OpenAI fired an employee after allegedly discovering a sophisticated hidden recording device in an executive conference room. Federal prosecutors say Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national who joined the company in 2025, planted the device and was arrested by the FBI on October 9. TechCrunch has more here.

Apple has unveiled HomeView, a $299 seven-inch smart-home tablet that recognizes up to six household members and showcases its revamped Siri, as the company pushes deeper into AI and tries to prove it can still create compelling new hardware categories. The New York Times has more here.

A federal judge has ordered OpenAI to quickly turn over hiring materials tied to former Apple employees as Apple pursues a trade-secrets lawsuit over OpenAI’s hardware ambitions, including interview records that may show discussions of confidential Apple technology. TechCrunch has more here.

North Korean state-controlled IT workers have infiltrated at least 70 U.S. companies using stolen American identities and domestic “laptop farms,” while the FBI warns that thousands may be working inside Western companies and stealing sensitive data and intellectual property. TechCrunch has more here.

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Cerebras Systems CEO and co-founder Andrew Feldman thinks the AI doomer narrative isn’t doing the industry any favors. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, the AI chipmaker exec quipped that “some of the leaders in the AI world maybe shouldn’t be allowed to talk in public.”

He’s referencing the negativity now spreading around the dangers of AI, from models breaking containment to AI insiders debating the percentage chance that AI may kill all of humanity by the end of the decade. The argument has become so mainstream that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was recently parodied in a skit on “Saturday Night Live,” where the fictional character summed up the discourse, saying, “We do not condone what we are doing.”

Feldman, however, thinks the promise and potential that go hand in hand with AI developments are getting overlooked. He thinks AI leaders should spend more time telling people that AI could lead to a world where your grandkids will “never meet anybody who dies of cancer,” for instance, even if they have concerns about AI risks.

Clearly, Feldman has a vested interest in AI being successful, as the company’s customers include big names working with the technology, like OpenAI, Block, Figma, pharmaceutical giant GSK, and Lovable.

However, he’s pragmatic about weighing the trade-offs between risk and reward.

“I don’t think there are powerful technologies that don’t come with the challenge of ‘what happens when powerful technologies are in the hands of bad people?’ I think you can’t make one and not have the other,” Feldman said during his interview at Disrupt.

“I think what we have to say is that this technology is powerful,” he added. “We have to be thoughtful about it. We have to regulate it reasonably,” he added.

Atlas Atomics, an Austin startup founded this year that develops heavy-water nuclear reactor technology that does not require enriched uranium, raised a Series A round of approximately $400 million at a $1.9 billion valuation. The deal was led by General Catalyst, with Andreessen Horowitz also chipping in. Investing.com has more here.

Suki, a nine-year-old startup based in Redwood City, CA, that uses AI to turn clinical conversations into documentation and support coding, billing, and clinical decision-making for healthcare organizations, raised a $90 million Series E round. Investors included Healthier Capital, Crosslink Capital, and Hercules Capital as well as previous investors Venrock, Flare Capital Partners, Hedosophia, Philips Ventures, and Zoom Ventures. The company has raised a total of $250+ million. Fierce Healthcare has more here.

Epyr, a two-year-old Paris startup that develops firebrick-based energy storage systems that convert low-cost electricity into high-temperature heat for industrial processes, raised a $16.8 million Series A round led by SlateVC, with previous investors AENU, Daphni, WEPA Ventures, OVNI Capital, and Aurum Impact also investing. ESG Today has more here.

Mistlabs, a San Francisco startup founded this year that develops an AI assistant that continuously captures context across devices to suggest information and perform tasks, raised a $26 million round co-led by Luminous Ventures and Huaqin Technology. TechCrunch has more here.

Pluto Security, a one-year-old startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel, that monitors and controls security risks from employee use of AI tools and agents, raised a $34 million Series A round led by Jump Capital, with Skinos and Ansa Capital also taking stakes. The company has raised a total of $42 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Scuba, a one-year-old New York startup that gives teams and AI agents a shared repository of company knowledge and context, raised $34 million across two rounds: a pre-seed led by Accel and a seed co-led by Accel and IVP. Individual backers include Stewart Butterfield, Patrick Collison, Mike Krieger, Reid Hoffman, and Drew Houston. Upstarts Media has more here.

Ubitium, a two-year-old Düsseldorf startup that develops reconfigurable processors combining sensing, AI inference, and real-time control for autonomous machines, raised a $14 million seed round led by Ibex Investors, with additional participation from OpenOcean and Florian Seibel as well as previous investors KBC Focus Fund, Runa Capital, and Inflection. The company has raised a total of $18 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

CarbonFarm, a five-year-old Paris startup that helps rice producers develop, finance, and measure projects that reduce methane emissions and water use, raised a $7.8 million Series A round led by Colam Impact, with Proparco, Suma Capital, Elea, Working Capital Fund, Albo, and BPI France as well as previous investors Serena, Make Sense, and Technmind also digging in. EU-Startups has more here.

Clueso, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI agents to create, edit, and update business videos by navigating software and capturing workflows, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Dharana Capital, with Founders Future and Neotribe Ventures as well as previous investors Y Combinator and f7 Ventures also engaging. The company has raised a total of $12 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Dubsof, a one-year-old Dublin startup that builds custom software infrastructure for integrating AI tools into companies’ existing workflows, raised a $6.5 million seed round led by BlueYard Capital, with Backed VC, Project Europe, Cocoa Ventures, and 10xHumans Limited also pitching in. The Irish Times has more here.

Intellivisa, a four-year-old Toronto startup that automates visa, entry, and travel-compliance processing with AI agents, raised a $3 million pre-seed round co-led by Mu Ventures and Incisive Ventures, with Uncommon Denominator, Recursive Ventures, P2S: AltaIR Capital and Smart Partnership Capital, and United Airlines Ventures also digging in. More here.

Pathways, a four-year-old New York startup that automates environmental product documentation for manufacturers by turning operational data into verified emissions reporting, raised a $6 million seed round led by Sorenson Capital, with Zacua Ventures, Blue Lion, Positive Ventures, Great Wave, Titan Ventures, Heidelberg Materials, and previous investor Pi Labs also taking part. The company has raised a total of $10 million. Startups Magazine has more here.

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Catapult Ventures, a nine-year-old VC firm based in Los Altos, CA, that backs early-stage startups in AI, robotics, automation and IoT, is raising $80 million for its third fund, according to a new SEC filing. More here.

Character.AI, a five-year-old AI chatbot startup that has raised more than $193 million, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and agreed to sell some assets to Disney for $20 million; the company says its platform could be wound down if no buyer emerges. TechCrunch has more here.

Bumble has agreed to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion and taken private, a steep comedown from its roughly $14 billion valuation when it went public in 2021 as paying users and revenue continue to fall. TechCrunch has more here.

Decagon, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that builds AI agents for customer service, has hired a bank to evaluate acquisition interest and held early talks with ServiceNow and other potential buyers after being valued at $4.5 billion earlier this year. Business Insider has more here.

Anthropic will disclose third-quarter financials to institutional investors on Wednesday as it prepares for a potential $2 trillion IPO, a closely watched test of investor appetite as higher rates and fresh scrutiny of AI-company revenue and profitability pressure the broader tech trade. CNBC has more here.

Blackstone-backed AirTrunk has delayed a planned Singapore IPO expected to raise more than $1 billion, the latest AI-infrastructure company to retreat from public markets as higher rates and volatility pressure valuations and make investors more selective about tech IPOs broadly. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar says some AI researchers have started smoking as a way to signal faith that AI will eventually cure cancer, an anecdote he offered while criticizing Silicon Valley’s increasingly quasi-religious belief in AGI. Business Insider has more here.

Canadian software engineer Anthony Sistilli built a Flock-like license-plate reader programmed to track police cars, prompting officers to visit his home and voice privacy and safety concerns that closely mirrored civilians’ objections to police surveillance networks. Tom’s Hardware has more here.

Jack Dorsey has spent nearly 14 years renovating a $32 million, two-property compound in San Francisco’s Sea Cliff neighborhood – adding rooftop gardens, a sauna complex, and a plunge pool – and apparently, his billionaire neighbors have had enough. The New York Post has more here.

Anthropic and OpenAI have sought significant control over what outside AI safety evaluators can publish, even as both publicly endorse editorial independence, highlighting the tension between independent scrutiny and protecting trade secrets. Reuters has more here.

Epic Games has delayed an upcoming Disney shooter featuring Marvel and Star Wars characters and told developers to adopt an “AI first” production model using tools including Anthropic’s Claude, with one director declaring “no more hand-written code” and saying all art would use AI workflows. Bloomberg has more here.

Amazon now operates more than 1 million warehouse robots alongside 1.5 million human workers, and its automation push is reshaping work: one study found severe injuries fell 40% at robotic sites but repetitive-strain injuries rose 77%, while internal documents suggested robots could reduce U.S. hiring needs by 160,000 by 2027. Ars Technica has more here.

AI labs are fueling a fast-growing market for workplace data, with brokers paying companies $100,000 to $2 million for anonymized Slack messages, emails and other internal records used to train AI agents, often without employees knowing or sharing in the proceeds. Business Insider has more here.

Anthropic reportedly offered about $190,000 for a London executive assistant to handle scheduling, travel, inbox management and expenses, an awkward juxtaposition for a company betting heavily that AI agents can automate much of that kind of administrative work. Fast Company has more here.

Hardware stores are turning their resident cats from mousers into marketing stars, using them in social media, merchandise and even billboards to draw customers and increase foot traffic; Aubuchon Ace Hardware now has more than 100 cats across its stores.

Two Vanity Fair reporters compare the season’s two big tech movies, praising Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial for making OpenAI’s drama feel vivid and revealing while panning Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning as self-satisfied and oddly hostile toward journalists. (Boo!)

Wing whiplash.

Arkadia-Life is selling a $30,000 made-to-order sofa modeled on an air-cooled Porsche 911, complete with a wine chiller, wireless charging, hidden storage and a 13-speaker sound system. (Note: it’s called a “sofa,” but it’s really a single-seat chair. Awkward?)

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