Hawkish Signal in Tightening Mode | Rewire News Brief

Fed Dot Plot Split 7:7, Powell Says Inflation Progress Below Expectations, Refuses to Step Down Before Investigation Ends. Rates Unchanged, But Hawkish Signal in Tightening.

1 | Fed Dot Plot Ripped Apart, Powell's Last Two Press Conferences Turned into Political Survival Battles

The Fed on Wednesday kept rates unchanged at 3.5%-3.75%, as expected. What exceeded expectations was the dot plot, with 7 out of 19 members seeing no rate cuts in 2026, up by 1 from December, and another 7 expecting only one cut. Inflation projection was revised up from 2.5% to 2.7%. Powell's language was colder than the market wanted to hear, "We expect inflation to make progress, but not as much as we would like." U.S. stocks intraday dropped to daily lows.

In the same press conference, Powell announced he would not leave before the end of his term. U.S. prosecutor Jeanine Pirro is investigating the Fed HQ renovation project, and Trump's nominee for successor Kevin Warsh was stalled by Senator Tillis in the Banking Committee. Powell's term ends on May 15, but he said he has "no intention of leaving before the investigation is completed." What seemed like a rate decision on the surface is underneath a situation where the Fed Chair's stay is being held hostage by a renovation investigation and a senator's veto power.

(Source: CNBC / Bloomberg / American Banker)

2 | NVIDIA GTC Draws Empire Map in Four Days, Groq Acquisition Turns into an Inference Weapon

On the fourth day of GTC, NVIDIA turned Groq, acquired for $20 billion in December 2025, into a product. The Groq 3 LPX platform, comprised of 128 LPUs, jointly deployed with Vera Rubin NVL72, claims a 35x throughput increase per megawatt. The Vera CPU released on the same day is the first processor designed specifically for Agentic AI, offering double the efficiency of traditional rack-scale CPUs.

They talked about the Seven Chip Platform on Monday, the Inference Grid on Tuesday, the Open Alliance (Nemotron Coalition) on Wednesday, and Groq Inference and Space Data Center (Space-1) on Thursday. After these four days, what Jensen Huang has built is not just a product line but a computing empire map from the ground to orbit, from training to inference. The next-gen Feynman architecture has also been unveiled, including the Rosa CPU, LP40 LPU, BlueField-5, and Kyber Network.

（Source: NVIDIA Newsroom / Yahoo Finance / NVIDIA Blog）

3｜150 Retired Judges Sign Joint Statement Supporting Anthropic, Pentagon Counters with 'Hostile' Response

Last night saw the release of a 40-page DOJ document and data showing Anthropic's corporate market share surpassing OpenAI. Today's development comes in the form of a collective legal response. Nearly 150 retired federal and state judges have submitted an amicus brief to the court, questioning the legality of the Pentagon labeling Anthropic as a "supply chain risk." With previous statements from the four major tech industry associations, Microsoft, and rival company employees, the support for Anthropic has now expanded from the industry to the judicial realm.

The government's retaliation is also escalating. Deputy Secretary of Defense Emil Michael has characterized Anthropic as being "hostile" in negotiations in the document, stating that their position is "not fact-based but image-conscious." Anthropic's CFO mentioned in the legal filing that the company could face "hundreds of millions of dollars" in lost revenue by 2026. The hearing on March 24 is defining the legal boundaries of a new issue: whether AI companies can impose conditions on government clients.

（Source: CNN / Axios）

4｜On Day 20 of Iran War, Oil Prices Retreat but $200 Warning Looms

WTI fell to $95.50 on Monday, a 5.3% drop triggered by Trump discussing a plan to safeguard the Strait of Hormuz. However, analysts' warnings have not been retracted. According to CNBC, traders believe that $200 is not out of the question. Capital Economics warns that if the war continues for three months, the average price of Brent could reach $150.

The physical boundaries of the conflict continue to expand. Azerbaijan has deployed troops to the Iran border citing potential internal security collapse in Iran. On March 2, Qatar suspended LNG production due to drone attacks (supplying 20% of global LNG). The 11 countries currently heavily involved in the conflict control 51% of global oil production capacity and 56% of natural gas production capacity. The brief drop in oil prices seems more like a breather than a turning point.

（Source: CNBC / EIA / Capital Economics / Al Jazeera）

5｜Cloud Giants' GPU Arms Race Adds Another Zero

AWS announced at GTC that it has deployed over 1 million NVIDIA GPUs globally. On the same day, Microsoft Azure showcased a liquid-cooled deployment solution for the Grace Blackwell GPU, Nemotron model integrated with Foundry, and Oracle accessed GPU-accelerated vector search through the cuVS library.

The three cloud giants made intensive appearances in the same week, and the competition focus has shifted from "whose model is better" to "who controls more inference computing power." NVIDIA is the common supplier, but each one's deployment architecture, cooling solution, and model access path are diverging. The scale battle of computing power infrastructure is no longer a long-term expectation, as 1 million GPUs is a number that is now being realized.

(Source: NVIDIA Blog / AWS / Microsoft Azure)

Also Worth Knowing ↓

PPI rose 0.7% MoM in February, more than twice what economists had expected. Production-side inflation is transmitting from both energy and tariffs, providing a footnote to Powell's "inflation below expectations." (Source: Yahoo Finance)

The Clarity Act is expected to have a committee markup in April, with Senator Lummis stating that the differences have narrowed to details. The most comprehensive U.S. crypto regulation bill is still pending, with unresolved issues regarding stablecoin yield provisions. The DC Blockchain Summit and New York Digital Asset Summit are lobbying in sync this week. (Source: CoinDesk)

NVIDIA unveiled its next-generation Feynman architecture, including the Rosa CPU, LP40 LPU, and BlueField-5. While Vera Rubin is not yet fully deployed, the next-generation roadmap is already visible. From Blackwell to Vera Rubin to Feynman, NVIDIA's product cadence is accelerating rather than slowing down. (Source: NVIDIA Blog)

The Linux Foundation received a $12.5 million grant to strengthen open-source software supply chain security. With supply chain attacks on the rise, open-source security has transitioned from a volunteer project to an industry infrastructure investment. (Source: Tech Startups)

Global crypto card annual consumption has reached $18 billion, and the S&P index authorized Hyperliquid perpetual contracts. Perpetual contracts are penetrating from the crypto-native market into traditional financial infrastructure, with S&P's entry being a signal. (Source: The Block / CoinDesk)