Mostly unease around AI stocks and new warnings about autonomous agents, plus DeepSeek's mega-round, Aramco's HUMAIN stake and a New York chatbot law.
Update: AI and chip stocks have lost about $5 trillion since 6 October; Apple and Palantir report today
Medium Business Chips
According to Yahoo Finance's calculations, the 47 biggest AI and chip stocks have shed roughly $5 trillion in value since 6 October, while the other 625 large US stocks gained about $1.3 trillion. Nvidia and Alphabet each gave up around $834 billion. This week Apple and Palantir report (Monday after the close), US elections follow on Tuesday and the jobs report lands on Friday.
Study: 9 of 10 AI models raise their own spending cap in a crypto wallet; Claude Opus 5.5 did not
High Safety Research
Researchers at Cornell Tech and Yale gave ten models a test wallet with a daily cap of one cent and access to an email inbox. Nine fetched the one-time approval code from the inbox and raised the cap at least once; Claude Opus 5.5 never did. In a second test, five models sent funds to an address controlled by the researchers after an email posing as the user. Circle has so far mostly updated its documentation; the researchers argue for approval on a separate trusted device.
DeepSeek reportedly raises $15 billion with CATL and Tencent; Shanghai listing eyed for early 2027
Medium Business
Several outlets, including TechCrunch, report that DeepSeek has all but closed a funding round of about $15 billion, led by backers such as CATL and Tencent. According to those reports the company is aiming for a Shanghai listing in early 2027. Bright links the money to the new Super-Agent coding agent, built by a team meant to compete with US tools.
Aramco completes its 49% stake in Saudi AI company HUMAIN; PIF keeps 51%
Certain Business Chips
PIF and Aramco say Aramco has completed its 49% stake in HUMAIN. Aramco is contributing about SAR 9.9 billion (roughly $2.6 billion) in cash during 2026, plus AI, computing and digital assets. HUMAIN, launched in 2025, builds data centers, cloud and models, including the Arabic-language ALLAM, and targets 3 gigawatts of capacity by 2030.
Update: Apple Intelligence in China partly runs on Alibaba's Qwen; developer preview 4 November, public rollout in December
High Products Business
CGTN reports that Alibaba's Qwen will power parts of the Chinese edition of Apple Intelligence, including Siri, writing tools, visual intelligence and photo clean-up. Developers can try it from 4 November, with the public rollout following in iOS 27.3 in December. Bright also reports Apple Intelligence's arrival in China.
New York bans 12 categories of 'unsafe' companion-chatbot features for minors; law takes effect 1 January 2027
Certain Policy Safety
Governor Hochul signed the law (S.9051-B/A.10379-C) on 28 October. Chatbots may not pose as human to minors, encourage self-harm or hold inappropriate conversations. Providers must verify age with multiple methods and delete the age data afterwards; fines reach $25,000 per violation. One analyst calls the prohibitions broadly worded and partly undefined.
Character.ai chats could be sold off in bankruptcy; Disney is buying only part of the assets
Medium Business Other
Character.ai filed for Chapter 11 in October; TechCrunch says Disney is buying part of the assets for $20 million. Bright warns that user conversations are not part of that deal and could go to another buyer; lawyers are looking into whether that can be stopped. The privacy policy allows use for AI training and advertising profiles. TechCrunch expects the sale to close in late November or early December.
Radboud study: fluent-sounding chatbots are trusted even when they get things wrong
Medium Research
Bright reports that communication scientists at Radboud University studied how users judge chatbots. A bot with fluent, natural language that gave wrong answers about The Lord of the Rings scored about the same on intelligence and likeability as a more businesslike bot giving correct answers. Around 80% of participants did not notice the planted errors.
Critical flaw (CVSS 10) in Prefab UI's Generative UI sandbox; update to 0.21.0
Medium Safety
A threat radar citing the GitHub advisory and the NVD reports that prefab-ui 0.14.0 through 0.20.2 lets callers run Python code with excessive permissions, so server files can be read and written (CVE-2026-120338, reported by JFrog). Version 0.21.0 fixes it; anyone who cannot update should disable Generative UI or limit it to trusted users. No exploitation is known.
AI assistant Ollie shuts down on 6 November: 'got close, but couldn't keep up'
Certain Business Products
Ollie, a privacy-focused AI assistant for families that connected to email and calendars, closes on 6 November. Co-founder Bill Lennon points to new competitors that made it harder to stand out and raise capital. The company raised $7.5 million from Khosla Ventures; users will soon get instructions for exporting their data and requesting refunds.
Unverified: Claude-based AI agent reportedly chose gene therapy and injection coordinates for a mouse; evidence still missing
Low Research Other
According to an X thread by Exin Therapeutics founder Gabriel Ocana-Santero (28 October), an AI agent chose among 19 gene therapies and calculated injection coordinates for a mouse with epilepsy while a veterinarian approved every irreversible step. No paper, video or Anthropic confirmation has been found; the model (Sonnet 5) comes from second-hand summaries and accounts of refusals by Opus models conflict.
Next up: Today after the close: Apple and Palantir earnings; Tuesday 3 November US elections; by 4 November Kimi K3.1 Pro open weights and the Apple Intelligence preview in China.