CHANNEL
Apple Intelligence is finally coming to China, with Alibaba's Qwen riding alongApple said on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, that the first Apple Intelligence features are coming to iPhone users in mainland China. Testing begins Nov. 4 with the latest iOS developer beta, and the features roll out to users with the release of iOS 27.3 in December. Alibaba's Qwen will be available inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence.
The company behind PUBG wants robots that can read the roomLudo Robotics, the Palo Alto robotics subsidiary of PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS publisher KRAFTON, presented Ludi 0.2, the latest version of its robot intelligence system, at the 2026 Bay Area Robotics Symposium at UC Berkeley on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026.
Powerlattice raises $86M to fix AI's power plumbing, one chiplet at a timePowerlattice Technologies, a Vancouver, Wash., startup that makes power-delivery chiplets meant to cut how much electricity AI processors waste, has raised about $86 million, according to a Form D it filed with the SEC on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026. The company is seeking $111 million in total.
Google's space data-center prototype just answered its first prompt, with a haikuGoogle said on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, that its Project Suncatcher prototype satellite has returned its first AI response from orbit: a Gemma 4 model running on a data-center-class TPU wrote a haiku about being in space and sent it down over Svalbard, Norway.
Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic agree on one robots.txt line to say "don't train on this"Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic said on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, that they will honor a shared robots.txt signal that lets website owners tell all participating AI providers, in one step, not to use their content for generative AI training. It's based on an Internet-Draft from the IETF's AI Preferences working group, published the same day.
Apple picks up Ascend.io, the agentic data-engineering startup, in a quiet acquihireApple has struck a deal with Ascension Labs, Inc., better known as Ascend.io, a 2015-founded startup whose AI agents automate data-pipeline work, and the deal surfaced on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, on the European Commission's Digital Markets Act list of acquisitions, as Ascend's homepage now says it is winding down operations.
Agility Robotics expects about $465M from its SPAC deal, with Nasdaq trading as AGLT set for Nov. 5Agility Robotics and Churchill Capital Corp XI said on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, that the humanoid-robot maker's gross capital raise from its SPAC merger and related financings should come to about $465 million before expenses, with the deal expected to close Nov. 4 and trade on Nasdaq as "AGLT" from Nov. 5.
Kodiak says its driverless long-haul safety case is 99% done, with I-45 launch nextKodiak AI said on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, that its Autonomy Readiness Measure for driverless long-haul trucking hit 99%, putting it "ahead of pace" to launch commercial driverless highway service on Interstate 45 between Dallas and Houston by the end of 2026, starting with IKEA freight.
Cohere raises at a C$35.7 billion valuation, and Canada buys a piece of itCohere announced the initial close of a Series E targeting up to CAD $7 billion on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, at a CAD $35.7 billion valuation, as Prime Minister Mark Carney said the Government of Canada will take an equity stake of up to CAD $1.6 billion.
Deepgram buys Daily, the company behind the open-source voice agent framework PipecatVoice AI company Deepgram said on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, that it is acquiring Daily, maker of the widely used open-source voice agent framework Pipecat and a real-time voice and video network. Terms were not disclosed.
Flagship merges three biotechs into Etcelera, an AI bet on knowing which drugs will work before the trialFlagship Pioneering on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, formed Etcelera by merging the platforms of three of its biotech startups, aiming to use AI and "causal biology" to predict how a medicine will act in patients before it reaches the clinic.
Opentrons raises $40 million so AI can run the lab experiments it keeps dreaming upOpentrons Labworks announced a $40 million Series E on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, led by healthcare investor Avego, to scale the robots, software and data tools behind what it calls "autonomous science."
Serval raises $150 million at $3 billion to replace ServiceNow with coding agents for everyone elseServal announced a $150 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, led by Sequoia, for its AI platform that lets non-engineers build enterprise workflows in code.
FuriosaAI raises $620 million to take on Nvidia with chips that sip powerFuriosaAI announced a $620 million Series D on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, at a $2.9 billion post-money valuation, to scale production of its RNGD inference accelerator and build its next-generation chip.
Claude Enterprise will now tell your boss what the team actually did with AI — and what it costAnthropic made smart reports, in-app surveys and pooled group budgets generally available for Claude Enterprise on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026.
Empatica's WellPD puts an FDA-cleared Parkinson's tracker on the wrist, for home useEmpatica launched WellPD on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, an FDA-cleared and CE-marked wrist-worn device and companion app that lets people with Parkinson's monitor their symptoms at home.
Google's Gemini 4 Carbon arrives two weeks after Argon — and cyber defenders get it firstGoogle DeepMind announced Gemini 4 Carbon on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, two weeks after launching Gemini 4 Argon, with state-of-the-art claims on cybersecurity and long-horizon coding and a staged rollout that starts with cyber defenders.
Apple finally lets you touch a Mac: the new MacBook Pro gets an OLED touchscreen and a Dynamic IslandApple announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, in 14- and 16-inch sizes, with preorders starting today and availability Friday, Nov. 6.
Formation Bio raises a $600 million fund to buy the drugs other companies gave up onFormation Bio said Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, that it has $600 million in commitments for its new Drug Development Accelerator Fund, which will acquire clinical-stage drug programs and push them through key trials using the company's AI development platform.
Upwind closes a $400 million Series C at a $3.8 billion valuation to secure the cloud for the AI eraUpwind said Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026, that it raised a $400 million Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners, less than nine months after its $250 million Series B, with reports putting its valuation at $3.8 billion.
