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On Thursday, AI app, Wabi, now describing itself as a "personal agent," said it has raised $55 million at a $1.25 billion valuation. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/wabi-the-ai-agent-that-builds-mini-apps-now-valued-at-1-25b-after-latest-round/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The social networking site is facing criticism for blocking access to the site, which identifies thousands of ICE agents and other employees working for Homeland Security. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/bluesky-blocks-links-to-leaked-dhs-employee-data-as-government-seeks-takedowns/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The acquisition would bring two major players in on-demand delivery under one roof, combining DoorDash’s dominance in restaurant takeout with Instacart’s reach in grocery delivery. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/doordash-to-acquire-instacart-for-17b/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Deepgram said that it is committed to keep Pipecat open source. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/deepgram-acquires-pipecat-maker-daily-to-bolster-its-voice-ai-infrastructure/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

The update allows you to use Alexa to create lists, register them, see what's on them, and add or edit items. You can also manage subscriptions with the AI bot. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/amazon-updates-alexa-to-help-you-manage-shopping-lists-subscriptions-and-update-delivery-instructions/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Six days from now, TechCrunch Founder Summit brings experienced founders, investors, and operators to Boston on Nov. 4 to share the decisions, mistakes, pivots, and lessons that shaped their companies. Register before it starts for ticket savings and deals. https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/who-will-you-learn-from-in-6-days-at-techcrunch-founder-summit-meet-the-founders-and-investors-taking-the-stage/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

Solink Corp. announced it has raised more than $100 million in new funding.
Source: SiliconANGLE
https://siliconangle.com/2026/10/29/solink-raises-more-than-100m-to-pull-business-data-from-security-cameras-with-ai/
#Startups

Anthropic built Claude Duet, an AI assistant that monitors connected apps and decides what needs attention without being asked.
Source: The New Stack
https://thenewstack.io/claude-duet-agent-judgment/
#AIAgents #Anthropic #Claude

The Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association supports the government reviewing the restart of nuclear power plants. A stable electricity supply is crucial for the chip industry.
Source: Free Malaysia Today
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/business/2026/10/29/taiwan-semiconductor-group-backs-govt-review-of-nuclear-power-restart
#Tech

Investors are shifting from rewarding aggressive AI spending funded by debt to demanding proof that growth can finance future outlays.
Source: Free Malaysia Today
https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/business/2026/10/29/cash-is-king-as-investors-draw-new-battle-lines-in-ai-spending-boom
#Startups

A tech-driven cold war threatens ASEAN centrality by forcing member states to choose between superpowers.
Source: BusinessWorld
https://bworldonline.com/opinion/2026/10/29/790254/waico-how-a-technological-cold-war-threatens-asean-centrality/
#TechPolicy

Hsu et al. present EVENET, a foundation model pretrained on simulated particle collisions using both self-supervised learning and physics labels, which transfers across many analysis tasks and works on real collider data.
Source: Nature Machine Intelligence
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-026-01322-9
#MachineLearning

GitHub introduced an npm package firewall in public preview for GitHub Enterprise Cloud customers to block supply chain attacks.
Source: TechJuice
https://www.techjuice.pk/github-launches-npm-firewall-block-supply-chain-attacks/
#Automation

GitHub stated that an influx of AI-generated code required an extra 4 million CPU cores and 160 petabytes of storage.
Source: Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/github-report-highlights-massive-influx-of-ai-generated-code-sixfold-increase-in-activity-over-one-year-required-extra-4-million-cpu-cores-and-160pb-of-storage
#AI

The service is delivering popular AI coding tools to mainland China and other regions where OpenAI and Anthropic products are not officially for sale, but it disables key security features.
Source: Dark Reading
https://www.darkreading.com/threat-intelligence/ai-relay-service-openai-codex-claude-code-sandboxes
#AI #OpenAI #Claude

Entourage closed its €100 million second fund after surpassing its €75 million target in two weeks.
Source: EU-Startups
https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/10/pieterjan-boutens-entourage-closes-e100-million-second-fund-after-surpassing-e75-million-target-in-two-weeks/
#Startups

Anthropic says nobody keeps a complete mental model of the Claude Code codebase, and the team documents a pull request that ran more than fifty review rounds overnight.
Source: InfoQ
https://www.infoq.com/news/2026/10/anthropic-code-review/?utm_campaign=infoq_content&utm_source=infoq&utm_medium=feed&utm_term=global
#AIAgents #Anthropic #Claude

Senators Ron Wyden and Edward Markey sent a letter to Meta demanding the company answer for privacy concerns regarding its smart glasses following an investigation.
Source: 404 Media
https://www.404media.co/senators-wyden-markey-letter-to-meta-smart-glasses/
#TechPolicy #Meta

OpenAI agents tried to cheat on a cybersecurity test and hacked Hugging Face. Anthropic, Google, and Meta disclosed incidents where agents went off track. Companies mostly rely on luck and hindsight to mitigate harmful impacts.
Source: MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/10/29/1147824/monitor-ai-agents-actions-real-time/
#AIAgents #OpenAI #HuggingFace

A hacker placed malicious software on the computers of top online poker players, letting the attacker view the victims' cards and defeat them at the tables.
Source: WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/a-hacker-targeted-high-stakes-poker-players-with-malware-that-exposed-their-cards/