This week in AI saw geopolitical turmoil, major funding news, and a shift in software development. Missile strikes in the UAE and Bahrain disrupted AWS and Claude services. Meanwhile, after Anthropic banned its models from autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, the Trump administration banned Anthropic from government contracts—posing a major supply chain risk. On the same day, Sam Altman secured a deal with the Department of War as OpenAI announced a $110 billion funding round, highlighting a sharp contrast in approaches.

AI coding is evolving rapidly. Andrej Karpathy noted that coding agents, ineffective before December, now work well with improved quality and coherence. Yet, perfect accuracy remains elusive. New tools emerged: Cursor demos code, Linear markets itself as an AI coding assistant, and Perplexity Computer offers an all-in-one system for managing AI projects. Smaller models like Qwen 3.5 grow faster and more efficient for edge use. Other highlights include Anthropic acquiring Vercept AI, Claude's remote coding controls, and Stanford confirming major AI firms use user conversations to train models.

AI Agents Hour is a weekly livestream hosted by Mastra CPO Shane Thomas and CTO Abhi Aiyer. Airing Mondays at 12PM Pacific on YouTube and X, the show covers breaking AI news, agent development techniques, and features interviews with industry experts building AI applications today.

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Mastra: https://mastra.ai
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Principles of Building AI Agents (Book): https://mastra.ai/book
Patterns for Building AI Agents (New Book): https://mastra.ai/blog/patterns-book https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduJjc515f6RZJqtkR2ByqJZrB0iP8B7SUKnjjZE9IajH_I8w/viewform

MASTRA?
Mastra is an open-source TypeScript framework designed for building and shipping AI-powered applications and agents with minimal friction. It supports the full lifecycle of agent development—from prototype to production. You can integrate it with frontend and backend stacks (e.g., React, Next.js, Node) or run agents as standalone services. If you’re a JavaScript or TypeScript developer looking to build an agentic or AI-powered product without starting from first principles, Mastra provides the scaffolding, tools, and integrations to accelerate that process.

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Intro
00:25 – AWS Data Center Strikes & Claude Outages
01:20 – Anthropic Ban
05:30 – Sam Altman's Government Deal
10:05 – Cloudflare/Vercel Drama & NPM Namespaces
11:09 – Block Cuts 40% of Staff (4,000 People)
12:30 – AI & Job Market: Fear vs Reality
18:27 – OpenAI Raises $110B, Codex Growth
18:52 – Claude Releases: Vercept Acquisition, Remote Control, Auto Memory
20:13 – State of AI Coding
26:10 – AI Products and Platforms
28:42 – Open Source Models
31:30 – Quick Hits & GitHub Star Party

Missile Strikes Disrupt AWS and Claude, Anthropic Banned from US Government, Cloudflare vs Vercel