Chinese AI startup MiniMax just released M3.1 Flash, an update it says runs nearly three times faster and costs 70% less to use. By MiniMax’s own benchmarks, the model beats OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 on some agentic tasks and performs about the same on coding. Reuters has more here.

The Department of Homeland Security ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek technology from their IT systems and stop buying its products. The ban also covers offerings from DeepSeek’s affiliates and any third-party services built on DeepSeek. The agency didn’t detail the security concerns behind the move.The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Federal prosecutors say an OpenAI engineer charged with planting a recording device in an executive conference room was in frequent contact with a Saudi royal who sought to recruit him. They argue his alleged conduct could threaten U.S. national security. CNBC has more here.

OpenAI is racing to close a roughly $30 billion round at a valuation above $1.4 trillion before Anthropic’s expected mid-November IPO, seeking to lock up overlapping investors and establish its valuation before Anthropic’s disclosures invite direct comparisons. Reuters has more here.

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OpenCode, an open source AI coding agent that has been gaining ground among developers as an alternative to Claude Code and Cursor, said Saturday that attackers broke into an older system overnight, affecting 1.4% of users of its online platform, OpenCode Console, where some users store the API keys, or digital passwords, they use to access AI services.

As the OpenCode team struggled to keep pace with the attack, the scramble to respond highlighted a growing problem: Companies without vetted access to AI models with fewer safety restrictions have a hard time defending against large-scale, AI-driven cyberattacks.

“We had a security breach last night related to a large-scale distillation attack that impacted 1.4% of OpenCode Console users,” the company wrote on X. “We have notified them all this morning via email.” Users who did not receive an email were not impacted, the company said.

While the company didn’t specify how the distillation attack occurred, leaked API keys can help users in countries with restricted access to American models generate the high volume of outputs needed for that process. Some skeptics called the framing an overstretch, arguing that the incident was a straightforward breach whose use for distillation remains unproven.

Overnight, developers began posting spending alerts and unauthorized charges on Reddit and X: “I saw my Open AI, Anthropic, and Google AI spend alerts all fire off before going to bed wondering what was going on,” a developer wrote. 

Other users reported charges in the hundreds of dollars on individual accounts; a few described totals above $1,000.

Abby Care, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that trains and pays family members to provide Medicaid-covered care at home, raised an $82 million Series C round led by Transformation Capital, with CVS Health Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures, and Pivotal Ventures as well as previous investors Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, and Sequoia Capital also stepping up. Fortune has more here.

Dream Labs, a San Francisco startup founded this year that builds a foundation model to train robots from video and natural-language instructions, raised a $90 million seed round co-led by B Capital and Kindred Ventures, with A.Capital, Unusual Ventures, Wing VC, SV Angel, Scribble VC, and Adrian Aoun also participating. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Even Healthcare, a six-year-old Bengaluru startup that operates hospitals and coordinates preventive care, chronic disease management, and treatment through insurance partnerships, raised a $50 million Series B round at a $300 million post-money valuation. The deal was led by previous investor Khosla Ventures, with Alpha Wave, Founders Fund, and 8VC also digging in. The company has raised a total of $120+ million. TechCrunch has more here.

Nouscom, an 11-year-old company based in Basel, Switzerland, that develops immunotherapies that train the immune system to recognize and attack cancerous and precancerous cells, raised a $134.9 million Series D round co-led by Revelation Partners and previous investor M Ventures, with Angelini Industries, the European Investment Bank, and Neva SGR as well as previous investors 5AM Ventures, Andera Partners, Angelini Ventures, Bpifrance, CDP Venture Capital, EQT Life Sciences, Indaco Venture Partners, Panakes Partners, Versant Ventures, and XGEN Ventures also investing. EU-Startups has more here.

Tenstorrent, a 10-year-old Toronto company that builds RISC-V-based AI processors, servers, workstations, and open-source software, raised a $1.5 billion Series E round at a $6.2 billion post-money valuation. The round was co-led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with additional support from Protagonist, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, ARK Invest, and T. Rowe Price. TechCrunch has more here.

Town, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that provides AI assistants that coordinate work across teams and communicate with customers, partners, and candidates, raised a $108 million Series B round at a $1 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, with Precedent.vc, Scribble Ventures, Serena Ventures, and Sparked Ventures as well as previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, and Better Tomorrow Ventures also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.

Prism Data, a five-year-old New York startup that analyzes bank-account transactions to help lenders assess creditworthiness, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Story Ventures, with FINTOP, Core VC, Obvious Ventures, 1st & Main Growth Partners, and Mana Ventures also taking part. Fintech Finance News has more here.

Tolan, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that builds a voice-first AI companion with long-term memory for everyday tasks and personal organization, raised a $30 million round. Investors included Union Square Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Homebrew. The company has raised a total of $60 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Kodama, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that builds remote-operation and supervised-autonomy systems for forestry equipment, raised a $7 million round co-led by Konvoy Ventures and Breakwater Ventures, with Blue Forest Asset Management, NYA Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Dangerous Ventures, M1C Ventures, and BTG Pactual also chiming in. The company has raised a total of $14 million. AgFunderNews has more here.

Linkener, a 15-year-old company based in Valencia, Spain, that provides energy monitoring software and metering hardware that help businesses track consumption, validate bills, and analyze electricity contracts, raised an $8.4 million round led by Klima, with previous investor GoHub Ventures also engaging. Tech Funding News has more here.

Vessla, a Stockholm startup founded this year that uses AI agents to automate workflows across existing software for residential and commercial property operators, raised a $3.3 million pre-seed round led by Seedcamp, with Inception Fund and Tiny VC also stepping up. Tech Funding News has more here.

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Inovia Capital, a 19-year-old Montreal VC firm, has raised a $200 million first close for its sixth venture fund, which will target 25 to 30 startups in sectors where AI adoption is still early but poised to have a meaningful economic impact. The Logic has more here.

Lux Capital, the 26-year-old New York VC firm, disclosed plans to raise up to $300 million for Lux Compute Leaders, a new investment vehicle whose relationship to the firm’s $1.5 billion Lux Ventures IX fund was not specified in the filing. More here.

Former S32 investor Ayesha Arora-Hughes is targeting more than $100 million for Permanent Partners Collective Fund I, a new VC fund focused on AI applications and infrastructure, with her father, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, serving as an adviser. The Information has more here.

Anthropic’s planned IPO will leave public investors with unusually limited governance rights because its opaque Long-Term Benefit Trust can appoint most of the company’s board and block major corporate moves, with key details about the trust’s powers and governing documents still undisclosed. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Nscale is facing investor pushback over its planned IPO valuation, with some prospective buyers urging the Nvidia-backed AI data-center developer to target $16 billion to $19 billion rather than the roughly $30 billion it has been seeking amid broader pressure on AI infrastructure stocks. Bloomberg has more here.

Elon Musk says he plans to give one of his SpaceX shares to every child in the U.S. in 2027, a giveaway worth roughly $10.5 billion at Friday’s closing price, although he offered no details on how the shares would be distributed. CNBC has more here.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt owns roughly 1% of Anthropic after investing tens of millions of dollars in the AI startup’s Series A, potentially setting him up for one of the largest individual windfalls from its imminent IPO. Bloomberg has more here.

Wired profiles Nathan Fielder as he explains how You Can See Everything evolved from an open-ended attempt to understand Elizabeth Holmes into a meditation on truth, performance, and ambiguity, with Holmes unexpectedly calling him from prison days before release to tell him twice, “I trust you.” More here.

Four AI agents running on Google’s Gemini 4 Argon beat Minecraft without human help, autonomously dividing tasks, sharing warnings and memories, and writing 2,783 JavaScript programs over 27 hours before defeating the Ender Dragon. The Decoder has more here.

A growing group of developers and vibe coders are enlisting AI coding agents to make their smart TVs dumb again, stripping out ads, tracking, and bloatware, replacing sluggish home screens, and otherwise reclaiming control of their devices, though some have managed to brick their TVs in the process. TechCrunch has more here.

A Harvard survey of 5,403 U.S. adults found that women use and trust AI less than men do. It also points to a confidence gap: asked whether they recognized 12 real AI figures and two invented names, men were more likely than women to claim they knew every name on the list, fakes included. Gizmodo has more here.

AI agents on the social media app iLands are autonomously cold-emailing writers, researchers, and literary magazines for paid work and submissions to earn the tokens they need to keep operating. Vulture has more here.

“Cleanfluencers” are turning ASMR scrubdowns, restocking videos, and extreme home makeovers into full-time businesses, with one former IT analyst now reaching more than 16 million followers and routinely drawing 10 million to 50 million views for her Costco-haul clips.

Copenhagen is obsessed with the bolle med ost, a humble bun with butter and cheese that has become a calling card for the city’s top bakeries, spawned rankings and cookbooks, and sells 50,000 a month at bakery chain Hart.

Ressence’s $67,300 Type 10 DN Dark Night is a 41.5 mm titanium watch with an oil-filled display, magnetically driven rotating satellites, no crown, a 60-hour power reserve, and a production run limited to 100 pieces.

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