The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 2.6% Thursday, its worst day since June; the S&P 500 lost 1.2%. The U.S. fiscal 2026 deficit reached $1.99T, while China proposed export controls on 40 technologies, including 23 AI technologies. Barclays plans 5,000 job cuts this year in an AI-driven efficiency push, including 1,000 already made. Meta was ordered to pay $25B over privacy violations. Salesforce agreed to acquire Braze at a $5.66B enterprise value. Elon Musk pledged one SpaceX share per U.S. child in 2027. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s reported 1% Anthropic stake could be worth $20B at a $2T IPO valuation. AI-detected PHP flaws prompted NSA warnings; GitLab fixed a critical remote-code-execution flaw, and Node.js issued security updates. Christiane Amanpour, a 43-year CNN veteran, will leave in June 2027. Finally, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley’s zero-return exit offers founders lessons in leadership and capital structure. See more in What We Read.
Top 5 AI Highlights
[1] 🚀 SpaceX and Tesla formed independent committees to explore a merger. Musk has recused himself from negotiations. The companies already jointly develop the Terafab chip plant; analysts see scope to combine AI infrastructure and autonomous systems. A deal could be announced in the first half of 2027; no terms have been agreed. Musk says approval would require a majority of all Tesla shares, so uncast ballots count against a deal. (Axios, Reuters, Bloomberg)
[2] 💰 OpenAI is seeking to accelerate fundraising ahead of Anthropic’s expected mid-November IPO. It is in talks to raise up to $30B at a $1.25T pre-money valuation, led by UAE investors and Coatue. The proposed bridge would precede OpenAI’s planned 2027 listing; financing is not finalized. (Reuters, CNBC)
[3] 🏗️ Nscale is in talks to sell Anthropic about $45B of additional AI computing capacity. The proposed second facility at its Monarch campus in West Virginia would provide 460MW using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chips. (Bloomberg)
[4] 📑 Anthropic’s draft IPO prospectus shows $16.3B in first-half 2026 revenue and an $80.7B net loss. The loss included $72B in accounting charges on convertible notes and other instruments. About one-fifth of revenue came from two customers. It could spend up to $750B on computing capacity in coming years, including deals still being negotiated. Anthropic also proposed allocating 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund, subject to stockholder approval. Its IPO prospectus could be filed publicly as early as Friday. (WSJ, Anthropic, Yahoo Finance)
[5] 📱 Meta’s Muse passed 10M U.S. and Canadian downloads in its first 35 days, Sensor Tower says. Its U.S. 14-day retention was 23%, versus Claude’s 17% at launch. Reported active U.S. users were about 2M versus ChatGPT’s 55M, although the activity window was unspecified. Zuckerberg says over 25% of Muse users make purchases, averaging over $200 per purchase. Meta also completed the first phase of its Prometheus AI supercluster, which it says has already trained Muse models. (PYMNTS, Business Insider, Meta)
✨Open Source AI Development
[1] 💰 DeepSeek is reportedly finalizing a CNY100B (about $15B) funding round, one of China’s largest ever. Tencent and CATL are among its biggest backers. The round is expected to close in the coming days, with final terms still subject to change. (Reuters, Bloomberg)
[2] 🧠 DeepSeek open-sourced DeepInfer, the inference engine behind its production services, under Apache 2.0. This adds inference code alongside V4.1-Flash-1017’s MIT-licensed weights, enabling offline use on Nvidia SM100 GPUs and Huawei Ascend 950 chips. (Model Card, GitHub)
[3] 🏛️ DHS ordered U.S. federal civilian agencies to remove technology from open-weight developer DeepSeek and stop buying its products. Removal also covers affiliate products and third-party products and services built using DeepSeek implementations. (DHS)
[4] 🔐 OpenCode, an open-source AI coding agent, disclosed a breach affecting 1.4% of its Console users who had linked external model providers. Stored provider API keys may have been exposed. The company says it notified affected users and is working with Anthropic, OpenAI and Google on remediation. (Notebookcheck, GitHub)
[5] 🧩 Anthropic donated Agent Skills to the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation, giving the open standard a vendor-neutral home. Anthropic says more than 70 agent platforms have integrated it. (Anthropic)
Founder’s Corner
Over the Last 7 Days (10/13-10/20), Opus 5.5 Is the Top Model in Spending on OpenRouter For 20 of the 29 Task Categories
Source: X
What We Read This Week
- Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley says its recent acquisition returned nothing to preferred or common shareholders. His retrospective examines the shift from consumer apps to enterprise software and the leadership decisions behind the outcome. (Dennis Crowley)
- Anthropic’s August survey found that 91% of its staff and 39% of U.S. adults expected AI to make a Nobel-level discovery by 2030. More than half of staff expected AI to do at least 80% of their work by then, versus 5% of U.S. workers. (Anthropic)
- Anthropic is reportedly consulting law firms on negotiation tactics as it develops AI agents to negotiate for users and interact with other agents. (FT)
- Princeton Ph.D. graduate Jack Weis applied to more than 2,300 jobs after graduating in 2024 and is still unemployed. His search widened from research roles to software engineering and food preparation; a temporary AI-training job also ended. (WSJ)
- Stripe says its Link payment service now supports about 200 AI agents, up from roughly 70 in September. Its customers include consumer assistants and work-focused agents that make purchases for users. (Upstarts)
- Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra performed well on local AI models in testing, powered by its RTX Spark chip. The review flags its high price, weight and fan noise, with limited Windows features using the chip. (Tom’s Hardware)
- Samsung reportedly agreed to use TSMC’s 3nm process for the base chips in Nvidia’s NVHBM memory. Nvidia requested that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron follow the same requirements. (Reuters)
- Amazon agreed to fund development work as AEP and X-energy evaluate a 960MW nuclear project in Indiana. The proposed facility would use 12 small reactors, with Amazon intending to buy the power under a long-term contract. (AEP)
Special Earnings
- Tesla reported Q3 revenue of $28.05B, essentially flat YoY, and GAAP net income down 43% to $787M. Adjusted EPS was $0.48 and operating margin was 2.6%. Free cash flow returned to positive $1.53B after a $1.09B outflow in Q2, despite capex rising 110% YoY to $4.73B. Vehicle deliveries fell 2% to 486,532. Shares fell 3.1% Thursday. (Tesla, AP)
- Meta reported Q3 revenue up 26% YoY to $64.60B and daily active people up 3% to 3.64B. GAAP EPS was $3.83, or $7.40 excluding a $9.89B teen-safety settlement charge. Capex reached $34.91B, leaving a $2.12B free cash outflow. Meta narrowed its 2026 capex outlook to $135-145B and forecast Q4 revenue of $73-76B. Shares fell 7% Thursday. (Meta, AP)
AI Fundraising News (Oct 16 — Oct 22)
- Arda: An AI manufacturing-automation company, raised $160M Series A at a $1.5B valuation.
- ASI: An AI critical-infrastructure software company, raised $325M Series C at a $3B valuation.
- Asymptote Labs: An AI-agent runtime infrastructure company, raised $5.5M seed.
- Atombeam: An AI and data-compaction software company, closed an $18.3M Regulation A+ offering.
- AuxoAI: An enterprise AI engineering company, raised $20.7M Series A.
- Azoma: An AI shopping-discovery optimization company, raised $11.2M Series A.
- Baba: An AI care-coordination company, raised $40M Series A.
- Beyond Vision: An AI-powered drone company, raised more than EUR28M.
- BioStack: An AI clinical-training data infrastructure company, raised $9.5M seed.
- Blackford Analysis: An AI medical-imaging orchestration company, was acquired by Azra AI from their shared owner Sopris Capital for undisclosed terms.
- Blacksmith: An AI code-testing infrastructure company, raised $66M Series C at a $1B valuation.
- Blackwall: An AI web-traffic security company, raised $100M Series C at a $2.2B valuation.
- Coherence Neuro: An AI brain-implant cancer-detection company, raised $45M seed.
- Dataline: An AI-agent data network, announced $10.6M seed funding, closed in April through a SAFE with a token warrant.
- Daytona: An AI-agent cloud infrastructure company, raised $60M Series B at a $1B valuation.
- Different: An AI business-to-business marketing company, raised $48M seed.
- Dream Labs: An AI robotics-model company, raised $90M seed.
- Eka Robotics: A physical-AI robotics company, raised $150M Series A at a $1.45B post-money valuation.
- Enact Intelligence: An AI robotics-model company, raised $30M pre-seed.
- Fae: An AI personal-agent product, is being acquired by Tomo for undisclosed terms; its developer, Friends for Humanity, remains independent.
- Firefly: A physical-AI safety software company, raised $20M Series A.
- Firstwork: An AI frontline-workforce onboarding company, raised $15M Series A.
- Flapping Airplanes: An AI research company, raised $1B Series A at a $6B post-money valuation.
- Formic: A physical-AI robotics deployment company, announced $50M in financing: $40M Series B and $10M in asset-backed financing.
- FORT Robotics: A physical-AI safety company, secured about $20M in new commitments: about $10M in financing expected to close this week and $10M in additional common-equity PIPE funding conditional on its proposed Newbury Street II merger closing.
- Greptile: An AI code-review company, raised $50M Series B at a $750M valuation.
- High Lander: An AI airspace-management company, raised an additional $16M to complete its Series A.
- Indurex: An AI industrial-security company, raised EUR7M.
- Inovia Capital: An AI-focused venture investor, completed a US$200M first close for Fund VI, targeting US$325M.
- Jooba: An AI recruiting company, raised $4M seed.
- Karta AI: An AI voice-automation company for financial services, raised $3M seed.
- Kevel: An AI advertising-infrastructure company, secured $52M in financing, including strategic investments and growth capital; the breakdown was not disclosed.
- Kodama: A physical-AI forestry company, raised $7M.
- Legora: An AI legal-software company, raised $550M Series E at an $8.8B post-money valuation.
- Mach9: An AI surveying and design-software company, raised $34M Series A.
- Mave: An AI security-investigation company, raised $28M Series A.
- Modelyo: A confidential-cloud company protecting data used by AI systems, raised about $17M.
- Mural: An AI-agent payments-infrastructure company, raised $15M Series A.
- Neolix: An autonomous-delivery vehicle company, raised nearly $400M Series E.
- Nirva: An AI wearable-companion company, raised $25M.
- Opply: An AI procurement and operations company for consumer brands, raised $7.5M.
- Optivolt: A solar-power electronics company serving AI data-center projects and other installations, raised $32M Series A.
- Orchestra Bio: An AI drug-development agent company, was acquired by OpenAI for undisclosed terms.
- Otter.ai: An AI meeting-assistant company, secured $320M in non-dilutive growth financing.
- Peak Energy: An energy-storage company building infrastructure for AI data centers, raised $108M Series B.
- Pennant: An AI corporate-governance software company, raised $5M seed.
- Permanent Partners: An AI-focused venture firm, is seeking more than $100M for Collective Fund I.
- Photon Bridge: An AI data-center laser-source company, raised €10M.
- Pigment: An AI business-planning software company, raised $250M Series E at a $2.3B valuation.
- QuantrolOx: An AI quantum-computer tuning and control software company, raised EUR12M Series A.
- Rosie: An AI-enabled household-help logistics company, announced $7M raised across two rounds.
- ScribeUp: An AI recurring-bill management company, raised $13M Series A, comprising $10M equity and a $3M venture debt facility.
- Sinopia Biosciences: An AI drug-discovery company, received a $2.5M NIH SBIR Phase II grant to develop a metabolomics foundation model.
- Slingshot: An AI embedded-insurance software company, raised $27M seed.
- Sunlight AI: An AI medical-practice administration company, announced $17.4M seed funding.
- Tenstorrent: An AI computing-chip company, raised $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B post-money valuation.
- Tolan: An AI companion company, raised $30M.
- Town: An AI assistant company for teams, raised $108M Series B at a $1B post-money valuation.
- Vectorial: An AI customer-behavior simulation company, raised $3M seed.
- Vegafin: An AI small-business lending company, secured commitments of up to INR10B (about $106M) and signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Bizloan for undisclosed terms.
- Vessla: An AI property-management automation company, raised $3.3M pre-seed.
- Warp Sciences: An AI drug-development company, raised $215M at an $865M post-money valuation.
- Watchtower Labs: An AI defense-logistics software company, raised $35M seed.
- Whop: An AI-powered business software company, raised $205M at a $5.1B valuation.
- XRlabs: An AI surgical-software company, raised $8.4M seed.
- YGO: An AI travel-booking infrastructure company, raised €8M Series A.