β‘ Current Dispatches from Techmeme (15)
- Investigation: some Chinese companies approved by the US Commerce Department to handle Nvidia's H200 chips have empty offices and ties to firms under sanctions (New York Times)
- Nasscom President Rajesh Nambiar warns AI could make it harder for fresh Indian engineering graduates to find jobs, urging an immediate CS curriculum overhaul (Sayan Chakraborty/Nikkei Asia)
- How differences in economics, public policy, and cultural patterns could explain greater pessimism about AI in the West than in Asia and emerging economies (Gillian Tett/Financial Times)
- Global tablet shipments fell 23% YoY to 32M units in Q3 2026, their lowest level in nearly three years; Apple's iPad shipments fell 27.5% YoY to ~11.58M (Omdia)
- Censys finds 800+ publicly exposed copies of ARTEX, a Chinese-made, AI-powered, open-source penetration testing tool linked to several cyberattacks since July (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
- Shenzhen, home to tech giants and an illicit trade of smuggled chips and stolen iPhones, is clearing out its illegitimate markets ahead of the APEC summit (William Langley/Financial Times)
- Huawei unveils HarmonyOS-powered Qinyun HM650 series desktop PCs for enterprise and government users, saying they use "100% domestically made" components (Iris Deng/South China Morning Post)
- Axon invests $1.2B in Skydio, whose autonomous drones are used by public safety agencies, the US military, and 32 allied nations, at a $5.2B pre-money valuation (Carly Page/Resilience Media)
- Beijing-based Sand.ai, an AI startup specializing in video generation, raised a $200M Series A+, bringing its total funding over the past 10 months to $300M (Eudora Wang/DealStreetAsia)
- Sources: US officials believe Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, who they allege was recruited to spy for China's top spy agency, MSS (Demetri Sevastopulo/Financial Times)
- Meta introduces specialized versions of its existing models, trained using Muse Wonder, bringing Active Memory and Active Focus to all Muse and Meta AI users (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack)
- CesiumAstro, which plans a 737-satellite LEO communications network at two altitudes, raised $730M at a $4.5B+ valuation, bringing its total funding to $1.4B (Loren Grush/Bloomberg)
- Apple says the App Store has over 100K apps built for the iPhone Duo and "thousands of optimized apps are being added to the store each day" (Jay Peters/The Verge)
- Crusoe says Google has bought out its data center site in southeast Wyoming; Crusoe reportedly failed to lock in customers including Google for the project (Lynn Doan/Bloomberg)
- Sources: US intelligence concluded that Megaspeed executive Alice Huang was recruited by China's top spy agency MSS to collect intelligence on Jensen Huang (New York Times)
π§ Editorial Topic Fingerprint
Subject distribution across 81 recent dispatches from Techmeme.
βοΈ Compare with Peer TECH Bureaus
π Multi-Day Historical Dispatches from Techmeme
Saturday, November 7, 2026
- • CesiumAstro, which plans a 737-satellite LEO communications network at two altitudes, raised $730M at a $4.5B+ valuation, bringing its total funding to $1.4B (Loren Grush/Bloomberg)
- • Sources: US officials believe Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, who they allege was recruited to spy for China's top spy agency, MSS (Demetri Sevastopulo/Financial Times)
- • Meta introduces specialized versions of its existing models, trained using Muse Wonder, bringing Active Memory and Active Focus to all Muse and Meta AI users (Frederic Lardinois/The New Stack)
- • Censys finds 800+ publicly exposed copies of ARTEX, a Chinese-made, AI-powered, open-source penetration testing tool linked to several cyberattacks since July (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
Friday, November 6, 2026
- • Artificial Analysis says Inkling 2 Small matches Gemini 3.8 Flash (high) in its index and would be the top open model outside China once its weights are out (Artificial Analysis)
- • Lyft reports Q3 revenue up 8% YoY to $1.82B, vs. $1.92B est., and a net loss of $0.03 a share, vs. an est. profit of $0.20 a share; LYFT drops 8%+ after hours (Kelly Cloonan/Wall Street Journal)
- • Meta indefinitely pauses its new commercial terms, which critics say would let it scrape sites of business users, after publisher outcry and court injunctions (Nieman Lab)
- • Sources: cloud security startup Cyera is planning to raise around $800M in a round led by Cyberstarts at a $20B valuation, up from $12B in June (Aaron Holmes/The Information)
Thursday, November 5, 2026
- • Sources: Goldman Sachs and Apollo are in talks with investors to sell portions of SpaceX's ~$40B chip financing, asking some for up to $500M before syndication (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg)
- • Sources: Anthropic and AP struck a licensing deal just before the midterms, marking the first time Anthropic paid a digital news publisher to license content (Mark Stenberg/Adweek)
- • OpenAI launches Images 2.6 in ChatGPT, Codex, and the API, saying it generates images 50% faster, and adds animated GIF creation from prompts or photos (Emma Roth/The Verge)
- • Sources: Google DeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs is in talks to raise ~$5B at a ~$50B valuation; the AI drug discovery startup last raised $2.1B in May (Bloomberg)
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
- • Following backlash against its education updates, Google says schools can choose to enable Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search individually (Isabel O'Brien/CNBC)
- • Cat Wu, product lead for Claude Code and Cowork, has left Anthropic; Thariq Shihipar, who worked on Claude Code, announced his departure last month (Stephen Council/Business Insider)
- • How Nvidia uses soft power to influence customers and shape US chip policy; sources: OpenAI took no public stance on China chip exports to avoid angering Nvidia (The Information)
- • We want to clarify what we announced today about our education services. Today's announcements give schools more choice, not less. Here's what we announced: - Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search will be OFF π΄ by default. This is based on K-12 schools asking for more control over student use of AI... (@newsfromgoogle)
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
- • Match Group reports Q3 revenue fell 3% YoY to $891M, below estimates, and total paying users fell 5% to 13.8M; Q4 forecast has adjusted EBITDA below estimates (Samantha Kelly/Bloomberg)
- • Trajectory, which is developing AI model post-training tools for nontechnical customers, raised a $45M Series A led by Sequoia at a $300M valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
- • Larridin, which helps companies track how AI affects employee output and identifies areas for better AI adoption, raised a $30M Series A led by Pelion Ventures (Aditi Bharade/Business Insider)
- • Salesforce announces plans to acquire Cresta, a provider of AI-powered contact center automation software; source: Salesforce agreed to pay $2.7B for Cresta (The Information)
Monday, November 2, 2026
- • A look at Binance's efforts to contain the hack, including creating a global war room of ~100 people, coordinating with other crypto firms and the FBI, and more (Bloomberg)
- • Midstream Health, whose AI tools help 250 hospitals recover revenue from rebates and vendor and payer underpayments, raised a $20M Series A led by Valtrius (Will Maddox/Axios)
- • Data analytics provider Hex Technologies, which says it has rebuilt its platform for AI agents, raised a $100M Series D led by Peak XV at a $1.2B valuation (Tim Keary/Forbes)
- • Broccoli AI, which sells AI agents to plumbing, HVAC, and electrical companies, raised a $22M Series A and a $30M Series B; a source says it is valued at $300M (Nick Lichtenberg/Fortune)