🟪 Austin approves downtown ad kiosks over concerns (Austin American-Statesman)

🟪 Austin approves plan for homes to have micro-retail shops (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 EdgeConneX plans second data center campus in Bastrop County (Community Impact)

🟪 Oracle cutting thousands of jobs worldwide amid AI data center push (Austin Business Journal)

🟪 NASA's Artemis II astronauts are hours away from moon launch. Watch it here (NPR)

🟪 Trump signs order directing creation of a national voter list, a move already facing lawsuit threats (Associated Press)

🟪 Trump tells aides he’s willing to end war without reopening Hormuz (Wall Street Journal)

READ ON!

✅ Austin approves downtown ad kiosks over concerns (Austin American-Statesman)

Downtown Austin will soon be dotted with digital kiosks that city leaders say will help visitors navigate the area and promote local events — but that will also prominently display advertising expected to generate millions for a city facing a tightening budget.

The Austin City Council last week approved an ordinance allowing the interactive wayfinding kiosks in public rights-of-way, advancing a plan the city has pursued as it searches for new revenue sources during a budget crunch. The move clears the way to implement a contract signed in September with IKE Smart City to install about 100 kiosks in downtown and other high-traffic areas.

City officials say the kiosks could bring in roughly $2 million to $6 million annually through advertising, funds supporters argue are increasingly necessary as Austin grapples with financial pressures.

“This is a time when any new revenue is desperately needed,” said Davon Barbour, president and CEO of the Downtown Austin Alliance, who added the money could support services for unhoused residents, park maintenance and public events.

The kiosks are designed to provide transit routes and schedules, maps, business directories and local event listings, along with emergency messaging capabilities and free Wi-Fi. They will not include cameras. Similar systems are already in place in cities such as San Antonio and Houston… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ EdgeConneX plans second data center campus in Bastrop County (Community Impact)

A $1.4 billion data center campus is being built in Cedar Creek, and the developers already have plans for a second Bastrop County location.

“This would be one the largest data center campuses in the United States, if not the globe,” said Evan Pierce, vice president of site development for EdgeConneX. “This is going to be our marquee campus of all the campuses we have across the globe.”

Pierce shared plans for a second data center campus in Bastrop County during a March 26 panel that YTexas hosted at the Bastrop Convention and Exhibit Center. YTexas is a business network and consulting firm that assists companies expanding or relocating operations into or within the state of Texas.

“When we bought the property [at the intersection of Pearce Lane and Wolf Lane], we thought it would be a one-and-done,” Pierce said. “But the county here is amazing to work with and is such a great partner. We could tell right away. So we decided to start looking around for more land to buy.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin approves plan for homes to have micro-retail shops (Austin Business Journal)

Some small-scale retail businesses could soon operate out of homes in Austin. 

The Austin City Council approved a resolution at its March 26 meeting to start a new land-use category that would allow for commercial businesses to operate on residential lots. The resolution creates a Strong Local Commerce Initiative for the city, and would allow for the creation of Accessory Commercial Units or ACUs.

The approved resolution said that ACUs could be up to 200 square feet. The ACUs can sell merchandise and offer services. The selling of tobacco products there is prohibited. 

The resolution passed by the city council would permit ACUs to conduct business directly on streets and from exterior portions of residential lots, like porches and front yards. The resolution aims to make ACUs done by-right and can be approved by Austin city staff… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Oracle cutting thousands of jobs worldwide amid AI data center push (Austin Business Journal)

Austin-based Oracle Corp. began laying off thousands of workers worldwide on March 31.

The job cuts at Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) have been anticipated since the start of the month.

Oracle is hustling to build AI-capable data centers worldwide and taking on tens of billions of dollars of debt to finance those projects. Companies such as OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia and others have generated a pledged pipeline of $553 billion in future spending with Oracle.

The exact impact on Oracle's Austin workforce was not immediately clear. Multiple LinkedIn users in Austin posted on March 31 about being laid off from the company. No layoff notices have been filed with the Texas Workforce Commission, a spokesperson for the state body said.

An Oracle spokesman declined comment… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Austin defense tech startup raises $1.75B, largest venture round in city history (Austin Business Journal)

Austin startups continue to raise the ceiling on funding rounds.

Locally based drone boat startup Saronic Technologies said March 31 that it has raised a $1.75 billion series D funding round. That's the largest venture round ever for an Austin-based startup, surpassing the $1 billion raised by battery power storage startup Base Power last year.

The fresh investments came at a $9.25 billion valuation, making Saronic one of Texas' most valuable startups.

Saronic's new funding round was led by Bay Area firm Kleiner Perkins. Other new backers included Advent International, Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth and BAM Elevate. The startup's earlier investors – 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Elad Gil and Franklin Templeton – also added to their positions… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Fort Worth delays vote on tax break for $1.1B data center as concerns grow (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

The Fort Worth City Council delayed a vote Tuesday, March 31, on a tax agreement for developers proposing a $1.1 billion data center in west Fort Worth that has stirred fear and confusion in residents, and prompted a larger discussion about how the city navigates the data center boom. Edged Data Centers, a subsidiary of the sustainable infrastructure company Endeavor, plans to develop an AI data center near the intersection of Interstate 20 and Chapin School Road, near the Veale Ranch development owned by Dallas-based PMB Capital.

The council first discussed a tax agreement for Edged at its work session on March 10. Fort Worth’s economic development department proposed a 50% break on property taxes for the equipment owned by the developer for 10 years. In exchange, Edged must invest $1.1 billion for the construction of the data center and create 50 jobs with an average salary of $73,000.

Fort Worth District 3 council member Michael Crain, whose district is where the data center would be located, added the following requirements to the proposed agreement: the company will comply with the city’s residential noise ordinance, agree to water limits included in a study performed by Kimley-Horn, provide an annual report detailing its compliance with the tax agreement, and comply with lighting and setback requirements set by the city.

The requirements also say that the company must comply with state and federal environmental standards, and — a major demand from residents — it must maintain a website with contact information and post regular updates about the construction process. The property Edged wants to develop was rezoned for medium industrial use in 2025, and a map of the Veale Ranch development designated it for industrial use. Fort Worth’s 2023 Comprehensive Plan officially designated the area as a “growth center.” Developers and representatives from the city of Fort Worth met with residents on March 24 to give an overview of the development and answer questions from residents, who had a laundry list of concerns about the project… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Dan Patrick adds data centers, prediction markets and THC to Senate priorities (Texas Tribune)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Friday instructed state senators to study a broad range of policy issues ahead of next year’s legislative session, including prediction markets, data centers, THC and more, expanding on an initial list of priorities that included “preventing Sharia law” and investigating Medicaid fraud.

Patrick’s latest list of interim charges corresponded with many of the priorities House Speaker Dustin Burrows laid out Thursday.

Data centers appeared three times on Patrick’s priorities, with the lieutenant governor — who leads the state Senate — instructing various committees to assess the water demands of “energy-intensive technologies,” including data centers; to consider how to meet electricity demands of data centers but also “balance economic development benefits of this growth against the impacts on landowners, private property rights, water infrastructure, and community integrity;” and evaluate the costs of the sales tax exemption granted to data centers… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Speaker Dustin Burrows lists data centers, property taxes and annexing slice of New Mexico among 2027 priorities (Texas Tribune)

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows directed lawmakers to study the secession of New Mexico counties to Texas, the development of data centers in the state, property tax relief and more in a list of his priorities for next year’s legislative session released Thursday.

The Lubbock Republican’s interim charges overlap with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s initial to-do list in their shared focuses on reducing property taxes, securing Texas from potential foreign threats and homing in on potential fraud and abuse in government spending.

But Burrows’ priorities cover a broader range of policy issues for House committees to tackle in preparation for the 2027 legislative session. Burrows also created three new committees on governmental oversight, health care affordability and general aviation.

He instructed the governmental oversight committee to study the implications of adding to Texas “one or more contiguous counties of New Mexico” and the process to do so, after welcoming a proposal out of New Mexico to allow its counties to band together and secede. While the Texas-New Mexico boundary is unlikely to shift next year, the proposal will likely appeal to pro-secessionists in Texas, some of whom are among Burrows’ conservative skeptics… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ NASA's Artemis II astronauts are hours away from moon launch. Watch it here (NPR)

Before taking his last steps on the moon, NASA astronaut Gene Cernan made sure to scratch his young daughter's initials into the lunar dust.

He had some parting thoughts for the rest of humanity, too.

"We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind," the Apollo 17 commander said before departing for Earth.

That was December 1972. Now, more than half a century later, NASA may be about to fulfill Cernan's wishes.

Watch the launch live stream, set to start at 12:50 p.m. Eastern time, here… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump signs order directing creation of a national voter list, a move already facing lawsuit threats (Associated Press)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The order, which voting law experts say violates the Constitution by attempting to seize states’ power to run elections, is the latest in a torrent of efforts from Trump to interfere with the way Americans vote based on his false allegations of fraud.

The president has repeatedly lied about the outcome of the 2020 presidential campaign and the integrity of state-run elections, asserting again Tuesday that he won “three times” and citing accusations of voter fraud that numerous audits, investigations and courts have debunked. The order signed Tuesday calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state.

It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list. Trump is also calling for ballots to have secure envelopes with unique barcodes for tracking, according to the executive order, which was first reported by the Daily Caller. Federal funding could be withheld from states and localities that don’t comply. “The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary. It’s horrible what’s going on,” Trump said, repeating his false allegations about mail ballots as he signed the order. “I think this will help a lot with elections.”

Within minutes of Trump signing the order, top elections officials in Oregon and Arizona, two states that rely heavily on mail ballots, pledged to sue, arguing that the president was illegally encroaching on the right of states to run elections. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said the state’s vote-by-mail system was designed by Republicans and is now used by 80% of voters. Arizona doesn’t need the federal government to tell it who can vote, and federal data isn’t always reliable, he said. “It is just wrongheaded for a president of the United States to pretend like he can pick his own voters,” Fontes told The Associated Press. “That’s just not how America works.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump tells aides he’s willing to end war without reopening Hormuz (Wall Street Journal)

President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date. In recent days, Trump and his aides assessed that a mission to pry open the chokepoint would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks.

He decided that the U.S. should achieve its main goals of hobbling Iran’s navy and its missile stocks and wind down current hostilities while pressuring Tehran diplomatically to resume the free flow of trade. If that fails, Washington would press allies in Europe and the Gulf to take the lead on reopening the strait, the officials said. There are also military options the president could decide on, but they aren’t his immediate priority, they said.

Over the past month, Trump has expressed various opinions in public on how to handle the strait, part of a larger pattern of giving conflicting goals and objectives of the war overall. He has at times threatened to bomb civilian energy infrastructure if the waterway isn’t reopened by a certain date. On other occasions, he has played down the importance of the strait to the U.S. and said its closure is a problem for other nations to solve. The longer the strait remains closed, the more it will roil the global economy and boost gas prices.

Multiple countries, including U.S. allies, are reeling from the downturn in energy supply that once flowed freely through the chokepoint. Industries that rely on items such as fertilizer to grow food or helium to make computer chips are suffering from shortages. Without a swift return to safe passages, Tehran will continue to threaten world trade until the U.S. and its partners either negotiate a deal or forcibly end the crisis, analysts say. Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and vice president at the Brookings Institution in Washington, called ending military operations before the strait is open “unbelievably irresponsible.”

The U.S. and Israel started the war together and can’t walk away from the fallout, Maloney said. “Energy markets are inherently global, and there is no possibility of insulating the U.S. from the economic damage that is already occurring and will become exponentially worse if the closure of the strait continues.”… 🟪 (READ MORE)