The U.S. Justice Department is scrutinizing Nvidia’s proposed $12.93 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, asking whether the deal could give the chip giant control over a key distribution point for AI or leverage to disadvantage rivals as part of a broader investigation into Nvidia’s acquisitions, investments, and sales practices. Reuters has more here.

Apple has launched its first full touchscreen MacBook Pro, nearly a decade after abandoning the Touch Bar and years after Steve Jobs called touchscreen Macs “ergonomically terrible”; the new models start at $2,899, with a fully spec’d out 16” touchscreen MacBook Pro costing a whopping $14,459. TechCrunch has more here.

Microsoft posted a record $92.3 billion in quarterly revenue, up 19% year over year and marking its tenth consecutive quarter of record sales, as Microsoft Cloud revenue climbed 30% to $63.9 billion and OpenAI contributed $10 billion, though capital expenditures also hit a record $45.2 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

On the flip side, Alphabet shares fell about 10% after hours after Google’s third-quarter search-ad growth slowed to 12% from 17% in the prior quarter, even as cloud revenue more than doubled to $30.7 billion. The company also posted negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion after spending $51.4 billion on capital expenditures. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

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By Amanda Silberling

Former Yahoo CEO and early Google engineer Marissa Mayer is catching a lot of flak for how she uses AI. In an interview about her new app Dazzle, an AI assistant that learns from your camera roll, Mayer poses what she believes is an impressive flex for the product: It helped her come up with three bullet points about her 10-year-old daughter for a birthday presentation at school, describing her as “empathetic, creative, and an animal lover.”

It’s a vague description, like a generic horoscope — it could probably describe a lot of 10-year-olds.

Some onlookers, like progressive activist Leah Greenberg, marveled that “the fact that Marissa Mayer would voluntarily disclose this to a reporter is a pretty good demonstration of how deeply the culture of Silicon Valley has diverged from the rest of humanity.”

Perhaps Mayer drew so much backlash because we have repeatedly observed sheltered billionaires suggest that we outsource child-rearing — one of life’s greatest tests of patience, humility, and kindness — to a computer that is incapable of understanding human emotion.

We’ve been primed for this frustration. Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Bored Ape owner and late night host Jimmy Fallon on national television, “I cannot imagine … figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.” The public didn’t love that comment, either, but Altman wasn’t fazed by the negative feedback. A few months ago, he said on X that a “cool use case” of ChatGPT Work would be creating a podcast that talks about your kids’ upcoming birthdays or soccer games and “explain[s] your kids’ interests.” (He was brutally ratioed with comments like, “What if you just talked to your children?”)

Broccoli, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI agents to handle calls, scheduling, follow-ups, membership renewals, and customer outreach for home-service businesses, raised a $52 million Series B round led by Khosla Ventures, with Y Combinator and Operator Partners also opting in. Fortune has more here.

Foundry Robotics, a one-year-old startup based in Emeryville, CA, that builds and operates autonomous factories for complex assembly, raised a $100 million Series A round led by Marlinspike Partners, with Khosla Ventures, Red Glass Ventures, SE Ventures, Wing VC, Axiom Ventures, Hanabi, and Zero Shot Fund also digging in. More here.

Hex Technologies, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup that provides collaborative analytics software for teams to analyze data and build interactive data applications, raised a $100 million round at a $1.2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Peak XV Partners, with previous investors Amplify Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital also digging in. More here.

Intake Breathing, an eight-year-old startup based in Santa Barbara, CA, that makes magnetic nasal dilators designed to improve airflow during sleep and exercise, raised a $62 million round from Camino Partners. Modern Retail has more here.

Upwind, a four-year-old San Francisco and Tel Aviv startup that develops software that monitors live cloud environments and AI agents to prioritize vulnerabilities and detect attacks, raised a $400 million Series C round at a $3.8 billion valuation. The deal was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Canapi Ventures as well as previous investors Cyberstarts, Greylock Partners, Craft Ventures, Leaders Fund, Salesforce Ventures, TCV, Alta Park Capital, Penny Jar Capital, Cerca Partners, Swish Ventures, and Picture Capital also piling on. TechCrunch has more here.

American Advanced Materials, a one-year-old startup based in Mountain View, CA, that develops automated manufacturing facilities for titanium sponge and other critical industrial materials, raised a $12.5 million seed round led by Amity Ventures, with Human Capital, Anti Fund, and Powerset also engaging. More here.

Circuit Mind, an eight-year-old London startup that automates printed circuit board design and review using AI agents and physics-based electrical testing, raised an $18.5 million Series A round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with Lightscape Partners as well as previous investors Third Prime, Differential Ventures, and Blackhorn Ventures also engaging. The company has raised a total of $33.4 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Infisical, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that provides tools for managing credentials, encryption keys, digital certificates, and privileged access across enterprise infrastructure, raised a $40 million Series B round at a $600 million valuation. The deal was led by previous investor Elad Gil. The company has raised a total of nearly $60 million. SecurityWeek has more here.

Luxor Technology, a nine-year-old Seattle startup that provides hardware, energy, cloud computing, and financial contracts for bitcoin miners and AI companies, raised a $16 million round alongside secondary share sales of an undisclosed amount. The deal was led by CMT Digital, with Canaan, MicroBT, Halo, and Steelhead also taking part. The Block has more here.

Numeracle, a nine-year-old startup based in McLean, VA, that verifies businesses and links their identities to communications systems to prevent legitimate calls from being blocked or mislabeled, raised a $28 million round led by Edison Partners. The company has raised a total of $34.8 million. Crunchbase News has more here.

Plato, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that builds simulated workplaces where AI models can train and be evaluated on real-world tasks, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Nava Ventures, with Gradient Ventures, Transpose Platform, and Mustafa Suleyman also taking stakes. The company has raised a total of $19 million. More here.

Rocker, a one-year-old startup that connects to workplace tools to surface priorities, catch missed decisions, and execute tasks for employees, raised a $12.85 million round led by Greycroft, with Anthropic, Anthology Fund, Matchstick, and Stripe also participating. Upstarts Media has more here.

Vera Health, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that provides an AI search engine that helps clinicians find and assess medical evidence and its limitations, raised a $28.5 million Series A round led by Threshold Ventures, with Optum Ventures, Mantis VC, and SV Angel as well as previous investors Y Combinator and Gradient also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $32 million. Tech.eu has more here.

Dalet Labs, a one-year-old New York startup that generates personalized visual shopping feeds featuring real products that users can buy in-app, raised a $7 million pre-seed round led by Lightspeed. More here.

FluxCap, a startup founded this year based in Washington, DC, that develops tools that organize evidence, legal precedent, and case strategy for lawyers handling complex litigation, raised a $6.4 million seed round. Investors included Y Combinator, Bloomberg Beta, Deep Work Capital, Coalition Operators, Burford Capital, and Omidyar Network. More here.

Manicule, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that helps software companies appear in AI recommendations and make their products usable by autonomous agents, raised a $1.3 million seed round co-led by Y Combinator and Broom Ventures. More here.

Mostest, a three-year-old New York startup that uses AI to automate event inquiries, proposals, and bookings for hospitality operators and event customers, raised a $4 million seed round at a $16 million post-money SAFE cap valuation. The deal was co-led by Capital Q Ventures, NEXUS Luxury Collection, and T-Squared Social, with additional participation from Wildwood Ventures, Locker Room Capital, and Newbond. The SaaS News has more here.

Northstar Security, a San Francisco startup founded this year that uses AI agents to connect security and IT data, identify linked risks, and automate remediation, raised a $7 million seed round led by Wing Venture Capital, with additional support from MVP and Outliers. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Parasol Med Tech, a one-year-old Chicago startup that is developing a gel-based device to seal the heart’s left atrial appendage and reduce stroke risk in patients with atrial fibrillation, raised a $2.75 million round. Investors included Cardiovascular Innovation Ventures, Harper Court Ventures, and UChicago Medicine Ventures. Cardiovascular Business has more here.

Sava, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI agents overseen by trust officers to automate trust compliance, reporting, and disbursements for families and advisors, raised a $10 million seed round led by Gradient Ventures, with Y Combinator, SV Angel, Max Mullen, Orange Collective, and SurgePoint Capital also buying in. More here.

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Inovia Capital, a 19-year-old VC firm based in Montreal, Quebec, that backs technology companies across multiple stages, held a $200 million first close for its sixth venture fund, which will focus on AI-native companies and other emerging frontier technologies. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Diffusion, the San Francisco venture firm founded this year by former Benchmark investors Victor Lazarte and Kristian Fredrickson, has raised $70 million for Diffusion V3, a separate venture vehicle from its $1.3 billion flagship Diffusion ONE fund. More here.

Medieval Theories of Haecceity, a San Francisco venture firm founded this year by former OpenAI special projects staffer Alexey Guzey, is raising a debut fund of $50 million to back exceptionally talented people Guzey believes will change the world. An SEC filing reports $0 sold so far. More here.

Guidewire, a public software company that provides core systems to property-and-casualty insurers, is buying Hyperexponential, a nine-year-old U.K. insurance software startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Battery Ventures, for $1.7 billion in cash, with another $400 million available if revenue targets are met. TechCrunch has more here.

RapidCanvas, a five-year-old Austin AI startup, acquired Entytle, which uses AI to help industrial equipment makers automate prospecting, quoting, and customer service across machines already in the field. The deal follows RapidCanvas’s recent $29 million Series B. Terms were not disclosed. More here.

Jio Platforms shares jumped 27% in their trading debut, valuing the Meta- and Google-backed telecom and digital services giant at nearly $140 billion after it raised $3.1 billion in India’s largest-ever IPO. The listing also marks a generational shift at parent Reliance, with Mukesh Ambani’s son Akash now running Jio. TechCrunch has more here.

Amazon could emerge as the biggest financial winner from Anthropic’s IPO: its roughly $18 billion investment includes convertible notes that Amazon valued at $97.9 billion as of June, while Anthropic has also committed to spend at least $110 billion on AWS over the next decade. TechCrunch has more here.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is demanding that Anthropic answer four pages of questions by Nov. 3 about the “existential” risks described in its IPO filing, its relationships with partners including Amazon and Broadcom, and how it would justify a valuation that could approach $2 trillion. The Wall Street Journal has more here, and here is a PDF link to Warren’s letter.

Silicon Valley billionaires and tech investors have poured more than $333 million into a California initiative to impose a one-time 5% tax on taxpayers with more than $1 billion in covered assets. Sergey Brin has given $102 million; Eric Schmidt and John Doerr have each contributed more than $40 million; and Patrick Collison has committed $33 million. The New York Times has more here.

Dropbox is cutting about 200 jobs – or roughly 9% of its global workforce. The move comes months after founder Drew Houston said he would step down as CEO after 19 years and become executive chairman. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Microsoft expects “very few people” among the 60,000 employees offered voluntary buyouts this week to take them, CFO Amy Hood told staff in an internal memo, despite roughly 1/3 of eligible workers accepting a separate retirement offer earlier this year. Business Insider has more here.

Anthropic’s IPO filing effectively pegs its potential market at more than $40 trillion a year by treating the economic value of global knowledge work as an opportunity for AI, surpassing even SpaceX’s $28.5 trillion estimate earlier this year. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

OpenAI is setting up an election “war room” staffed by hundreds of employees to monitor suspected attempts to misuse ChatGPT and its other tools during next week’s Congressional midterm elections, including misinformation campaigns, unexpected model behavior, and other potential interference efforts. Politico has more here.

Amazon has stripped product names from many order-confirmation emails and replaced them with broad categories, a change that appears designed in part to keep Google and other AI companies from learning more about Amazon customers’ purchases through Gmail and related services. The Verge has more here.

AI systems are uncovering software vulnerabilities at such a rapid pace that security teams are struggling to patch them before attackers can exploit them. The New York Times has more here.

The Athletic tells the story of Oksana Chusovitina, a 51-year-old Uzbek gymnast who has already competed in eight Olympics and is training six days a week and aiming to qualify for the 2028 Los Angeles Games at age 53.

Harvard’s notoriously demanding Humanities 10 course has become an unlikely campus hit, with applications jumping 40% this fall as 180 freshmen competed for 90 spots in a yearlong survey of major works from Homer and Plato to Shakespeare, Austen, Baldwin, and Joyce that asks students to wrestle with big questions about literature, philosophy, and the human experience.

A $16 million full-floor condo at 18 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan offers 4,207 square feet, four bedrooms, windows on all four sides, a private elevator, and one of New York real estate’s rarest perks: a key to the gated Gramercy Park.

Architectural Digest rounds up 12 historic hotels and vacation rentals that double as time capsules, including a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Wisconsin; an 1884 firehouse in Washington, DC; a former Greek windmill; and a medieval Italian castle.

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