Mark Zuckerberg ordered Meta to launch its Muse AI agent despite internal safety concerns, including a test in which the software changed a user’s password without permission, after the now-buzzy 14-person startup called Instinct began gaining traction with a competing product. The New York Times has more here.

Canadian cybersecurity expert Edward Dubrovsky, a suspected ShinyHunters co-conspirator, has been arrested on federal extortion charges as authorities pursue the notorious hacking group, which has breached more than 140 organizations and allegedly extorted $70 million (!) since last year. Dubrovsky is also considered a primary co-conspirator in its recent theft of sensitive data on thousands of FBI employees. The New York Times has more here.

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Anthropic said its models exploited websites on the internet, including some run by U.S. government agencies, and it will turn off live internet access for all of its internal evaluations until the frontier lab is sure it can monitor and control its AI agents.

The incidents, disclosed in a blog post, involved AI agents tasked to solve problems seeking resources on the internet. In the process, they exploited software flaws, accessed databases without paying fees, used URL shortening services to smuggle information past restrictions, and even submitted a false murder tip to the Philadelphia police.

Anthropic said it discovered these new issues in a review of its model’s activities that began in July, demonstrating the lab’s lack of awareness of its software’s behavior in real time.

Notably, the company said that alignment training was not yet sufficient for skills like search and computer use that are central to its pitch that AI agents will be used by any professional who relies on digital tools.

The behaviors Anthropic disclosed are similar to incidents involving OpenAI agents that collaborated to break into various websites in search of information, including some run by the Australian government.

Atomic Machines, a seven-year-old startup based in Emeryville, CA, that creates AI-controlled manufacturing systems that build functional micro-machines with moving parts directly from code, raised a $250 million round. Investors included OneIM, Gigafund, XTX Ventures, KAS Venture Partners, Valor Equity Partners, Tru Arrow Partners, Construct Capital, Sozo Ventures, and the Regents of the University of California. More here.

Oxide Computer, a six-year-old startup based in Emeryville, CA, that sells integrated data center racks combining computing, storage, and networking for on-premises cloud infrastructure, raised a $445 million Series D round led by previous investor Eclipse Capital, with AMD Ventures, Riot Ventures, Jane Street, Atreides Management, and previous investor USIT also chiming in. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Ramp, a seven-year-old New York fintech startup that provides expense management and payments software to businesses, reportedly raised about $1.85 billion at a $60 billion pre-money valuation just four months after raising $750 million at a $44 billion valuation. Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital co-led the new round, with Founders Fund also investing. Bloomberg has more here.

Sabi, a two-year-old Palo Alto startup that is developing a baseball cap that translates imagined speech and intent into commands for AI without implants or surgery, raised a $50 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with Accel, Initialized Capital, Kevin Weil, DST Global, Collaborative Fund, and Ascend also pitching in. Forbes has more here.

TypeSafe AI, the two-year-old San Francisco startup behind the Jev decision-making model for developers, has raised about $870 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Sequoia Capital also participating. The startup launched its AI model just weeks ago. TechCrunch has more here.

Ultra, a two-year-old Brooklyn startup that builds and leases robots to automate e-commerce order packing in warehouses, raised a $50 million Series A round led by Framework Ventures, with previous investor Y Combinator also participating. The company has raised a total of $62 million. Fortune has more here.

Voltus, a 10-year-old San Francisco company that connects flexible energy resources at businesses and homes to electricity markets to help balance power grids, raised a $225 million Series D round co-led by Generation Investment Management, Activate Capital, and Vitol, with Broadscale Group, Climate Investment, NGP, Ajax Strategies, and All Aboard Fund also opting in. ESG Today has more here.

AblePay Health, a 10-year-old company based in Allentown, PA, that offers patients flexible payment options for medical bills while guaranteeing accelerated payments to healthcare providers, raised a $20 million Series A round led by F-Prime, with A1 Health Ventures and 406 Ventures also pitching in. The SaaS News has more here.

Sonilo, a San Francisco startup founded this year that generates music and sound effects synchronized to video footage, raised an $11 million round led by B Capital, with Redpoint also opting in. Variety has more here.

Vocca, a two-year-old Paris startup that develops AI phone assistants that handle patient calls, appointment scheduling, confirmations, and routine administrative requests for medical practices, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Norrsken VC, with Heal Capital, Speedinvest, and Firstminute Capital also investing. The company has raised a total of $25 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Apéro, a Montreal startup founded this year that combines restaurant reservations, table management, guest communications, and an AI phone receptionist for Quebec restaurants, raised a $3.5 million Series A round from Now Book It. Dealroom has more here.

Immix, a seven-year-old London startup that uses AI pricing to execute stablecoin currency conversions for payment companies, issuers, and trading venues, raised a $3.5 million round. Investors included Crane Venture Partners, BTSE, and Portfolio Ventures. EU-Startups has more here.

Outro, a four-year-old New York startup that helps patients discontinue psychiatric medications through specialized clinicians, tapering plans, monitoring, and psychological support, raised a total of $7 million in pre-seed and seed funding. Investors included Listen Ventures, Cake Ventures, LAUNCH, Actions Capital, Hannah Grey VC, SemperVirens, Brock Recovery Group, and Pave Health Ventures. More here.

Peppermint, a San Francisco startup founded this year that combines AI with human billing specialists to automate invoicing, payment reconciliation, and collections for clinical research organizations, raised a $4.7 million seed round led by Moxxie, with Homebrew, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Layout Ventures, Digital Health Venture Partners, and Night Capital also participating. More here.

Phinity Labs, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that builds AI agents to design, verify, and prepare custom chips for manufacturing, raised a $5.2 million seed round led by Uncork Capital, with Moxxie and Jeff Dean also chipping in. More here.

Rebel Audio, a one-year-old Nashville startup that develops AI tools for podcasters to record, edit, publish, translate, distribute, and monetize content in one place, raised a $10 million Series A round at an approximately $50 million post-money valuation. The deal was led by HardScope, with the state of Tennessee and Launch TN also buying in. The SaaS News has more here.

Thrixel, a Chicago startup founded this year that develops AI tools that generate, assemble, and animate structured 3D assets for games and other interactive applications, raised a $3 million round. Investors included Sierra Ventures, MFV Partners, Harper Court Ventures, and Z5 Capital. The SaaS News has more here.

UniSieve, an eight-year-old Zurich startup that produces membranes that separate industrial gases for plastics manufacturing and point-source carbon capture, raised a $9 million Series A round led by Supernova Invest, with Guenat Holding as well as previous investors Amadeus APEX Technology Fund, Founderful, and Zürcher Kantonalbank also digging in. The company has raised a total of $25 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Verso, a one-year-old Paris startup that automates consumer research through study design, participant recruitment, AI-moderated interviews, and analysis for large companies, raised a $6 million seed round led by Angular Ventures, with 100in, Kima Ventures, Olympe Capital, and Sharpstone Capital also engaging. Tech.eu has more here.

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Benchmark is seeking $352 million across two founders’ funds: $220 million for Benchmark Partners Founders’ Fund T1 and $132 million for Benchmark Partners Founders’ Fund 2, new SEC filings indicate. These appear to be companion vehicles to Benchmark’s $1.25 billion growth fund and $750 million early-stage fund announced in June. More here and here.

The Experience Fund, a new vehicle co-sponsored by investment firms EMERGING and Promethean Investments, is raising $300 million to back AI, automation, and data infrastructure for hospitality and experiential entertainment, with $7.6 million sold so far, the firm disclosed in a new filing. More here.

Anthropic reportedly lost $42 billion in 2025 on just $4.6 billion in revenue according to Reuters’ analysis of its IPO prospectus. Looking ahead, the company expects to owe about $518 billion over the next several years for cloud, compute, and infrastructure, and roughly 80% of that can’t be canceled. Mashable has more here.

The collapse of Firmus Grid’s planned $5 billion IPO is the latest sign that public investors are growing more selective about AI infrastructure companies, demanding valuations that better reflect operating scale, debt costs, and revenue visibility rather than simply rewarding exposure to booming compute demand. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is seeking up to $100 billion from Gulf investors for a new fund that would acquire companies and use AI and other advanced technology to improve their operations, extending an AI push that already includes a $65 billion OpenAI investment. The Financial Times has more here.

Orkut Büyükkökten, founder of the once-popular social network Orkut, is asking users to register support for bringing the service back – more than a decade after Google shut it down – though he has not said whether a relaunch is actually in development. TechCrunch has more here.

WordPress.com parent Automattic has lost interim CFO Jeremy Klaperman less than a month after his appointment following a boardroom upheaval that briefly ousted CEO Matt Mullenweg; Klaperman resigned after being demoted back to his prior role as the company continued an external CFO search. TechCrunch has more here.

Software engineer Brandon Thomas used Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 to build ArtCraft, a free, open-source suite recreating seven Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom, for macOS, Windows, and Linux; the software is still in alpha. PetaPixel has more here.

Flock is cutting 18% of its workforce – or about 270 employees – through a voluntary separation program as the surveillance-camera maker faces mounting backlash over its license-plate readers and people-tracking technology. TechCrunch has more here.

Netflix is preparing for a significant restructuring that could include layoffs of 5% or more of its 16,000-person workforce as the company contends with slower growth, a 20% year-to-date stock decline, and intensifying competition from YouTube. The Hollywood Reporter has more here.

Cloudflare is acquiring Deno – the startup co-founded by Node.js creator Ryan Dahl – for an undisclosed sum. Deno’s team will join Cloudflare, while its standalone software and hosting service will shut down. Cloudflare plans to use Deno’s technology to make it easier for developers to run apps outside Cloudflare’s own network. The New Stack has more here.

U.S. venture deal value reached a record $515.8 billion through Q3, already 44% above 2021’s full-year peak, with AI startups accounting for 82.7% of all capital invested despite their share falling to 65.9% in Q3 as the year’s biggest frontier-model rounds tapered off. The PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor has more here.

The scramble for scarce AI computing power is reshaping Silicon Valley, forcing bitter rivals into alliances, pushing executives to personally broker capacity deals, and prompting VCs to reserve GPU clusters for portfolio companies. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei even called Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang seeking additional capacity, though Meta ultimately declined to provide chips. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Anthropic is building an in-house “presidential engagement” program for the 2028 election, hiring a political lead to work with candidates from both parties on AI policy and oversee its political giving. Fortune has more here.

An Anthropic AI model submitted a false tip about an unsolved Philadelphia murder while testing interactions with randomly selected websites, and the company didn’t discover the incident for more than two months; police never saw the tip because it was flagged as spam. TechCrunch has more here.

The United Nations is warning that rapidly advancing neurotechnology could eventually let governments access or manipulate citizens’ brain data, threatening privacy and freedom of thought, and it’s urging countries to treat thoughts as highly sensitive personal data and require explicit consent for its use in criminal justice. (Sorry, what?!) The New York Times has more here.

Top chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants to James Beard nominees are professing their love for Taco Bell, praising favorites like the Crunchy Supreme and Crunchwrap for their combination of texture, fat, acidity, heat, and convenience and sometimes even riffing on them in their own kitchens.

A low resting heart rate - generally under 60 beats per minute, with elite cyclists sometimes dipping into the high 30s - is becoming a fitness status symbol, with people putting the number on dating profiles and tracking athletes’ rates on live sports broadcasts like the Tour de France.

Vollebak has revived its Relaxation Hoodie, a heavyweight wool outerwear piece whose hood zips completely shut over the face, with a built-in eye mask, arm-supporting sling pockets, and seam construction designed for comfortably doing absolutely nothing.

TechCrunch’s Lucas Ropek makes the case for mechanical keyboards, singling out the $60 Keychron K2 as a favorite and arguing that tactile feel, distinctive clack, customizable keycaps, and retro styling can make long hours of typing considerably more enjoyable.

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