Chris Welch / Bloomberg:
Amazon unveils the $500 Echo Show 16, the $200 Echo Time alarm, and the $200+ Alexa Photo Frame, raises smart speaker prices, and previews Alexa Home Map — With its latest devices, including a smart bedside alarm clock, Amazon looks to cement Alexa's presence in every room of the home
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Meta quietly launched Waddle World, a Tamagotchi-like, AI pet-rearing game, in the Philippines in September, calling it a “daily journal disguised as a pet” — But it's only available in the Philippines for now. — Looks like a big part of Meta's AI strategy is to rely on …
Rachel Yeo / Bloomberg:
Chinese AI chipmaker Moore Threads reports Q3 revenue up 1,774% YoY to ~$240M and a ~$7.4M net profit; Moore is building a domestic 100K-GPU cluster with JD.com — AI chipmaker Moore Threads Technology Co. said sales grew 1,774% in the three months through September, buoyed …
Financial Times:
Sources: Anthropic's seven cofounders remain extremely influential and personally tight; Daniela Amodei, who runs operations, is seen as a good balance to Dario — Anthropic's seven billionaire co-founders are set to gain collective control over one of the world's biggest companies following …
Sarah Brager / San Francisco Chronicle:
A US federal grand jury indicts OpenAI engineer and Saudi national Abdulrahman “Abdul” Alfozan on a felony charge of interception of oral communications — The OpenAI engineer accused of bugging a conference room in San Francisco used by company executives was indicted Tuesday, according to a court filing.
Marissa Newman / Bloomberg:
AI and cloud cybersecurity startup Upwind Security raised $400M led by Bessemer at a $3.8B valuation, up from $1.5B in January, for $830M in total funding — Upwind Security, a San Francisco-based startup offering cybersecurity for artificial intelligence and cloud applications …
Financial Times:
How the UK's Slough, a town on the borders of west London, became the largest data center hub in Europe, hosting 40+ facilities, as locals seek more benefits — The UK council overseeing Europe's data centre capital has asked companies to provide more benefits for local people …
Dawn Kopecki / Reuters:
Email: a hacker attack forced the FEC to temporarily take its filing system offline around 10pm ET on Monday, blocking groups from submitting reports — The US Federal Election Commission's website was targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters …
Corrie Driebusch / Wall Street Journal:
Letter: Senator Elizabeth Warren asks Dario Amodei for “exhaustive responses” to four pages of questions by November 3 regarding existential risks in its S-1 — The Democratic senator told the AI giant to answer four pages of questions about its IPO filing by Nov. 3
Rozanna Latiff / Reuters:
Malaysia says it seized ~$12.11M worth of AI chips this month, as authorities close in on a syndicate suspected of smuggling through the country's main airport — Malaysian customs said on Wednesday that it had seized about 49.5 million ringgit ($12.11 million) worth of advanced artificial intelligence chips …
Anthropic:
Research: professional analysts followed AI agents' randomly assigned “leans” on subjective analytical decisions 86% of the time; 77% used the agents' arguments — Amaç Herdağdelen, Hailey Joren, Alex Tamkin — When experts hand their work to an AI agent …
Teddy Rosenbluth / New York Times:
Lawsuit: the parents of a 31-year-old say OpenAI's GPT-4o guided her through an aggressive tapering plan off epilepsy meds, leading to her death in February — The chatbot helped a woman taper off a lifesaving drug and hide the plan from her doctors. — 1.3k
Leslie Picker / CNBC:
S-1: Anthropic had $112.4B in cash and $19.3B in short-term investments on June 30, surpassing every non-bank US company except Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet — Anthropic has more cash than almost every company in America. — The nearly 6-year-old artificial intelligence lab disclosed …
New York Times:
How Silicon Valley billionaires raised $333M+ to try to defeat a 5% California wealth tax; Patrick Collison's $33M is his most serious campaign engagement yet — Every Tuesday for the last few months, two dozen of the world's richest people or their advisers hop onto a conference call and plan for war.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
The CFTC files a legal challenge to block Utah's attempt to restrict prediction market betting, asserting it is the sole US regulator of prediction markets — The U.S. agency that oversees derivatives has filed a federal legal challenge to halt Utah's attempt to stop prediction market betting in its state …
Simon Sharwood / The Register:
SK Hynix expects memory shortages to persist through at least 2030; the company has long-term deals with 14 major buyers for 50%+ of its output in 2027 and 2028 — Korean memory-maker SK Hynix has predicted memory shortages will persist until at least the year 2030 and says that will help …
Financial Times:
Sources: TPG is in talks to acquire UK-based Ark Data Centres, which operates 27 data centers in the UK and Belgium, from Elliott Management at a ~$5B valuation — US private capital group in talks with Elliott over what would be among the booming sector's biggest deals this year
Nikkei Asia:
Industry insiders say PCBs and chip substrates are key supply constraints for consumer electronics makers, as AI demand increasingly eats up production capacity — TAIPEI — As executives at PC makers, including HP and Dell, map out their supply needs for 2027, a mundane component has emerged as an unlikely concern.
Reuters:
Sources: CXMT plans to start HBM3E production despite yields of just 20% to 30%; its HBM3E performance is closer to that of SK Hynix's previous-gen HBM3 chips — China's CXMT plans to start production of HBM3E, an advanced type of high-bandwidth memory chip used with AI processors …
Priyanka Salve / CNBC:
Jio Platforms, India's largest telecom and digital services company, jumps 21.4% in its trading debut, after raising ~$3.2B in the country's largest-ever IPO — Jio Platforms' shares rose 21.4% on their trading debut Wednesday after a record initial public offering that was lapped up by retail as well as institutional investors.