Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

🤝 ByteDance closes in on a MediaTek chip supply deal for its data centers.
🎵 YouTube Music adds AI labels as machine-made songs flood streaming platforms.
⚖️ Eight U.S. states sue OpenAI over alleged harm to young users from ChatGPT.
✂️ Netflix to cut 1k jobs as competition for viewers’ attention heats up.
🛰️ Elon Musk says Trump is ‘ultimately’ to blame for Ukraine’s Starshield restrictions.

TECHNOLOGY

• ByteDance closes in on MediaTek chip supply deal for its data centers (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, AOL, Reuters}}

  • ByteDance could become MediaTek’s second major customer for custom ASICs, after Alphabet’s Google.

  • Barred from NVIDIA’s top AI chips, ByteDance is turning to chip designers, as it did with Qualcomm.

  • The deal would boost MediaTek’s push beyond phones, backed by NVIDIA’s $3.5B investment announced in September.

• YouTube Music adds AI labels as machine-made songs flood streaming platforms (Engadget)
  ^{_{More: CNET, TechCrunch, Variety}}

  • Tags appear on the player page and in the main YouTube app, and clicking one explains AI’s role.

  • Partners self-declare ‘Fully Gen AI,’ ‘Partly Gen AI,’ or ‘No Gen AI,’ backed by YouTube’s detection tools.

  • Apple Music plans ‘Made With AI’ tags later this year, while Spotify offers AI labels and spam filtering.

• SK Hynix ties new U.S. factory to chip-tool export approval for China (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, Economic Times}}

  • Solidigm, SK Hynix’s U.S. unit, wants to fill unused space at the Dalian, China, site with NAND equipment.

  • The Trump administration is pressing SK Hynix, Samsung, and other foreign chipmakers to build U.S. plants.

  • SK Hynix said the Dalian installation is proceeding in close consultation with, and under authorization from, Washington.

BUSINESS

• Eight U.S. states sue OpenAI over ChatGPT’s alleged harm to young users (NBC)
  ^{_{More: AOL, Reuters, The Guardian}}

  • The suits allege the agreeable chatbot reinforces delusions, encourages dangerous behavior, and helps users plan violence.

  • The group, including Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona, says OpenAI violated consumer protection laws and created a public nuisance.

  • They seek penalties, damages, and a ban on developing self-improving models unless OpenAI ensures alignment with human values.

• Netflix to cut 1k jobs as competition for viewers’ attention heats up (The Guardian)
  ^{_{More: IGN, TechCrunch, Investing.com}}

  • The cuts, about 6% of its 16k workforce, mainly hit product, tech, legal, and human resources teams.

  • The layoffs follow Netflix losing a drawn-out bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery’s assets to Paramount Skydance.

  • YouTube reportedly overtook Netflix in average daily viewing in 2025, while TikTok is closing the engagement gap.

• Anthropic’s pre-IPO investor day: ‘thinking’ caps, surging revenue & no extinction talk (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Investing.com, Business Standard}}

  • Third-quarter revenue jumped 45% to $16.8B, up from $11.6B in Q2 and $4.7B in Q1.

  • Anthropic claimed adjusted profitability for the quarter and is targeting a valuation above $2T for its IPO.

  • The listing, likely after November’s U.S. midterms, is expected to precede OpenAI’s and test AI investor appetite.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Elon Musk says Trump is ‘ultimately’ to blame for Ukraine’s Starshield restrictions (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: BBC, NY Post, Yahoo!}}

  • Ukraine accused SpaceX of curbing the military-grade internet service without warning, disrupting operations by its armed forces.

  • Musk said the U.S. government drove the decision, shifting responsibility for the abrupt changes away from SpaceX.

  • Some of the restrictions on the network appeared to have been partially lifted as of Thursday.

• South Korean stocks plunge 8% as investors race to dump AI bets (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: Nikkei, Yahoo!}}

  • Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix sank 11% and 12%, respectively, as the selloff forced an early trading halt.

  • The rout followed a Wall Street tech selloff after hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation revived fears of higher rates.

  • Doubts over AI firms’ profitability and reliance on outside financing are prompting investors to rethink chipmaker valuations.

• Two ships sink near Hormuz after projectile strikes as attacks surge (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: The Guardian, The Standard}}

  • Iran says it is escalating strikes in response to the U.S. blockade of its ports and tougher sanctions.

  • The Singapore-flagged GFS Pride caught fire and sank, though all 21 crew members were safely evacuated.

  • The Cape Dao sank weeks after a September 23 strike, making three sinkings since the U.S.-Iran war began.

FUTURISM

• Apate’s undercover AI agents get scammed on purpose to collect fraud intelligence (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!}}

  • The Sydney-born startup’s thousands of agents pose as victims, answering calls and following phishing links.

  • The TechCrunch Disrupt finalist’s fleet has wasted 17 years of fraudsters’ time across 2.5M conversations.

  • Banks, telcos, and government agencies use the crypto wallets and phone numbers scammers disclose to bolster anti-fraud efforts.

• Anthropic warns ‘AI worms’ could hijack your smart home devices to self-replicate (Futurism)
  ^{_{More: The Verge, AOL}}

  • Anthropic’s report says the threat could be months away if AI models keep improving at their current rate.

  • Worms are malware that spread by scanning networks for devices, a skill rogue AI agents may soon gain.

  • Many IoT devices sit on poorly secured networks yet carry chips powerful enough to run small AI models.

• Colossal Biosciences unveils new AI platform to speed up de-extinction efforts (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Tech Buzz}}

  • Called GenoMorph, the tool combines 3D morphology, comparative genomics, and developmental biology to identify genes for editing.

  • Colossal is applying it to revive the dodo, working from one genome versus 100 for the woolly mammoth.

  • Mammoth DNA is more plentiful because cold climates preserve it better than the tropics where dodos lived.

• Hunting for AI roles eats hours across careers pages, internal referrals, group chats, and a dozen overlapping boards*

  • The Athyna AI Job Board does the watching for you and matches openings to your profile in the background.

  • When a role hits a 75% matching index or higher, we notify you with details and a direct apply link.

CONTENT

• How an ex-DeepMind researcher’s startup built an open-source model in 90 days (This Week in Startups)

  • Reflection AI’s Misha Laskin says enterprises are done renting closed models and want control over data and costs.

  • Reflection’s open-weight Beam model trails top Chinese rivals by months but needs three to four times fewer tokens.

  • Laskin argues open source makes AI safer, since a few hundred lab safety researchers cannot catch every flaw.

• Nathan Lambert breaks down the gap between frontier labs & open models (a16z)

  • Lambert credits OpenAI and Anthropic’s compute and capital edge, but says Chinese open labs follow close behind.

  • With a16z’s Lisha Li, he weighs distillation against talent and explains why compute remains a major constraint.

  • His new nonprofit, Trillium, will release RL environments and document how AI is automating AI research.

• Jodi Picoult reveals the writing habits that helped her sell 50M books (David Perell)

  • Picoult has published 30 novels and, for a stretch of her career, was writing a book every year.

  • Her research has taken her ghost hunting and to Alaska, and she says she hears her characters speak.

  • She covers her 80% research rule, finding a story’s ‘what if,’ and reading outside one’s genre.

EXTRAS

• Trump’s press secretary Katie Zacharia under scrutiny over her lawyer claims (AP)
  ^{_{More: BBC, Seattle Times, The Guardian}}

  • Neither Zacharia nor the White House has shown that she passed a bar exam in the U.S. or China.

  • Asked where she passed the bar, Zacharia answered, “When I moved to China,” leaving the sentence seemingly unfinished.

  • Zacharia holds a 2011 Pepperdine law degree, but China’s bar exam is open only to Chinese citizens.

• Mukesh Ambani’s Jio targets $3.2B in what could be India’s largest IPO (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: TechCrunch, Yahoo!}}

  • Jio will offer up to 270M new shares priced around $11.19 to $11.76, with subscriptions opening October 21.

  • At the top of its price band, Jio would be worth about $108.3B, up from $65B in 2020.

  • Meta invested $5.7B, and Google committed $4.5B in 2020, part of more than $20B Jio raised globally.

• Apple readies its first AI features for a December launch in China (Bloomberg)
  ^{_{More: Firstpost, The Information}}

  • The rollout is expected to arrive with iOS 27.3, though Apple has not officially confirmed the timeline.

  • Regulatory restrictions have kept Apple Intelligence unavailable in mainland China for more than two years.

  • The initial release will likely include only features already available in other markets, with advanced tools still uncertain.

AND MORE

• Flock CEO pushes back on national surveillance backlash: “We shouldn’t pause progress”.

• China’s solar giants cut another 40k jobs last year amid persistent overcapacity.

• Roko’s Basilisk skips the buzzwords and cuts straight to what moves markets, products, and careers.*

• Intero Biosystems wants drugmakers to replace animal testing with mini human intestines.

• Nicaraguan families plead for answers as dissidents disappear into state custody.

• U.S. electric vehicle sales are beginning to show signs of recovery.

• Delta’s business-class revamp brings new seats, menus, plates & more Porsches.