AI and Tech News, 21 Oct 2026: Anthropic S-1, SpaceX, Braze

Grab a coffee, because this one's long. Thirty-one tech and AI stories made the cut today, starting with Anthropic's draft IPO filing and SpaceX's AI-heavy quarter and ending with Spotify's new paid podcast memberships.

1. The WSJ says Anthropic's draft S-1 shows $16.3B in first-half revenue

There's a big catch, though. The leaked filing reportedly shows an $80.7B net loss for the first half of 2026, mostly down to non-cash accounting charges. It also reportedly shows two customers bringing in about a fifth of sales.

2. SpaceX revenue jumps 161% to about $14.6B, and its AI unit now out-earns Starlink

In the third quarter, the AI business brought in $7.56B. Starlink's connectivity revenue? $5.25B. On top of that, SpaceX posted its first operating profit as a public company.

3. Tesla and SpaceX boards set up special committees to look at a possible merger

According to Musk, the committees of independent directors exist because shareholders asked for them. Nothing has been agreed on terms, and they may never reach a deal.

4. Salesforce is buying Braze for about $5.66B in cash

The price works out to $47.50 per share, which Axios says is a 58% premium. Salesforce plans to fold the customer engagement platform into its Marketing Cloud.

5. Reuters: ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered over $35B of Nvidia RTX PRO 5500 cards

Between them, sources say, the three firms ordered more than 3 million of these export-compliant cards. The catch? Nvidia has warned it may fill only a small share of Chinese orders.

6. Netflix revenue grows 12% to about $12.9B, but the 2026 ad forecast gets trimmed

Advertising revenue this year is now expected to land at $2.7B, not $3B. Investors didn't love the softer outlook, and shares fell after hours.

7. Super Micro lifts its quarterly revenue estimate to $18.5B to $19.5B

Compare that with its earlier guidance of $14.5B to $15.5B for the September quarter. The server maker says demand for AI platforms is the main reason behind this preliminary figure.

8. Google Cloud's London region loses power, knocking out Revolut and UK banks

Here's what happened: Google said a power event hit one London zone, and one report says the backup generators didn't start. Revolut, other UK banking apps and some public services were hit by a multi-hour outage before most workloads came back.

9. OpenAI buys drug development startup Orchestra Bio

Orchestra's team is moving over along with its agent platform for coordinating drug programs, and both will join Rosalind, OpenAI's life sciences suite. Nobody shared the financial terms.

10. TorchTPU, Google's native PyTorch backend for its TPUs, goes open source

Google released it under the Apache 2.0 licence at PyTorch Conference. The pitch is simple: PyTorch developers can run models on Google's chips with fewer code changes. That's a direct challenge to Nvidia's hold on AI developers.

11. DeepSeek open-sources DeepInfer, the inference engine that runs its own services

For now, the framework supports DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash and runs on Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and Huawei Ascend 950 chips. Worth knowing: some internal components are still closed.

12. Joel Kaplan, Meta's policy chief, is leaving the company in 2027

He's been Meta's top Washington adviser for more than 15 years and will stay on through the midterms. After that, Dina Powell McCormick and C.J. Mahoney pick up his duties.

13. NPR: court records show TikTok staff warned executives about child exploitation on Live

In depositions reviewed by NPR, employees say they raised alarms again and again, and the warnings went unaddressed. TikTok's response is that the documents were cherry-picked and the claims haven't been tested at trial.

14. UK regulator wants iPhone contactless payments opened up to rival wallets

The CMA's proposal would have Apple give rivals access to both contactless routes on iPhone, with the regulator expecting fees to be much lower than today's, and the consultation runs to November 17. Apple, for its part, says the plan weakens privacy and security.

15. Qualcomm plans global, performance-based layoffs from November

Reuters has seen an internal memo from CEO Cristiano Amon saying the cuts will follow annual reviews. How many jobs? The company hasn't said.

16. Amazon wants more than 300,000 US holiday workers, up 20%

It's the biggest holiday hiring target the company has ever set, up from 250,000 in each of the past three years. Most other retailers are going the other way and pulling back on seasonal hiring.

17. Amazon plans to put more than €16B into Germany in 2027

Of that, €4.8B goes to expanding the AWS Frankfurt region. The rest covers AI data centers, Amazon Leo satellite internet and logistics.

18. Apple commits up to $100M to Perryman, a US titanium supplier, for iPhone Duo

It's a three-year deal backing titanium made in Pennsylvania. Apple also says US suppliers now make nearly 100 components for the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro.

19. PHP warns of two critical remote code execution flaws, with emergency patches on the way

Both flaws got a 9.2 rating from the PHP team, which pushed out emergency patches on October 21, so update now. Researchers at watchTowr had seen no exploitation at first, but by October 22 they were logging attempts in the wild.

20. Gemini's Personal Intelligence arrives on Android Auto

If you opt in, Gemini can use Gmail, Calendar, Photos and Maps to answer your questions while you drive. Cars with Google built in will get it over the coming months.

21. Google opens a preview of Gemini for Government

It's an agent platform for federal, state and local agencies, built for jobs like FOIA redactions and regulation reviews. Among the early users are HHS and the State of Missouri.

22. In a 64-hour run, Claude designs 17 protein binders against scorpion toxins

Anthropic says Claude came up with over 300,000 designs. Of the 211 that were lab-tested, 17 bound their targets. None has been tested as a treatment yet.

23. General Catalyst puts $320M of non-dilutive growth funding into Otter.ai

The cash comes from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, which earns its returns from revenue instead of equity. Otter.ai will put it toward enterprise and international expansion of the meeting tool.

24. Arda, Bob McGrew's startup, raises a $160M Series A at a $1.5B valuation

Altimeter, Accel and Khosla Ventures led the round. The former OpenAI research chief's AI manufacturing startup has now raised $232M in total, and Anduril is its first customer.

25. $325M for ASI's AI transport systems, at a $3B valuation

Spark Capital led this one. The Boston company, also known as Air Space Intelligence, won an $875M FAA contract back in June.

26. Eka Robotics raises $150M at a $1.45B valuation for robot hands that sense force

MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal co-founded the startup. It's building a physical AI model that blends vision and touch, so robots can handle objects.

27. Reliable Robotics lands $115M and pushes its valuation past $1B

This Series D extension splits into about $90M in equity and $25M in debt. The money goes into more aircraft and the push to get autonomous flight certified with the FAA.

28. Daytona raises $60M at a $1B valuation for its cloud built for AI agents

FirstMark led the Series B, bringing total funding to about $91M. So what does Daytona do? It gives AI agents their own computers to run code on.

29. Oro Mobility, from Hertz, raises $80M to run Uber's planned robotaxi fleet

Hertz keeps majority ownership, while Steve Cohen's family office led the investment. Oro will manage Uber's Lucid robotaxis, and San Francisco comes first.

30. Bloomberg: Legendary makes a takeover offer for Lionsgate Studios

Lionsgate shares jumped roughly 14% to 17% on the report. Neither company would comment.

31. Spotify rolls out paid podcast memberships in 34 markets

Think bonus episodes, fewer ads and early access: those are the kinds of perks creators can offer. They also keep 90% of membership revenue.