Shopify Plans Muse Checkout; Amazon Blocks It
Shopify reported $115.57 billion in second-quarter GMV as it planned a Muse–Shop Pay integration; Amazon blocked Muse and Walmart built an agent gateway. Their different approaches put agentic commerce authorization beneath the shopping interface.
Big Tech Returned 9.3% of Cash as AI Plans Topped $3T
Five tech giants returned 9.3% of cash while their AI spending commitments exceeded $3 trillion. OpenAI sought less funding, Google reported lower monetization in AI Mode, and Binance drew on company funds after a $6.36 billion theft.
Oracle’s Leases Show the Limits of AI Debt Hedges
Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet spent $31.5 billion on capex and leases in 2016. Now debt insurance on five major technology companies is at its highest level since 2021, while AI capacity commitments extend years ahead of the revenue they are meant to produce.
Binance's $6.36B Theft Put Company Funds on the Line
The FBI linked Binance’s October 2026 theft to TraderTraitor, which it also blamed for Bybit’s $1.5 billion hack. Binance said it reserved more than $6.34 billion in company funds to protect customers.
Copilot Cited Ballot Brief in 75% of Tested Midterm Replies
AI election information sources now gain reach when chatbots choose them: Copilot cited Ballot Brief in 75% of tested midterm responses, while ChatGPT cited it in 22%.
Binance says it has covered 90% of its hack losses, having set aside $6.34B+ of company funds; the remaining 10% is in less liquid tokens
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said on Saturday that it was able to cover 90% of the amount stolen during its recent hack.
Binance has started resuming withdrawals in phases, including for BTC and ETH, after covering 95% of the $6.3B in tokens stolen in the hack by TraderTraitor
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said it would resume withdrawals in phases after covering 95% of the $6.3 billion …
Sources: OpenAI has secured ~$11B in commitments for its latest funding round, less than half its initial $30B target, and expects to raise more in coming weeks
The ChatGPT maker's latest funding round values it at $1.25 trillion, less than its $1.4 trillion target
John Ternus says Apple doesn't “want to ship AI for AI's sake” and that Tim Cook is “available to help wherever I ask” on policy; Ternus has yet to meet Trump
Apple doesn't need fixing, and it doesn't want drama. Its new leader is a “product guy” who bleeds six colors.
Google's data center energy head says space data centers cost up to 100x more than Earth-based ones, and US power supply is sufficient but permits are slow
Data centers in space could cost up to 100 times as much as those on Earth, Google's head of data center energy said this week …
Anthropic says a malicious actor used access to Cursor's marketplace to publish a “tampered” copy of the Claude Code extension, which it didn't build or publish
We're working with Cursor on this incident, but it wasn't a compromise of Anthropic's systems or employee laptops. A malicious actor used access to Cursor's marketplace to publish a tampered copy of t...
When talking about local inference, Sam Altman says supply-constrained DRAM is better used in data centers than sitting in PCs and “being used 5% of the time”
S&P downgraded Meta's outlook from stable to negative, citing high capex and negative free cash flow; META fell 15% in October, its worst month in four years
Meta's outlook has been revised downward by S&P Global Ratings on concerns surrounding cash flow and AI spending.
How AI detectors like Pangram are changing human writing: authors drop em dashes, “not X, but Y” phrasing, and words like “delve”, or add typos, to look human
As AI transforms writing and detectors like Pangram police what counts as machine-generated …
OpenAI plans a post-midterms policy and PR blitz, pushing mandatory “speed limits” for powerful AI and rebranding its data centers as “AI compute campuses”
Right after Tuesday's midterms, OpenAI will unleash a policy and PR blitz to try to get in sync with the new Washington …
Sources: Meta built a prototype humanoid robot with Chinese firm Fourier in three months and is building a second; Meta says it has no plans to sell these units
Meta Platforms has built a prototype humanoid with Chinese robotics company Fourier and is already working on a second version …
As AI models commoditize, lasting wealth will accrue to those controlling chokepoints like distribution, payment rails, and a stablecoin dollar, not to the labs
Scarce, controllable positions of Economic Power whose holders durably capture the gains of Increasingly Capable and diffused intelligence.
Researchers are paid $5K for reporting a bug to OpenAI that would let attackers run code in logged-in sessions of all who opened the hacker's ChatGPT share link
A malicious ChatGPT share link could run an attacker's code in the logged-in session of anyone who opened it …
Tests: chatbots rely on three obscure AI-built voter sites for US midterm answers; Copilot cited the error-prone Ballot Brief in 75% of tests and ChatGPT in 22%
Frustrated with hunting for information on political candidates, Ben Torres Ezrick set out to build a one-stop shop for voters.
Sources: neoclouds CoreWeave, Nebius, and Nscale have effectively been shut out of the bond market in recent weeks as lenders and investors demand tougher terms
Lenders and investors are getting choosier about their bets and demanding stricter terms, as the AI build-out enters a new phase
Intel stock closed down 28.58% on Friday, its worst day since the 1970s and wiping ~$12B off US government's stake, after issuing weaker-than-expected guidance
Saudi Aramco acquires a 49% stake in AI startup Humain, contributing ~$2.6B in cash in 2026 plus AI, compute, and digital assets; Saudi Arabia's PIF retains 51%
Join the Leaders Making Gaming's Next Big Deals. GamesBeat NEXT brings 500+ executives, CEOs, founders, and investors to San Francisco …
DeepSeek open sources Super-Agent, a coding agent research prototype it says proactively monitors developer group chats for coding issues and suggests solutions
DeepSeek has released a prototype of a more autonomous coding agent as it seeks to challenge Anthropic PBC's popular Claude Code.
TRM Labs attributes the Binance hack to North Korea-based TraderTraitor, which drained ~$6.36B from Binance wallets across 10 blockchains, mostly in ~20 minutes
North Korean hackers were behind a $6.3 billion raid on cryptocurrency exchange Binance, according to US blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs.
A profile of White House OSTP Director Michael Kratsios, an ex-Peter Thiel aide who is among a handful of players steering the Trump administration's AI policy
The fight to regulate AI and reform American science runs through a little-known White House office, and the Thiel-turned-Trump aide in charge of itLinkedIn:Paul SemenzaandColossusLinkedIn:Paul Semenz...
Lumaril, which develops AI software for optimizing industrial production by connecting to existing control systems, raised a $66M Series A at a $400M valuation
The AI-for-manufacturers company has raised $66 million at a $400 million valuation — Think of running a production line on a factory floor as a kind of art.
A look at VC-backed glossy magazine Colossus, whose glowing profiles of Zuckerberg and other tech titans win industry praise, while Kara Swisher says it is PR
Inside tech's corner offices, there's no love left for the news media. “I think you're the problem, the media,” …
Reddit closed down 29.27% on Friday, the worst drop since becoming a public company in 2024, after it forecast weak Q4 revenue
Google says its Suncatcher prototype data center satellite is online after an October 1 launch, with Gemma 4 generating a haiku about being in space
Insurance software maker Guidewire agrees to acquire Hyperexponential, which makes AI-powered insurance underwriting and pricing software, for $1.7B+ in cash
Insurance software maker Guidewire (GWRE.N) said on Tuesday it would buy hyperexponential for $1.7 billion in cash and up to $400 million …
Solve: the cost of insuring against debt defaults at hyperscalers Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle has hit its highest level since 2021
With trillions riding on the artificial-intelligence trade, investors, traders and tech executives alike are hunting for high-stakes protection
Shanghai-based NeuroXess, which is developing BCI technology for movement support, speech decoding, and control of external devices, raised a ~$105M Series B
Chinese brain-computer interface startup NeuroXess has raised RMB 700 million in Series B funding, co-led by SDIC Juli, Shenzhen Capital Group and Qinzhi Capital.
A look at a crude campaign of cyberattacks by Russia-linked hacktivist groups that have caused physical damage in NATO-aligned countries over the past two years
Cyberattacks causing physical damage are on the rise in NATO countries, and the hackers carrying them out don't always understand what they're doing.LinkedIn:Ryan GallagherLinkedIn:Ryan Gallagher:My l...
Analysis: candidates backing a data center moratorium could win up to 15 of 36 US governors' races on Tuesday, including in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, and New York
As data centers have gone from obscurity to the top of voters' minds, midterm candidates are taking a stance on the issue.
Chainalysis says Binance hackers used automated money-laundering patterns not seen before; Elliptic: almost all of the $6.3B was taken in the first 30 minutes
Financial Times:
A look at growing bipartisan opposition to AI data centers in drought-stricken Arizona, where TSMC's chip fabs were welcomed but newer projects face backlash
How “get-paid-to” apps like Freecash, briefly a top five App Store app in September, pay users small sums to play games and help publishers find big spenders
Is getting paid to scroll a symptom of the economy or its entire future? — Last year, Jeremiah's TikTok started feeding him ads for a new way to make money.
ServiceNow confirms it acquired Israeli startup Sweep to speed up customers' migrations to its CRM, for an undisclosed price estimated at hundreds of millions
Bill McDermott said rollouts now take “a month ... 30 days, 60 days” for large companies, as ServiceNow pushes into CRM.
The FBI attributes the $6.3B Binance hack to North Korea's elite hacking unit TraderTraitor, which the agency has also blamed for the $1.5B Bybit hack in 2025
The FBI said that North Korea was responsible for stealing more than $6 billion in cryptocurrencies in a brazen hacking attack on Binance.
Sources: Baseten is raising ~$2B in two tranches, one valuing it at $26B and the other at $30B; Baseten was valued at $13B in June after raising $1.5B
Binance says it has reserved $6.34B+ in company funds, including $5B already held in impacted token assets, to deal with the fallout from the $6.3B hack
Rajveer Singh Pardesi /Reuters:
Sources: OpenAI now seeks ~$20B at a $1.25T valuation for its latest round, from $30B at a $1.4T valuation, as some investors cut commitments amid an AI selloff
ChatGPT maker is now seeking about $20bn at a $1.25tn valuation as it tempers its ambitions — OpenAI has slashed the target …
Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle have a collective $3T+ in AI spending commitments over the coming years, including Alphabet's $1T and Meta's $800B
OpenAI tightens limits on the weapons-related information that ChatGPT provides teens, even when a question appears harmless, as part of new safeguards
Enterprise voice AI tools provider Deepgram acquires Daily, which has raised $62M+ and develops open-source voice AI framework Pipecat, for an undisclosed sum
Binance says net outflows were $3.64B, or 2.1% of assets, in the 9.5 hours after it began restoring withdrawals; DefiLlama puts 24-hour net outflows at $4.05B
The exchange said the outflows equal 2.1% of its assets and that withdrawal volumes have eased after an initial spike.