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Investors grew skeptical Anthropic’s IPO could land a $1.5T valuation after a brutal chip selloff. Thinking Machines unveiled Inkling 2 Small, Tesla announced it would wind down the Cybertruck, and Anthropic launched Personal Finance in Claude. Plus, Microsoft’s buyouts.

Sources: major investors are increasingly skeptical Anthropic’s IPO can proceed at a $1.5T valuation after a market selloff; one says it could be closer to $1T (WSJ)

The Nasdaq 100 fell 6% on Thursday, losing a record $2.3T in value, as the Philadelphia chip index fell 12% and vol control funds were expected to sell about $135B of US equity futures (Bloomberg)

Thinking Machines Lab debuts Inkling 2 Small, a MoE model with 594B total and 17B active parameters, and plans to release weights next week after safety testing (Thinking Machines)

Inkling 2 Small scored 31 on Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index, an 18-point jump, but used roughly four times as many output tokens per task; Thinking Machines is reportedly nearing a $5B round led by Accel (TechStrong.ai)

Elon Musk says Tesla plans to wind down production of the Cybertruck at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027 “to make room for increased Cybercab production” (Financial Times)

Anthropic launches Personal Finance in Claude, letting users connect bank and credit card accounts via Plaid with read-only access to analyze spending trends (ZDNet)

Longreads

How employees at Microsoft, long known for its stability in the tech industry, are grappling with its decision to offer buyouts to 60,000 people as AI spending grows (The New York Times)

AvidXchange is a licensed money transmitter for B2B payments in the United States, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, as well as all other states that require AvidXchange to have a license.

OpenAI pledged to rethink data center deals, dropping NDAs, after the blue wave rattled AI. Motorola launched a $1,599 flagship, OpenAI released GPT-6 Cyber, and Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro reviews said the screen’s gorgeous, but you don’t have to touch it.

OpenAI pledges to change how it handles data center deals, including avoiding NDAs and lowering power usage during peak times, after Democrats’ midterm wins (Bloomberg)

AI’s biggest names watched Figaro at the San Francisco Opera on election night as results turned against the data center build-out; OpenAI leaders weighed resetting next year’s capacity expectations, CoreWeave fell nearly 10%, and Brad Gerstner says 25% to 35% of next year’s US build-out could be at risk (WSJ)

Motorola launches the $1,599+ Signature 27, featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, a 6.8-inch Tandem OLED display, and seven years of OS updates (9to5Google)

Motorola’s Signature 27 is its first all-out slab flagship, matching the Galaxy S26 Ultra at $1,599 with 512GB and 12GB of RAM and adding GrapheneOS support, but it lacks built-in Qi2 magnets and $1,600 is a steep hill to climb (The Verge)

OpenAI launches GPT-6 Cyber, which it says outperforms GPT-6 Astra on cyber benchmarks, is better at finding vulnerabilities, and is less likely to go rogue (The Verge)

MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display review: gorgeous screen, touch is useful, strong performance and speakers, and a Dynamic Island, but pricey and no Face ID (Tom’s Hardware)

The Verge gives the PROLED MacBook Pro a 9 out of 10: touch is nearly unusable as a touch-first experience, with no onscreen keyboard and no Apple Pencil support, so it’s a laptop that happens to have a touchscreen, but it’s the one to get if you’re coming from an M1-era Mac (The Verge)

The PROLED display is the best you can buy, but touch adds little and there’s no Apple Pencil support; the $400-cheaper M5 Max MacBook Pro performs identically, and the OLED premium may become the only option with the M6 Max (PetaPixel)

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AvidXchange is a licensed money transmitter for B2B payments in the United States, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, as well as all other states that require AvidXchange to have a license.

Democrats swept Texas, Georgia and Ohio governorships on data center moratorium pledges, putting AI buildout billions at risk. Apple opened Siri AI to every developer, Google said it would turn K-12 AI off by default, and Revolut cut coding costs 90%.

Democratic gubernatorial wins from Texas and Georgia to Ohio and Pennsylvania are set to expose 50% of AI data center proposals to more scrutiny and pushback (Bloomberg)

Democratic gubernatorial candidates who pledged to halt data center development swept Texas, Georgia and Ohio, threatening billions in planned AI investment and rebuking Trump’s endorsement of the AI building spree (Financial Times)

The Texas results could be awkward for Elon Musk, who reportedly gave nearly $450 million to Republican midterm candidates and has bet big on the state with SpaceX, Tesla and the planned Terafab chip complex (The Information)

Apple opens Siri AI to all developers, letting any app on iOS 27.3 beta and other 27.3 OS betas bring its content and actions into Siri AI by using App Intents (Apple Developer)

Apple’s new “app skills” let any app build Siri AI integrations for the first time, and teach Siri to coordinate complicated multi-step actions, testable now in the iOS 27.3 betas (9to5Mac)

Google says AI tools for K-12 students will be off by default in 2027; schools that block AI entirely will lose Search, as “Search and AI are deeply integrated” (The New York Times)

Revolut says it cut AI coding inference costs by ~90% in less than a year by making self-hosted GLM models its default over commercial tools like Claude Code (The Register)

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AvidXchange is a licensed money transmitter for B2B payments in the United States, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, as well as all other states that require AvidXchange to have a license.

Apple beat estimates in John Ternus’s first earnings call, but memory costs loomed. Investors told Anthropic to price its IPO near $1.5T. Google banned a TV box maker for preloading malware. Binance detailed its $6.3B hack. Anthropic said RSI might be imminent.

Apple reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $114.48B, above $113.39B est., China revenue up 21% to $17.5B, below $18.9B est., in John Ternus’ first earnings report (Business Wire)

Apple guided Q1 sales up 7–10% YoY, above the 6% Wall Street expected, but shares slipped ~3% after-hours on a 45–46% margin forecast and Ternus calling memory pricing “unprecedented” (FT)

Opinion: Ternus’s tight-lipped first earnings call missed a chance to talk up the iPhone Duo, Apple’s AI-agent moat, and capex at just 6.5% of Meta’s (Bloomberg)

Sources: institutional investors told Anthropic that its IPO valuation should be ~$1.5T to $1.6T, below the $2T range, citing factors like a tech stock selloff (WSJ)

Google severs ties with and bans Android TV box maker Videostrong after finding it intentionally preloaded malware to open a backdoor to control the XCPE botnet (9to5Google)

Binance says North Korean hackers stole $6.3B through a months-long scheme with fake LinkedIn job interviews and an ad campaign to deliver malicious software (Fortune)

S-1: Anthropic says it may “imminently meet” its RSI threshold and may not identify “a significant acceleration” in its development until after it has occurred (TechCrunch)

Anthropic’s internal data shows Claude went from leading 1% of its AI R&D work in March to 26% by August; co-founder Jack Clark now thinks RSI arrives in 2027, not 2028 (WSJ)

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AvidXchange is a licensed money transmitter for B2B payments in the United States, licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services, as well as all other states that require AvidXchange to have a license.