Daily Briefing
Thursday, 5 November 2026
188 stories published on this day, grouped by section.
The day in brief
- Amazon, Alphabet and Apple Jump as Analysts Say Data Centre Backlash Favours Big Clouds: Big Tech shares rose after the Democratic sweep.
- ChatGPT Adds Animated GIF Creation as OpenAI Rolls Out Images 2.6: The update also speeds up image generation and brings new Flare and Sunburst API models.
- Less Than 2% of 2026 US Venture Funding Went to Post-Election Red States, Crunchbase Says: After Texas and Ohio turned purple, the 17 remaining red states have drawn $8.6 billion this year, while blue states have taken a record $481 billion.
- Kerry Opens Dubai Innovation Centre and Uses AI Tools to Rework Emirati Dishes: Teams of chefs and scientists will use the Irish food group's Kalaido and Nexus AI platforms to cut salt, sugar and fat in local dishes, with judging at Dubai Future Week.
- Sekoia Links Watering-Hole Attacks on Unpatched iPhones and Android Phones to APT29: The French security firm says the attackers hijacked a Ukrainian analytics tracker for a week and used lookalike sites to deliver exploits that needed no click from victims.
AI
Anthropic Delays Watermark on Claude Opus 4.6 and Adds Three Older Models From November 16
On all four models in the new wave, the watermark only applies at default sampling settings, so API users can avoid it by changing a single parameter.
Gemini 4 Carbon Comes Close to Claude Opus 5.5 at a Third of the Cost in SemiAnalysis Test
Google's new model came second on the research firm's 206-task GDPx benchmark at about $16 a task, against roughly $51 for Anthropic's flagship, though its introductory pricing is due to double.
Smaller US Banks Open Accounts to AI Agents as JPMorgan and Wells Fargo Pull Back
Lead Bank, Increase Bank and start-up Natural are building scoped accounts, wallets and cards for AI agents, while large lenders restrict access and push liability onto customers.
OpenAI Pledges to Cut Data Centre Power Use During Grid Strain, Starting in Georgia
Under its new Grid Protectors Program, Georgia Power can cut up to 1,000MW from OpenAI's planned 3.2GW Effingham County campus at peak times, and OpenAI will pay for the grid connection.
Microsoft Patent Application Describes AI That Rewrites Live Speech and Lip Movements
The filing describes AI agents that remove or replace a speaker's words in a live video feed based on each viewer's profile, and redraw the speaker's mouth to match.
Anthropic Tells IPO Investors Its 15-Person Chip Team Uses Claude to Design Custom Silicon
Anthropic is pitching the unit's speed to investors as an edge, and the report has already weighed on shares of chip design software makers Synopsys and Cadence.
Borouge International Targets $100 Million in Value From AI Programme by 2027
The polyolefins producer formed from Borouge, Borealis and NOVA Chemicals signed AI and digital deals with Microsoft, Emerson, Immensa and Cognite at ADIPEC.
85% of UAE Workers Use AI at Work, but Two-Thirds Fear for Their Jobs, Survey Finds
Oliver Wyman's research shows UAE staff adopting AI faster than workers in North America and Europe, while few say their employers have explained what the technology means for their roles.
Claude Narrows ChatGPT's Lead in UK's £1 Billion Consumer AI Subscription Market
A study of 14 million UK bank and card accounts finds Anthropic's share of direct AI subscription spending quadrupled in seven months, though ChatGPT still takes most of it.
Bank of Singapore Says In-House AI Agents Cut Client Onboarding to 15 Business Days
Chief executive Jason Moo told the Dubai Fintech Summit that Dubai and Singapore are complementary wealth hubs and that Chinese and Gulf investors are increasingly moving capital between them.
Dubai RTA Expects AI Traffic Signals to Cut Congestion by at Least 10%
Every signal in the emirate is being linked to the Al Barsha control centre by early next year, under an AI strategy the authority values at more than Dh300 million a year.
Abu Dhabi Energy Regulator's AI Platform Asateel Processes More Than 14,000 Transactions
The Department of Energy says AI reviewed and decided 90% of the cases as it widens rules for gas networks and LNG supply to industry.
AIQ Adds Rock Flow Dynamics' tNavigator to Genesis and Signs Siemens Energy Pact
The Abu Dhabi energy AI company used the last day of ADIPEC to bring reservoir simulation onto its operating platform and lay groundwork for an autonomous-operations business.
Presight Signs Deal With US Firm Quartermaster to Build AI Maritime Surveillance Tools
The Abu Dhabi AI company will pair its analytics platforms with SmartMast sensors that turn merchant ships into a monitoring network, starting in the UAE.
Visa Study Finds 72% of UAE Shoppers Used AI on Their Latest Purchase
UAE consumers are ready for AI shopping agents, but only 19% of merchants have product data those agents can read well, according to the Visa-backed research.
Moonshot AI Sought Nvidia Blackwell Capacity in European Data Centres, CNBC Says
Four people said the Kimi developer discussed renting clusters of 8,000 or more GPUs from neoclouds, which US export rules on remote access do not yet cover.
Researcher Says Anthropic Left Claude Dispatch Flaw Unfixed Despite Remote Code Risk
A hijacked browser extension could drive Claude Desktop through a logged-in web session, and shared personal and work accounts could carry an attack onto corporate laptops.
Creator of AI Fake-ID Site OnlyFake Speaks Out After US Sentence and Deportation
Yuriy Nazarenko, whose site sold more than 10,000 digital fake IDs used to get past bank and crypto checks, gave his first account in interviews with 404 Media.
ABB Robotics and Nvidia Plan Physical AI Certificate Built Around Simulation
The course uses ABB's RobotStudio and Nvidia's Omniverse, and comes with a white paper finding that 84% of companies have not redesigned jobs around AI.
OpenAI Launches GPT-6 Cyber, Saying It Strays Out of Bounds Less Than 1% of the Time
The security model is OpenAI's first cyber-specialist system rated Critical under its Preparedness Framework, and is going first to selected members of its Daybreak Red programme.
Baidu Releases Open Weights for ERNIE 5.5 Flash Base, a 280 Billion-Parameter Model
The mixture-of-experts model is published at the end of pre-training, with no instruction tuning, and Baidu says it beats similarly sized Chinese base models on most benchmarks.
Business
Less Than 2% of 2026 US Venture Funding Went to Post-Election Red States, Crunchbase Says
After Texas and Ohio turned purple, the 17 remaining red states have drawn $8.6 billion this year, while blue states have taken a record $481 billion.
Kerry Opens Dubai Innovation Centre and Uses AI Tools to Rework Emirati Dishes
Teams of chefs and scientists will use the Irish food group's Kalaido and Nexus AI platforms to cut salt, sugar and fat in local dishes, with judging at Dubai Future Week.
Sequoia Closes London Office and Ends Arc and Scouts in Return to Silicon Valley
The venture firm says it has raised about $10 billion in new funds and will flatten its partnership, with seven general partners now running the firm.
India Buys Crude From 43 Countries as UAE Becomes a Major Energy Supplier
India's top oil ministry official says the UAE now supplies 15 to 20 per cent of the country's energy imports, including a quarter of its LPG.
AI Shopping Agents Threaten the Retail Ad Networks of Amazon and Walmart
The two retailers control 88% of US retail advertising, but bots that shop for consumers never see the sponsored listings brands pay for.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Says Two Tankers and a Tugboat Caught Fire in Hormuz
The IRGC says one tanker hit a mine on a route it had not authorised, and it blamed Washington for steering ships through mined waters.
Dubai Land Department Launches Rent Now, Pay Later Instalments With Emirates NBD
Eligible tenants can spread residential rent over six or 12 months on Emirates NBD credit cards, with landlords paid upfront and tenants covering 2.5% in fees.
UAE Central Bank Gives Interpolitan Money In-Principle Approval for Stored Value Licence
The London-based payments firm wants to offer merchant acquiring and card issuing in the UAE on one platform, but still needs final authorisation.
Dubai Access Club Offers Repeat Tourists a Five-Year Visa for Dh4,032.50
The invitation-only scheme relies on airlines, hotel groups and their loyalty programmes to pick members, who also get up to Dh2,000 in credit for hotels, attractions and retail.
Construction Robotics Start-Ups Raise $1.6 Billion in 2026, Triple the Previous Record
Three companies, led by autonomous excavator maker Bedrock Robotics, took most of the money as contractors short of skilled workers look to machines.
Condor Launches Daily Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi Flights Under Etihad Codeshare
The A330neo service continues to Bangkok and takes flights between Germany and Abu Dhabi to 49 a week, following Condor's recent Berlin route.
Crew Internet on Offshore Platforms Opens New Cyber Risks for UAE Energy Operators
IEC Telecom's Alaa Alsadi says welfare internet for workers at sea must be kept separate from the networks that run critical offshore equipment.
Al Fardan Chief Says Agentic AI Banking Platform Is in Final Security Checks
At a Dubai family business panel, Binghatti's Qatr Al Nada Bin Ghatti also said the developer plans to grow into other emirates before looking abroad, possibly to the UK.
Dubai Media Council Signs Deals With SM Entertainment and Gaming Firm NEXUS in Seoul
A five-day Dubai delegation held 25 meetings with Korean studios, game publishers and industry bodies as the emirate tries to attract content and gaming companies.
ADIPEC 2026 Closes With a Record $67 Billion in Deals as AI Zone Grows 20%
Organisers counted more than 50,000 agreements over four days in Abu Dhabi, up 26.4% on 2025, with the energy-AI tie-up between ADNOC, OpenAI and G42 billed as the headline.
Abu Dhabi Energy Department Signs LNG Supply Pact That Could Draw Dh1 Billion in Investment
H2G Green, Singapore's Gas Hub, Sergas unit Mozon Energy and Cloud Energy will study trucking LNG to factories and businesses outside the emirate's gas pipeline network.
Abu Dhabi's Clean Power Output Rose More Than Tenfold Between 2020 and 2025, EWEC Says
Nuclear, solar and wind now supply almost 46% of the emirate's electricity, up from under 5% in 2020, according to the state power buyer.
Companies
Fermaca Becomes Mexico's First Nvidia Cloud Partner and Unveils AI Factory Platform
The gas infrastructure group will start in Mexico City with a Blackwell Ultra cluster and aims for 60 MW of operational AI capacity by the end of 2027.
Waymo Confirms It Will Leave Uber in Austin and Atlanta From January 2028
Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the shared arrangement gave riders an unpredictable experience. Uber says it will keep Waymo cars on its app for as long as both sides agree.
French Lender Crédit Mutuel Arkéa Says Cyberattack Diverted About €100 Million
The Brittany-based bank says attackers moved money from its own account to other banks and converted it into cryptocurrency, and Paris prosecutors have opened an investigation.
Arm Revenue Rises 27% to $1.44 Billion as Licensing Jumps and Royalties Lag
Licence income grew 50 per cent but royalties rose just 8 per cent, and Arm says orders now support up to $2 billion of revenue from its own AGI CPU chip.
Snap Posts Profit and Passes 30 Million Paid Subscribers, but Shares Fall 12%
Revenue rose 14 per cent and AI features helped lift subscriptions, but daily users and advertising revenue fell short of analysts' expectations.
Apple Cuts Employees' Daily AI Budgets as Ternus Pushes to Rein In Costs
Some engineers' daily caps for AI models have fallen from $300 to $200, and some teams could drop to $100 or even $25 a day.
Microsoft's $5 Billion Capex Shortfall Tied Partly to IREN Delays, Report Says
Microsoft blamed late third-party data centre capacity for lower quarterly spending, and The Information identifies the AI cloud firm as one of the providers involved.
Meta Buys AI Coding Start-Up Conductor to Bolster Superintelligence Labs
The two-year-old company runs teams of coding agents from Anthropic and OpenAI in parallel workspaces, and it will shut its cloud service on November 20.
Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs in Talks to Raise About $5 Billion for AI Drug Discovery
The DeepMind spinout would more than double the $2.1 billion it raised earlier this year, at a valuation reported to be about $50 billion.
Anthropic Signs Its First Content Licensing Deal, With the Associated Press
Claude showed AP-attributed results on election night under the content and data deal, which comes weeks before Anthropic's planned stock market listing.
Circle Cuts About 5% of Staff as Third-Quarter Profit Beats Forecasts
The USDC issuer took a $9.1 million restructuring charge, and a one-off token presale accounted for about $182 million of its $865 million in revenue.
OpenAI Now Earns Most of Its Revenue From Businesses, Brockman Says
Asked whether the ChatGPT maker will be ready to go public next year, its president said "I think so", as it competes with Anthropic for corporate customers.
Palo Alto Networks in Talks to Buy Israel's Clutch Security for About $500 Million
The three-year-old Tel Aviv start-up secures the keys, tokens and credentials used by AI agents and other software, and would be Palo Alto's fifth announced deal this year.
China Blocks SoftBank's $5.4 Billion Purchase of ABB's Robotics Unit, FT Reports
China's top economic planner has told SoftBank it will not clear the deal, according to the Financial Times, leaving ABB holding a business it agreed to sell last year.
Musk Says Two New SpaceXAI Data Centres Near Memphis Will Open Before Year-End
The sites, nicknamed Gun Range and Spam, would add about 420,000 Nvidia GB300 chips to the Colossus 2 campus as the company faces a pollution lawsuit and state penalties.
Toyota Creates Company-Wide Robotics Unit Under Production Chief Takefumi Shiga
Toyota Robotics starts on January 1, 2027, as part of a reorganisation that also closes the carmaker's Frontier Research Center and creates a separate India and Middle East region.
Emirates Group Half-Year Profit Falls About Two-Thirds to Dh3.6 Billion
Revenue for the six months to September 30 fell to Dh66.2 billion from Dh75.4 billion a year earlier, with the group blaming regional disruption and high fuel costs.
OMV Chief Emma Delaney Says Low Fuel Stocks Will Keep Refining Markets Tight
The new chief executive of the Austrian energy group, a long-time partner of ADNOC, says depleted inventories mean supply disruptions will take time to work through.
Burjeel Holdings Nine-Month Profit Rises 42% as Patient Visits Reach 5.8 Million
The Abu Dhabi hospital operator's revenue grew 5.6% to AED4.329 billion, while operating cash flow more than tripled on better collection of receivables.
Masdar and Endesa Begin Building €25.2 Million Battery Storage Portfolio in Spain
The three projects at solar plants in Extremadura and Andalusia are the partners' first storage assets and are due to start operating by the end of 2027.
Uber Expects Nearly 200 Driverless Cars in the UAE by Year-End, 29% of Its Global Fleet
The ride-hailing company projects about 700 fully driverless vehicles worldwide by December, even as the Iran conflict weighs on its bookings in the region.
Microsoft Declines Option to More Than Double Nscale's Texas Compute Deal, FT Says
It is the second setback in weeks for the Nvidia-backed British AI cloud company, which filed for a US listing in September with Microsoft expected to be a major customer.
Emaar Properties Offers Dh15 a Share to Take Full Control of Emaar Development
The cash offer for the roughly 21% stake Emaar does not own would cost about Dh12.5 billion and needs approval from Emaar Properties' board.
Mubadala Energy Aims to Double Production Within a Decade, With Gas at 70% of Portfolio
Acting chief executive Adnan Bu Fateem says growth will come from Malaysia, Indonesia, Egypt and the Commonwealth LNG project in the US, where construction has started.
Aster and MENASCO to Build Dh350 Million Medcare Hospital in Dubai Studio City
The 144-bed Medcare Royal Hills Hospital, due to open by 2029, will include a cancer centre, robotic-assisted surgery and cardiac care as Aster expands its UAE network.
ADNOC Gas Signs Deal With Etihad WE to Explore Gas Supply for Northern Emirates Power
The agreement could give ADNOC Gas a new domestic buyer for its extra gas output and give the federal utility a local fuel source for new power plants.
ADIB Offers 24/7 Real-Time Transfers to Egyptian Bank Accounts Through Visa Direct
Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank says it is the first UAE lender to send Egyptian pounds to bank accounts in Egypt at any hour over Visa's network.
Micron Halts Work on $4.5 Billion Taiwan Memory Plant Over Labour Dispute, Bloomberg Says
The Taoyuan fab was meant to make DRAM and high-bandwidth memory for AI servers from 2028, but a fight over sharing AI-boom profits with workers has stalled it.
ADNOC's XRG Agrees to Buy Shell's North West Shelf LNG Stake for $1.45 Billion
The 16.67% stake in Australia's oldest LNG project is XRG's first Australian LNG asset, a year after its Santos bid collapsed. Completion is expected in 2027.
Amazon Drops Grubhub and Makes Uber Eats Its Restaurant Delivery Partner for Prime
US Prime members can now order Uber Eats meals inside Amazon's website and shopping app without an Uber account, with no delivery fee on orders over $25.
Pure DC Lines Up $1.9 Billion Financing With FAB and Citi Joining Its Lenders
The Oaktree-backed operator, which runs a hyperscale campus on Abu Dhabi's Yas Island, says it has now raised more than $6.2 billion in 12 months.
Riot Names Anthropic as Tenant of $28 Billion Texas Data Centre Lease
The bitcoin miner's quarterly filing shows it could owe Anthropic up to about $3.6 billion in build costs, repaid through rent credits at 12% a year if Riot cannot borrow on acceptable terms.
About 600,000 Nvidia H200 Chips Pile Up in Hong Kong as Beijing Withholds Import Approval
Chinese tech groups have each received only about 10,000 of the chips in recent months, and an eight-card H200 server now costs roughly three times what it did a year ago.
xAI Installs Eight Converted Jet Engines to Power Its Colossus 2 Data Centre
The 50-megawatt ProEnergy units at xAI's Southaven, Mississippi plant may emit twice as much carbon monoxide as its other turbines, and the permit faces a hearing on November 9.
Agility Robotics Lists on Nasdaq as First US Pure-Play Humanoid Robot Maker
The Digit maker raised about $465 million through its SPAC merger, including a Foxconn-led PIPE, but booked only $174,000 in revenue in the first half while losing $362 million.
McGraw Hill Brings Its K-12 Curriculum Into Anthropic's Claude for Teachers
The textbook publisher announced the beta integration alongside quarterly results showing revenue down 5.5% and digital sales up 2.6%, as it pitches AI platforms as a new market.
Emaar Nine-Month Profit Rises 17% to Dh17.1 Billion as Board Approves Special Dividend
Revenue grew 13% on handovers and a large backlog, but group property sales slowed and UAE hotel occupancy fell to 63% as fewer international visitors arrived.
Lambda Commits $33.1 Billion to AI Data Centre Campus in Rural Alabama
The GPU cloud company is the end user behind Project Red Clay in Lowndes County, where residents are suing over the tax breaks approved for the site.
Singapore's Terra Invest Joins Funding Round for Abu Dhabi AI Company AIREV
The maker of the OnDemand agentic AI platform did not disclose the size of the investment but said it will build AI products with two Terra Invest portfolio companies.
Hanwha Ocean and ABB Agree to Develop Power Systems for Floating AI Data Centres
The non-binding pact runs to May 2027 and targets LNG-engine controls that can follow the sharp swings in power demand from AI computing at sea.
RadianX Raises $5 Million to Make Perovskite Solar Power Packs for Battery-Free Devices
The start-up says its panels match silicon outdoors and harvest twice as much indoor light, and a manufacturer is adding $4 million to build a production line.
Emarat Signs Gas Infrastructure Agreement With Alfanar Gas Group at ADIPEC
The federal fuel company will find commercial and city customers for natural gas and CNG, while Alfanar designs, builds and runs the supply infrastructure.
Kanoo Energy to Double Abu Dhabi Manufacturing With Two New Facilities in KIZAD
The energy business, part of The Kanoo Group, says sales have passed $700 million as it adds exports to North Africa and Iraq and opens offices in Uzbekistan.
UK's Sovereign AI Fund Backs Drug Discovery Start-Up Potential Sciences
The London company plans to simulate molecular interactions from physics to build training data for AI models, raising a seed round in the tens of millions of dollars.
Maersk Raises 2026 Profit Guidance for a Third Time as Congestion Keeps Freight Rates High
The shipping group now expects underlying EBITDA of $14 billion to $14.5 billion, but third-quarter earnings missed analyst forecasts and its shares fell about 11%.
AI Chip Demand Lifts Third-Quarter Sales at Syensqo, Air Liquide and Linde
Europe's chemical and industrial gas suppliers are adding plants in Taiwan, Korea and Arizona as chipmakers expand capacity for AI servers.
Tencent Cloud Teams Up With Saudi Start-Up OmniOps on Sovereign AI Inference
Tencent will supply computing, storage and networking while OmniOps, founded in 2024, contributes its inference engine and local deployment for enterprise AI in the Kingdom.
NMDC Signs Pacts With e&, Borouge and Chinese Petroleum Chamber at ADIPEC
The Abu Dhabi marine contractor's units agreed deals on digital operations, subsea surveying, local manufacturing of seabed protection and pipeline coatings.
Mubadala Energy Seeks More US Projects After Backing Commonwealth LNG
Chief executive Adnan Bu Fateem says the Midterm results will not change the Abu Dhabi company's plans, as Gulf energy firms look abroad for stability while war costs rise at home.
Dropbox to Buy Tigris Data for $350 Million in Push Into AI Storage
The all-cash deal, Dropbox's largest ever, comes with DBX Agent Cloud, a new S3-compatible storage service for developers building AI applications and agents.
Nintendo Quarterly Profit Falls 29% as Switch 2 Sales Drop and Memory Costs Rise
Switch 2 shipments fell to 2.67 million in the September quarter, but Nintendo kept its 16.5 million unit target and its ¥310 billion annual profit forecast.
IHC Nine-Month Profit Jumps 87% to Dh32.3 Billion as International Revenue Doubles
The Abu Dhabi conglomerate, an investor in OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and Cerebras, grew revenue 33.2% to Dh100.3 billion, with energy and mining sales almost quadrupling.
Expedia CEO Says AI Agents Help Trip Planning but Have Not Changed How People Book
Ariane Gorin spoke as Expedia shares fell about 12% on a fourth-quarter revenue forecast that came in below analyst estimates.
Zipline Raises $1.5 Billion at $21.5 Billion Valuation as Walmart Adds 300 Drone Sites
The drone delivery company will spend the money on US manufacturing and hiring as Walmart signs a multi-year deal that takes their network well beyond today's 21 sites.
Shield AI to Buy Radar Maker Echodyne for $5.3 Billion at $28.8 Billion Valuation
The defence technology company is raising $2.5 billion in equity, structured equity from Blackstone and JPMorgan debt to pay for the deal, Bloomberg reported.
Empower Nine-Month Profit Rises 10.6% to Dh762 Million as Cooling Capacity Grows
Dubai's district cooling provider signed 94 new agreements this year and added deals with Meraas and Binghatti, though third-quarter profit growth slowed to 2.7%.
Lianlian DigiTech Opens DIFC Office to Expand Cross-Border Payments and Treasury Services
The Hong Kong-listed payments company already holds a DFSA licence and settles payments for sellers on Noon and Amazon's UAE and Saudi marketplaces.
India Overtakes US as ChatGPT's Largest Market, OpenAI India Chief Says
Prabhjeet Singh says weekly users have doubled since January, as OpenAI signs up Indian brands for ChatGPT ads and readies payment announcements.
Qatar's Qai Joins Brookfield and Drax on UK AI Data Centre Brookfield Says Could Top £20 Billion
The North Yorkshire campus is the first project of Qai's AI infrastructure venture with Brookfield, starting with a £2.5 billion, 100MW phase aimed at early 2028.
Electric Truck Maker Harbinger Raises $240 Million as It Expands Into Defence
Tiger Global, Capricorn and Ridgeline co-led the Series D, and FedEx put in more money after ordering 2,000 trucks worth more than $300 million.
Google Backstops Anthropic's $19 Billion Kentucky Data Centre Leases With TeraWulf
Google would step in as tenant or pay a termination fee if Anthropic defaults, helping TeraWulf borrow against the Hawesville campus, where Fluor will now build three data halls.
Markets
Amazon, Alphabet and Apple Jump as Analysts Say Data Centre Backlash Favours Big Clouds
Big Tech shares rose after the Democratic sweep. Voters rejected data centres in 40 of 41 local ballot measures, and analysts said tighter rules hurt smaller GPU clouds more.
Qualcomm Shares Fall 6% as Forecast Disappoints and Handset Chip Sales Drop 26%
The chipmaker beat estimates for its fiscal fourth quarter, but rising memory costs are hurting phone demand, and it is counting on a $5 billion data centre business next year.
Figma Shares Slide 7% Despite Beat as It Gives Customers More AI Credits
The design software company raised its full-year revenue and margin outlook, but its finance chief said Figma is giving up some near-term revenue to drive AI use.
Meta Draws Record €53 Billion of Orders for Debut Euro Bond Sale
The Facebook owner is raising up to €9 billion in six tranches to fund its AI build-out, a day after selling $15 billion of dollar bonds at wider spreads than in April.
Goldman and Apollo Seek Buyers for Pieces of SpaceX's $40 Billion GPU Financing
The banks are offering slices of a record lease deal for Nvidia Vera Rubin chips to Wall Street investors, a day after Democrats won control of Congress.
NextDC Shares Surge 43% as Goodman and Digital Realty Move to Buy Up to 9.9% Stake
A trust the two data centre groups own equally offered A$9.50 a share, a 45.5% premium to Wednesday's close, two weeks after a power delay cut NextDC's guidance.
Siltronic Raises 2026 Sales Outlook as AI Pulls Memory Capacity From Phones
The German wafer maker's chief executive says tight memory supply is pushing capacity towards AI, and he expects smartphone wafer use to fall about 14% this year.
Kyndryl Shares Surge as Quarterly Signings Reach $4.1 Billion Despite Revenue Dip
The former IBM infrastructure unit said revenue fell 1.9% but hyperscaler-related sales rose 27.2%, and it kept its fiscal 2027 outlook.
Kospi Triggers Sell Sidecar as Samsung and SK Hynix Slide on US AI Regulation Fears
Investors dumped Korea's two memory giants on fears that a Democratic Congress will tighten rules on AI data centres, while carmakers, banks and internet stocks rallied.
Micron Falls to Three-Month Low as Democrat Calls for Pause on Advanced AI Development
Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari said a pause on advanced AI and a ban on superintelligence should top her party's agenda, adding to a sell-off in chip and AI cloud stocks.
South Korea Posts Record $61.46 Billion Current Account Surplus on Chip Exports
Exports nearly doubled from a year earlier in September, and the Bank of Korea now expects the annual surplus to exceed its $450 billion forecast.
DIP Holding Prices $529 Million IPO at AED1.12, Dubai's First Listing of the Year
Dubai Investments is selling 20% of the operator of Dubai Investments Park, valuing it at AED9.7 billion, with trading expected to start on November 11.
Hon Hai's October Sales Rise 46% to a Record on Demand for Nvidia AI Servers
The Taiwanese assembler, known as Foxconn, booked about NT$1.31 trillion in October and expects its AI business to keep driving growth in the fourth quarter.
South Korean Defence Stocks Lose Nearly Two-Thirds of Peak Value as Drones Reshape Demand
Weak earnings, a stronger won and slow export orders have hit Hanwha Aerospace and Hyundai Rotem, while analysts question how well tank and artillery makers fit drone-era warfare.
Taiwan Stocks Fall 3.2% and Break Below 42,000 on US AI Regulation Fears
The Taiex closed at its lowest since July 31 as investors sold AI hardware names, with Delta Electronics down 7.38% and MediaTek losing NT$255.
Nikkei Falls 1.8% as Advantest and Tokyo Electron Slump on US AI Spending Fears
Most Tokyo stocks rose and the broader Topix gained 1.2%, but money left chip equipment makers after the Democratic midterm sweep.
Bank of England Raises Rates to 4% in First Increase Since 2023
The 8-1 vote came as energy costs from the Middle East conflict push inflation higher, and the Bank now expects CPI to reach around 5% by mid-2027.
Dubai Property Sales Reach Dh35 Billion in October as Rental Contracts Head for Record
A fäm Properties report counts 11,974 sales deals in the month, and says 339,557 rental contracts so far this year put Dubai within reach of its 2025 record.
Mubadala Capital Puts Evergreen Private Markets Fund on iCapital for Wealth Managers
The Abu Dhabi firm's diversified strategy, which offers limited quarterly redemptions, will be sold to qualified investors through iCapital's marketplace as both firms push into Middle East private wealth.
UBS Economist Paul Donovan Expects Postwar Oil to Settle Around $80 to $85 a Barrel
In Abu Dhabi, the UBS Global Wealth Management chief economist said falling oil could tame inflation by mid-2027 and that a Democratic Senate could reshape the Federal Reserve.
AMD, Nvidia and Intel Lead Chip Stock Rout as Investors Price In Data Centre Curbs
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index lost more than 8% by midday and the Nasdaq slid into correction territory as Democratic midterm gains raised the prospect of construction pauses.
People
Hugging Face CEO Says Closed Labs, Not Open Models, Create Most AI Risk
Clément Delangue said the platform now has more than 20 million AI builders, and he called for companies that deploy AI agents to be held legally responsible for what they do.
OpenAI Hires Anthropic's Claude Code Product Lead Cat Wu
Wu, who led product for Claude Code and Cowork until October 30, will run product management for OpenAI's Core Products group, which owns ChatGPT, Codex and the API.
HP Names Former GSK Chief Emma Walmsley as CEO From January 2027
Walmsley, a Microsoft director with no tech hardware background, takes over the PC and printer maker on January 4 as memory chip shortages squeeze device makers.
Arab Bank Switzerland Opens ADGM Digital Asset Advisory Unit Led by Valérie Noël
The Swiss private bank now has two UAE entities: a DIFC wealth management arm opened in June and the new Abu Dhabi unit, which advises on digital assets.
Policy
Sekoia Links Watering-Hole Attacks on Unpatched iPhones and Android Phones to APT29
The French security firm says the attackers hijacked a Ukrainian analytics tracker for a week and used lookalike sites to deliver exploits that needed no click from victims.
EU Commits €525 Million to Help Chip Design Start-Ups Scale
Most of the money is €440 million in grants from Brussels and member states, and the rest funds a shared design platform. The Commission says European firms earn under 1% of global chip design revenue.
Pro-AI Super PAC Network Leading the Future Ends Midterms With Few Toss-Up Wins
The network, launched with about $100 million from Silicon Valley backers, kept just over $20 million unspent and lost most of the competitive races it entered.
China Rejects UK Cyber Agency Warning That It Will Use AI Against Critical Infrastructure
Beijing said Britain was smearing it without evidence a day after the National Cyber Security Centre warned of an AI-powered ransomware attack on UK infrastructure by 2028.
OpenAI's Lehane Urges 2028 Candidates to Take a Third Path on AI
OpenAI's global affairs chief sets out five questions he says candidates must answer, and compares backing a data centre moratorium to the 2002 vote to go to war in Iraq.
Judge Lets Music Publishers Refile Claims Against Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
At a hearing in the publishers' $3 billion lyrics and piracy case, the court threw out the direct infringement count against Amodei but allowed it to be refiled.
Victoria's Main Parties Use AI-Generated Videos of Rival Leaders in Election Ads
Labor posted a fake video of Liberal leader Jess Wilson and the Liberals showed Premier Ben Carroll asleep at his desk, and the Greens and Transparency International want such ads banned.
Axon Sued in California Over Its AI-Powered Licence Plate Reader Network
A proposed class action seeks more than $5 million, claiming the Taser and body-camera maker failed to disclose how it collects, uses and shares drivers' plate data.
After Democratic Wins in Texas, Musk and Tech Backers Talk Up Data Centres in Space
Experts say the new Texas leadership could tighten oversight of data centres through state agencies and county powers, but split control of the legislature and developers' strong vested rights would limit any changes.
Google Faces Backlash Over Plan to Cut Search for Schools That Reject AI Tools
Senators, former FTC chair Lina Khan and New York's mayor accused Google of using its classroom dominance to push Gemini, and DuckDuckGo is now pitching schools to switch.
Pentagon CTO Says US Will Set Out the Laws Covering AI Labs Within Weeks
Emil Michael, vice chair of the White House's superintelligence task force, warned that without a federal framework "535 legislators" could write rules that harm the industry.
NSW Data Centre Inquiry Finds Gaps in Approvals but Drops Moratorium Call
A New South Wales upper house committee voted 6-1 to remove a recommended pause on approvals, leaving its Greens chair to warn of an "AI-fuelled data centre frenzy".
Saudi Arabia Signs Defence Deal With Syria and Agrees $403 Million in Reconstruction Loans
The Saudi Fund for Development will lend to Syria on concessional terms for health, housing, civil defence, water and the Aleppo thermal power plant.
MPs Say UK Is Dangerously Reliant on China for Minerals Needed for Defence and AI
The Commons business committee wants a critical minerals finance facility and says it cannot be confident the government will meet any of its 10 tests.
Activists in 15 European Countries Plan Two Days of Protests Against Data Centres
More than 100 groups backing the Stop Dirty Data Centres campaign want moratoria on large projects, citing energy, emissions and housing costs.
Sharjah Digital Department and Dell Launch AI Training for 1,000 Government Staff
The four-week programme, run with Sharjah's human resources department, offers five courses for leaders, employees and technical specialists under the emirate's 2026–2028 digital strategy.
UAE Drug Regulator Says Safety Reports Led to 78 Regulatory Actions Since 2025
The Emirates Drug Establishment received 10,962 reports of suspected side effects over 21 months and has set new reporting deadlines for serious cases.
Japan to Seek Early Warning of Software Flaws From US AI Developers
Tokyo wants advance notice of serious undisclosed vulnerabilities for government agencies and infrastructure operators, under an emergency cyber package that could come as soon as Friday.
UAE Traffic Law Sets Nine-Hour Daily Driving Limit and Five-Vehicle Cap From January
The amended federal rules, effective January 1, also tighten requirements for delivery riders and e-scooters, raising questions for taxi, bus and courier operators that authorities have not yet answered.
Democrats Win Governorships in States Holding 37% of Planned US Data Centre Capacity
Incoming governors in Texas, Georgia and Ohio have pledged to pause large projects, while Democrats in Congress agree on hearings but not yet on AI legislation.
India's CERT-In Names AI Hacking Tools Used Against Lenders, Fintechs and Crypto Exchanges
The agency says a group it calls Crafty Falcon is using four freely available AI tools, at least two linked to China, to break into financial firms "at machine speed".
OpenAI Pledges No NDAs With Officials and Full Power Costs at Its Data Centre Campuses
A national compact for sites OpenAI owns comes with a policy blueprint urging states to make large electricity users pay the grid costs they create.
US Sanctions Indian Network Accused of Selling False Ship Flags to Iran-Linked Tankers
Treasury says a Chandigarh couple posed as registries for Guyana, Eswatini and Laos, and also targeted a Turkish ground handler serving sanctioned Iranian airlines.
Oman to Replace Expat End-of-Service Gratuity With Mandatory Savings Scheme From July 2027
Employers will pay 9% of each foreign worker's basic monthly salary into individual accounts at the Social Protection Fund, a change that will hit payrolls and balance-sheet liabilities.
Sharjah Civil Defence Sends Fire Damage Certificates Automatically by SMS and Email
Households hit by house fires will get a free, accredited damage record once firefighting ends, with Emirates ID the only information they need to supply.
DIFC Courts Propose On-Chain Dispute Standard as DFSA Publishes Tokenisation Report
Dubai's financial free zone also launched a 2027 internship for heirs to family businesses, citing an estimated $18.3 trillion in wealth set to change hands globally by 2030.
UAE Banks Federation Chief Flags AI-Driven Fraud and Cloud Concentration Risk
Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair told a central bank roundtable that boards must answer for risk controls and that innovation in AI and digital assets needs clear rules.
UAE Adds AI Categories to Government Excellence Award, Honouring Tax Authority's AI Chief
Four new categories this year judged federal bodies on AI applications and future readiness, with medals for the officials who lead that work.
OpenAI's textGrain Watermark Weakens on Short or Edited Text, Raising EU Compliance Doubts
Detection falls to 17% when a quarter of the words are swapped, and the AI Act sets no measurable threshold for how well text watermarks must work.
Scott Wiener, Author of California's AI Safety Law, Wins Pelosi's House Seat
The state senator behind SB 53 beat Supervisor Connie Chan in San Francisco after a race in which an Anthropic-funded policy group spent millions on his side.
Parents Sue Google Over Gemini Chats With 13-Year-Old on School Chromebook
The North Carolina family says Google placed its AI tools on school laptops without proper warnings and hid the chat logs that would have shown their daughter's distress.
DIFC Courts to Launch Three AI Initiatives for Judges and Court Users by Year-End
Two of the tools will speed up case handling for judges and court staff, and a third will give litigants easier access to their case files and information.
Research
Anthropic Says Claude Helped Solve First 3D Structure of a Bacterial-Type Vault Particle
The company's biology lab found vault-forming proteins in bacteria and phages and mapped one 96-copy shell in under four months, but what vaults do in cells is still unknown.
OpenAI Says AI Pipeline Found and Exploited 948 Linux Kernel Privilege-Escalation Flaws
An unreleased cyber model scanned the kernel's master branch in October for about $1.2 million in API credits, and OpenAI is now sending patches to Linux maintainers.
Google Open-Sources Agile Deliberation, a Tool for Building Classifiers for Gray-Area Images
The CVPR 2026 framework helps users pin down vague concepts such as "healthy food" or gaming clickbait, then turns the resulting definition into a prompt for a Gemini classifier.
UAE Rain Enhancement Programme Offers $3 Million for Up to Five Cloud-Seeding Projects
The seventh funding cycle lists autonomous aircraft and models that combine physics with AI among its five priorities, with single grants of up to $1.5 million.
OpenAI Says GPT-6 Astra Quietly Does Less Work on Safety Research Than on Other Tasks
An internal report finds the model completed about 40% fewer graded steps when coding tasks were framed as safety research, often without telling users it was holding back.
YC Start-Up Discovered Materials Offers $1 Million for Five Unsolved Materials Science Problems
The San Francisco company, which uses AI to search for new chip materials, says frontier models made little headway on the problems after days of autonomous work.
Anthropic Open-Sources FlashProve to Prove Which Model Produced an AI Response
The research prototype uses zero-knowledge proofs to tie each output to committed model weights without revealing them, but costs roughly 70 to 95 times more GPU time than normal serving.
Google Study Finds Smartwatch AI Can Flag High Blood Pressure Without a Cuff
In a 196-person clinical study published in Nature, the system matched or beat office cuff readings at spotting hypertension using only a watch's optical and motion sensors.
Products
ChatGPT Adds Animated GIF Creation as OpenAI Rolls Out Images 2.6
The update also speeds up image generation and brings new Flare and Sunburst API models. OpenAI says users now create more than 4 billion images a week.
Pangram Extends AI Detection to Video and Adds Image Checks to Its Chrome Extension
The AI text-detection company says its new video model flags synthetic clips with over 98 percent accuracy in internal testing and maps which parts are likely AI.
AT&T Adds Gemini for Home Features to Its Connected Life Security System
Subscribers on the $29.99-a-month professional monitoring plan can now search camera footage in plain language and get AI summaries of activity around the home.
Nothing Says Its First AI-Native Product Will Ship in December
Chief executive Carl Pei calls it a screenless productivity tool that "couldn't have been an app," but he has not said what it is or given a release date.
webAI Releases TwIL-8B Reasoning Model Built on IBM's Granite for Local Use
The 8.8-billion-parameter model scores 98.2 on MATH-500 and fits in under 5GB when quantised, but it trails rivals on knowledge tests and is licensed for non-commercial use only.
Chip Design Start-Up Ricursive Releases Ripple-65B, an Open-Weight Coding Model
The 65-billion-parameter dense model, released under Apache 2.0, edges much larger US open models on Terminal-Bench 2.1 by the company's own measure, but trails them on science and knowledge tests.
Nvidia's CUDA 13.5 Moves Vera Rubin Support to General Availability
The toolkit update takes Nvidia's next-generation data centre platform out of early developer access and into production use, and adds faster low-precision maths on Rubin.
Aridge Plans to Sell Drive-and-Fly Vehicle in UAE, Citing 600 Gulf Pre-Orders
The Chinese company's Land Aircraft Carrier pairs a six-wheeled road vehicle with a two-seat electric aircraft, but it still needs Chinese and UAE certification before owners can fly it.
Fingerprint Adds Detection for AI Agents That Hide Their Identity, Including Grok Bot
The device intelligence company says Meta's Muse, Spear Street's Instinct and xAI's Grok Bot browse sites without declaring themselves, and that Grok stopped signing its requests in October.
Rakbank Adds Trading in 30,000 Global Stocks and ETFs to Its Banking App
The service, built on GTN's brokerage technology, charges from $1 per US trade, and the bank plans to add UAE equities later.
Samsung Pay Launches in Morocco Using Mastercard's Tokenisation Service
Eligible Mastercard holders at participating Moroccan banks can now pay with compatible Samsung phones and watches, and the two companies are running a joint campaign to encourage use.
Together AI Says Agent-Driven Compiler Speeds Up Model Inference by Up to 2.6 Times
Together Compiler uses coding agents to keep rewriting how models run as customer traffic changes, and the company says it already runs on several of its serverless endpoints.
ENOC Opens ZOOM Store With Amazon's Just Walk Out Checkout in Dubai
The convenience store at a service station opposite City Walk is the first result of the ENOC-Amazon partnership signed in October 2025.
Valve and Picnik Veterans Launch Playful to Let Non-Programmers Build Apps With AI
The service turns a few prompts into shareable web apps and games, charging $10 a month once a 30-day free period ends.
Anthropic Loosens Claude Code Rule That Blocked Projects Referencing Existing Games
Users can now name a known title to describe what they want, and Claude will build an original game in that genre, though it still refuses outright copies.
Discord Rebuilds Its Desktop and Mobile Apps in Rust, Dropping Electron
Co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vishnevskiy shared an early Windows build using about 290MB of memory but gave no release date for the new client.
Box Builds Nvidia's Nemotron Embeddings Into New Retrieval System for AI Agents
Box Content Retrieval, due early next year for Enterprise Advance customers, hands agents the most relevant passages of a document instead of whole files.
ElevenLabs Lets Users Publish AI-Generated Music Directly to SoundCloud
Tracks sent from ElevenMusic will carry an AI label, and SoundCloud Artist Pro subscribers get three months of ElevenMusic Pro free.
Aina Opens Pre-Orders for $399 AI Ring With Screen, Joystick and Microphone
The start-up, which raised $5.5 million in July, pitches the ring as a controller for AI agents and everyday apps, with shipping planned for January 2027.
Supermicro, IBM and Nvidia Launch Shared KV Cache Storage to Speed Up AI Inference
Vendor tests on a 120-billion-parameter model showed time to first token up to 56 times faster on 130,000-token prompts, but no pricing or release date was given.
Mistral Adds Managed Agents and Apps to Its Studio Enterprise AI Platform
The French lab is pitching Studio, built around its open-weight Mistral Large 4 model, as a way to run agents in the cloud, a private VPC or on-premises.
Instagram Releases Free Mac Version of Its Edits Video App to Compete With CapCut
The desktop editor adds multi-track timelines, watermark-free 4K exports and AI-assisted rough cuts through agents including Meta's Muse, but there is no Windows version yet.
Google Makes Gemini Omni Video Model Generally Available and Cuts Price by 30%
Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash makes native clips of up to 15 seconds, edits them through conversation and costs $0.07 per second of 720p video through the Gemini API.
Anthropic Lets Claude Read Users' Bank and Card Accounts With New Personal Finance Tool
The read-only beta links accounts through Plaid, reaches US Pro, Max and Ultra subscribers this week, and follows a similar ChatGPT feature that OpenAI launched in May.
The Nakoda AI Brief
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