In partnership with
It's Monday, March 23rd: We're tracking NVIDIA's $1 trillion order pipeline unveiled at GTC and the White House's new federal AI framework that aims to override state laws before they take effect. Read more for your weekly briefing on the latest news and updates in AI.
Head over to our Events Portal to get the latest on upcoming AI Collective events near you. Search by city, date, or event format, and join thousands of builders at events across 180+ chapters on every continent (except Antarctica, for now).
Find an event in your city using the link below.👇
The top AI stories from last week, filtered for what will help you stay in the know.
1️⃣ NVIDIA GTC 2026: Vera Rubin, Groq 3, and a Trillion Dollars in Orders
Image from NVIDIA
Jensen Huang opened NVIDIA's GTC 2026 in San Jose on March 16 with a single number: $1 trillion in projected Blackwell and Vera Rubin purchase orders through 2027, doubling the $500 billion projection from GTC 2025.
Vera Rubin platform integrates seven purpose-built chips into five rack-scale systems. The NVL72 rack pairs 72 Rubin GPUs with 36 Vera CPUs. Each Rubin GPU carries 288 GB of HBM4 with 22 TB/s memory bandwidth. NVIDIA claims 10x higher inference throughput per watt and one-tenth cost per token compared to Blackwell.
Groq 3 LPU, the first chip from NVIDIA's $20B Groq acquisition, packs 500 MB SRAM per die with 150 TB/s memory bandwidth. A full LPX rack houses 256 LPUs with 315 PFLOPS of FP8 compute. Rubin GPUs handle prefill; Groq LPUs handle decode. Samsung manufactures the LP30 on 4nm, shipping Q3 2026.
Cloud deployments: AWS committed to 1M+ NVIDIA GPUs plus Groq LPUs. Microsoft Azure will be the first hyperscaler to power up Vera Rubin NVL72 systems. Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, CoreWeave, Crusoe, Lambda, and Nebius also confirmed.
Hardware partners: Cisco, Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and Supermicro will ship Vera Rubin systems in H2 2026.
Next gen preview: Feynman (2028) will introduce 3D die stacking, custom HBM, and TSMC A16 1.6nm fabrication.
The $1 trillion figure maps where capital is moving: dedicated AI factory infrastructure, not general-purpose compute. For builders, the Groq 3 LPU is the detail worth tracking. Splitting prefill and decode across specialized silicon could sharply reduce inference costs for trillion-parameter models powering agentic workflows. If the 35x throughput-per-megawatt claim holds in production, the economics of large model serving shift from hyperscaler-exclusive to mid-size-operator competitive. Watch LPX rack pricing and availability when Q3 shipments begin.
2️⃣ AI POLICY: White House Sends Congress a Federal AI Blueprint
Image from The White House
The Trump administration released a four-page "National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence Legislative Recommendations" on March 20, asking Congress to pass a single federal AI law that would preempt state regulations.
Seven pillars: (1) Protecting children with age verification and CSAM safeguards; (2) Safeguarding communities from AI-enabled scams and streamlining data center permitting; (3) Declaring that training on copyrighted material does not violate copyright, deferring to courts; (4) Preventing government-directed censorship via AI platforms; (5) Regulatory sandboxes and no open-ended developer liability; (6) Workforce skills training; (7) Federal preemption of state AI laws.
States affected: Colorado's AI discrimination law (hiring + medical, takes effect this year), Texas disclosure requirements, California's signed AI bills (Newsom vetoed SB 1047), New York's RAISE Act (whistleblower protections + model testing).
Support: Speaker Johnson, Majority Leader Scalise, Energy and Commerce Chair Guthrie, Judiciary Chair Jordan, and Science Chair Babin urged Congress to act. Sen. Blackburn called it a "roadmap."
Opposition: 36 state attorneys general objected. Colorado AG Phil Weiser plans a court challenge. 280+ bipartisan state lawmakers signed a letter urging Congress to reject preemption.
The federal framework promises simplicity for AI companies navigating a patchwork of state laws, but simplicity comes at a cost. The framework says nothing about algorithmic discrimination and nothing about developer accountability for downstream harms. For practitioners building AI systems today, federal preemption without those guardrails doesn't eliminate compliance risk, it just moves the uncertainty from state legislatures to courtrooms. With 36 state AGs already opposing, the "one federal standard" this framework promises may create more legal ambiguity, not less.
🔗 Other News
Your pulse on the biggest events and announcements and happening in AI this week, from Noah Frank ⚡️
📅 Events We’re Watching
Mark your calendars and be sure to sign up for these landmark events we’re watching. Be sure to look out for special AIC discounts where available.
April 6 – 9: HumanX 2026 (San Francisco, California)
HumanX is quickly becoming one of the premier gatherings for AI decision-makers, with 6,500 expected attendees at the Moscone Center and speakers including Fei-Fei Li and Ray Kurzweil. Less focused on code, more on high-level strategy, safety, regulation, and enterprise adoption. AI Collective members can register here to lock in current pricing before rates increase.
April 27 – 29: AIM-2026 (San Francisco, California)
The Third International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, with keynote speakers from Stanford, University of Maryland, and York University. More academic than trade show. Registration runs $299 to $1,099.
May 27 – 28: AI DevSummit 2026 (South San Francisco, California)
A two-day conference on shipping real-world AI, with tracks on management, machine learning, and enterprise integration. Speakers include Logan Ramalingam (Google Cloud) and Kordel France (Toyota). Registration starts at $1,080.
🔦 Spotlight On: The AI Backlash Is Here. Now What?
Image from Michael Trazzi.
On Saturday, a group called Stop the AI Race marched across San Francisco from the headquarters of Anthropic to OpenAI to xAI, calling on Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk to publicly commit to pausing frontier AI development if every other major lab does the same. The march was organized by Michaël Trazzi, a filmmaker and former AI safety researcher who led the Google DeepMind hunger strike last year. This follows a separate QuitGPT protest at OpenAI's headquarters on March 3 after the company signed its Pentagon deal.
The public response and backlash to AI is taking shape, and neither of these events are in isolation. For example, in the last few weeks, US Senator Bernie Sanders flew to Berkeley to sit down with Yudkowsky, Soares, and other AI safety researchers to discuss existential risk, and last week released a 9-minute video in which he interviewed Claude about data privacy and corporate power that has drawn 4.4 million views. AI companies have collectively poured over $185 million into the 2026 US midterms according to the Washington Post, and only 26% of voters view AI positively according to recent polling.
We understand the frustration behind these movements. The pace of change is real, the concerns about privacy and autonomy are legitimate, and a lot of people feel like decisions that will reshape their lives are being made without them. At AIC, we believe the answer is not to shut progress down but to chart a more human path with it. That means helping people understand how these tools actually work, what they can do, and how to use them in ways that make their work and lives better. It's why this community exists.
If our aim is to be the answer to the AI backlash, then we should aim to live up to these ideals. Continue to share, to host, to join events, and make community in your own community.
🗒️ Community Notes
Every headline satisfies an opinion. Except ours.
Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.
HumanX 2026 — Starting in Two Weeks (4/6-4/9)
HumanX 2026 (April 6–9) brings a concentrated slice of the AI ecosystem into one building in San Francisco. The speaker and attendee list spans Fei-Fei Li, Andrew Ng, Ray Kurzweil, founders from Databricks, Replit, Pika, Cohere, ElevenLabs, Cerebras, and CEOs from AWS, Snowflake, Zoom, along with partners from a16z, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, and hundreds more.
Last year, founders walked away with Series A rounds and enterprise partnerships that started as hallway conversations or demo-booth follow-ups. This year, The AI Collective will be on-site running 18+ programs and hosting a major exhibit on the floor, giving our community a clear home base inside the conference. With roughly 70% of attendees at VP-level and above, the value is less about volume and more about the density of decision-makers across industry, startups, and capital.
If you’re actively building or leading in applied AI, this is one of the rare weeks where your users, partners, and future investors are literally in the same building.
🤝 Thanks to Our Premier Partner: Roam
Roam is the virtual workspace our team relies on to stay connected across time zones. It makes collaboration feel natural with shared spaces, private rooms, and built-in AI tools.
Roam’s focus on human-centered collaboration is why they’re our Premier Partner, supporting our mission to connect the builders and leaders shaping the future of AI.
Experience Roam yourself with a free 14-day trial!
🫵 Do You Belong on Our Newsletter?
Share your message with the world’s largest AI community. To inquire about partnership availability, reach out to our team below.
The AI Collective is a community of volunteers, made for volunteers. All proceeds directly fund future initiatives that benefit this community.
Before You Go…
💬 Join Slack: AI Collective
🧑💼 LinkedIn: The AI Collective
📸 Instagram: The AI Collective
𝕏 Twitter / X: @_AI_Collective
Get Involved in Your Community
Thank you to the thousands of volunteers around the world who make this work possible. We truly could not do this without you.
About Noah Frank
Noah is a researcher, innovation strategist, and ex-founder thinking and writing about the future of AI. His work and body of research explores the economics of emerging technology and organizational strategy.
About Joy Dong
Joy is a news editor, writer, and entrepreneur at the forefront of the emerging tech landscape. A former educator turned media strategist, she currently writes TEA, where she demystifies complex systems to make AI and blockchain accessible for all.