Today's Highlights:

• OpenAI Kills Sora, Eyes "Spud." OpenAI confirmed it's discontinuing Sora in both the consumer app and API, with a spokesperson stating the research team will continue focusing on world simulation to advance robotics. Inc.com The real story: it's a strategic retreat. OpenAI was trying to fight Google on video diffusion while simultaneously catching up to Claude on coding — and that was not a viable two-front strategy. MEDIANAMA The compute freed up is being funneled toward "Spud," a next-gen model whose pretraining reportedly wrapped on March 25. Inc. | Medianama

• Claude Mythos: The Accidental Reveal. Today, Anthropic confirmed what a data leak made public: a next-gen model, internally codenamed "Capybara" and marketed as "Mythos," is in testing. Leaked benchmarks position it as larger and more capable than the current Opus lineup, with dramatic gains in software coding, academic reasoning, and cybersecurity — with plans to release it first to cyber defense organizations before broad availability. WinBuzzer The timing is awkward: both Anthropic and OpenAI are racing to release flagship models ahead of planned IPOs later in 2026. WinBuzzer Winbuzzer

• Shopify + ChatGPT = Agentic Commerce, Live Now. This isn't a future roadmap — it's already on. AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores has increased 7x since January 2025, and AI-attributed orders are up 11x over the same period. The Keyword Every Shopify merchant now has default distribution into the AI conversation layer, with no setup required. The Keyword | TechCrunch

• Hark: Figure AI Founder's Next Bet. Brett Adcock, who built Figure AI, just emerged from 8 months of stealth with Hark — a personal AI paired with dedicated hardware. Adcock put $100M of his own money in, the 45-person team pulls from Apple, Google, Meta, and Tesla, and the company has signed a deal for thousands of NVIDIA B200 GPUs arriving in April. The Rundown AI First products expected this summer. The Rundown AI

Deep Dive:

1. The OpenAI Pivot: From Everything to One Thing

OpenAI's decision to shutter Sora isn't just a product cancellation — it's a full strategic realignment. The company simultaneously killed Sora, walked away from a $1B Disney deal, scaled back ChatGPT's in-chat shopping feature, and renamed an internal team to "AGI Deployment." All in one Tuesday.

The backdrop is a deteriorating position in the enterprise market: data from more than 50,000 customers of payments startup Ramp shows that first-time enterprise buyers are now choosing Anthropic's services three times as often as OpenAI's — a sharp reversal from the year prior. NowadAIs Anthropic's singular focus on text and code is now paying off in dollars.

OpenAI is now combining its ChatGPT desktop app, its coding tool Codex, and its browser into one "superapp," targeting integrations with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. MEDIANAMA Meanwhile, the pretraining of Spud — OpenAI's next frontier model — reportedly wrapped this week, with Sam Altman describing it internally as a system that could accelerate the broader economy. The compute from Sora isn't being wasted; it's being concentrated. Whether that's the right call depends entirely on what Spud actually delivers.

Inc. | NowadAIs

2. Agentic Commerce: The Race to Own the AI Checkout Layer

The battle for who controls AI-driven shopping just became very real. Shopify launched Agentic Storefronts this week, giving millions of merchants native presence inside ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot — no setup, no extra apps.

Visa's new Agentic Ready program completed its first end-to-end AI-agent transaction: Banco Santander used a Visa credential issued in Spain to enable an AI agent to purchase a book, completing the full sequence of authorization, tokenized payment, and network settlement without any manual consumer input. PYMNTS Meanwhile, Mastercard completed Europe's first live end-to-end agentic payment, Stripe confirmed production agentic transactions via ACP, and J.P. Morgan announced an enterprise agentic commerce partnership. Agenticplug

The structural implication for founders and investors: the storefront is becoming secondary to the payment credential and the catalog quality. Google AI Mode currently charges no additional fees for purchases, while OpenAI takes a 4% fee on sales completed through ChatGPT checkout. The Keyword Fee structure and trust infrastructure will define the winners — not which AI model is the smartest.

PYMNTS | Shopify

Global AI News

• EU Streamlines AI Act Compliance. The EU Council agreed on a negotiating mandate on March 13 for a "Digital Omnibus on AI" — a regulation aimed at simplifying implementation of the existing AI Act rules. Consilium Full compliance for high-risk AI systems is required by August 2026. EU Council

• Samsung Doubles Down on Gemini. Samsung has announced an ambitious goal to double its footprint of mobile devices equipped with Google's Gemini AI, aiming for 800 million units by the end of 2026 — bringing advanced AI features previously reserved for flagships to mid-tier and budget devices worldwide. Crescendo AI Crescendo AI

• Apple Reimagines Siri with Gemini. Apple has announced a completely reimagined AI-powered Siri set to debut in 2026, partnering with Google to leverage a 1.2 trillion parameter Gemini model running on Apple's Private Cloud Compute — targeting a release alongside iOS 26.4. Crescendo AI A standalone Siri app is also reportedly being tested for iOS 27. Crescendo AI

• Alibaba Goes AI-First in Local Commerce. Alibaba launched an AI-driven 3D restaurant showcase service through its mapping unit Amap, using its "Tongyi Wanxiang" visual generative model to let merchants create immersive digital tours from standard photos — part of CEO Eddie Wu's broader AI-first mandate to compete with Meituan. Crescendo AI Crescendo AI

• UK Regulators Demand Answers from xAI. The UK's Information Commissioner's Office and Ofcom issued a formal demand to Elon Musk's xAI for information regarding its Grok AI model Crescendo AI — a sign that regulatory pressure on AI companies is accelerating across Europe. Crescendo AI

Market Trends:

• OpenAI Raises Another $10B. OpenAI raised another $10B this week, bringing its latest round to roughly $120B total, as it preps for a potential late-2026 IPO. BrianChristner.io The raise comes as the company consolidates products and bets on a single flagship model to anchor its valuation story. BrianChristner.io

• Anthropic's Enterprise Momentum. First-time enterprise buyers are now choosing Anthropic three times as often as OpenAI — a sharp reversal from the year prior, according to data from Ramp's 50,000+ customer base. NowadAIs Anthropic is expected to leverage this traction heading into its own IPO preparation. NowadAIs

• NVIDIA's Agent Toolkit Goes Broad. NVIDIA launched its Agent Toolkit — an open platform for building enterprise AI agents — including OpenShell for secure runtimes, Nemotron models, and AI-Q agent blueprints that combine open and frontier models to reduce costs while maintaining accuracy. MarketingProfs Major enterprise software providers are already integrating. MarketingProfs

• Aetherflux Eyes $2B Valuation. Aetherflux, founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt to develop orbital data centers, aims to raise $250M to $300M in a Series B at a $2B valuation. LLM Leaderboard The raise signals growing investor appetite for AI-adjacent infrastructure beyond the data center. LLM Stats

• AI Ad Spend Surging. AI-driven advertising is projected to grow 63% in 2026, reaching $57 billion and accounting for a significant share of total US ad spend — with platforms that automate targeting, bidding, and optimization gaining rapid adoption across small and large advertisers. MarketingProfs MarketingProfs

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