Silicon Valley Daily
Wednesday, October 28: Apple put a touchscreen on the Mac for the first time — a MacBook Pro with a tandem-OLED PROLED XDR display, 2,000 nits and a $2,899 starting price. Google released Gemini 4 Carbon two weeks after Argon; it scores 59 on the Artificial Analysis index, but access starts with vetted cyber defenders. Earnings split the market: Alphabet missed on revenue and EPS, Microsoft's $45.2 billion of capex came in under the $50.7 billion estimate and dragged CoreWeave and Nebius lower, while Oracle jumped 11% on a $225 billion fiscal-2030 forecast. Wired reported a leak exposing 41,000 Homeland Security workers, and a UEFI firmware flaw affects most of the world's servers. In China, DeepSeek V5 identifiers surfaced in code and Unitree posted 70% revenue growth.
Apple launches its first touchscreen Mac, an OLED MacBook Pro from $2,899
Apple introduced a 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro with a PROLED XDR tandem-OLED touchscreen, rated up to 2,000 nits and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio. It starts at $2,899, per Tom's Hardware, and is Apple's third major launch under CEO John Ternus, per CNBC. CNBC's hands-on found touch entirely optional: anything clickable can be touched, and macOS looks largely unchanged.
Google releases Gemini 4 Carbon two weeks after Argon
Google DeepMind released Gemini 4 Carbon, which tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 with 59 points and scores 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro. Google says it is built for long agent workflows and the full cyber-defense lifecycle, so access starts with vetted security experts, priced at $2/$10 per million tokens. Ars Technica calls it essentially a slightly better Argon.
Alphabet misses on revenue and earnings; cloud is the bright spot
Alphabet reported third-quarter revenue of $127.6 billion, up about 25% but below the $128.2 billion consensus, according to CNBC. Adjusted EPS fell 7% to $2.67 against $3.02 expected, and the stock sank after hours; CNBC said cloud was the main bright spot. Other Bets, which includes Waymo, made up 0.3% of revenue.
Microsoft's capex comes in light, and neocloud stocks fall
Microsoft reported $45.2 billion of capex and finance leases for the quarter, up about 30% but below the $50.7 billion analyst average, CNBC reports. Shares of CoreWeave, Nebius and IREN fell in extended trading, since Microsoft relies on such neoclouds for capacity. SCMP notes Elon Musk has warned of collapses among the 200-plus neoclouds, while Nvidia's Jensen Huang says demand will keep capital flowing.
Oracle jumps 11% on $225B fiscal-2030 forecast and funding cap
Oracle shares rose 11% after its investor day forecast $225 billion in revenue for fiscal 2030, implying 35% average annual growth, CNBC reports. The company also committed to cap additional fundraising from fiscal 2027 through 2030 at $20 billion, split equally between equity and debt, easing concerns about its borrowing.
Leak exposes 41,000 Homeland Security workers, including undercover ICE agents
Wired reports a leak of Department of Homeland Security records exposing more than 41,000 employees and contractors, including email addresses, phone numbers and the locations of ICE and CBP facilities. The data also lists members of groups tied to wiretap programs, Palantir software and xAI's Grok. Bluesky told Wired it is blocking links to the archive because it shares people's contact details without authorization.
GitHub Universe: 7.4B commits in September and a new Copilot Fusion
At GitHub Universe, the company launched Copilot Fusion, a system that picks and orchestrates models for coding tasks; The New Stack reports GitHub says it beats Claude Code at half the API cost. GitHub's Octoverse report says commits and pushes hit records as developers build with agents. GitHub logged 7.4 billion commits in September and added 4 million CPU cores and 160 PB of storage to keep up.
Google opens Android Studio to 40-plus third-party coding agents
Google's new Bring Your Own Agent feature lets Android Studio work with more than 40 coding agents, including Anthropic's Claude Agent and OpenAI's Codex. Google says new terminal tools help agents finish UI tasks 77% faster with up to three times fewer tokens, and it also unveiled new Gemini APIs.
OpenAI widens enterprise push with ServiceNow deal and Berlin DevDay
OpenAI and ServiceNow expanded their partnership, bringing OpenAI models and agents into ServiceNow and ServiceNow workflows into ChatGPT and Codex. At DevDay Exchange in Berlin, OpenAI said its Dots assistant will roll out more widely in Europe in a few weeks and that weekly Codex users in Germany have grown twentyfold since January, The Decoder reports. OpenAI also published a case study on legal-AI startup Legora.
Anthropic's public-benefit structure poses unusual risks for IPO investors
Anthropic plans to go public as a public benefit corporation, a rare structure for listed companies that legally requires it to balance a public-benefit mandate with standard fiduciary duties, CNBC reports. Analysts told CNBC the structure could weigh on long-term valuation and come into play in mergers and acquisitions.
UEFI firmware flaw leaves most of the world's servers exposed
A critical flaw in UEFI firmware used by most server vendors and data centers lets attackers execute code early in the boot process, Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports in Wired. Defenders now face another round of firmware updates across server fleets.
DeepSeek V5 identifiers appear in its official code repository
Three DeepSeek V5 identifiers — deepseek-v5, deepseek-v5-open and deepseek-v5-next — appeared in tests in DeepSeek's official Harness repository on GitHub, TechNode reports. Pandaily notes they are placeholders and no V5 has been announced; DeepSeek's V4.1-Flash-1017 currently leads open-weight models on FrontierCode 2.0.
US agency approves Amazon Leo's $11.5B Globalstar acquisition
A US agency has approved Amazon Leo's $11.5 billion acquisition of satellite operator Globalstar, according to a Reuters headline. Amazon announced the deal in April to expand its Leo satellite network.
Unitree's first post-IPO quarter: revenue up 70%, core profit down
Unitree reported third-quarter revenue of RMB 665 million, up 69.93% year on year, in its first report since listing on Shanghai's STAR Market in August. Net profit attributable to shareholders was RMB 113 million, but profit excluding one-off items fell 17.42% to RMB 105 million as R&D spending jumped 249.58%, SCMP reports.
Malaysia seizes $12M of AI chips hidden in 30 servers
Malaysian customs seized 30 servers containing more than $12 million worth of advanced AI chips at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Authorities are investigating a suspected smuggling network linked to several earlier seizures that used the country as a transit hub.
Samsung posts record profit but shares fall; SK Hynix lifts chip stocks
Samsung Electronics reported record third-quarter operating profit, broadly in line with estimates, yet its shares closed 4.13% lower on Thursday, CNBC reports. A day earlier, CNBC's Jim Cramer said SK Hynix's blockbuster quarter showed AI chip stocks can still rally.
Amazon tells engineers to stop 'tokenmaxxing'
Amazon published engineering guidelines warning developers and managers against tokenmaxxing, calling AI usage metrics deeply flawed unless tied to long-term outcomes. Tom's Hardware says the move follows similar spending concerns at Uber and Accenture.
Rising AI component costs push big PC makers back to China
Higher prices for AI-related components are pushing the largest PC makers to move manufacturing capacity back to China, where an established supply chain and workforce keep costs lower, Tom's Hardware reports. Smaller Chinese suppliers are also winning orders by offering easier access to domestic chipmakers such as CXMT.
Nvidia open-sources Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe for 40 languages
Nvidia released Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe, an open-weight speech model with 4.3 billion active parameters that transcribes 40 languages and adds speaker labels and word timestamps. It posts a 4.71% mean word error rate on the English Open ASR Leaderboard, and users can steer it with prompts.
Biwin and Moore Threads shares plunge despite surging revenue
Shares of Chinese chip suppliers Biwin Storage Technology and Moore Threads fell more than 10% on Thursday amid a broader mainland tech sell-off, despite strong third-quarter revenue driven by AI demand, SCMP reports. Biwin closed down 15.79%, reversing an 8.4% gain the day before.
Tencent says Hy4 models with visual understanding are coming soon
Tencent will soon release Hy4 and Hy4 flash, adding visual understanding to its model lineup, senior executive vice president Dowson Tong said at the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Conference. The full Hy4 improves on the August preview in sustained-reasoning tasks.
UK budget introduces 'Founders' Relief' to keep entrepreneurs in Britain
The UK chancellor unveiled measures to encourage entrepreneurs to build in Britain, including a Founders' Relief and steps to support female founders, Tech.eu reports. Sifted's budget rundown also covers capital gains, work visas and allowances for young entrepreneurs.
EU and UK users can object to Meta's new AI training terms
Meta's new terms allow it to use users' data to train AI, but people in the EU and UK can currently object to certain uses of their information, 404 Media reports, publishing a guide to the process.
AI labs are buying data from shut-down startups
AI labs are buying data from defunct startups to train their models, MIT Technology Review reports. One example is Keelan Miskell, who did not expect his crypto startup's data to be worth much when he began winding it down.
Mistral Large 4 arrives on Hugging Face
Hugging Face announced the availability of Mistral Large 4, which it nicknamed Le Chonk, on its platform. The feed carried only the headline.
US police seize Virtualine bulletproof hosting service
US law enforcement seized the primary domain of Virtualine, a bulletproof hosting service advertised on cybercrime forums and tied to ransomware, BleepingComputer reports.
Europe plans first undersea cable to Greenland, bypassing the US
Europe is planning the Pan-Arctic Cable, its first undersea link to Greenland, Ars Technica reports. The route will bypass the US to connect to Canada, Japan and South Korea.