01
TechCrunch AI ↗
The Financial Times reported that OpenAI cut its latest round by $10 billion, to about $20 billion, at a $1.25 trillion valuation instead of $1.4 trillion. A first close is expected under $20 billion after some investors cut their allocations. The Wall Street Journal reported about $11 billion secured so far, with a UAE group that includes MGX as the largest expected participant. OpenAI has not confirmed the figures.
02
Bloomberg ↗
DeepSeek published the code for Super-Agent, which it calls a research prototype and not an official product. The project is on GitHub under an MIT license and can work in one code repository and listen to team chats, including Feishu. Bloomberg reported that it can watch developer chats for coding problems and suggest fixes without being summoned. DeepSeek says the public code differs from its internal version, and that some ideas in its write-up are not built yet.
03
Aramco ↗
Saudi Aramco closed a deal for 49 percent of HUMAIN, the AI company controlled by the Public Investment Fund, which keeps 51 percent. Aramco will contribute about $2.6 billion in cash during 2026, plus AI, compute, and digital assets. The companies said the deal supports a plan to deploy 3 gigawatts of AI data center capacity by 2030. Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said the firm has recorded $11.3 billion in technology value since 2023, with a significant share from AI.
04
Wired ↗
Exin Therapeutics let a Claude Sonnet 5 agent pick a gene therapy from 19 options and run an injector on a live mouse with epilepsy. A veterinarian approved irreversible steps and held an emergency stop. After a dropped connection, the agent found a calibration error and refused to continue, so founder Gabriel Ocana-Santero fixed the code by hand. He said the mouse recovered, that he knows of no earlier case of an agent both choosing and delivering a treatment in a living mammal, and that the results are not peer reviewed.
05
Ars Technica ↗
Cursor said a malicious copy of Anthropic's Claude Code extension was on its marketplace for about 11 hours on October 29 and could have reached up to 5,000 users. The package tried to collect host details and install a persistent remote-access backdoor. Cursor said Anthropic did not build it, and Microsoft said Anthropic confirmed that its own systems were not compromised. A key step required administrator rights, so Cursor said it would have failed on most machines.
06
TechCrunch AI ↗
A federal judge refused to dismiss an NAACP lawsuit accusing SpaceX-owned xAI of running at least 35 gas turbines at its Colossus data center outside Memphis without required air permits. xAI argued the turbines were mobile and that the plaintiffs lacked standing. Judge Debra Brown wrote that the turbines are not mobile sources under Mississippi's plan and that the Clean Air Act claims will proceed. The NAACP called it another win after a Justice Department attempt to dismiss the case failed earlier in October.
07
Reuters ↗
Intel shares fell about 30 percent on Friday, which Reuters called its biggest one-day drop, after guiding to fourth-quarter sales of $15 billion to $16 billion versus about $17 billion expected. Reuters said the drop was set to wipe out more than $146 billion of market value and about $12 billion of the US government's roughly 10 percent stake. Chief executive Lip-Bu Tan blamed a PC slowdown on memory prices pushed up by AI demand. Finance chief David Zinsner said Intel does not expect positive cash flow this year.
08
Reuters ↗
A US bankruptcy judge let Character. AI proceed with an asset sale over objections from attorneys general in 41 states, who said the auction favors Disney. The company filed for bankruptcy on October 12. Disney's opening bid is $20 million for a license to the chatbot technology, not the app or user chat logs, after Disney had already hired most of the staff, including the former chief executive. A parent who sued over a child's chatbot use also objected, as did the Justice Department's bankruptcy watchdog.
09
Microsoft ↗
Microsoft priced a $25 billion sale of senior notes on October 29, which Reuters described as its first US investment-grade bond deal in more than nine years. The debt is split into 10 tranches due from 2028 through 2066, and the sale is expected to close on November 4. Microsoft said the proceeds may fund capital spending, stock buybacks, acquisitions, and repayment of existing debt. The offering follows finance chief Amy Hood's comment that the company would raise money when that helped protect cash flow.
10
Ars Technica ↗
The Justice Department charged five people in the first cases from Operation Ghostbusters, a crackdown on ghost students who use stolen identities to collect federal student aid. Prosecutors said those cases involve about $2.9 million, and the department seized more than $750,000 in cryptocurrency tied to a Kenyan network. Officials said scammers use AI to complete applications, coursework, and fake attendance in online classes. The Education Department has flagged more than 830,000 suspect aid accounts that could be tied to losses near $130 million if they are all fraudulent.