01
VentureBeat ↗
Google rolled out Gemini 4 Argon globally through the Gemini API, to Google AI Pro subscribers in the Gemini app and AI Mode, and in its Antigravity coding tool for Ultra subscribers. The model is priced at an introductory $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens until November 30, after which the rate doubles to $4 and $20. Argon had been restricted since its late September announcement, when Google limited early access to trusted cybersecurity users over safety concerns. There is no free tier, so only paying users and developers can use it.
02
The Verge ↗
Federal prosecutors charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national on OpenAI's product team, with intercepting oral communications after a hidden audio recorder was found in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco headquarters. According to the complaint, the device was concealed in toilet paper and plugged into a USB port on the back of a television around September 28. OpenAI fired him and the FBI arrested him on October 9, and the company said it used its own AI models to analyze the device and trace it to him. OpenAI said it has no indication he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data.
03
CNBC Technology ↗
Character. AI, one of the best-known chatbot startups of the ChatGPT era, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware, citing high costs and litigation. Disney is the lead bidder, offering $20 million for a non-exclusive, permanent license to some of its intellectual property and certain legal claims, though rival bidders can still top the offer. The company listed assets and liabilities of $50 million to $100 million and says the platform will keep running during a sale expected to close in late November or early December. Character. AI settled five lawsuits over teen mental health crises and suicides in January, and Disney hired its former CEO Karandeep Anand as its first technology chief in September.
04
TechMeme ↗
Self-driving simulation software maker Applied Intuition has received investment offers that would value it at no less than $30 billion, The Information reported, roughly double the $15 billion valuation from its $600 million Series F. The offers could lead to a new funding round of $1 billion or more in the coming months. The company's annual recurring revenue was estimated at $830 million for 2025, about double the prior year. Applied Intuition has been pushing into defense, landing contracts with the US Army and $171 million in Department of Defense simulation testing work.
05
Bloomberg Technology ↗
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in Paris that the company will unveil about $2 billion in new European AI investments within the next week, on top of roughly $8 billion it has put into the continent over the past year. In France, Nvidia is taking minority stakes in Doctolib, Pigment, Genesis AI and Entalpic, and Huang met President Emmanuel Macron to discuss investment, open-source models and AI safety. Huang argued that open models can be tailored to local languages and national sovereignty, saying Europe needs to get in the race. The tour continues to London and Berlin, where Nvidia holds its GTC developer conference next week.
06
Bloomberg Technology ↗
Tencent raised about $5.7 billion in dollar and offshore yuan bonds, above the roughly $5 billion originally planned, as investor orders topped $23 billion despite worries about AI spending weighing on global markets. Its yuan notes priced at 2.40% for 10-year debt and 3.00% for 30-year debt, both 50 basis points below initial guidance. Bloomberg reported that most of the AI-related spending will go toward chip purchases, and Tencent's capital expenditure more than doubled to 96.3 billion yuan in the first half of 2026. It is Tencent's second offshore bond deal this year after a $4.7 billion sale in June.
07
CNBC Technology ↗
Apple unveiled HomeView, a $299 smart home display that serves as a showcase for its new AI-powered Siri, with pre-orders open now and shipping on November 13. The device comes in tabletop and wall-mounted versions with a 7-inch screen and an A18 chip, and it can recognize up to six household members by face to show each a personalized home screen. Siri AI is still labeled beta on the device, and personal features require a paired iPhone or iPad that supports Apple Intelligence. The launch puts Apple in direct competition with Amazon's Echo Show and Google's Nest Hub, both of which sell for far less.
08
Financial Times Tech ↗
Chinese companies have bought more than 1 million Nvidia gaming and workstation chips this year to make up for a shortage of AI computing power, the Financial Times reported, citing industry insiders. The chips, mostly the RTX Pro 6000D, RTX Pro 5000 and RTX 5090, are weaker than Huawei's Ascend 910C but can handle simpler AI workloads like parts of inference. China's domestic AI chip supply could reach about 3.5 million units this year, while demand may exceed 5 million. Nvidia has said its share of China's AI accelerator market is effectively zero because of US export controls.
09
Wired ↗
Super PACs in Leading the Future, the pro-AI political network that has raised more than $140 million, paid about $33 million to two Nevada firms with mailbox addresses, a Wired investigation found. Think Big, which mostly backs Democrats, paid Lantern Production Consultants about $20 million, while Republican-focused American Mission paid Summit Ridge Media Group roughly $13 million. The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing the firms may be hiding the consultants and vendors who actually received the money. Leading the Future denies wrongdoing.
10
ZDNet ↗
Linux creator Linus Torvalds has published an experimental kernel branch whose patches, test programs and first draft description were written with Claude Code under his direction. The eight-patch series lets the kernel read from the page cache without reference counting, and on his laptop one benchmark jumped from about 10 million reads per second to 30 to 33 million. He also used AI tools to untangle a hard-to-read kernel library, uncovering three additional bugs dating back to 2013. Torvalds said he now genuinely likes using AI as a tool, while warning that AI-generated contributions add real burden for maintainers.