⛵ Salesforce Agrees to Buy Rune
Plus: OpenAI Seeks $20B at Lower Valuation, Meta Builds Max Humanoid
Good Morning, Early Adopters!
Claude can help inject medicine into a mouse's brain, but recreating an old video game is apparently where things get dangerous.
Big Tech: Last Week | Oct 26 – 30 |
Company | Price | 1 Week | Mkt Cap | |
 | Amazon AMZN | $240.35 | −3.08% | 2.60T −83B |
 | Apple AAPL | $344.63 | −0.89% | 5.03T −45B |
 | Google GOOGL | $279.84 | −12.61% | 3.44T −496B |
 | Meta META | $614.99 | −4.30% | 1.57T −71B |
 | Microsoft MSFT | $521.91 | −0.50% | 3.88T −19B |
 | NVIDIA NVDA | $204.64 | −3.00% | 4.94T −153B |
 | SpaceX SPCX | $134.72 | −8.66% | 1.83T −173B |
 | Tesla TSLA | $399.81 | +7.41% | 1.58T +109B |
Salesforce Agrees to Buy Rune
TL;DR: Salesforce signed an agreement to acquire military logistics startup Rune Technologies, with the price reported at $375 million in cash and stock. Rune helps frontline units forecast supplies and plan transport even with unreliable connectivity. The deal would extend Missionforce into battlefield logistics and is expected to close in Salesforce's fiscal fourth quarter, subject to customary conditions. Read more →
Claude Code Blocks Existing Game Remakes
TL;DR: Anthropic added instructions to Claude Code on Opus 5.5 to stop it recreating specific existing video games, including projects disguised under new names. Original games, familiar genres and games built from a user's own designs and assets remain allowed. The change narrows game-copying requests while keeping original development available. Read more →
OpenAI Seeks $20B at Lower Valuation
TL;DR: OpenAI has cut its fundraising target from $30 billion to $20 billion and its proposed valuation from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion, the Financial Times reports. The company is trying to complete the round before Anthropic's IPO competes for the same investors, as scrutiny of AI spending makes large private funding rounds harder to close. Read more →
Meta Builds Max Humanoid Prototype
TL;DR: Meta built a humanoid prototype called Max with Chinese robotics company Fourier in roughly three months, The Information reports. Designed for household tasks, it uses Nvidia Jetson Thor chips and hands that can grasp small objects. A second prototype, Max 2, is already in development with revised hands, more sensors and a projector; no consumer launch date is set. Read more →
AI Giants Back Shared Training Opt-Out
TL;DR: Google, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI plan to support a shared robots.txt signal for opting out of generative AI training. Publishers could express one preference across participating providers instead of maintaining separate crawler rules. OpenAI and Microsoft plan implementation in the coming months, while Google expects to follow next year. Search and AI-answer grounding have separate controls. Read more →
xAI Must Face NAACP Pollution Suit
TL;DR: A federal judge rejected xAI's bid to dismiss the NAACP's Clean Air Act lawsuit over turbines powering its Memphis data center. xAI argued the turbines were mobile and exempt from permitting, but Judge Debra M. Brown ruled that the power plant they formed was stationary. The decision allows the case over alleged unpermitted emissions to proceed. Read more →
Compromised Claude Extension Hits Cursor
TL;DR: Malicious Claude Code extension versions 2.1.312 and 2.1.313 appeared in Cursor's marketplace on October 29, collecting host details and attempting to install persistent SSH access. Cursor removed them, rebuilt the marketplace and took the attacker's server offline. Affected Windows and macOS users should follow Cursor's cleanup guidance; uninstalling alone may leave persistence scripts behind. Read more →
Retired A100 Cluster Listed for $59.7M
TL;DR: Reseller Core 4 Solutions offered a retired cluster on eBay for $59.7 million, including 300 racks, 9,600 Nvidia A100 GPUs and 4,200 AMD EPYC processors. Individual 32-GPU racks were offered at $199,000. The full-system listing has since ended. The bundle shows the scale of retired AI infrastructure reaching resellers, where buyers must also budget for power, cooling and networking. Read more →
Huang's Meetings Draw Intelligence Scrutiny
TL;DR: US intelligence agencies believe Megaspeed executive Alice Huang worked for Chinese intelligence and developed a close relationship with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, The New York Times reports. Officials were concerned about potential access to sensitive information. Nvidia says the contacts were routine customer meetings and that Megaspeed received ordinary business information, with no trade secrets shared. Read more →
AI Agent Injects Therapy Into Mouse Brain
TL;DR: Exin Therapeutics used a Claude Sonnet 5 agent to select a gene therapy and control its injection into a living mouse's brain. A veterinary surgeon first performed the craniotomy, and humans approved the injection plan and retained an emergency stop. The demonstration shows agents operating lab equipment under supervision; the team is still waiting to assess the therapy's effect. Read more →
Startup Pays Humans to Walk Robot Dogs
TL;DR: San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised $20-an-hour work guiding robot dogs along outdoor routes, with paid training and no robotics experience required. Operators use a remote or phone app while onboard cameras and sensors collect navigation data. The work supports an open-source system for AI-controlled robots, though walkers may also need to carry the 33-pound machines home when they fail. Read more →
Tesla Semi Fire Closes Hayward Freeway
TL;DR: A Tesla Semi caught fire on Interstate 880 in Hayward after its driver pulled over, with no collision reported and no injuries to the driver. Authorities closed both directions over smoke concerns; southbound lanes remained shut for nearly ten hours. The incident highlights the difficulty of containing large electric-truck fires and reopening roads after battery emergencies. Read more →
ChatGPT Share-Link Flaw Exposed Private Chats
TL;DR: Parameter Labs found that a malicious ChatGPT share link could execute code in a signed-in visitor's session, read private conversations and send their contents to an external server. The chain crossed the HTML-preview sandbox through a MathLive message handler. OpenAI fixed both affected web frontends on October 26, classified the report as P1 and awarded a $5,000 bounty. Read more →
Fifty Companies Oppose OKXICE Stock Tokens
TL;DR: Fifty companies, including Nvidia, Microsoft, JPMorgan and Walmart, have objected to tokenized versions of their shares on OKXICE, the planned venue backed by OKX and Intercontinental Exchange. The objections target their own stocks being offered through the platform. The growing opt-out list complicates the venture's proposed roster of tokenized equities. Read more →
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