American Express Has the Booking. Who Approves the Bill?
Base recorded more than 138 million agentic-commerce transactions in Q3 2026, but over 87% were under $0.10. American Express agreed to buy TheFork for $700 million while banks reportedly restricted some third-party agents from customer accounts.
Fluidstack's Price Without a Meter
Fluidstack announced an $830 million round at a $7.5 billion valuation in January; an October solicitation at $40 billion remained unconfirmed. Its Anthropic-linked buildout shows why a long lease and a comparable operating return are different things.
40,000 CVEs: NIST Now Picks Which to Analyze
The CVE program logged more than 40,000 entries in 2024. NIST narrowed detailed NVD analysis in April 2026, while OpenAI says one pipeline validated and patched 948 Linux vulnerabilities.
Cloudflare Blocks AI Crawlers on New Sites by Default
Cloudflare began blocking AI crawlers by default on new sites in July 2025 and says it has since blocked 416 billion AI-bot requests. Its Pay per Crawl beta has no publicly documented per-crawl price or publisher payout in the cited coverage.
TeraWulf’s $19 Billion Lease Still Awaits Power
Anthropic’s 20-year, roughly $19 billion Kentucky lease now sits beside Google credit support for a TeraWulf project not expected to deliver power until the second half of 2027. Oracle’s construction-loan market shows why the second commitment matters.
Voters in 38+ US jurisdictions pass data center bans or restrictions; TV network poll: 56% said AI and data centers were a major or crucial factor in their vote
In at least 38 jurisdictions voters rejected or restricted data centers, delivering a major setback to the AI industry. — SummaryLoading...
OpenAI pledges to change how it handles data center deals, including avoiding NDAs and lowering power usage during peak times, after Democrats' midterm wins
OpenAI said it will avoid nondisclosure agreements when it negotiates data center deals and ensure residents don't pay for the electricity …
Sources: at Jensen Huang's midterms event, tech executives expressed concern over anti-data center results; OpenAI discussed resetting its 2027 capacity plans
Americans' vote for anti-data center candidates and ballot measures could rein in AI's expansion and hobble economic growth
Data center shares fall as investors expect a slower AI buildout after Democrats' win; Hut 8 drops 23%, IREN 11%, Core Scientific 10%, and Applied Digital 7%
Wall Street closed sharply higher on Wednesday as Democrats' sweeping midterm election victory eased political uncertainty …
Elon Musk's preferred US midterm candidates, including Ken Paxton and Vivek Ramaswamy, lost almost everywhere; Musk spent ~$446M, a record for a non-candidate
Plans for buildout of data centers across Texas in doubt after Democrats won a surprise sweep.
OpenAI launches Images 2.6 in ChatGPT, Codex, and its API, saying it generates images 50% faster, and adds animated GIF creation from a prompt or a photo
You can use ChatGPT to edit a GIF's animation speed and individual frames. … ChatGPT can now create GIFs using a prompt or a photo uploaded to the AI chatbot.
MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display review: a gorgeous screen, touch is useful for some apps, and excellent speakers with deep bass, but pricey and no Face ID
Sure, touch is there, too. — Reviews … Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing …
Apple says it will check iCloud items shared to “Anyone with the link” for “harmful content” in 27.3 OS versions, and may delete the content or disable accounts
iOS 27.3 adds lots of new iPhone features, and it also makes a change to how public iCloud links work …
OpenAI details a pipeline that used an upcoming cyber model to validate and patch 948 local privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Linux for $1.2M in API costs
Security research that once required a separate, sustained investigation for each finding can increasingly be run as a systematic process.
Qualcomm signs a multiyear SpaceX deal to supply Dragonwing hardware and network software for “tens of thousands of cell sites” for a US-wide 5G network in 2027
Qualcomm Inc. will supply hardware components for SpaceX's planned nationwide terrestrial wireless network …
Microsoft rolls out to Xbox Insiders an Xbox PC app that launches up to 60% faster and has a design to match Xbox Cloud Gaming updates on the web and smart TVs
Xbox Insiders can start testing the new PC app today. … Microsoft is unveiling a new Xbox PC app that launches “up to 60 percent faster” than before …
Meta acquires Conductor, which lets developers run multiple AI coding agents in parallel; CEO Charlie Holtz says the team will join Meta Superintelligence Labs
Meta has acquired Conductor, an AI coding startup that lets software engineers manage multiple coding agents simultaneously …
OpenAI launches GPT-6 Cyber, which it says outperforms GPT-6 Astra on cyber benchmarks, is better at finding vulnerabilities, and is less likely to go rogue
Classified as ‘Critical,’ GPT-6 Cyber outperforms GPT-6 Astra on cyber-related benchmarks.
Sources: Apple cut some engineers' daily AI spending cap from $300 to $200 and plans cuts to as little as $100, as cost cutting stokes employee fears of layoffs
Apple Inc. is reducing employee budgets for artificial intelligence usage as part of a cost-cutting effort, even as the company seeks …
Anthropic launches Personal Finance in Claude, letting users connect bank and credit card accounts via Plaid with read-only access to analyze spending trends
Anthropic has released what appears to be its answer to ChatGPT Finances. — ZDNET's key takeaways
Meta President Dina Powell McCormick says building new US data centers will be “harder” after midterm results, but it will be easier to expand existing projects
Speaking at the WSJ Tech conference, Dina Powell McCormick says the company is more optimistic about scaling up its existing data centers
METR: Anthropic's models are improving about twice as fast as they did between March 2024 and October 2025, with internal AI use driving ~80% of acceleration
AI use within Anthropic may have doubled the company's pace of AI development, a new report from AI research nonprofit METR says.
Google says it will spend $17B to build its first Wyoming data center, pay for all the power it uses, and form a Community Council to address growth concerns
Alphabet Inc.'s Google will spend $17 billion to build a data center in Wyoming, formally putting a price tag on the proposal two days …
Meta raised €9B from its debut euro bond sale that drew a record €62B+ of orders, paying ~1.4x the risk premium Alphabet offered for similar bonds this week
Meta Platforms Inc. raised €9 billion from a debut euro debt bond sale that drew a record €53 billion of orders …
Pangram releases Pangram Image 1.0, which it says is state-of-the-art in AI image and AI video detection, and the smaller Image Flash 1.0 for AI video detection
State-of-the-art AI image and video detection with our latest Pangram Image models. … A few months ago, we released Pangram Image as a research preview.
Discord is moving its desktop app from Electron to Rust for improved speed and memory safety; its CTO shares an image of the Windows app using just 290MB of RAM
Discord is moving its apps fully over to the Rust programming language. … Discord is finally giving up on Electron …
Ricursive releases Ripple-65B Preview, a general-purpose variant of its AI model for advanced chip design, under Apache 2.0, costing $0.60 per 1M output tokens
There's another American victory worth paying attention to today: a new, open weights AI model that its creators claim scores …
Amazon partners with Uber to make Uber Eats the “official” US restaurant delivery partner for Amazon Prime subscribers, after previously partnering with Grubhub
Prime members can now order takeout straight from the Amazon app or website with waived delivery fees on orders over $25.
An interview with two Nintendo producers on the new Ocarina of Time remake for the Switch 2, which features modern gameplay mechanics like full camera control
Producers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi talk about bringing the first 3D Zelda to a whole new audience.
Qualcomm reports Q4 revenue down 8% YoY to $10.32B, above $10.1B est., net income up 140% to $1.25B, and handsets revenue down 26% to $5.14B; QCOM drops 9%+
Qualcomm Revenue Will Shift Away From Handsets, CFRA's Zino Says — Video Player is loading. — Unmute — Current Time 0:00 Loaded: 19.75% Playback Rate
Democratic gubernatorial wins from Texas and Georgia to Ohio and Pennsylvania are set to expose 50% of AI data center proposals to more scrutiny and pushback
now his AI empire faces a new threatSteven Rosenbush /Wall Street Journal:Democratic Wave Changes AI Policy CalculusParis Marx /Disconnect:US midterms delivered a blow to tech's AI ambitionsReuters:Cr...
Sequoia raised ~$10B in new funds, and announces it is shutting down its Arc accelerator and Scouts program, merging its early-stage and growth teams, and more
Sequoia Capital posted a memo to X on Wednesday morning titled “The Sequoia of Tomorrow” that's full of surprises.
Uber reports Q3 revenue up 10% YoY to $14.8B, Gross Bookings up 20% to $59.8B, trips up 16% to 4.1B, and plans to scale its autonomous fleet to 2,000+ in 2027
Ride-hailing group aims to have 2,000 robotaxis on road by end of next year but will still trail rival Waymo
Motorola launches the $1,599+ Signature 27, featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, a 6.8-inch Tandem OLED display, and seven years of OS updates
Motorola is officially back in the flagship space, with its new Signature 27 phone available for pre-order starting today, but it'll cost a pretty penny.
Berlin-based Pliant raised an $80M Series C led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, as it opens its B2B payments infrastructure to AI agents
Claude, ChatGPT and in-house AI agents can now run business payments through Pliant. The Berlin fintech, past $100M in recurring revenue, will expand in North America.
Snap reports Q3 revenue up 14% YoY to $1.72B, in line with est., DAUs up 4% to 495M, below 499M est., and ad revenue up 4%, below 6% est.; SNAP drops 10%+
Snap Inc. fell after the company reported third-quarter ad revenue and user growth that missed estimates, with Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel acknowledging that …
Apple rolls out Retention Messaging, letting developers show personalized text, images, or special offers to users who are trying to cancel their subscription
Apple today rolled out a new subscription retention tool for developers looking to reduce cancellations. Here are the details.
Arm reports Q2 revenue up 27% YoY to $1.44B, vs. $1.38B est., royalty revenue up 8% to $670M, vs. $720.8M est., and licensing revenue up 50% to $773M
Arm Holdings (O9Ty.F), beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue on Wednesday, driven by higher royalty payments and licensing fees …
X rolls out a redesigned web app country by country for signed-in users, replacing three servers with one to improve load times especially on slow connections
X is moving signed-in users to its new web app one country at a time, but it's already using the rewrite for X's logged-out web experience.
Microsoft previews using smartphones as controllers for Xbox Cloud Gaming on supported smart TVs and Wi-Fi cloud gaming support for the Xbox Nano Controller
Starting today, we're rolling out two previews for XBOX Cloud Gaming. On supported Smart TVs, you can use your phone as a controller when you don't have one nearby.
Autonomous drone delivery startup Zipline raised $1.5B at a $21.5B valuation, up from $7.85B after raising $600M+ in January, and plans to grow US manufacturing
CEO Keller Cliffton says the company's skyrocketing valuation is a sign that autonomous delivery has finally gained wider acceptance
United Airlines is rolling out a custom native Spotify seatback app across its fleet, letting users log into their accounts, powered by Starlink's Wi-Fi
Powered by Starlink Wi-Fi, United Airlines is rolling out a custom seatback Spotify app that lets travelers stream personal playlists and podcasts at 35,000 feet.
Agility Robotics begins trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker AGLT after a SPAC merger, the first dedicated humanoid robotics company to go public in the US
Agility Robotics Inc. is set to become the first dedicated humanoid company to go public in the US, marking a major milestone …
Crypto and AI super PACs spent $250M in 2026 midterms, but lost 9/12 competitive races called so far, spending $74.7M on losing candidates and $28.3M on winners
and came up nearly dryNew York Times:Ohio's Senate Race Is a Rare Loss for Crypto Under TrumpUnchained:Crypto Super PACs Back the Winning Side in 28 of 30 Called House Races, 1 of 4 Senate RacesIsabel...
AppLovin reports Q3 revenue up 55% YoY to $2.19B, above $2.07B est., net income up 72% to $1.44b, and forecasts Q4 revenue above estimates; APP surges 30%+
AppLovin's stock is popping after ‘clearly positive’ earnings results — AppLovin's forecast impressed investors.
Sources detail Dario Amodei's AI beliefs, shaped by forums like GiveWell and based on EA and “rationalism”, and his disputes with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman
One night in 2007, Dario Amodei regaled a friend who was visiting him at Princeton University with his thoughts on …
Democrats who ran on data center opposition and AI regulation won Congress seats in OH, PA, WI, CO; some see a mandate to use their new gavels against Big Tech
Democrats' decisive midterms victory marked a warning shot to politicians who choose to align with the artificial intelligence industry …
The French Blood Establishment says external providers' blood cold storage units were hacked to raise temperatures, in a wave of refrigeration cyberattacks
Sources: Goldman Sachs and Apollo are in talks with investors to sell portions of SpaceX's ~$40B chip financing, asking some for up to $500M before syndication
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc. are in talks with Wall Street investors to start selling portions …
Source: Meta has decided to stop naming its AI models after fruit, as they didn't suit its lofty AI ambitions; its latest, Wonder Full, was codenamed Watermelon
Meta is done with fruits. — The social media giant has internally decided to stop naming its AI models after fruit, a person familiar with the matter said.
Sources: China told SoftBank it will not allow the $5.4B acquisition of ABB's robotics division to go ahead; the Swiss-Swedish company employs ~12,700 in China
Swiss-Swedish company's unit is focused on Chinese market and has mega-factory in Pudong — China has told SoftBank it will not allow …
Google, Meta, and TikTok file lawsuits to block a California law that bans online platforms from providing “psychologically exploitative features” to under-16s
Google (GOOGL.O), Meta Platforms (META.O) and TikTok sued California to block enforcement of a new state law intended …
Sources: Micron suspends construction of its $3B to $4.5B Fab 11E facility in Taiwan, set for 2028, due to mounting uncertainties over a local labor dispute
Micron Technology Inc. has suspended plans for a memory chip plant in Taiwan due to a protracted labor dispute …
Figma reports Q3 revenue up 43% YoY to $391.4M, above est., gross margin of 80%, below 81% est., and lifts its 2026 revenue outlook; FIG drops 6%+
Figma (FIG.N) is leaning on cashing in on its AI features through credits and using its first-party model to power tasks …
ElevenLabs says users can now publish AI-generated music made with ElevenMusic directly on SoundCloud and that users have created 25M+ tracks using its models
Audio AI company ElevenLabs on Thursday said users will be able to publish AI-generated music created using its ElevenMusic platform directly on SoundCloud.
Sources: Anthropic and AP struck a licensing deal just before the US midterms, the first time Anthropic paid a digital news publisher to license its content
The arrangement marks the first time the artificial intelligence firm has paid a digital news publisher to license its content
OpenAI acquires developer tools startup Pierre Computer for an undisclosed amount and plans to integrate Pierre's Code Storage feature directly into Codex
Catherine Wu, who left Anthropic last week, says she joined OpenAI as Product Lead for Core Products; Wu was the Head of Product for Claude Code for two years
Sources: Microsoft rejects an option to more than double its Texas data center contract with Nscale, dealing a fresh blow to Nscale's ambitions for a $35B IPO
Fresh blow ahead of start-up's IPO as tech giant turns down option to more than double Texas data centre contract
Waymo plans to end its exclusive robotaxi partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta in January 2028 and switch to its own app to improve consistency for users
Sony reports Q2 revenue of ~$21.7B, operating profit of $3.94B, both above est., and 2.6M PS5 sales, as GTA VI sparks a US sales jump, especially of the PS5 Pro
OpenAI President Greg Brockman says H1 2026 was “pretty rough”, but agentic coding tools, GPT-5.6 Sol, and ChatGPT Work drove a “revenue inflection” in Q3
The ChatGPT maker's president said it experienced a ‘revenue inflection’ in the third quarter of 2026, driven by a growing enterprise business
Pro-AI PAC Leading the Future ended the midterms with $20M+ in the bank, from ~$100M, after focusing on safe bipartisan candidates; its riskier bets fell flat
Leading the Future, backed by Silicon Valley's biggest billionaires, had a war chest of $100 million and an aggressive stance against AI regulation.
CoreWeave's bonds hit new lows after Democrats in favor of slowing down data center construction win gubernatorial races, including in Texas; CRWV drops 9.9%
Katherine Schwartz /Bloomberg:
US tech giants' shares jump after Democrats' midterm sweep, as investors bet that a Democrat-controlled Congress will slow AI capex that is draining cash flow
The shares of US technology giants led the market higher on Wednesday as investors bet that a Democrat-controlled Congress will slow …
Greece's parliament approves a 10% capital gains tax on crypto, exempting gains of up to €500 a year, in the country's first comprehensive crypto tax framework
Greece's parliament approved on Thursday a bill that imposes a 10% capital gains tax on cryptocurrencies …
Defense tech startup Shield AI raises $2.5B to help acquire radar company Echodyne, including a $1B Series H at a $28.8B valuation, up from $12.7B in March
Defense tech startup set to acquire Echodyne Corp., which sells radar sensors to government and commercial customers.
Mercedes-Benz rolls out conversational models that run directly on its cars instead of the cloud through a partnership with MIT spinout Liquid AI
The automaker is working with Liquid AI, a startup that spun out of MIT, to run AI models directly in the car, rather than the cloud
Sources: Palo Alto Networks is in talks to acquire Israeli startup Clutch Security, which develops software for tracking passwords used by AI agents, for ~$500M
Palo Alto Networks is in talks to buy three-year-old Israeli security startup Clutch Security for around $500 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Dropbox plans to acquire AI storage startup Tigris Data for $350M, its largest acquisition to date; Tigris raised ~$31.9M from Spark, a16z, and others
Dropbox announced Thursday plans to acquire Tigris Data for $350 million in a transaction the company told Crunchbase News would mark …
Tencent releases its Hy4 open-weight foundation model, which it says joins the top tier of Chinese open-weight AI for the first time, and plans a Flash version
Aina, which raised $5.5M, launches an “AI ring” with a screen, joystick, and mic to let users talk to their AI agents, take notes, control Apple TV, and more
Hardware startup Aina released a smart ring today that features a screen, a joystick, and a mic so that you can talk to your agents and take notes.
Analysis: SpaceX revises its 2027 data center capacity target up to a record ~13GW, roughly equivalent to all of Google's capacity from 1999-2026 in 1.5 years
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue says his P(doom) is “close to zero”, arguing that future AI risks stem from closed frontier AI labs, not open-source systems
“Most of the risk is actually created by a couple of players building behind closed doors,” Clément Delangue said of the need for open source AI.
Google says it expanded voluntary exit buyouts in June to employees across Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland to manage costs amid huge AI spending
Humble Robotics, which is building cabless electric autonomous trucks for regional routes under 250 miles, raised $51M, taking its total funding to $75M
Many self-driving truck companies are trying to teach existing trucks to drive themselves. Humble Robotics thinks the truck itself needs a rethink.
Sources: China's export curbs on critical metals have disrupted supplies of micro drill bits made mainly from tungsten carbide, used in PCBs and chip substrates
TAIPEI — China's export controls on critical metals have disrupted supplies of micro drill bits, little-known but critical components …
Study: UK consumer AI spending passes £1B annually, with 5.1% of adults paying for subscriptions as of July 2026; Claude is rapidly catching up to ChatGPT
UK consumers are spending over £1 billion ($1.4 billion) a year on artificial intelligence subscriptions …
Sources and company memo: Chinese NAND flash maker YMTC has put its Shanghai IPO on hold as China tightens share sale approvals; YMTC sought to raise ~$4.9B
Flash-memory chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Co has put its Shanghai IPO on hold, according to a company memo and three people …
METR: Anthropic redacted much of the “most informative” evidence from METR's 100-page report, so readers “must rely on our judgment more than we consider ideal”
@metr_evals:
Nintendo reports Q2 net profit down 16% YoY to $468M, as rising Switch 2 component costs cut into its margins; Switch 2's H1 FY 2027 sales fell 37% YoY to 6.49M
Takashi Mochizuki /Bloomberg:
Titan OS, which monetizes smart TVs via ads and FAST deals, raised $46M in equity and debt, taking its total funding to $110M, and says it now has 30M users
Filing: AMD will pay ~$2.9B in cash and stock for AI chip startup Taalas, with $1.4B dependent on unspecified conditions; the deal was announced in August
Revolut hits a $115B valuation, up from $75B in November 2025, after a secondary share sale led by Glade Brook, Coatue, and others, as it plans a US bank launch
Sunil Mittal, who founded India's second-largest telco Airtel, says Airtel-backed OneWeb can build a satellite-internet network independent of the US and China
The MacBook Pro's PROLED XDR display is the best display you can buy right now, but touching it is not very ergonomic and lack of Apple Pencil support is weird
and I still can't believe my eyesJonny Evans /Computerworld:Apple VP Tom Boger on MacBook Pro weight, design, and the return of the glowing logoTimothy Beck Werth /Mashable:M6 MacBook Pro review: A qu...
Circle reports Q3 revenue up 17% YoY to $875M, driven in part by its ARC token presales, net income up 5% to $226M, and says it is cutting 5% of its employees
Sources: Apple plans to raise ~$7B from its first investment-grade bond offering in more than a year to fund share buybacks, dividends, and capital expenditures
Google plans to spend $15B across 2027 and 2028 to expand its data center and cloud operations in Malaysia, including on new computing hubs and water security
Sources: Tron, Tether, Binance, and TRM Labs' T3 Financial Crime Unit quietly dissolved in August due to slow response times, after freezing $250M in assets
Adzuna: UK entry-level job postings mentioning AI are up almost 3x since early 2025; Indeed: one in six openings in AI-exposed fields now mentions AI, up 2x YoY
Artificial intelligence skills are no longer optional for the hundreds of thousands of young Britons seeking their first job …
UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan says AI is set to add £55B to £140B to the economy by 2030, below a £400B estimate from a Google-led report touted by officials
OpenAI says GPT-6 Cyber will first launch to a limited number of customers in its Daybreak Red program and has found 81+ “novel” vulnerabilities in Firefox
OpenAI announced a new cybersecurity-focused model Thursday, citing internal benchmark testing that shows improvements …
Chinese chipmakers' aggressive hiring of experienced engineers is increasingly at odds with efforts to protect trade secrets in Taiwan and South Korea
TeraWulf secures a credit backstop agreement with Google to support financing for its data center project with Anthropic in Kentucky, set to come online H2 2027
Sources: Google DeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs is in talks to raise ~$5B at a ~$50B valuation; the AI drug discovery startup raised $2.1B in May led by Thrive
A software engineer details how he went from merging eight to 20 pull requests per month to 200+ after joining AI-native creator startup Tano eight months ago
AI sales automation startup Nooks secures a $500M commitment from General Catalyst's CVF, which will take a share of the returns its capital helps generate
Sources: Microsoft is tightening oversight of some data center projects, stepping away from those it deems risky, and debating whether to ink new neocloud deals
Brody Ford /Bloomberg:
Nintendo reports Q2 net profit down 16% YoY to $468M, as rising Switch 2 component costs cut into its margins; Switch 2's H1 FY 2027 sales fell 37% YoY to 6.49M
Takashi Mochizuki /Bloomberg:NEW