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The internet’s being weird again; this time it seems to be Cloudflare’s fault

Last month, we wrote that Amazon’s cloud service sneezed, and huge chunks of the internet came down with a pretty bad cold. While it’s not yet that bad, several major websites have been intermittently peaky this morning, and it looks like Cloudflare is the super-spreader.

Though much of America might have been asleep for some of the most frustrating periods of disruption this morning, thousands of users across the US and around the world have taken to Downdetector to report problems accessing some of the internet’s biggest platforms, including OpenAI, X, and popular battle arena game League of Legends, as Cloudflare has been acknowledging its issues and looking to fix them.

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Cloudflare, an American IT behemoth that supplies tools to protect websites from cyberattacks and helps users connect and load content online, is down around 3% in early trading on Tuesday, as investors (at least those who can connect to their brokerages) react to the issues. Though the stock began to sink in premarket trading when the problems first came to light, the wider market mood is also likely weighing on Cloudflare, with the S&P 500 Index down more than 1% as of 10:08 a.m. ET.

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Anthropic says that a group of Chinese AI startups are “distilling” their models by setting up huge numbers of fake accounts for Claude AI. In a blog post, Anthropic said that it disrupted “industrial-scale” campaigns by Chinese AI labs DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax. The company said that the group had over 16 million exchanges with Claude, after setting up 24,000 “fraudulent” accounts. Anthropic said it is developing countermeasures to prevent such attacks in the future.

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Report: OpenAI’s Stargate has been a chaotic mess

Just over a year ago, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stood alongside President Trump, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to announce an ambitious $500 billion plan to build massive data centers in the US — Project Stargate.

While today an actual Stargate 1-gigawatt data center is certainly well under construction in Abilene, Texas, it turns out there wasn’t much of a plan in place at the time of the announcement, according to a new report from The Information.

The past year has been full of partner disputes, debt problems, and scuttled plans as the loosely defined project races to build the AI computing infrastructure that OpenAI is craving as competition heats up.

Per the report, OpenAI tried to build its own data centers as the project stalled, but lenders balked at funding the risky project. They eventually settled on the current plan, in which partner Oracle borrows the money and leases capacity back to OpenAI. OpenAI was still able to control the design of the facility.

The slow start for the project resulted in OpenAI missing its own goal of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Oracle and SoftBank by the end of 2025.

The past year has been full of partner disputes, debt problems, and scuttled plans as the loosely defined project races to build the AI computing infrastructure that OpenAI is craving as competition heats up.

Per the report, OpenAI tried to build its own data centers as the project stalled, but lenders balked at funding the risky project. They eventually settled on the current plan, in which partner Oracle borrows the money and leases capacity back to OpenAI. OpenAI was still able to control the design of the facility.

The slow start for the project resulted in OpenAI missing its own goal of 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity from Oracle and SoftBank by the end of 2025.

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Ives says AI represents huge opportunity for cybersecurity firms as losses mount

Cybersecurity stocks continued to slide Monday, after Anthropic unveiled a new security feature for its AI model Friday. The company’s AI advancements have been wreaking havoc across software firms, and its latest foray appears to be doing the same to cybersecurity leaders, including CrowdStrike, Zscaler, and Cloudflare.

But similar to Dan Ives’ broader thesis on the software sell-off — which he has called “overblown,” arguing that the companies getting hit may ultimately become “core participants in the AI Revolution” — the Wedbush Securities analyst says AI is actually a positive for cybersecurity stocks.

“Anthropic going after this market with an initial tool validates our thesis that cyber security is the next frontier for the AI Revolution,” Ives wrote Monday morning, arguing that AI is elevating the risk environment — and the need for cybersecurity firms in the first place.

“AI will be a major tailwind to the cyber security sector over the coming years as protection of use cases, data, and endpoints expand markedly,” he said, adding that companies including CrowdStrike and Zscaler are well positioned to capitalize on the shift by incorporating AI into their strategies.

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Analysts slash Salesforce price targets ahead of Wednesday earnings, as narrative of AI eating its lunch persists

A number of analysts have significantly lowered their price targets for Salesforce, citing growing fears that AI workforce tools, including Anthropic’s Cowork, could threaten parts of its core business. According to reports, here are some of the recent cuts:

  • Morgan Stanley cut its price target nearly 30%, to $287 from $398.

  • Jefferies slashed its forecast 33%, to $250 from $375.

  • Barclays reduced its price target to $265 from $338.

  • Evercore ISI went to $260 from $340.

  • Last week, Citigroup also reduced its price target to $197 from $257.

Earlier this month, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives offered a different view, adding Salesforce to his list of top 30 AI companies and calling the stock a “core participant” in the “AI revolution.” He described the recent software sell-off as “overblown.”

Shares of Salesforce, which reports earnings Wednesday, are down 30% year to date and 1% premarket today.

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