch
Anthropic's expanding orbit
Frozen out of Pentagon contracts, Anthropic is building everywhere else: a $100 million partner network, a new research institute, and its models powering Microsoft's flagship agent.
- Pentagon CTO says 'no chance' of renewed Anthropic negotiations — The Hill
- Anthropic commits $100 million to Claude Partner Network for enterprise adoption — Anthropic
- Anthropic launches The Anthropic Institute to study AI's impact on jobs and society — eWeek
Consumer AI consolidates
ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users. Google won't rule out ads in Gemini. OpenAI is folding Sora into ChatGPT after standalone installs dropped 45%. Standalone AI products are collapsing into platforms, and the platforms need revenue models.
- a16z Top 100 Gen AI Apps: ChatGPT reaches 900M weekly users, Claude paid subs grow 200% YoY — Andreessen Horowitz
- Google SVP won't rule out ads in Gemini as platform tops 750 million users — WinBuzzer
- OpenAI plans to fold Sora into ChatGPT as standalone video app struggles — PCWorld
Open research
AI2 open-sourced MolmoBot — robots trained in simulation that transfer to real-world tasks without fine-tuning. If this holds, the cost of physical AI drops by orders of magnitude.
- AI2 open-sources MolmoBot — robots trained entirely in simulation that work in the real world — Allen Institute for AI
Persistent agents change the questions builders need to answer: auth, data access, billing, and what happens when an agent runs unsupervised for hours.