# AI Governance, Fusion Energy, and Platform Consolidation

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-03-24

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
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Belina Stadtwerken.
Good for dich.
Good for Berlin.
The Sam Altman-backed fusion startup Helion is currently in talks with OpenAI.
I'm Imran Sheikh and your daily crunch for Tuesday, featuring three big tech headlines and a little bit of startup news starts right now.
Elizabeth Warren calls the Pentagon's decision to bar anthropic retaliation.
Anthropic is attracting an increasing number of supporters in its fight against the U.S.
Department of Defense, which last month designated the AI lab as a supply chain risk after it refused to make concessions on how its AI could be used by the military.
Well, in a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hexeth, U.S.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren equated the DOD's decision with retaliation, arguing that the Pentagon could simply have terminated its contract with the AI lab, CNBC reports.
Warren's words echo many other organizations that have spoken out against the Defense Department's treatment of Anthropic.
Several tech companies and employees, including from OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, as well as legal rights groups, have filed amicus briefs in support of Anthropic and denouncing the designation, which is usually applied to foreign adversaries and not U.S.
firms.
Now, the dispute arose after Anthropic told the Pentagon that it did not want its AI systems to be used for mass surveillance of Americans, and that the technology wasn't ready for use in targeting or firing decisions of lethal autonomous weapons without human intervention.
The Pentagon contested that a private company shouldn't dictate how the military uses technology, and soon after designated the company as a supply chain risk.
The letter from Warren comes a day before a hearing in San Francisco on Tuesday when District Judge Rita Lin will decide whether to grant anthropic or preliminary injunction that seeks to preserve the status quo while its case against the DoD is litigated.
With the ongoing Iran-U.S.
war contributing to a significant spike in gas prices, DoorDash is stepping in to support its drivers in the U.S.
and Canada.
You see, the company announced on Monday the rollout of a temporary program aimed at easing the financial burden on Dashers who rely on their vehicles for deliveries.
Doordash's relief program, which runs through April 26th, offers weekly payments to eligible drivers.
Dashers who drive at least 125 miles per week can receive payments starting at $5 and translating to an estimated savings of a buck to a buck fifty per gallon.
The support could be especially meaningful for drivers in suburban and rural areas who travel longer distances.
Additionally, drivers who utilize DoorDash's Crimson debit card will benefit from an extra 10% cash back on gas purchases, offering them potential savings of up to a buck ninety per gallon.
Now, if you didn't know, gasoline is one of the largest expenses for delivery drivers.
Unlike traditional employees, gig workers are responsible for covering their own costs, including fuel, vehicle maintenance, and insurance.
A human Rights Watch survey from May 2025 found that gig workers in Texas spent an average of $100 dollars per week on fuel, or $2.76 for each hour worked.
At the time of the survey, the price of gas in Texas was about three bucks per gallon.
Now, the situation is, well, even more dire.
According to Triple AAA, the national average for regular gas is now just under $3.96 per gallon.
That's over a buck higher than it was a month ago.
In some areas, prices have even reached around $4 per gallon.
It remains uncertain if other delivery services will follow DoorDash's lead this time around.
Fusion startup Helion is reportedly in talks to sell power to OpenAI.
Now, both companies are backed by Sam Altman.
The deal, which was reported by Axios, is in early stages and it could guarantee OpenAI 12.5% of Helion's production, which is 5 gigawatts by 2030 and 50 gigawatts by 2035.
Move over, Doc Brown.
This isn't your typical gigawatts we're talking about.
OpenAI partner Microsoft signed a similar deal with Helion in 2023 to buy power starting in 2028.
Now, if the figures in Axios' report prove to be accurate, it suggests that Helion expects to be able to rapidly scale production of its fusion power plant.
Helion has said that each of its reactors will generate 5035.
And the company didn't immediately reply to inquiries from TechCrunch.
Helion is racing it will need to build and install 800 reactors by 2030 and an additional 7200 by 2035.
If the startup is successful, it would place it years ahead of the competition, which is mostly targeting early 2030s for commercial operations.
The startup raised $425 million last year from investors, including Altman, as well as firms Mitchell, Lightspeed, and SoftBank.
Though Altman has reportedly stepped down from his position as chair of Helion's board and recused himself from the discussions, his fingerprints are all over the matchmaking.
Last year, Altman stepped down as board chair of Oklahoma, a small modular nuclear reactor startup that had emerged with his acquisition company, Alt C.
Now to the latest in startup business news, all in about one minute with our friend producer Dennis.
Thank you, Imran.
And we begin with Lovable, the AI-powered app building platform that valued at $6.6 billion, is on the hunt for acquisitions.
On Monday, the startup's co-founder and CEO announced on X that the company was looking for more great teams and startups to join Lovable.
Lovable's desire to acquire teams or smaller companies arrives at a time when it's racing against competition from other tools such as Cursor, Replit, Bolt, as well as the coding powers of the AI models themselves.
Lovable is seeing noteworthy growth, recently reporting that it now has $400 million in ARR.
It also now sees over $200 million at the end of 2000 new vibe coding projects created on the platform every day.
And Gimlet Labs has created what it claims is the first and only multi-silicone inference cloud, which is software that allows an AI workload to be simultaneously run across diverse types of hardware.
It can split an AI app's work across both traditional CPUs and AI-tuned GPUs, as well as high memory systems.
And folks, that's your daily crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Tim Deshant, Ramayer, Lauren Forrestall, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same tech time, same crunch channel.
And until then, find us at techrunch.com.
Yeah, genau.
Stimmt, krass.
Fühlt sich gar nicht wie Steuern an.
Steuern erledigt?
Safe.