AI Roundup: March 31, 2026

1. Mistral Secures $830M in Debt to Build NVIDIA-Powered Data Center Near Paris

Mistral AI closed $830 million in debt financing from a consortium of seven banks including BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, and HSBC to build a data center near Paris equipped with 13,800 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs. The facility at Bruyères-le-Châtel is expected to be operational in Q2 2026 with 44 MW of capacity, and Mistral aims to reach 200 MW across Europe by end of 2027. It is the French AI lab’s first major debt raise, signaling that lenders now view AI infrastructure as bankable collateral. Source

2. Eli Lilly and Insilico Medicine Sign $2.75B AI Drug Discovery Deal

Eli Lilly reached a $2.75 billion agreement with Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine for exclusive worldwide rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize AI-discovered oral treatments currently in preclinical development. Insilico receives $115 million upfront with the remainder tied to regulatory and commercial milestones, plus royalties. The companies have collaborated since 2023, and Insilico has developed at least 28 drugs using generative AI, with nearly half already at clinical stage. Source

3. Starcloud Raises $170M at $1.1B Valuation to Build Data Centers in Orbit

Starcloud, a Redmond-based startup, raised a $170 million Series A led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures to build solar-powered AI data centers in space. The company became the fastest Y Combinator startup to reach unicorn status, hitting $1.1 billion just 17 months after demo day. In November, Starcloud partnered with SpaceX to launch a satellite carrying an NVIDIA H100 chip that became the first to train an LLM in orbit. Its next satellite will feature NVIDIA’s Blackwell B200 chip, with long-term plans for an 88,000-satellite constellation. Source

4. DeepSeek Suffers Longest Outage Since Launch

DeepSeek experienced a seven-hour service disruption on Sunday, its longest outage since the Chinese AI lab’s rapid rise in 2025. The platform, which has more than 355 million users, went down overnight in China with the status page acknowledging multiple cascading issues that took until Monday morning to resolve. The cause remains unknown, and the incident highlights reliability challenges as AI platforms scale to hundreds of millions of users. Source

5. Meta Loses $310B in Market Value as Legal and AI Spending Fears Mount

Meta shed $310 billion in market capitalization in March — a 19% decline — driven by a New Mexico jury finding that the company misled teenagers about the safety of its social networks and growing investor anxiety over heavy AI infrastructure spending. Meta recently boosted its El Paso data center investment to $10 billion from $1.5 billion, and the combined legal exposure and capital expenditure trajectory prompted analysts to raise “tobacco moment” comparisons about long-term regulatory risk. Source

6. Pro-AI PAC Pledges $100M for 2026 Midterms

Innovation Council Action, a new political group led by former Trump deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich and aligned with White House AI advisor David Sacks, announced plans to spend more than $100 million in the 2026 midterms to back candidates who favor AI deregulation. The group has developed a scorecard ranking lawmakers on alignment with the administration’s AI agenda. Other tech-backed groups including Leading the Future ($50M) and a Meta-backed state-level PAC ($65M) are also ramping up, bringing total pro-AI midterm spending above $300 million. Source

7. Bluesky Launches Attie AI Assistant, Immediately Becomes Platform’s Most-Blocked Account

Bluesky debuted Attie, an AI assistant built on Anthropic’s Claude and the AT Protocol that lets users create custom algorithmic feeds and eventually vibe-code social apps using natural language. Presented by Bluesky’s CTO Paul Frazee at the Atmosphere conference, Attie is currently in beta with conference attendees. The tool’s official account quickly became the second most-blocked account on the platform behind J.D. Vance, reflecting the Bluesky community’s deep skepticism toward AI integration in social media. Source