Friday, finally. 🍻 Have a great weekend, all.

OpenAI plans to stop providing its models to Cursor on Nov. 12 following the coding startup’s acquisition by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, saying it cannot trust Musk’s companies to comply with its contracts and terms of service. Reuters has more here.

Anthropic researchers found that automated AI systems improved model alignment across all 10 tested benchmarks without hurting overall performance, offering an early glimpse of “recursive self-improvement” in which AI systems help improve the training of future AI models. TechCrunch has more here.

A federal appeals court ruled that Kalshi’s sports contracts are bets, not federally regulated swaps, giving states authority to regulate them as gambling and creating a split with another appeals court that could send the issue to the Supreme Court. The New York Times has more here.

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By Tim Fernholz

Everyone’s waiting for Nvidia to confirm this week’s most interesting tech deal: A reported $13 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, a platform for sharing open-weight AI models and benchmarks.

Now best known as the target for a team of reward-hacking OpenAI agents, Hugging Face is at the center of the ecosystem of developers building and deploying LLMs that aren’t owned by frontier labs. Think of it as a kind of GitHub for the AI era.

Rumors of that deal come after Nvidia struck a $6 billion agreement with Poolside, an open-weight model builder, that will see most of its employees move to the chip-making giant. And two weeks ago, Stripe acquired OpenRouter, the top provider of open-weight models to businesses, for more than $7 billion.

That’s a lot of capital pouring into a sector based on giving stuff away, and it reflects the latest trends in the AI sector.

For Nvidia, there’s a need to avoid further dependence on its deals with the major hyperscalers and frontier labs. That’s particularly the case when major AI model builders like OpenAI and Google are also building their own inference chips, like OpenAI’s Jalapeño, whose capabilities were announced this week. If model builders are making chips, Nvidia wants a chunk of the model-making business.

Nvidia already builds its own Nemotron family of open-weight models, but their uptake hasn’t been huge. By taking control of the largest U.S. developer space for open models, the company will have access to a mass of users it can drive to its chips and standards.

There are also growing questions about the cost of AI inference, which has companies exploring cheaper models built by Chinese companies like Moonshot, DeepSeek, and Alibaba. Right now, adoption is relatively small but growing — just 6% of companies use open-weight models, according to a survey of spending data by Ramp, or just 2% of software engineers measured by Jellyfish, which makes tools for developers.

Ajaib Group, a seven-year-old Jakarta startup that offers crypto, stablecoins, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, commodities, foreign exchange, payments, and savings services, raised a $270 million round from SBI Holdings, which acquired an approximate 20% stake. The company has raised a total of $500+ million. The Block has more here.

Cyclic Materials, a five-year-old Toronto startup that recovers rare earth magnets and critical minerals from electronics and manufacturing scrap to produce rare earth oxides for manufacturers, raised a $75 million round led by T. Rowe Price, with ERI as well as previous investors Energy Impact Partners, Microsoft, Amazon, BMW i Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover, and Hitachi Ventures also buying in. The company has raised a total of $237 million in equity funding. More here.

Owner, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI agents to run websites, direct online ordering, customer marketing, support, and phone orders for independent restaurants, raised a $240 million round at a $2.3 billion post-money valuation valuation. The deal was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with Meritech, Redpoint, Headline, and Jack Altman also engaging. Restaurant Technology News has more here.

Lone Palm Labs, a four-year-old startup split between New York and San Francisco that operates Retro, a photo-and-video sharing app for close friends and family, raised at least $21 million. Investors include Thrive Capital, Scribble Ventures, Imaginary Ventures, Uncommon Projects, and Figma CEO Dylan Field. Business Insider has more here.

Metriport, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that turns fragmented patient records into structured, searchable health histories so clinicians can see relevant information at the point of care, raised a $26 million Series A round led by Matrix, with ARTIS and Y Combinator also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $28.4 million. More here.

Vitalfluid, a 12-year-old company based in Eindhoven, Netherlands, that helps fruit and vegetable growers make on-site antimicrobial crop treatments from water, air, and electricity to reduce chemical fungicide use, raised a $19.9 million round led by Invest-NL, with Alder Tree Investments as well as previous investors Horticoop, BOM, Future Food Fund, Graduate Ventures, Innovation Industries, VDL, and Goeie Grutten also investing. Dealroom has more here.

ArcSpace, a four-year-old Paris startup that develops electron-beam tools for welding and cutting structures in orbit, raised $2.3+ million round led by DEPO Ventures, with SCE Freiraum Ventures, and IRDI Capital Investissement also participating. Dealroom.co has more here.

Maash, a five-year-old Brussels startup that makes fermented mycoprotein ingredients for food and pet food manufacturers to use in blended meat and animal nutrition products, raised a $6.8 million round. Investors included Ambra Capital, InvestPro, Bpifrance Amorçage Industriel, Nordzucker, and Tereos. Green Queen Media has more here.

Neocrete, an eight-year-old Auckland startup that develops concrete additives that enable fly ash and volcanic ash replace cement while maintaining strength and durability, raised a $3.5 million round led by previous investor Wavemaker Ventures, with Icehouse Ventures, and Temasek Trust also digging in. More here.

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Andreessen Horowitz launched a $1.1 billion “Machine Age” fund to back the physical infrastructure behind AI, including chips, memory, data centers, cooling, electrical systems, and robotics. TechCrunch has more here.

Pasqal, a seven-year-old French quantum-computing company that builds neutral-atom processors for problems in drug discovery, materials science, and financial modeling, surged as much as 73% in its Nasdaq debut after a SPAC merger valued it at roughly $2 billion. Reuters has more here.

Meta’s India and Southeast Asia vice president Sandhya Devanathan is leaving after more than a decade to join OpenAI, where she will oversee consumer growth, enterprise adoption, partnerships, regulatory engagement, and operations across Southeast Asia and Australia. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenAI employees are joking that the company’s breakneck pace is visibly aging them, with Codex staff posting before-and-after photos featuring longer hair and under-eye patches, a meme that reflects the broader “grindset” culture inside leading AI labs. Business Insider has more here.

Big U.S. tech companies that donated heavily to Trump are now courting Democrats and preparing for possible congressional investigations if the party wins the House, with Meta giving $10 million to Democratic-aligned nonprofits and some firms forming internal subpoena-response teams. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

A furious legal battle over prediction markets has pitted 20 states against Kalshi, Polymarket, and the Trump administration, while Donald Trump Jr. holds financial interests in both platforms and has personally urged state attorneys general to back off. The New York Times has more here.

Beijing’s AGI Bar has become an unofficial clubhouse for China’s booming AI scene, where founders, coders, and investors trade gossip, recruit talent, court funding, and drink cocktails named after local models; a second, five-times-larger location recently opened in Shanghai. Bloomberg has more here.

Grand Theft Auto VI’s Nov. 19 release is shaping up as an unofficial holiday, with fans stockpiling vacation days to binge the game; a U.S. Army battalion is even offering a four-day pass as a reenlistment incentive.

The Hamptons has become a near-continuous circuit of sponsored brand activations, as companies can reach wealthy vacationers, celebrities, influencers, and media in one fell swoop.

Pokémon cards have become valuable enough to turn Bay Area hobby shops into security-conscious luxury retailers, with one San Francisco store spending tens of thousands of dollars on theft prevention as rare cards sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[H/T Teddy.]

Any, a Belgian electric-mobility startup, has unveiled the LUV1, a modular electric motorcycle with 120 liters of cargo space, a 62 mph top speed, and up to 87 miles of range, priced from about $8,150.

TechCrunch tests whether XREAL’s roughly $300 a01 smart glasses can really replace the experience of watching a movie in a theater.

Miami’s wealthy are increasingly treating rooftop helipads and private docks as must-have real-estate amenities, using helicopters and boats to bypass worsening traffic and turn commutes to Palm Beach, the Bahamas, and private aviation hubs into far shorter trips.

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