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Happy Monday! With AI advancing at lightning speed, many companies seem unsure of their next move—freezing hiring has become the new normal. AI is already handling a growing share of our work, making every employee more efficient. The question is no longer if tech will replace us, but when and how. Meanwhile, mega data centers are being built across the globe to power the next wave of AI agents and data-heavy applications. All that and more in today’s issue.

Drop your thoughts in the comments. We’re curious.

• The AI Hiring Pause Has Begun

• 🧰 AI Tools - Law

• OpenAI’s Next AI Superhub in Abu Dhabi Will Be Bigger Than Monaco

• 🧠 Learning Corner - Helsinki University

• China's Rise, America's Decline?

• 📰 News and Trends.

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The AI Hiring Pause Has Begun

Despite booming AI adoption, companies like Microsoft are laying off employees, including those in AI and engineering. Microsoft laid off 6,000 employees, highlighting how AI is boosting productivity but reducing the need for human coders. AI now writes or assists with over 30% of code at Microsoft and Alphabet, and Mark Zuckerberg recently said that AI will write the majority of Meta's code in the next 12 to 18 months.

Other firms echo this shift:

• Intuit reports 40% faster coding using GenAI.

• Palantir claims agents make teams 50x more productive.

• Coca-Cola and Expedia are using AI to speed up marketing and content creation.

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Shopify, and DuoLingo all cited AI as a reason to pause hiring. Economists warn that macroeconomic uncertainty, tariffs, and reduced business confidence are accelerating this shift. Stanford’s Nicholas Bloom notes this could be the start of a "perfect storm" where AI replaces roles traditionally seen as secure, starting with coding.

📰 AI News and Trends

• Google rolls out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome.

• MIT says a high-profile AI productivity study used data that cannot be trusted.

• OpenAI introduces Codex, its first full-fledged AI agent for coding.

• Nvidia plans to sell tech to speed AI chip communication.

🌐 Other Tech news

• Ideas are the #1 Weapon. Chinese news is very strong on social media. While American congressmen fret about TikTok, China appears to be relying on Facebook, to spread its message internationally.

• U.S. lawmakers have concerns about the Apple-Alibaba deal, and officials are scrutinizing a deal between Apple and Alibaba that would bring Alibaba-powered AI features to iPhones sold in China.

• Russia launches war's largest drone attack ahead of Putin-Trump call.

• FDA OKs first blood test that can help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.

• How Walmart became a tech giant—and took over the world.

OpenAI’s Next AI Superhub in Abu Dhabi Will Be Bigger Than Monaco

OpenAI is partnering with UAE-based tech giant G42 to build a 5-gigawatt AI data center campus in Abu Dhabi — more than 4x larger than its Texas Stargate site and larger than Monaco (10 square miles). The site will draw energy equivalent to five nuclear reactors, making it one of the largest AI infrastructure projects globally.

The move is part of the Stargate project, a global initiative by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to scale AI infrastructure. However, the UAE partnership has raised concerns among U.S. lawmakers due to G42’s past ties to China, such as its association with Huawei and the Beijing Genomics Institute. G42 claims it has since divested from China and pivoted its strategy.

Key numbers:

• 5 GW power (vs. 1.2 GW in Texas)

• 10 square miles = bigger than Monaco

• $1.5B: Microsoft’s recent investment in G42

This project underscores both OpenAI’s global ambitions and the geopolitical complexities of scaling AI.

🧰 AI Tools

Law.

• Harvey AI - A dedicated “virtual junior associate,” Harvey uses legally‑tuned LLMs to analyze documents, draft pleadings, and surface relevant case law from a firm’s repository.

• Hebbia’s Matrix - The platform offers natural‑language search across massive collections—PDFs, contracts, presentations—returning answers with source citations.

• Ironclad - A contract lifecycle management (CLM) SaaS that embeds OpenAI’s GPT‑3/4 to auto‑extract key terms and suggest redlines.

• Litera - Provides an enterprise suite for document drafting, comparison, and AI‑driven contract review.

• Robin AI - Specializes in high-volume contract review and management. Suggests edits, answering natural‑language queries over large document sets, and reducing review time

Download our list of 1000+ Tools for free.

China's Rise, America's Decline?

According to Princeton researcher Kyle Chan, the “Chinese century” is no longer theoretical — it’s already underway. China is rapidly outpacing the U.S. in critical industries like EVs, solar, batteries, semiconductors, and AI, aiming to command 45% of global manufacturing by 2030. Recent milestones like BYD surpassing Tesla and DeepSeek's AI rivaling U.S. models are proof of China’s momentum.

Meanwhile, U.S. policies under Trump — tariffs, slashed R&D, weakened universities — are eroding long-term competitiveness. The U.S. risks becoming a domestically isolated, less innovative economy with pricier, lower-quality goods, and shrinking global influence.

China, backed by a $138B national VC fund and state-directed strategy, is building interconnected industrial dominance. If trends continue, future tech battles may not be U.S. vs. China — but Shenzhen vs. Hangzhou. The U.S. must urgently reinvest in R&D, global partnerships, and talent to avoid irrelevance.

🧠 Learning Corner.

Elements of AI (University of Helsinki + MinnaLearn) - Teaching AI basics and Building AI, fully free, multilingual, no prerequisites.