Sun 29 March 2026
Weekly Brief — Curated and contextualised by Best Practice AI
Alphabet and Meta Pledge $305 Billion, CEOs Admit Zero Impact, and Memory Stocks Shed $100 Billion
TL;DR Alphabet and Meta announced $305 billion in AI-related capital expenditures for 2026. Goldman Sachs reported AI added zero to US economic growth in 2025 despite $410 billion in investments. OpenAI shut down its Sora video platform and canceled a $1 billion Disney deal. Chinese authorities blocked the $2 billion sale of AI startup Manus to Meta and barred its founders from leaving the country. Fortune cited CFOs projecting 502,000 AI-attributed job losses this year, a ninefold increase from 2025. Memory chip stocks lost $100 billion in value as research showed AI data centers need far less capacity than expected.
Economics & Markets
Alphabet and Meta to Invest $305 Billion in AI Expansion
Alphabet and Meta Platforms plan a staggering $305 billion in AI-related capital expenditures for 2026, underscoring their commitment to advancing artificial intelligence.
Kleiner Perkins is Going All In on AI
With $3.5B in fresh capital, Kleiner Perkins is going all in on AI
Meta boosts Texas AI data center investment to $10 billion | Reuters
Big Tech firms such as Meta, Amazon (AMZN. O), opens new tab, Alphabet (GOOGL. O), opens new tab, and Microsoft (MSFT.
Venture capital: a crucial backer of fast-growing businesses
More than a third of the €66.2bn worth of VC deals in Europe were in AI-related companies
Memory chip stocks shed $100bn as AI-driven shortage trade unwinds
New research suggests AI data centres will need much less memory than investors had bargained for
Lex in depth: Will the AI data centre boom become a $9tn bust?
The biggest groups splashing their cash may not make their money back, but will almost certainly live to tell the tale
Legal AI Startup Harvey Raises Funds at $11 Billion Valuation
Harvey, AI for law firms, raised $200M in new round valuing company at $11B.
AI startups are eating the venture industry — and returns so far are good
10% of startups accounted for 50% of all VC funding in 2025, with Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI raising double-digit billions.
Big Returns From AI Investments Are Here, CFOs Say
Executives at WSJ's CFO Council Summit say they are seeing efficiency and productivity gains from AI investments.
AI Demand Is Shielding China’s Booming Trade From War Shocks
An investment boom in artificial intelligence has kept China’s trade volumes on a path to exceed last year’s record levels, offsetting disruptions from higher oil prices in the weeks after war broke out in Iran.
AI Boom Risks Widening Wealth Gap
BlackRock's annual investor letter warns of widening wealth gaps due to the AI boom, urging broader public access to long-term market gains. It suggests measures like emergency savings accounts and investment accounts from birth to democratize wealth creation, emphasizing the historical benefits of staying invested in volatile markets.
Goldman Sachs claims AI had zero impact on US economic growth in 2025
Goldman Sachs claims AI contributed zero to US GDP growth in 2025 despite $410bn in corporate AI investment.
Welcome to a Multidimensional Economic Disaster
The AI boom wasn't built for the polycrisis. The global economy has become dependent on AI infrastructure that relies on key materials from the Middle East, now destabilized by the Iran war.
AI Reshapes Work as Productivity Gains Meet New Risks
Workmonitor 2026: 70% of Mexican workers believe AI improves productivity, 61% positive on long-term impact.
AI Coding Agents Transform Software Delivery
AI coding agents and orchestration tools are turning software delivery into a 'software factory,' where builders delegate implementation to agents and focus on design and review. This shift collapses cycles from weeks to hours and enables everyone, not just engineers, to become builders, using AI to streamline workflows, automate processes, and extend teams with AI teammates.
Yes, AI could boost productivity, but work is about more than maximizing output
Stanford study found customer service agents with AI assistance resolved issues 14% faster, with largest gains for newer workers.
What is the impact of AI on productivity?
Reconciling the micro and the macro evidence
The AI productivity boom is not here (yet)
Artificial intelligence is improving fast. Its effect on output, not so much
Thousands of CEOs just admitted AI had no impact on employment or productivity—and it has economists resurrecting a paradox from 40 years ago
A study of thousands of CEOs reveals AI has yet to impact employment or productivity, echoing Robert Solow's 1980s paradox on computers. This suggests a lag in AI's economic benefits despite widespread adoption.
Artificial Intelligence, Productivity, and the Workforce: Evidence from Corporate Executives
Survey of nearly 750 corporate executives shows substantial heterogeneity in AI adoption across firms, with more than half having already invested. Labor productivity gains are positive, vary across sectors, and expected to strengthen in 2026. Productivity paradox: perceived gains larger than measured gains. Little evidence of near-term aggregate employment declines.
Labor & Society
Divide between Silicon Valley and ordinary people grows ever larger
Big tech believes the future is AI while everyday Americans remain wary; and the dangers of riding in a Tesla Cybertruck Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. This week in tech, we discuss a moment of divergence between Silicon Valley and everyday people; deep cuts at Meta to maximize spending on AI; writers caught using AI; and the frightening, fiery crashes of the
AI washing is masking an insidious labour crisis
Companies citing AI adoption as reason for job cuts — 'AI washing' — using AI as rhetorical cover for cost-cutting.
AI Job Displacement Statistics 2026
GenAI investment increased nearly 8x since November 2022. Gap between automation and retraining creates human cost.
The New Reality of Work: AI, Restructuring, and the Labor Market in 2026
Global job market undergoing most profound structural shift since industrial revolution in 2024-2026.
HBR research: generative AI reshaping, not erasing, white-collar work
New research in HBR finds early evidence that generative AI is reshaping white-collar work through task-level substitution rather than wholesale job elimination, with differential effects by occupation. Jobs requiring codifiable knowledge face higher automation risk; those requiring tacit, experiential knowledge are more complemented by AI. One of the first empirical snapshots of AI's actual labou
Are AI Tokens the New Signing Bonus or Just a Cost of Doing Business?
TechCrunch
AI Unbundling Jobs into Lower-Paid Chunks
A paper argues that AI isn't killing jobs, but rather 'unbundling' them into lower-paid chunks. The real impact is seen as narrowing human work and pay.
Will software engineers survive agentic AI?
A data deep dive shows that job vacancies are rising — but only for senior developers
Palantir CEO Says Only Two Kinds of People Will Succeed in AI Era
Palantir's billionaire CEO says only two kinds of people will succeed in the AI era: trade workers — 'or you're neurodivergent'
Employees Fear AI-Driven Job Loss
Forrester finds that staff are hesitant to adopt AI due to concerns about job security, which may hinder AI rollout and productivity gains. This fear could lead to a slower adoption of AI technologies in the workplace.
CFOs admit privately that AI layoffs will be 9x higher this year
AI-attributed job losses will reach ~502,000 this year — a 9x jump from 55,000 in 2025, but still under 0.5% of US workforce.
Alex Imas: How Will AI-driven Automation Actually Affect Jobs?
Alex Imas and Soumitra Shukla new post on economics of AI exposure and job displacement - addresses media discussion about AI-driven displacement with empirical analysis.
Wharton Researchers Prove AI Output Review Limitations
Wharton researchers have proven that human brains tend to give up when reviewing AI output, highlighting the need for more effective review processes.
AI hallucinations haunt users more than job losses
Anthropic’s survey of 80,000 Claude users provides detailed snapshot of how people are using technology
Big lesson from high reliability organizations that AI agent builders need to learn is reliability is the property of systems.
Big lesson from high reliability organizations that AI agent builders need to learn is reliability is the property of systems. Current agentic tools are weaker than the agents: they are bad at agent-agent handoffs, escalation, when to call in humans. All keys to high reliability.
Dear followers, I’m happy to share this new academic paper on how even capable AI can lead to deterioration of collective knowledge in society
Dear followers, I’m happy to share this new academic paper on how even capable AI can lead to deterioration of collective knowledge in society
Europe Is Looking To Water Down AI Protections. It Should Reinforce Them.
Analysis argues Europe should reinforce AI protections rather than water them down.
White House AI czar Sacks to step down, moves to advisory role
White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar David Sacks is stepping down from his role, saying in an interview on Bloomberg Television on Thursday he had reached the end of his time as a special government employee.
You thought the generalist was dead — in the 'vibe work' era, they're more important than ever
Not long ago, the idea of being a “generalist” in the workplace had a mixed reputation. The stereotype was the “jack of all trades” who could dabble in many disciplines but was a “master of none. ” And for years, that was more or less true.
What Young Workers Are Doing to AI-Proof Themselves
They’ve got their whole careers ahead of them, and they’re navigating a technology with a still-uncertain impact.
America's Next Class War: AI Fluency
Anthropic just dropped the most granular data yet on who's actually using AI and how — and the findings should rattle anyone thinking the AI revolution will be evenly distributed.
Labor Department AI Literacy Course
The Labor Department will announce a free AI literacy course today aimed at Americans skeptical of the technology. The course covers AI's core capabilities and how to create clear prompts, among other basics.
The AI Skills Gap is Here, Says AI Company
Anthropic finds AI isn’t replacing jobs yet, but early data shows growing inequality as experienced users gain an edge, raising concerns about future displacement and workforce divides.
10 Must-Have Skills for Claude (and Any Coding Agent) in 2026 | by unicodeveloper | Mar, 2026 | Medium
The definitive guide to agent skills that change how Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and other AI coding assistants perform in production.
Two Thirds of Students Say AI is Hurting Their Critical Thinking
Two thirds of students say AI is hurting their critical thinking, and they're using it more than ever.
Technology & Infrastructure
AI Infrastructure and Energy Supercycle: Market Outlook 2026
2026 AI spending backed by strongest balance sheets. Power availability is dominant limiting factor.
How AI Data Centres Are Exposing US Power System Limits
Global data centre investment forecast at $6.7T by 2030 with $2.7T in US.
OpenAI makes a ‘Code Red’ turn in strategy
The company shows some business discipline in ditching Sora video app and plans for erotic chatbot
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini Entered the WSJ Bracket Pool. One Might Actually Win.
The AI ringers struggled at first. But soon, they were calling upsets, picking against the crowd—and beating the humans.
Adoption & Impact
Companies Aren’t Ripping Out Business Software for AI. Here’s What They’re Doing Instead.
Tech leaders at large corporations say that, for now, they’re vibe-coding their own small, custom apps, and putting pressure on their software vendors.
AI Adoption Increases Operating Costs
Token usage is becoming a real operating cost for enterprises as AI adoption moves from experimentation to scaled deployment. Companies are starting to track tokens as a proxy for compute spend, productivity, and governance. Leaders need new budgeting and measurement frameworks because AI is one of the first major enterprise software categories where successful usage can materially increase the bi
Best AI Users
The strongest users of large language models are more ambitious, treat AI as a reasoning partner, delegate complex tasks with clear objectives, and use it as a general cognitive tool rather than just a shortcut. This shifts the question from simple adoption metrics to what sophisticated AI use actually looks like across the workforce.
Scaling AI Agents Successfully
To scale AI agents successfully, think of them like team members. This framing surfaces useful reminders around permissions, scope, security, and accountability, but most of those cautions were seen as familiar governance basics rather than new guidance for experienced AI leaders.
The Three Disciplines Separating AI Agent Demos
The three disciplines separating AI agent demos from real-world deployment
AI is hitting the sweet part of the S-curve
Drawing on Jevons Paradox, AI is entering steepest part of adoption S-curve. Greater efficiency expands demand rather than constraining it.
The whole reason for the J-curve for new technologies is that there is some cost to learning and experimentation. And for AI, there may be outsized returns to really bold (and often quite cheap) experiments. Fast follower is a risky strategy with exponential improvement happening
The whole reason for the J-curve for new technologies is that there is some cost to learning and experimentation. And for AI, there may be outsized returns to really bold (and often quite cheap) experiments. Fast follower is a risky strategy with exponential improvement happening
I think that if companies are not failing at all with their AI efforts it is a sign that they are not being ambitious enough. This is a fundamentally new technology that we do not know how to use well. Achieving breakthroughs will require experimentation, which require failure.
I think that if companies are not failing at all with their AI efforts it is a sign that they are not being ambitious enough. This is a fundamentally new technology that we do not know how to use well. Achieving breakthroughs will require experimentation, which require failure.
Best AI Users
The strongest users of large language models are more ambitious, treat AI as a reasoning partner, delegate complex tasks with clear objectives, and use it as a general cognitive tool rather than just a shortcut. This shifts the question from simple adoption metrics to what sophisticated AI use actually looks like across the workforce.
OpenAI Scraps Sora Video Platform Months After Launch
The app, released last year, allowed people to insert themselves into famous movie scenes, among other functions.
China’s MiniMax Wants AI to Be Your New Work ‘Bestie’
As AI models become more capable of completing complex tasks, MiniMax is betting on AI becoming an integral part of workers’ daily lives.
Uber Launches Robotaxi Service
Uber, in collaboration with Pony AI and Verne, has launched Europe's first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb, Croatia, with plans for broader market expansion.
AI Coding — Key Statistics & Trends (2026)
AI coding adoption widespread (84%+), daily use common (~51%), with productivity gains (~3.6 hours/week).
OpenAI closes Sora video-making app and cancels $1bn Disney deal
The move comes less two years after the launch of the AI video app sent shockwaves through the media industry.
Geopolitics
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