Techmeme

Charlie Warzel / The Atlantic:
An interview with Ondřej Surý, a volunteer who maintains and helps automate PHP patches, about his role in fixing two critical PHP security vulnerabilities  —  On Tuesday, the world found out about two massive security vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language that is used by roughly 70 percent of websites.

Eva Brendel / Bloomberg:
German energy company PreussenElektra says it is working with Nvidia to assess whether the country's idle nuclear plants could be turned into data centers  —  Germany's idle nuclear plants could find a new life as data centers, with operators looking for ways to redevelop the sites while dismantling of the reactors continues.

Camila Grigera Naón / Fortune:
a16z rebrands “a16z Crypto” as “a16z Frontier” and expands the $2.2B fund's scope to back startups developing AI, robotics, and other emerging technologies  —  In 2018, Andreessen Horowitz made a splash in the venture capital world by launching a spin-off dedicated to digital assets called a16z Crypto.

Financial Times:
Sources: OpenAI has cut its valuation target to $1.25T, down from the $1.4T valuation it pitched earlier in October, after facing resistance from some investors  —  AI lab floated $1.4tn price tag earlier this month, according to documents seen by the FT  —  OpenAI has cut its valuation target …

Kelcee Griffis / Bloomberg:
Sources: SpaceX is in talks with at least one major cellular infrastructure firm to secure a minimum of 80K US cell sites, as it eyes a wireless carrier launch  —  SpaceX aims to secure a minimum of 80,000 cell sites across the US, and it's in talks with at least one major cellular infrastructure company …

Anthropic:
Anthropic donates the Agent Skills open standard to the Agentic AI Foundation and says 70+ platforms have integrated it, after donating MCP to the AAIF in 2025  —  Today, we're donating Agent Skills, the open standard that gives AI agents specialized knowledge and workflows, to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF).

Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Sources: OpenAI nears an up to $30B round led by investors from the UAE and Coatue at a $1.25T pre-money valuation, as an “opportunistic” bridge ahead of an IPO  —  OpenAI is closing in on a funding round that could value the artificial intelligence giant at more than $1 trillion ahead …

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Canva launches Craft, its first image generation model, trained on human-designed templates, available to all users, with plans to support third-party chatbots  —  Design platform Canva released its first image generation model, called Canva Craft, developed by its research team to compete …

Camila Grigera Naón / Fortune:
Microsoft and Alphabet join 14 other companies objecting to a plan by OKXICE, a venture of OKX and ICE, to trade blockchain-based versions of their shares  —  A growing number of companies are pushing back against tokenized trading of their shares.  Microsoft and Alphabet are the latest …

Alfred Ng / Politico:
Amazon issues refunds from a 2025 settlement, crediting “President Trump's Federal Trade Commission,” the first time an FTC refund has been tied to a president  —  Millions of Americans are expected to receive a settlement check from Amazon credited to “President Trump's Federal Trade Commission” …

Robert Hart / The Verge:
Microsoft says its GPT-5-powered Diagnostic Orchestrator uses agents that mimic panels of experts to diagnose conditions up to 4x more accurately than doctors  —  'We're going to build something that is indistinguishable from human performance ... in the next couple of years,' Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman tells The Verge.

The Information:
Sources: Datadog offered to acquire Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Upwind Security for nearly $4B; Upwind is finalizing a $300M round at a ~$3.8B valuation  —  Enterprise software firm Datadog recently offered to buy Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup Upwind Security for nearly $4 billion …

Maria Diaz / ZDNET:
Amazon rebrands its Kindle Unlimited subscription as Kindle+ and expands access to audiobooks, including titles narrated by AI  —  Unlike narrated audiobooks from Audible and other providers, the audiobooks created with Virtual Voice in Kindle+ will instead be narrated by AI.  —  ZDNET's key takeaways

The Information:
Sources: SoftBank's SB Energy is considering going public as soon as December or waiting until 2027, as it closely watches Anthropic's IPO, expected in November  —  SB Energy, the SoftBank Group-controlled developer of a massive planned Ohio data center project for OpenAI …

Wall Street Journal:
US officials say Trump asked Elon Musk to lift Starshield restrictions; Ukraine officials said it was not fully fixed Thursday but was working at higher speeds  —  Military-grade system appeared to be working more normally on Thursday, soon after the call  —  WASHINGTON—President Trump …

Natalie Breymeyer / Axios:
Chicago-based Formic, which provides robots-as-a-service automation to manufacturers, raised $50M, including a $40M Series B and $10M in asset-backed financing  —  Formic, a physical AI commercialization platform, raised $50 million in financing, CEO Saman Farid tells Axios exclusively.

Jay Peters / The Verge:
The Browser Company says it will shut down its Arc browser on December 22, launched in 2023, shifting attention to its AI-focused Dia browser, launched in 2025  —  New feature development for the innovative web browser ended last year.  Now The Browser Company is telling users to try Dia, Arc's replacement.

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Microsoft says it is closing The Garage, which for 17 years gave employees worldwide space and tools for side projects and ran the company's Global Hackathon  —  Microsoft is winding down The Garage as a companywide program, ending a 17-year run for the effort that gave employees space …

Lauren Feiner / The Verge:
Filings: Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI had their highest-spending lobbying quarter between July and September, spending $2.2M, $2.1M, and $1.5M, respectively  —  Collectively, they spent nearly $6 million around cybersecurity, child safety, and more. … It was a busy summer for AI lobbyists.

Rocket Drew / The Information:
Atlanta-based Tractian, which uses AI and sensors to predict machine failures and recommend maintenance plans, raised a $130M Series D at a $1.4B valuation  —  Tractian, a 7-year-old physical AI startup based in Atlanta, Georgia, has raised $130 million at a valuation of $1.4 billion …