Markets slumped Thursday: the Nasdaq Composite closed down 5.5%, entering a correction, while the S&P 500 fell 4.4%. U.S. growth is accelerating on AI and consumer spending, but inflation has absorbed most wage gains, the WSJ finds. Meanwhile, the Treasury sold a record $839B of bills and notes in the week ended October 30, including refinancing. ADP estimates private employers added 86,000 jobs in October. In tech, Marvell agreed to buy Lumentum for $115B in stock, pending approvals. SpaceX is in talks with EchoStar to buy Boost Mobile or access its network. Alphabet is issuing €6B in euro-denominated bonds. On restructuring, Canva’s changes affect 1,271 employees, or 22%, through layoffs, role changes, and relocations. Disney is considering thousands of job cuts, with some managers asked to target 20% annual cost savings.
Top 5 AI Highlights
[1] 💰 Anthropic disclosed nearly $17B in Q3 revenue, up twelvefold, and a $23.3B net loss in its amended IPO filing. Purchase commitments and leases total $895.4B through 2045, largely for compute and infrastructure. Separately, Blackstone warned investors that Anthropic may not receive an investment-grade rating after its IPO; no agency rating has been announced. (Bloomberg, SEC filing, Financial Times)
[2] 💰 OpenAI secured about $11B in commitments for its latest financing at a $1.25T valuation, below its original targets of $30B and $1.4T, the WSJ reports. The round remains in progress. Separately, OpenAI agreed to acquire Pierre Computer to bring its code-storage tools into Codex; closing remains subject to approvals. (WSJ, OpenAI)
[3] 🏗️ Oracle closed a $20B financing package on November 4 to fund its AI buildout, combining $10B in common stock with $10B in senior notes. The shares were priced at $116 each, and the bonds mature from 2029 through 2046. Oracle’s stock fell 8.8% when the package was announced on November 2. (SEC filing, Oracle, CNBC)
[4] 💳 S&P revised Meta’s credit outlook to negative while maintaining its AA- rating, citing heavy AI spending and negative free cash flow. Meta then raised $15B in dollar bonds and €9B in its debut euro sale, which attracted more than €62B in orders. (CNBC, Bloomberg: dollar bonds, Bloomberg: euro bonds)
[5] 🛡️ CrowdStrike agreed to buy Fiddler AI for about $400M and Dreadnode for $95M to monitor agent behavior and test AI systems. The mostly cash deals, with some vesting stock, are expected to close in fiscal Q4 2027, subject to conditions. It also launched an AI Kill Switch at its gateway; endpoint controls are planned. (WSJ, Dreadnode announcement, CrowdStrike)
✨Open Source AI Development
[1] 🌙 Moonshot released Kimi K3.1 Pro’s downloadable weights after its October API launch. The text-and-image model supports 1M-token context; Moonshot reports 65.7% on Terminal-Bench 4.0 using Claude Code. Its custom license requires a separate agreement for model-service businesses above $20M annual revenue, with internal use exempt. (Model card, License, AMD)
[2] 💻 DeepSeek released an MIT-licensed coding-agent research prototype that turns authorized GitHub or Feishu requests into tasks and can return pull requests. It works within one repository and flags when human input is needed; DeepSeek cautions that it is not production-ready. (GitHub)
[3] 🖥️ Microsoft released Mage-VL-Cowork, a 4B Apache-2.0 open-weight model that combines screen interaction and terminal commands. Microsoft reports 66.0% on 361 OSWorld-Verified tasks excluding Google Drive, averaged over two runs with a 50-step limit. (Hugging Face)
[4] 🔎 Anthropic released FlashProve, an Apache-2.0 research prototype that proves a response came from a specified model without revealing its weights. The current system supports 1,024-token contexts and adds substantial computing overhead; it is not a new open-weight model release. (Anthropic, GitHub)
[5] 👁️ Tencent launched Hy4 with vision and computer-use capabilities, including Blender and CAD workflows. Tencent reports its internal hallucination rate fell from 12.95% for Hy4 Preview to 7.2%. Downloadable weights and system cards are still promised; the release license remains unverified. (Tencent)
Founder’s Corner
AI Token Consumption Accelerates: OpenRouter’s Latest 10× Increase Took 28 Weeks, Down from 50 weeks
Source: X
What We Read This Week
- Menlo Ventures estimates enterprise AI deployment spending reached a $177B annualized run rate by September, up from a revised $33B baseline for 2025. New budgets funded 55% of the increase. The study includes a survey of nearly 400 U.S. enterprise decision-makers. (Menlo Ventures)
- Goldman Sachs restricted Claude Code and GitHub to engineers after reviewing productivity and risk concerns, Bloomberg reports. Updated October guidance ended access for most bankers and traders. (Bloomberg)
- The New York Times and other publishers sued Brave, alleging unauthorized scraping and resale of copyrighted content to AI companies. (TechCrunch)
- CXMT reported Q3 revenue of RMB118.71B, up 613.2% year over year, and RMB54.4B in net profit attributable to shareholders. The Chinese memory-chip maker benefited from higher prices and sales volumes. (Reuters)
- CoreWeave, Nebius and Nscale face tougher borrowing terms, the WSJ reports. Debt-default insurance for Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle reached its highest cost since 2021. Separately, Reuters reports Microsoft declined an option to more than double its Texas contract with Nscale. That decision was made months ago; the existing contract is unaffected. (WSJ: borrowing, WSJ: hedging, Reuters)
- Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Oracle returned 9.3% of operating cash flow to shareholders in the first nine months of 2026, down from 27.4% a year earlier, Reuters found. Their combined capital spending exceeded operating cash flow as AI investment grew. (Reuters)
- Ahold Delhaize and Colruyt confirmed refrigerator-system hacks that spoiled food. The French Blood Establishment also reported compromised cold-storage controls at three sites; alarms and transfers prevented losses of blood products or samples. (TechCrunch, CNBC)
- Apple cut some engineers’ daily AI spending limit from $300 to $200 in October and is considering further cuts to as little as $100, Bloomberg reports. Separately, Apple will require 18+ ratings for dating apps and AI companions offering sexual or romantic content, with new descriptors required from November 16. (Bloomberg, TechCrunch)
- Terence Tao warns that racing to solve math problems with AI can undermine the slower work that produces insight and trains researchers. Rivka Galchen’s profile examines how mathematicians are responding as AI changes their field. (The New Yorker)
Special Earnings
- Apple: Fiscal Q4 revenue rose 12% to $114.5B, beating estimates, and diluted EPS was $2.10, including $0.05 from tariff refunds. iPhone revenue grew more than 17% to $57.58B. Apple forecast December-quarter revenue growth of 7%-10%, above analysts’ 6.1% estimate, but gross margin of 45%-46%, below the 46.3% consensus. Shares fell 3% in extended trading on November 2 after the results. (Apple, CNBC)
AI Fundraising News (Oct 30 — Nov 5)
- Agility Robotics: A physical-AI humanoid robotics company, completed its Churchill Capital XI SPAC merger; approximately $465M in gross capital includes PIPE financing and $100M received before closing
- Applied Compute: An AI model-customization and inference company, confirmed a $350M raise at a $3.25B valuation
- Athena: An AI legal-services company for commercial real estate, raised $2.5M in pre-seed funding
- AvalonX: An AI penetration-testing company, announced up to $10M in funding
- Brava Security: An AI cyberattack-detection testing company, raised $15M in seed funding
- Cephable: An on-device AI-agent company, raised $7M in seed funding
- Clark: An AI audit and assurance company, raised $11M in seed funding
- Clutch Security: An AI-agent credential-security company, is in talks to be acquired by Palo Alto Networks for about $500M
- CyberKord: An AI IT and cybersecurity automation company, raised €2.7M in pre-seed funding
- e2e: An AI-agent software-testing company, formerly TesterArmy, raised $8M in seed funding
- Fal: An AI image, video and audio inference company, announced a $1.3B Series F at a $16B valuation
- Finpilot: An AI investment-workflow company, raised $10M in Series A funding
- Firmly: An AI-shopping infrastructure company, raised $15M in Series A funding
- Gallium Defense: An AI-enabled drone-detection radar company, announced a €7.1M seed round closed in June
- Guava: An AI voice-agent developer-platform company, raised $12.5M in seed funding
- Humble Robotics: An AI autonomous-trucking company, raised $51M
- Journify: An AI advertising-data infrastructure company, raised $12M in Series A funding
- Juritas: An AI contract-intelligence company, raised €1.4M in pre-seed funding
- Kabilio: An AI accounting-platform company, raised €10M
- Kodiact: An AI materials-sourcing company, raised $2.5M in pre-seed funding
- Larridin: An AI usage and productivity measurement company, raised $30M in Series A funding
- Laza Medical: An AI robotic cardiac-imaging company, announced up to $160M in structured Series B financing
- Lazarus AI: An enterprise AI company, announced $43M in funding
- LookDeep Health: An AI patient-monitoring company, was acquired by LeanTaaS for an undisclosed amount
- Marble Cognition: An AI business-process automation company, raised $3.75M in pre-seed funding
- Mindmax: An AI tutoring company, raised £2.5M
- Nooks: An AI sales-agent company, secured a $500M non-dilutive growth-capital commitment, repayable from the customer value it generates
- nPhase: An AI clinical-data platform company, raised $30M in Series D funding
- Numica: An AI accounting-services company, raised $21M in combined equity and debt
- Ocient: An AI analytics-infrastructure company, raised $100M in Series C funding
- Omen AI: An AI data-center cooling company, is acquiring Aquatic Labs for $16M in cash and stock
- Ornn: An AI-compute trading company, is raising $150M across three Series A tranches; the second closed at an $800M valuation, while the third remains in talks at a potential valuation above $1B
- Phaze: An AI-agent and human remote-computing access company, raised $8.75M in seed funding
- Pliant: An AI-enabled business-payments company, raised $80M in Series C funding
- Powerlattice: An AI-processor power-delivery chiplet company, disclosed $86.01M raised toward a $111.01M equity offering
- Proscia: An AI digital-pathology company, completed its sale to Agilent for $240M cash plus up to $30M in performance milestones
- Robin Capital: A venture firm targeting enterprise AI, robotics and other technologies, raised €15M for Fund II
- Roleo: An AI career-agent company, raised €2.9M in funding
- Sentra: An AI-agent data-security company, raised $150M in Series C funding; the round includes a small employee secondary component
- Shackleton AI: An AI construction-workflow company, raised $5M in seed funding
- Shield AI: An AI autonomous-defense systems company, is raising $2.5B conditional on its Echodyne acquisition closing: $1B Series H at a $28.8B post-money valuation, $1B structured equity and $500M debt; the acquisition totals $4.8B in cash and stock plus up to $500M in performance milestones
- Snaplii: An AI-agent wallet company, raised $15M
- Supa: An AI property-management company, raised £21M in seed financing combining equity and a debt facility; the split was not disclosed
- Syncere: An AI home-robotics company, raised $11M in pre-seed funding
- Tigris Data: An AI data-storage infrastructure company, agreed to be acquired by Dropbox for $350M
- Titan OS: An AI-enabled TV operating-system company, raised $46M in equity and debt financing; the split was undisclosed
- Traversal: An AI software-reliability company, raised $120M in Series B funding at a $1B valuation
- Tutor Intelligence: An AI robotics company, raised $75M in Series B funding
- Valo.ai: An AI operational-intelligence and governance company, was acquired by Copado for an undisclosed amount
- Zipline: An AI-powered autonomous drone-delivery company, raised $1.5B at a $21.5B post-money valuation