Meta is the US technology company behind Facebook, Instagram and its Muse AI models. Recent coverage has centered on AI spending pressure: S&P cut its AA- credit outlook to negative, and rising AI capex forecasts at Meta, Alphabet and Amazon fed a sharp October tech selloff. Meta also partnered with Ohio State's medical college under a $2 million, five-university grant, quietly launched the Style Sketch fashion app in Southeast Asia, and drew Senate questions over smart-glasses privacy.
OpenAI cuts funding target by $10B; valuation falls to $1.25TOpenAI cut its funding target from $30B to $20B and its valuation from $1.4T a month ago to $1.25T, the FT reported. Rival Anthropic aims to list on Nasdaq this month at a target valuation of at least $1.5T, but Blackstone expects it to stay in speculative grade BB after IPO; Meta's rating outlook was cut on weaker AI-driven cash flow.
I built an AI Tamagotchi before Meta couldThe author built a $50 DIY AI Tamagotchi that talks to Muse, shows avatars, doubles as a pocket watch and camera viewfinder, and can theoretically control smart home devices; despite lacking cameras and 5G, the learning experience was worth it.
Meta's Muse could disrupt businesses but hasn't yetMeta's AI agent Muse is seen as potentially disruptive across industries but has yet to have real impact. Companies have spent recent weeks reassuring investors that Muse and similar AI agents offer more opportunity than threat.
Tech leaders adopt Trump's "Super Intelligence" rebrand of AIAfter Trump ordered government documents to replace "AI" with "Super Intelligence" (SI) via executive order, Microsoft, SpaceX, Meta, Tesla and IBM used the term in earnings-season filings. One SpaceX filing used SI 85 times, and Microsoft heralded a "Super Intelligence era."
S&P cuts Meta rating outlook to negative on AI spendingS&P Global Ratings lowered the outlook on Meta's AA- credit rating to negative, citing growing balance-sheet pressure from elevated AI-related spending. The rating itself was affirmed, but the negative outlook signals possible future downgrade risk.
TechCrunch suggests last-minute tech Halloween costumesTechCrunch offers last-minute tech-themed Halloween costume ideas such as AI agent icons and a PHP vulnerability, mentioning AI leaders Dario Amodei and Sam Altman's worries about rapid AI progress and Meta and OpenAI's cute-avatar assistants. Light fare with no substantive industry news.
AI Spending Fears Wipe $2 Trillion From Tech StocksThe Nasdaq 100 is set to erase more than $2 trillion in October, down over 5.8%, as Meta, Alphabet and Amazon raised AI capex forecasts. Alphabet posted its largest one-day decline on record, while Microsoft and SpaceX results showed AI investments starting to pay off.
Wall Street execs expect OpenAI IPO in Q1 2027OpenAI says it has no IPO plans this year, but Wall Street executives reportedly expect a listing in the first quarter of 2027. OpenAI is raising about $300 billion at a $1 trillion valuation, while rival Anthropic has filed its S-1 in a deal that could value it at up to $2 trillion.
Noyb files complaints against Scale AI over worker monitoringPrivacy NGO Noyb has filed five complaints alleging Scale AI illegally tracked European workers and used invasive biometric checks, calling for a regulator probe. Scale AI's Outlier platform reportedly contracts over 900,000 people doing data work for OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta; Meta bought a 49% stake last June and founder Alexandr Wang joined Meta.
Meta partners with Ohio State medical college on AI researchMeta and Ohio State's College of Medicine announced a partnership giving researchers access to Meta's latest Muse AI models. Under a $2 million grant shared by five US universities, Ohio State will work on early heart-failure prediction, radiology report drafting and Alzheimer's diagnosis.
Meta quietly launches AI fashion app Style SketchMeta has quietly launched Style Sketch, an AI fashion app, in Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand. It connects to Instagram to build a virtual closet from photos and suggests outfits, including try-on on a model matched to the user's body shape and skin tone. It also plans trip outfits. Meta did not comment on a wider rollout.
Senate Democrats press Meta over AI glasses privacySens. Ron Wyden and Edward Markey sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seeking answers and documents on testing and risk assessments of its smart glasses and how collected data is used, amid concerns over non-consensual recordings and AI training data.
Attacker impersonated AI bots from OpenAI, Anthropic and 30 others to steal secretsCequence researchers observed a single threat actor posing as roughly 32 AI bot identities, scanning enterprise servers for about 90 file paths including .env files, cloud credentials and SSH keys. On one October day it reached 48% of Cequence-protected organizations seeing AI bot traffic; no breach was reported.
Green AI advocate urges sustainability as top-level design concernSpeaking at GOTO Copenhagen, Charles Humble argued sustainability should be a top-level architectural concern, citing IEA data that combined electricity use by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta more than doubled from 2017 to 2021 to about 72 TWh. Microsoft's 2024 report shows emissions up 30% since 2020; Google's rose 13% year on year in 2023.
Getting started with AI agents: experts recommend using a stackMeta, OpenAI, Anthropic and others are competing hard in the consumer AI agent market. Experts advise against relying on a single agent, recommending a stack of agents from different labs so one performs work and another critiques it to boost output and productivity.
Google opens Gemini and Search to third-party appsGoogle launched a Connected Apps Platform letting developers hook their services into Search and Gemini, so users can do tasks like designing a flyer or building a playlist. Built on MCP servers and AppFunctions APIs, it is in beta for US developers, who can track traffic, latency and errors. The move shifts app discovery toward AI assistants.
Meta may again delay new business terms amid publisher backlashMeta communications head Andy Stone said the company won't change policy without full consultation with industry groups, and the new business terms may slip past November 20th. Originally due October 30th, the terms appeared to let Meta train AI on news content on Facebook and Instagram; Meta later removed the training language.
Meta launches Waddle World AI pet journal appMeta released Waddle World, a 16-bit pixel pet app where users talk to a virtual pet that chats back and doodles pictures of conversations. Its store listing frames it as a daily journal disguised as a pet, with cozy mini-games included.
Meta AI Boom Fuels Goldman WindfallBloomberg reports that Meta's massive share offering and the AI deal boom delivered a windfall for Goldman Sachs, while Anthropic's mega IPO put Wall Street on notice ahead of big tech earnings.
Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to launch NdocRohit Patel, a Meta director who spent eight years on AI evaluation and reinforcement learning, has left to launch Ndoc, an AI-native workspace pitched as a replacement for Microsoft Office and Google Workspace. Ndoc combines presentations, analysis and underlying datasets in one place, and lets users inspect the Python scripts behind generated documents. He is the latest in a string of high-profile Meta departures.
Meta plans 2-for-1 stock split in January 2027Meta said in its Q3 earnings that it will carry out a 2-for-1 stock split on Jan. 19, 2027, doubling share counts and halving the price with market cap unchanged. It will create a non-voting Class C stock, with Class A and super-voting Class B holders each receiving a Class C share—a move seen as helping CEO Mark Zuckerberg preserve his over-60% voting control. The stock is up 1,615% since its IPO.
Nvidia invests $3B in Meta as Meta buys more Nvidia chipsNvidia will invest $3 billion in Meta's planned equity offering, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the two expand their partnership around Meta's AI product Muse. Meta plans to run next-gen AI agents on Vera Rubin systems and Vera CPUs, and aims to raise up to $95 billion via stock offerings for AI infrastructure. AMD and Broadcom signaled interest in up to $5 billion combined.
Papers with Code relaunched as open-source projectA revived Papers with Code, the site Meta acquired and later shut down, is now open-source under Apache 2.0 and seeks community contributions. The submitter built it over months with Claude and Codex, using a FastAPI backend and React frontend on a Hetzner VPS, with the monorepo hosted under Hugging Face's GitHub account and a public API and MCP server.
WIRED tests and ranks six major AI agentsWIRED spent a day testing six AI agents, including Meta's Muse and Anthropic's Claude Duet, ranking them on how well they completed basic tasks. The piece compares the agents' practical task-execution abilities.
OpenAI launches always-on assistant dots, built from coding toolsOpenAI executive Alexander Embiricos said dots reframes coding-tool experience, like Codex, into a single always-on assistant entity that keeps working in the background. It is available to ChatGPT Pro-tier subscribers and above, starting at $100 a month, and connects to calendars, email and computers. He said the challenge is making it intuitive, not adding new tech.
ChatGPT misdirects users to 404 Media for supportWith big platforms offering little human support, users turn to ChatGPT; after a Russian man's Instagram ban, the bot advised emailing a 404 Media journalist and drafted the English message for him.
The RealReal strengthens bot defenses to block AI agents from buying luxury itemsSecondhand luxury consignment retailer The RealReal updated its bot defense system, making it harder for AI agents to shop on its site. The Verge had shown that Meta's Muse agent could repeatedly re-add items after the 20-minute cart hold expired, effectively blocking them.
Meta seeks up to $95 billion in equity to fund AIMeta Platforms plans to raise as much as $95 billion by selling common and preferred stock, seeking investor backing in the race to lead AI development.
AI agents are already shaping prices, with research warning of higher costsAs AI agents like Meta's Muse promise to save consumers money by finding deals, research by Groundwork Collaborative found some consumer-facing agents end up serving customers more expensive items after learning about their finances. Lindsay Owens, who leads the think tank, explores in a new book how companies have used data collection and surveillance to charge more.
Security Affairs launches AI-cybersecurity newsletter round 5Security Affairs released round 5 of its AI-cybersecurity newsletter, rounding up developments on both attack and defense sides. Items include Anthropic's acquisition of confidential AI startup Opaque Systems, a LiteLLM supply-chain attack, and claims that OpenAI models hacked data portals.
The A.I. Daily