Apple’s Free NFC Pledge Leaves a UK Fee Question
Apple promised third-party wallets 10 years of free NFC access in the EU, then described associated fees for a separate iOS 18.1 Secure Element route. The UK CMA is now consulting on lower contactless-access fees.
Curl Reviewed Five Claims. One Was a Vulnerability
Late-2025 coverage put HackerOne’s annual rewards at $81 million, while curl prepared to leave its program. Stenberg’s May 2026 review found one vulnerability among five alleged Mythos findings.
Nvidia’s $3.5B Backstop for Data-Center Leases
Insight Partners led $215 million across three AI-software rounds as Nvidia’s guarantees for data-center leases reached $3.5 billion. The contrast places software growth and compute construction on different balance sheets.
Ledger's $86M-Plus Theft and the Reseller Badge
Ledger confirmed an unauthorized implant in one device amid thefts exceeding $86 million from wallets sold by authorized reseller CryptoBilis. Bitkey preorders in more than 95 countries show how far self-custody distribution can reach.
Apple announces a “Pro and tell” event on October 28 at 10am PT in LA, where its first touchscreen MacBook, a 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6, and more are expected
Apple today announced its second experience of the month, taking place next Wednesday, October 28 at 10 a.m. PT. The tagline for this event is: “Pro and tell.”
The US DHS orders all federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek's tech from their IT systems and prohibits future procurement of its products and services
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered federal civilian agencies to remove artificial-intelligence technology developed …
Google says Cloud services in its London region are recovering after a “power event” caused a multi-hour outage that affected Revolut and several European banks
An outage at Google Cloud knocked out banking services in the UK including Revolut Ltd. early on Tuesday.
MiniMax launches M3.1 Flash, saying it delivers “a generational leap” in agentic tasks, coding, computer use, and cybersecurity, with weights due October 23
Space Bunny 🐰, which processed more than 200 trillion tokens while operating anonymously, was an early version of MiniMax M3.1 Flash.
A profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma; sources: Xbox plans a major Game Pass overhaul, a next-gen handheld device by late 2027, and a next-gen console by late 2028
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. — Asha Sharma returns from one of her walking meetings around Microsoft's sprawling campus in Redmond …
DeepSeek open-sources DeepInfer, its high-performance inference framework that powers its production services, starting with support for DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash
DeepSeek is opening up the software it uses to run its artificial intelligence models at scale, potentially making its technology cheaper and easier for businesses to run.
Cloudflare debuts Clairic, a System One-class extraction model it says processes unstructured data faster, more cheaply, and more accurately than normal LLMs
Today, we're announcing a preview of a new class of System One-style models: extraction models.
Netflix reports Q3 revenue up 12% YoY to $12.87B, in line with est., net income up 44% YoY to $3.66B, in part due to expenses timing; NFLX drops 5%+ after hours
Netflix on Tuesday reported third-quarter earnings that topped analyst estimates and revenue that was in line as Wall Street eyes …
SpaceX reports Q3 revenue up 161% YoY to $14.58B, vs. $12.72B est., AI revenue up 830% to $7.56B, and AI operating income of $431M, up from a loss of $1.7B
SpaceX reported 161% revenue growth for the third quarter, driven by the company's artificial intelligence business and Starlink Subscriber growth.
Eight intermediate TLS certificates from eMudhra with private key sizes of just 3 to 8 bits were compromised; browser makers and major apps have blocked them
Security personnel around the world are on high alert Tuesday following the discovery of eight TLS certificates with private keys …
Sources: DHS officials asked CISA to hack a voting machine to report vulnerabilities to the White House without telling the vendor; the request wasn't acted on
Reporting Highlights — An Unusual Request: Political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security wanted the agency …
Town, which develops enterprise AI assistants, raised a $108M Series B at a $1B valuation led by Forerunner and Menlo, after announcing a $55M Series A in June
Town, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup developing AI assistants, nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B funding round co-led …
Microsoft debuts new security tools in Microsoft 365 E7 and its Project Perception system that treat AI agents as potential insider threats via risk assessments
Microsoft is coming out with new security tools that treat AI agents as potential insider threats, continuously assessing …
Sources: Nscale is in talks for a second deal with Anthropic worth ~$45B to deliver 460MW of computing power at its West Virginia campus using Vera Rubin chips
Nscale Ltd., the AI cloud computing firm, is in talks to sell computing power to Anthropic PBC in a deal that could be worth about $45 billion …
Leaked documents detail ECHOTRIBBLE, a nascent US Army Cyber Command program for agentic AI to autonomously navigate networks to identify and neutralize targets
Documents obtained by The Intercept show the military is trying to deploy autonomous AI agents to hack its adversaries.
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone agree to explore a joint bid to offer “direct-to-device” satellite service in Europe, challenging Starlink
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone to explore joint bid for spectrum to provide mobile satellite coverage
Researcher: a Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to target 1,200+ websites and breach 100+ entities, like Deere and SharkNinja, spending ~$5,000 in tokens
Over the past couple of weeks, a cybersecurity researcher watched as a Chinese-speaking hacker broke into websites belonging …
PHP development team plans to release updates tomorrow to address two vulnerabilities, each rated 9.2; security researchers at watchTowr say they are RCE flaws
The PHP security team is warning administrators to prepare for emergency security updates tomorrow to address two critical vulnerabilities …
Google says it is rolling out Personal Intelligence for Gemini on Android Auto now and to cars with Google built-in in the coming months as an opt-in feature
Google is beginning to roll out Personal Intelligence for Gemini on Android Auto and Android Automotive (cars with Google built-in).
Filing: US prosecutors say OpenAI suspect Abdulrahman Alfozan maintained frequent WhatsApp contact in 2025 and 2026 with an unnamed Saudi Royal Family member
The Saudi national charged with planting a recording device in a sensitive OpenAI executive conference room in San Francisco was …
Sources: Eric Schmidt, who owns ~1% of Anthropic after investing tens of millions in its Series A, is poised to have one of the largest windfalls from its IPO
Former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt owns around 1% of Anthropic PBC thanks to his early investment in the startup …
Sources: Elon Musk ordered Starshield slowdown in Ukraine and discussed it with Trump after the issue became public; some US officials say he acted unilaterally
The SpaceX founder authorized the move and has been discussing Ukraine with Trump, but the president has denied ordering the restrictions
Amazon launches TorchNeuron, an open-source framework that lets developers run PyTorch code on Amazon's Trainium chips with no rewriting needed, in public beta
A new software tool from Amazon aims to make switching from Nvidia to the company's own AI chips about as simple as changing a setting.
An Australian minister says the eSafety Commissioner plans to sue Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube over alleged non-compliance with the under-16 social media ban
Australia's government is set to sue Facebook, TikTok and other major digital platforms for alleged non-compliance …
Meta details Prometheus, its gigawatt-scale supercluster in Ohio, which Meta is scaling to ~1M GPUs and used to train its Muse family of foundational models
- With the recent release of the Muse family of foundational models, we want to take you inside the infrastructure that has made it all possible.
The US sanctions Chinese VC firm MiraclePlus for financing Zhisuan, founded by Ding Linwei, who in 2026 was convicted of stealing Google's AI trade secrets
Washington has blacklisted a Chinese venture firm established by ex-Microsoft Corp. AI scientist Lu Qi for alleged ties …
Sources: Waymo aims to expand its fleet to 8,000 by the end of 2026, up from 4,000 now, and to 20,000 by the end of 2027, after raising $5B in debt in October
THE SCOOP — As Waymo expands into new cities with its self-driving cars, the company plans to use the $5 billion it recently borrowed to massively increase its fleet.
AI safety advocates widely criticize Anthropic's leaked US federal AI bill as much weaker than the bipartisan FRONTIER Act, undermining its safety-first pitch
The leaked draft bill is weaker than the FRONTIER Act and makes Anthropic's safety-first pitch ring hollow
Developers and vibe coders are using AI tools like Claude Code to remove sponsored ads on their smart TVs, speed up app launchers, disable tracking, and more
The latest use case for AI? Dumbing down your smart TV to get rid of the bloat. A number of developers and vibe coders have recently …
Google debuts TorchTPU, an open-source version of PyTorch for running AI apps on TPUs and Google Cloud via a simple configuration change and no code rewriting
On Tuesday, Google announced that TorchTPU, its long-awaited version of PyTorch, is now available as an open-source project.
Sources: Ted Sarandos complained for months that Netflix was short on new hit shows and lower US watch time; Netflix just fired its film chief and content chief
Company is overhauling creative leadership as it struggles to get domestic audiences to watch more — Netflix is writing a new script.
Amazon pledges to spend €16B+ in Germany in 2027 on AWS and AI data centers, its Leo satellite internet, Prime Video media production, and a Berlin robotics lab
Amazon.com Inc. said it will invest more than €16 billion ($17.9 billion) next year in Germany for operations including data centers …
OpenAI says its new models are better for building and migrating software in low-resource legacy programming languages like COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic
Our latest model advances bring stronger capabilities for building and migrating software in low-resource programming languages such as COBOL, Fortran, and Visual Basic.
Elon Musk says “I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, a gift worth ~$10.5B, after Anthropic committed 5% of its shares to APBF
Sources: US investigators pursuing ShinyHunters, which stole FBI data, identified executives at two ransomware negotiation firms who had unusually close ties
U.S. federal investigators pursuing the ShinyHunters hacking group that recently stole highly sensitive data from the FBI …
Eka Robotics, which is developing a “vision-force-action” architecture for its physical AI models, raised a $150M Series A at a $1.45B post-money valuation
Robots still aren't that good at picking things up, despite billions of dollars of investment and endless videos fed into deep learning models.
Amazon plans to hire 300K+ US seasonal, part-time, and full-time workers for the upcoming holiday shopping season, up 20% YoY, paying $20-$24/hour on average
Amazon.com Inc. plans to hire more than 300,000 workers during the holiday shopping season, up 20% from a year ago …
Note-taking tool Otter.ai raised $320M in non-dilutive capital from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund; PitchBook says it raised $50M prior to this round
Meeting note-taking tool Otter.ai announced on Tuesday that it has raised $320 million from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund …
Ant-backed Mynt, which runs mobile wallet app GCash, rose as much as 2.4% in Manila after raising $841M in the Philippines' largest-ever IPO, valuing it at ~$7B
The fintech company raised over $841 million from its IPO — A financial-technology company backed by Ant International climbed …
Anthropic's IPO prospectus: H1 2026 revenue of $16.3B, ~20% from two customers, vs. $1.1B in H1 2025, and an $80.7B net loss driven by accounting charges
In a new draft prospectus viewed by the Journal, the AI giant disclosed an $80.7 billion net loss for the first half of 2026 and a long list of risk factors
OpenAI acquires Orchestra Bio, which builds AI agents for managing drug development, and plans to integrate its tech into OpenAI life sciences suite Rosalind
OpenAI has acquired Orchestra Bio, a startup building AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies manage drug development, the ChatGPT maker shared exclusively with Axios.
Dream Labs, which offers a public API for its Dream-1 robot foundation model trained on human videos, raised a $90M seed led by B Capital and Kindred Ventures
This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more. … Want to make your dumb robot smart? $3 an hour is all it costs.
Sources: OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments before Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO, at a $1.4T+ valuation; source: OpenAI could raise ~$30B
OpenAI is racing to secure investor commitments before rival Anthropic's expected public market debut in mid-November …
Sensor Tower: Muse passed 10.9M downloads since its September debut, 10.2M of them in the US, becoming the 12th app to hit 10M US downloads in its first 40 days
Meta's AI companion, Muse, is now one of only a dozen mobile apps to have reached 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market.
Arda, which builds AI software and agents to accelerate assembly lines and manufacturing, raised $230M at a $1.5B valuation led by Altimeter, Accel, and Khosla
OpenAI's former research chief has been quietly building a startup that aims to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. using AI.
The UK CMA proposes that Apple lower fees and remove technical barriers to its contactless tech to help Apple Pay rivals; a consultation runs until November 17
Britain's competition regulator said on Tuesday it was seeking to loosen Apple's grip on contactless payments by proposing …
Seoul-based data center infrastructure company Elice falls 30%+ in its Kosdaq debut, the worst-ever opening day for a sizable Korean IPO, after raising ~$151M
Data-center infrastructure company Elice Inc. plunged in its trading debut in South Korea, dragged down by swirling concern about the outlook for the industry.
Apple says it will commit up to $100M over three years to Pennsylvania-based Perryman, a titanium supplier for the iPhone Duo, and expand its Qnity partnership
Apple is adding a U.S. titanium supplier for its new iPhone Duo and expanding domestic production of camera components for the iPhone 18 Pro …
Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan plans to leave in 2027, after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg's top DC adviser; Kaplan helped Meta get close to Trump
Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, will leave Meta next year after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg's top Washington adviser.
Ramp says it applied to the US OCC for a trust bank charter that, if approved, would allow it to offer fiduciary investment management and digital asset custody
Financial technology firm Ramp said it applied with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a trust bank charter …
Analysis: London fell from 7th to last place out of 18 European capitals for median mobile download speed from 2021 to 2026; 5G adoption has outrun 5G capacity
London has slipped from seventh to last among 18 European capitals for median mobile download speed since 2021.
Estonia-based web traffic security tools startup Blackwall raised a $100M Series C led by AVP at a $2.2B valuation, after raising a €45M Series B in March 2025
Estonia-based Blackwall, which builds web traffic security tools for hosting providers, said on Tuesday that it has raised $100 million at a $2.2 billion valuation.
Inception debuts Mercury 3, a diffusion LLM that it says tops GPT-6 Luna, Claude Haiku 5.5, and GLM-5.3 Flash on agentic benchmarks while being 4x to 8x faster
W — hile the AI industry has bet heavily on LLMs and the massive data centers needed to scale them …
A US judge dismisses a civil sexual abuse lawsuit brought against Sam Altman by his sister, after she refused to appear for an independent medical examination
Sam Altman on Tuesday won the dismissal of a civil lawsuit filed by his sister accusing the OpenAI co-founder and chief executive …
Sources: DeepSeek and Huawei are collaborating on future AI chip designs; DeepSeek plans to start using Ascend 950DT for pre-training as soon as 2026's end
DeepSeek is working closely with Huawei Technologies to shape the design of future AI chips, two people familiar with the matter said …
TikTok staff depositions: TikTok executives ignored internal warnings about child sexual exploitation on Live, where staff said minors appeared in livestreams
TikTok employees repeatedly raised concerns internally about the risks the short-form video app posed to children …
Sources: OpenAI has retreated from advocating for strict export controls on US chipmakers selling to China, a boon for Nvidia and aligning with President Trump
OpenAI has changed its tune on China. Nvidia is a big winner. — OpenAI for much of last year advocated for strict limits …
Four Z.ai founders participated in a 2018 to 2021 research project co-funded by CGTRI, which the UK's MI5 said had “very strong ties” to China's main spy agency
Four founders of one of China's most promising artificial intelligence companies, Z.AI Co., worked on research …
Sources: ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent ordered 3M+ of Nvidia's new RTX PRO 5500 GPUs, worth $35B+, in a rush to secure less powerful, export-compliant chips
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia's new RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards with a collective sticker price …
Foursquare co-founder says the company was acquired in September in a deal resulting in a $0 payout for equity holders, and faults leadership installed in 2021
After 17 years, FSQ's ending has been written. Some thoughts on our final years, an effort to honor the team …
Sources: Polymarket's investors pressured CEO Shayne Coplan to fix its financial controls; Elon Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, joined its board and now helps daily
When Founders Fund considered investing in Polymarket in 2025, it learned that the prediction-market startup's young chief executive …
Spotify launches paid podcast memberships in 34 markets, including the US; creators can offer perks like bonus content or fewer ads and keep 90% of the revenue
Spotify on Tuesday launched paid memberships, a new way for podcasters to make money from their biggest fans beyond paywalled bonus episodes.
Chinese state media: China inaugurates the National Data Group, a new state-owned enterprise that will focus on developing and utilizing data resources
China on Tuesday inaugurated the National Data Group, a new state-owned enterprise that will focus on developing and utilising data resources …
Mercury CEO Immad Akhund says the fintech hit $1B in annualized revenue, up ~50% YoY, now has 450K+ customers, and is launching a payroll service
I sat down with Mercury CEO Immad Akhund — We just published my conversation with Mercury CEO Immad Akhund on the Newcomer Podcast.
Survey: 20% of US adults regularly consume news on TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020; 39% of those aged 18 to 29 and 25% of those aged 30 to 49 do so regularly
TikTok is primarily known for short-form video sharing, but it has also become a common place for many people to get news.
ASI, which makes AI tools for the military and air traffic controllers, raised a $325M Series C at a $3B valuation, after winning an $875M FAA contract in June
Startup ASI raised $325 million in new funding from investors, allowing the company to expand an artificial intelligence system …
Google DeepMind says four Gemini 4 Argon agents beat Minecraft without any human help in 27 hours and 14 minutes, costing $1,620 at Argon's planned 2027 price
Salesforce agrees to acquire AI-powered marketing platform Braze for nearly $5.7B in enterprise value, paying $47.50 per share, set to close from February 2027
Salesforce Inc. has agreed to buy Braze Inc., an artificial intelligence-powered platform for marketers, for almost $5.7 billion in enterprise value.
Oro Mobility, a Hertz-owned fleet management business that has a deal to manage Uber's planned Lucid robotaxi fleet starting in San Francisco, raised $80M
Billionaire hedge fund investor Steve Cohen is backing a new $80 million investment in Oro Mobility, a Hertz-owned business positioning itself …
Sources: Sam Altman told OpenAI staff of three AI endgames: an IAEA-style regulator, a CERN-like lab merger, or one lab using RSI to “melt everyone else's GPUs”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week told employees about three proposals the industry has discussed for how to safely develop AI …
Tolan, an AI assistant focused on users that are not tech-savvy, raised $30M from USV, Khosla Ventures, and Homebrew, and says 70% of its users are women
Daytona, which is building cloud infrastructure for AI agents, raised a $60M Series B led by FirstMark at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to ~$91M
AI agents need somewhere to work—and Ivan Burazin thinks the existing cloud providers aren't the right answer.
AI infrastructure startup Modal says it plans to start using Nvidia's Vera CPUs for the first time for hosting agents, alongside its current Intel and AMD chips
Firefly, whose AI software connects with existing cameras, radios, and sensors to detect incidents and coordinate responses in real time, raised a $20M Series A
Firefly, a physical AI safety startup, emerged from stealth with a $20 million Series A led by Definition Capital, CEO James Batt Buckley tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Vinted sees an influx of listings suspected of containing stolen goods following widespread French riots, which hit Sephora, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and others
Chinese robovan maker Neolix raised a $400M Series E led by Boyu, taking total funding to $1.4B+; it operates 30K+ vehicles in 300+ cities across 20 countries
Neolix Technologies Co., a Chinese maker of driverless delivery vehicles, raised $400 million to fuel its global expansion.
Prism Data, which provides credit-scoring data and analytics that help lenders assess borrowers, raised a $20M Series A led by Story Ventures
AI chip startup Tenstorrent raised a $1.5B Series E led by Trace Capital and Innovation X at a $6.2B valuation, up from $2.6B after raising $700M in 2024
Character.AI's Chapter 11 court filings indicate a two-part deal with Disney to transfer talent and tech, shielding Disney from Character.AI's legal liabilities
The US FTC clears Publicis' $2.2B LiveRamp acquisition, subject to a consent decree requiring equal access to LiveRamp's data connectivity tools for all clients
A look at Anthropic's opaque, five-member Long-Term Benefit Trust, where members own no Anthropic equity but hold enormous sway by appointing most of its board
SCOTUS rejects an appeal by BMG, Sony Music, UMG, and Warner Music, upholding a decision that copyright termination rights apply globally, not just in the US
Pigment, a French startup that makes AI-powered software to help businesses forecast finances, spin up slide decks, and more, raised $250M at a $2.3B valuation
Pigment, a French AI company that competes with Microsoft's Excel and PowerPoint, has raised $250 million in a funding round …
Elon Musk says Tesla and SpaceX have formed special committees to discuss a possible merger and calls the possibility of a Tesla-SpaceX merger a “good idea”
Andrew J. Hawkins /The Verge:
Alibaba, Tencent, and Huawei are pouring billions into data centers in Shaoguan, China, a hinterland region with cheap power and a cool climate, angering locals
Residents in remote region of Shaoguan hope country's AI infrastructure push will deliver boom that has long eluded them
Source: Anthropic is preparing a model with better intuition and reasoning that can discern underlying intentions and is better at thinking outside of the box
Netflix says despite investor concern about its view-hours growth, its engagement is “healthy” and it will try to bring more third-party content to its service
Do they want people watching 26 hours day by 2035? [embedded post]See also Mediagazer
CyberSN: US cybersecurity job postings fell 26.4% YoY to a four-year low of 235,786 roles from January to September; AI security engineer demand soared 268.3%
Netflix says it expects FY 2026 ad revenue of ~$2.7B, under its ~$3B forecast, and its Q4 operating margin will be impacted due to costs associated with layoffs
Todd Spangler /Variety:
Super Micro reports preliminary Q1 revenues of $18.5B to $19.5B, vs. $15B est., and gross margins of 12% to 12.5%; SMCI jumps 11%+ after hours
Tel Aviv-based doubleAI releases a code execution model for improving GPU and CPU performance; doubleAI raised $220M, using ~50% to buy 1,000 Nvidia B300 chips
Analysis: companies are set for a massive acceleration of 50GW+ in data center capacity additions in 2027; 24GW+ across 40 campuses are in the advanced stages
How the data center industry courts kids amid a backlash: 11+ firms and groups hosting field trips since 2025, flag kits and cards for first graders, and more
SpaceX reports Q3 capex of $19.6B, up from $6.9B a year earlier, and Q3 connectivity revenue, which includes Starlink, up 69% YoY to $5.2B
Becky Peterson /Wall Street Journal:NEW
How Democrats, who polls predict will flip at least one chamber of Congress in the midterm elections, are preparing to aggressively scrutinize the AI industry
Report: Anthropic's draft S-1 shows it spent ~$9B on compute and infrastructure in H1, up from $2.3B a year earlier, and could spend $750B in the coming years
David Morris /Bloomberg: