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Microsoft's disclosures on its OpenAI stake are scant, including putting OpenAI-related losses into a $4.7B "other, net" expense line in the FY ended June 30 (Jonathan Weil/Wall Street Journal)

How Saudi Arabia is pouring money into data centers and working with US and Chinese tech giants, landing its AI ambitions in the middle of a geopolitical tussle (New York Times)

Indonesia and other developing countries are becoming AI hubs amid the multitrillion-dollar spending boom, in part driven by an "AI decolonization" philosophy (Stu Woo/Wall Street Journal)

The US DOJ's rigged-poker-game indictment involved hacking DeckMate, a casino-standard, suitcase-sized, $10K+ card shuffling machine, to reveal players' hands (Molly Schuetz/Bloomberg)

Japanese fintech JPYC launches a yen-pegged stablecoin, the country's first, and its issuance platform JPYC EX, targeting $65.4B in circulation in three years (Timmy Shen/The Block)

Real estate agents are using AI tools like AutoReel to replace videographers and stagers, cutting costs but generating distorted or misleading property images (Kat Tenbarge/Wired)

Q&A with Bill Ready, who became Pinterest's CEO in 2022, about changes during his tenure, winning over Gen Z, Pinterest's business model, AI content, and more (Jordyn Holman/New York Times)

An interview with Mauro Porcini, who became Samsung's first Chief Design Officer in April, about creating a "consistent experience" across devices, and more (Verity Burns/Wired)

Papers, patents, and tenders show China's military is integrating DeepSeek and Qwen models in weapons like AI-powered drones, and continues to use Nvidia chips (Reuters)

In Vietnam, 65 countries sign a UN cybercrime treaty to share data and extradite suspects, despite tech companies' and activists' privacy and security concerns (Lien Hoang/Nikkei Asia)

A look at Cal State's plans to become an "AI-empowered" university via partnerships with Amazon and a $16.9M deal to provide ChatGPT Edu to students and staff (New York Times)

Australia sues Microsoft for allegedly misleading ~2.7M Microsoft 365 users into accepting a price hike for Copilot plans while hiding cheaper non-AI options (Sneha Kumar/Reuters)

How building robotic hands that match human dexterity remains a major technical obstacle to deploying humanoid robots in factories and for caregiving jobs (Wall Street Journal)

Employees are increasingly using AI to create ultra-realistic fake expense receipts; AppZen and others attribute the rise to advances in image generation models (Cristina Criddle/Financial Times)

Artemis: $10B+ was moved through stablecoins in August, up from $6B in February and more than double YoY, after President Trump signed the Genius Act on July 18 (Judy Lagrou/Bloomberg)

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says Trump and Xi will "consummate" a TikTok deal on October 30 in South Korea, confirming a final US-China deal on the sale (Anthony Ha/TechCrunch)

Q&A with Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz on the patient scheduling platform's telehealth expansion, its policy of not providing medical advice through AI, and more (Nilay Patel/The Verge)

Inside OpenAI's deals with Nvidia, Oracle, and AMD, where sources say Sam Altman largely relied on his executive team, with little input from outside advisors (Financial Times)

Swift releases a Swift SDK preview for Android, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android (Hartley Charlton/MacRumors)

Sources: Sam Altman's brain-computer interface startup Merge Labs hires Mikhail Shapiro, who works on noninvasive techniques for neural imaging and control (Alex Heath/Sources)

Sources: Apple is working on a vapor chamber for the next iPad Pro in 2027, and the company plans to start selling ads in its Maps app as early as 2026 (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Rumble plans to roll out a bitcoin tipping feature, developed in partnership with Tether, to its 51M creators in December; Tether has invested $775M in Rumble (Francisco Rodrigues/CoinDesk)

French online carpooling marketplace BlaBlaCar says India now accounts for ~33% of its carpool passengers and expects to reach ~150M passengers globally in 2025 (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

The US AI data center boom is consuming capital, power, and people that the rest of the economy needs, and is crowding out Trump's manufacturing revival plans (Bloomberg)

Defakto, which lets enterprises secure automated interactions between internal systems and AI agents or other non-human actors, raised a $30.75M Series B (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Microsoft says its Gaming Copilot feature, which recently hit Windows 11 as a public beta, uses screenshots to understand in-game events, not to train AI models (Jowi Morales/Tom's Hardware)

Seneca, which is developing autonomous firefighting drones, raised $60M in seed and Series A rounds led by Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital (Christopher Marquis/Forbes)

Austin-based Roller, a provider of venue management software, raised $50M led by Insight Partners, taking its total funding to over $100M (Chris Metinko/Axios)

Singapore-based wealth management platform Endowus raised $70M+, bringing its total funding to $130M+, and says the new capital will boost its AI advisory tools (Katrina Bianca Cuaresma/DealStreetAsia)

Sources: AI chip startup SambaNova is exploring a sale after it struggled to complete a fundraising round; SambaNova was last valued at $5B in 2021 (Valida Pau/The Information)

Kyrgyzstan launches a national stablecoin and a CBDC in partnership with Binance; CZ says a national cryptocurrency reserve includes Binance's BNB token (Aigerim Turgunbaeva/Reuters)

Glasgow-based Chemify, which combines AI with robotics and chemistry to rapidly make novel molecules for pharmaceutical companies, raised a $50M+ Series B (Alex Scott/Chemical & Engineering News)

Pave Bank, which lets businesses manage both fiat and digital assets in real time, raised a $39M Series A led by Accel, with Tether and others participating (RT Watson/The Block)

A profile of Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who left in 2002 and whose claims that Wikipedia has a liberal bias are fueling the right's campaign against it (Will Oremus/Washington Post)

Sources: OpenAI is developing AI tools to generate music from text and audio prompts, including capabilities such as adding guitar accompaniment to vocal tracks (The Information)

Crypto infrastructure provider Fireblocks acquires Dynamic, which streamlines crypto wallet setup, authentication, and onboarding for 50M+ accounts, for ~$90M (CTech)

A look at AI startups aiming to address loneliness among the elderly; a study predicts the AI market for aging and elderly care will grow to over $43B in 2025 (Forbes)

How Changpeng Zhao's pardon frees him to refocus on reclaiming ground in the US market, where Binance.US only has a 0.75% share of bitcoin trading volume (Bloomberg)

Xiaomi says surging memory chip prices have raised the cost of making smartphones, after pricing of its new Redmi K90 series disappointed Chinese consumers (Reuters)

Grab is investing an undisclosed amount in May Mobility as part of a multiyear deal, which includes bringing robotaxis to Southeast Asia as soon as 2026 (Natalie Lung/Bloomberg)

Shares of Japanese optical fiber maker Fujikura are up ~171% YTD, outpacing the Nikkei's 22% and lifting its market cap to $33B+ amid the AI data center boom (Junko Fujita/Reuters)

Sources: PayPal to take over Carlyle's stake in Shopware, a German provider of e-commerce tools to merchants, with PayPal's stake increasing to ~41% from ~11% (Bloomberg)

Lindo St. Angel, VP of hardware at Amazon's Lab126 R&D unit since 2010, plans to leave on October 31; he helped develop the Echo, Astro robot, and Fire tablet (Greg Bensinger/Reuters)

Oreo maker Mondelez has spent $40M+ on an AI tool, developed with Publicis and Accenture, to cut costs for the production of marketing content by 30% to 50% (Jessica DiNapoli/Reuters)

Sources: X's advertising chief John Nitti, who joined in January, has left; X's CFO Mahmoud Reza Banki left in early October after less than a year in the role (Hannah Murphy/Financial Times)

Sources detail how Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, Marc Benioff, and others brokered a call between SF Mayor Daniel Lurie and Trump to stop National Guard deployment (Wall Street Journal)

Microsoft plans to bring its Halo franchise to the PlayStation for the first time with the launch of a 25th‑anniversary remake of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2026 (Zachary Small/New York Times)

Grindr board members Ray Zage and James Lu, part of an investor group that owns more than 60%, offer to take Grindr private for ~$3.46B; GRND closes up 18.63% (Reuters)

Source: President Trump has picked Michael Selig, the chief counsel for the SEC's crypto task force, to chair the CFTC, amid a crypto push (Bloomberg Law)

With an influx of Meta alums, some OpenAI staffers worry it is adopting Meta's tactics, like using social media dynamics with Sora and a softening stance on ads (The Information)