#Funding/M&A

AIOpenAI and Anthropic are hiring former Trump administration officials for senior roles as AI companies work to strengthen ties with Washington. Anthropic has appointed at least two former Trump officials, including Chris Liddell to its board and Sihao Huang as head of frontier compute strategy, while OpenAI has hired at least three, including Thomas Lind to lead cyber and strategic risk on its national security policy team. The moves come as frontier AI is increasingly treated as a national security issue.

AITencent is reportedly considering an offshore bond sale of up to $5 billion in US dollars and offshore yuan, possibly as early as this month, according to Bloomberg. The move follows its $4.66 billion bond offering in June, its largest debt deal since 2020, with proceeds earmarked for general corporate purposes including AI development. The post notes that major tech firms are increasingly turning to debt to fund AI infrastructure spending beyond their existing cash flows.

AILangChain says Factory AI is sponsoring the Interrupt London event. Attendees can visit Factory AI's booth to try its autonomy stack for enterprise teams.

AIShenzhen-based Insta360 opened its first U.S. flagship store in New York City's Times Square in September, marketing its pocket-sized cameras to content creators, travelers, and sports enthusiasts. Co-founder Max Richter said the U.S. accounts for 30% to 40% of the company's revenue, while the FCC has blocked DJI from selling new drones and cameras in the country. Insta360 also launched drone brand Antigravity, whose A1 drone received FCC approval just before a new foreign drone rule took effect.

AIRevolut CEO Nik Storonsky says the fintech aims to crack the US market and compete with JPMorgan and American Express. He says Revolut plans a full digital banking offer, from credit cards to loans, and will test AI agents that can shop and transact for users.

AIOpenAI reportedly assured investors it expects to reach a $70 billion annualized revenue target this year, an apparent effort to ease concerns that it is missing earlier projections. The figures matter because they are seen as a gauge of underlying demand for cutting-edge AI models and a justification for huge spending on tech infrastructure. Some analysts, however, say the annualized revenue metric itself is flawed.

AIMeliá Hotels International, a hotel chain with more than 380 hotels across four continents, is cited in an AWS post as having taken a step the post describes as the approach needed. The source gives no further details on the specific technology, implementation, or results.

AIBending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said falling software company valuations create buying opportunities as the firm aims to benefit from AI disrupting the industry. The source does not provide further details on specific deals, figures, or timelines.

AIAnthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5, its cheapest and fastest small model, which it says costs around 75% less to run than Claude Haiku 4.5. The author argues Anthropic is the only frontier model builder, though the piece also covers Nous Research's $90 million Series B and OpenAI's revenue discrepancy.

AIChinese AI chipmaker Biren Technology is raising HK$4.04 billion ($520 million) through a share placement of 130 million shares at HK$31.08 each, a 33% discount to its July placement price. The proceeds will mainly fund supply-chain purchases and production preparation for its next-generation BR20X chip, with about 70% going to procurement and commercialization. Its shares fell 11.85% on October 8 after the announcement.

AIFirmus abandoned its attempt at one of Australia's biggest-ever initial public offerings after failing to attract global investors wary of frothy AI valuations. The Nvidia-backed data center company's withdrawal reflects growing investor skepticism toward AI-related companies.

AIOpenAI told investors it expects $50bn in revenue this year, about $20bn less than the $70bn it had signalled last month. The gap stems partly from comparing with Anthropic, which counts revenue sold through cloud partners such as AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not. The news weighed on US tech stocks, and OpenAI is in early talks to raise $30bn at a valuation of about $1.4tn.

AIOpenAI has made GPT-6 available to all ChatGPT free and paid users worldwide, replacing GPT-5.6 SOL and GPT-5.6 LUNA. The model integrates Astra safety improvements that strengthen safeguards against misuse in cyber, biological, and violent domains.

AIShares of Chinese optical chipmakers fell for a second straight session on Friday amid fears of potential US trade curbs on next-generation optical transceivers for data centres. China's CSI 300 Index slid 1.3 per cent by midday to its lowest level since August last year, with upstream laser chip suppliers falling more steeply than downstream transceiver makers.

AIAsia's booming data-center industry faces growing political risk because billions of dollars in investment depend on a few US technology giants, Jardine Matheson's chief executive warned. He said those companies' ability to operate globally could be disrupted by Washington's increasingly unpredictable stance toward China.

AIOpenAI expects to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, according to people familiar with the matter. The company's annualized revenue was roughly $50 billion at the end of September, those people said.

AIDayOne Data Centers Ltd., a Singapore-based company, has held preliminary talks with banks for weeks about a potential $500 million bond offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The discussions are taking place even as the company plans to list in the US.

AIFirmus Grid Ltd. is exploring a private funding round to raise as much as $3 billion after its planned initial public offering collapsed. The data center operator is seeking alternative financing options following the failed IPO.

AITom Watson, now a senior vice-president at Palantir, warned UK ministers against letting "mob rule" dictate public procurement, saying they could get "in a lot of trouble" if they do. The former Labour deputy leader's comments come as Prime Minister Andy Burnham faces pressure to drop Palantir from government contracts, including a £330m NHS software deal.

AIAustralian cloud-computing firm Firmus Grid scrapped its IPO, which had sought a $30 billion valuation. The company had only two operational data centers at the time.

AIManus parent Butterfly Effect announced funding of over $500M led by Boyu Capital and IDG, with Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund returning, its first disclosed raise since resuming independent operations. The reported $4B post-money valuation was not confirmed. Manus also launched version 2.0 and the personal agent Cue on September 29, and is building a China-focused product team and partnerships with domestic model developers.

AIGeekPark reports that Krinwave, a Shenzhen company, has completed a new 400 million yuan round with XVC and Sequoia China as new investors. The company says its low-frequency ultrasound captures brain structures through the skull, which conventional high-frequency devices cannot, and it aims to supply hardware and its kOS software platform to brain-computer interface and NeuroAI groups.

AIChina's tech hardware shares are falling rapidly after strong gains earlier this year, as doubts over the global AI trade make high-valuation names especially vulnerable. The selloff reflects growing valuation concerns in the sector.

AIEvan Cheng, CEO of Mysten Labs, presented the Sui Agent Pass at Sui Basecamp in Singapore as a way to bound AI agent authority over money. Users would define allowed actions, assets, recipients, and permission duration, with the system itself enforcing those limits so that losses stop at a predefined cap even if an agent is compromised. The article argues that the real challenge is making such limits impossible to bypass when failures occur.

AISoftBank Group Corp. is seeking to raise as much as $100 billion from Gulf investors to expand its AI investments, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report did not specify the timing or terms of the proposed fundraising.

AIXPENG has named its robotaxi business XPENG YOYO and launched a ride-hailing mini program that lets invited members of the public test the service. The company says its first production robotaxi, based on the flagship GX model, rolled off the line in May 2026, and it has completed more than 2,000 internal test rides in Guangzhou. XPENG says YOYO uses four in-house Turing AI chips delivering 3,000 TOPS, a second-generation VLA model, and a vision-based approach without high-definition maps or LiDAR.

AIOpenAI's most senior Asia-Pacific public policy executive is leaving after six months in the role, according to a person familiar with the matter. The departure comes as the ChatGPT maker faces regulatory scrutiny in the region.

AIThreatBook has acquired CyberStrikeAI, an open-source AI pentesting agent, after reports that attackers had used it in real intrusions. The company says it added guardrails to limit misuse but will put new capability enhancements into its commercial edition, and it argues defenders should control such tools. It also corrects an earlier threat intelligence report that linked the developer, a security engineer at Alipay, to government agencies, calling that attribution a false positive.

AIOpenAI expects to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026, according to people familiar with the matter. The growth is driven largely by its enterprise business.

AIGoogle Cloud unveiled Gemini Agent at its Gemini at Work 2026 event, a general-purpose work agent for enterprise customers that works across Gemini Enterprise and Workspace. Currently the agent supports Gemini and Claude models, with an API planned so developers can integrate it into third-party applications.

AIFactory has appointed Connor Maloney as Head of Federal to lead its expansion into the public sector. Maloney previously served as Vice President of Federal at Rubrik and began his career as a Program Manager at the Department of War. Factory also recently announced a partnership with Carahsoft and says it can run in managed, private cloud, on-premises, or fully air-gapped deployments.

AIJerry Liu is preparing for the Agent Economy Gala, which has reached its 400-guest capacity and is organized by @imaanxsultan. The source says attendees include 203 founders with over $1B raised combined, 67 founding operators, 58 investors, 23 creators, and 295 guests building agent applications or infrastructure.

AISnyk moved its internal support agent, Snyk Assist, into the core Snyk product in September 2026, giving every paying customer access. Built on LangChain and LangGraph with observability in LangSmith, the agent answers questions in plain language and can open support cases or log feature requests. It runs as a single agent behind Slack, web and API surfaces, with tools attached per user permissions.

AIAustralian AI data center operator Firmus, backed by Nvidia, has withdrawn its planned initial public offering, citing market volatility and conditions. Its board concluded the proposed terms did not adequately reflect the company's business strength and long-term growth outlook. Firmus said it will now pursue private market capital and consider other public and private options.

AIMicbot says a procurement dispute with a Zhejiang customer over four wheeled-quadruped robots has been settled through negotiation, after reports of late P2 deliveries, a balance fault in a Curiosity S01 and a disagreement over secondary-development rights. The buyer, which ordered two P2 units for 580,000 yuan and later two S01 units at 160,000 yuan each, had refused research-only terms for software access. Micbot's October 6 statement said it supports customer secondary development but requires clear authorization and protection of core technology.

AINaive AI, a Tsinghua-linked company founded seven months ago, has raised $400 million across three rounds at a post-money valuation of $1.42 billion. The company's founder is Dai Jifeng, an associate professor in Tsinghua's Department of Electronic Engineering, and its team has not given interviews or published a product introduction.

AIZhang Lei, then a recent PhD graduate working mainly on image retrieval, beat a team led by face recognition expert Li Ziqing in a 2002 Microsoft Research Asia contest to build a face detection system. He cut the false-positive rate from roughly 50% to 1%, and the algorithm was integrated into Windows. Several members of his team later became prominent figures in China's technology industry.

AIBASAL Intelligence, founded by Tsinghua AIR's first PhD graduate Li Jianxiong, has secured lead funding from Five Source Capital, with Ivy Capital, Linear Capital and WestSummit Capital participating. The company says it is betting on an action-native In-Context embodied foundation model that lets robots learn on site from a few human demonstrations and trial attempts within minutes, without retraining after a scene change.

AIElon Musk announced on X on October 7 that Grok Bot will select the most suitable backend model for each specific task, explicitly naming Claude Opus 5.5. The source text is truncated, so the full list of other models and any further details are not available.

AIChina's Xiongan New Area is accelerating efforts to attract technology firms, officials and sources said, aiming to nurture local industries alongside state institutions relocated from Beijing. Officials are targeting companies that could reach valuations of 10 billion yuan (US$1.4 billion) and list on markets including Hong Kong within a few years.