THE DEFOOR REPORT AS OF OCTOBER 26, 2026  ·  TODAY'S REPORT →  ·  ALL DAYS

Grok releases the first seven minutes of its AI-generated ‘Odyssey’AI delivers ‘zero financial payoff’ to most companies, Apollo economist saysThe hottest AI wearables and gadgets you should know about
OpenAI and Anthropic cut their LLM prices by up to 80% within a few months. Why?
DEFOOR REPORT

AI · ROBOTS · MONEY · JOBS · FOOD · SECURITY  |  UPDATED OCT 26, 2026 2:09 AM ET

A DeFoor Innovations publication  ·  Advertise

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

BIGGEST AI RAISES THIS WEEK

  1. DeepSeek $15BCATL
  2. Nvidia-backed Nebius $3.5B
  3. Tenstorrent $1.5B · Series ETrace Capital, Innovation X
  4. Flapping Airplanes $1B · Seed
  5. Legora $550MAtreides
  6. ASI $325M · Series C

TOP INVESTORS · 30 DAYS

  1. South Park Commons 3 deals · $72M in rounds
  2. Forerunner 2 deals · $113M in rounds
  3. Abstract Ventures 2 deals · $110M in rounds
  4. Forgepoint Capital International 2 deals · $78.5M in rounds
All investments & investors →

CRYPTO

BITCOIN, ETHEREUM, STABLECOINS AND THE RULES

BTC $80,004 ▼0.7%ETH $2,317 ▼1.3%SOL $101 ▼0.8%XRP $1.29 ▼0.9%24 hr · CoinGecko

Here’s what happened in crypto todayIndia's largest crypto exchange absorbs $16 million loss from internal process failure tied to retired walletBitcoin wallet bug let rogue servers steal funds when users tried to speed up paymentsBitcoin slips under $80,000 as traders de-risk ahead of Fed meetingCanada proposes direct stablecoin cash-outs for small holders with a 1% fee capMore crypto news →Hong Kong names Nasdaq-listed Solana Company a strategic enterpriseLido opens larger Ethereum validators with a 32 ETH operator bondStandard Chartered-led Anchorpoint says it’s not rushing retail stablecoinPaolo Ardoino wants AI to run Bitcoin mines. Who gets permission to act?CoinDCX confirms $16 million loss from retired wallets days after CEO called breach reports a ‘false alarm’

AI AGENTS

DOTS · MUSE · GROK BOT · INSTINCT · GEMINI SPARK · OPENCLAW

GROK BOT Grok Bot can now add events, set reminders, and even turn off your lights for youINSTINCT The Tatkal test for AI agent Instinct: Can it beat India's ticketing rush?MUSE The Grok–Muse agent war is a capacity sale, not a software sale - and the meter is running on Meta's booksINSTINCT Text-Message AI Agents Multiply as Instinct Hits $10B ValuationMUSE Meta’s Muse is popular, but personal agents still face barriers to adoptionMore AI agent news →GROK BOT Grok Bot Can Now Make Phone Calls for You — Here's How It WorksGROK BOT Grok Bot Hits Penn Station: What the NYC Ad Push MeansMUSE Meta's Muse Could Transform Its AI Business. But Can It Make Money?CLAUDE Anthropic's Claude Duet AI agent manages work across thousands of connected apps — here’s howCLAUDE Anthropic previews Claude Duet personal AI agent for subscribers

WHO WILL FEED US?

AG TECH, FOOD AND THE MONEY BEHIND THEM

ROBOTS FIRA USA draws agtech and robotics industry and growers to Yakima ValleyROBOTS Dutch robot builder AIGRO declared bankruptROBOTS Kubota and Agtonomy introduce autonomous M5L tractor for specialty cropsFUNDING Pythag Tech Gets $4.25M to Make Cultivated Meat Production Faster & Cheaper with AIROBOTS FieldSense FSR500: lightweight spraying robot designed for easy farm repairsMore farm & food news →Infinite Roots Adds Umami Block to Mushroom-Based Protein Lineup in GermanyPTx on Precision Ag Retrofits, Targeted Spraying, and AutonomyIndia’s Dhampur Bio Organics Signs Exclusive Mycoprotein Production Deal with PlanetaryHerbalife & IIT Madras Launch Accelerator to Advance India’s Plant Biotechnology SectorRecent agrifood cyberattacks are ‘a wakeup call’ for the industry as ransomware incidences increase

ESSAYS & BLOGS

THE WEEK'S AI WRITING, ONE POST PER WRITER

NOTABLE ESSAYS

  1. The Future Is for EveryoneMark Zuckerberg · Aug 2026
  2. Policy on the AI ExponentialDario Amodei
  3. The Adolescence of TechnologyDario Amodei · 2026
Podcast: Kimi K3.1 Pro, the new cyber reality, and Muse musings🔮 The internet under attack, AGI compression & the next oil shock that never will be... #607More essays and blogs →Will Generative AI do more harm than good?The HackeningThe Pulse: Time to rethink software security because of AI?30 Months on the Exponential (in Charts)New paper: Emerging trends in AI agent evaluationAI is ushering in an age of personal mediaImport AI 477: In which I tell the IMF the Singularity has begun

AI IN HEALTH

MEDICINE, WELLNESS, HOSPITALS AND THE FDA

STAT+: AI drug firm Pathos raises $237 million, pushing valuation to $3 billionDevelopers, not doctors, should be held accountable for generative AI medical devices, providers sayAMA Calls for Risk-Based GenAI Oversight to Protect Patients and Support Responsible InnovationFDA Official Believes GenAI-enabled Tools Will Need to Be Assessed Like a Physician

AI LABS

Image: Google Research

Bringing foundational models to the front lines of TB screening Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learning on Amazon SageMaker AI: A hands-on guide Rapidly scaling online storage to serve over 1 billion ChatGPT users (Part II) Orchestrating SageMaker AI endpoint auto scaling with AWS CDK Visualize points and routes with GeoJSON in Amazon Quick Sight layer maps
LitPivot: Developing research ideas through dynamic contextualization within the literature landscape Securing our frontier model training environment Kazakhstan Expands Compute for Its AI Future More AI labs news →Does Your Model Run on AWS Trainium? Look It Up Turning Database Grading into RL Rewards: Post-Training Agents with ThinkingBox

ON THE RISE

WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE ARE BUILDING

The next young builder featured here could be someone you know.

Know a young person building with AI? Tell us →

Build more responsive apps with the Decisions API NVIDIA Unveils Minerva to Bring End-to-End Observability for AI Factories Beyond tree cover: mapping the world’s forest types Ensemble forecasting with IBM Granite time-series models What FDE means at OpenAI
Leading European Financial Services Organizations Embrace Open Models to Build Proprietary Intelligence NVIDIA Cosmos Opens New Tools to Train, Evaluate and Deploy World Models Broad access through consistent standards How AT&T is rethinking in-house legal work with OpenAI Empowering frontline maternal care with AI-assisted ultrasound
Mistral Advances AI for Engineering with NVIDIA

THE LLM WARS

ANTHROPIC · OPENAI · GOOGLE · GROK · CHINA · OPEN MODELS

CHINA Kimi Apologizes for K3.1 Pro Rate Limits, Resets 25% of Members' Monthly Quota and Trims Sub-AgentsANTHROPIC Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark moves his prediction for self-improving AI forward to 2027ANTHROPIC Anthropic says one AI agent beats many subagents now that models can handle complexity aloneOPENAI Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companiesOPENAI OpenAI offers discounts up to 90 percent to poach Anthropic's biggest customersMore LLM news →OPEN MOSS-Image Passes 1 Million Downloads in Four Days and Tops Hugging Face Text-to-Image TrendsCHINA Qwen's Jiang Guanjun Lays Out a Personal Agent Framework Built on Models, Memory and EcosystemCHINA Baidu Health Adds a Video Health Camera and Doctor Matching, Says AI Services Top 50M Monthly UsersGROK Forced to pick, Grok’s AI model chooses Republicans. OpenAI’s picks Democrats.GROK Elon Musk actually follows through on Grok AI adaptation of 'The Odyssey'OPEN MiHoYo team open-sources GameScaling models that control games through keyboard and mouse actionsOPEN Hugging Face’s New AI Biology Model Lets You Chat With DNA

WHO GOT HACKED

Unpatched Tailscale SSH Flaws Could Let a Hacked Device Reach Root on Other ServersPHP2Shell Exploitation Attempts Continue Amid Suspected N. Korea Global Scanning ActivityBlackX UEFI bootkit exploits Baton Drop flaw to bypass Secure BootAbandoned Popcorn Time app exposed millions of devices to RCE attacksExposed to PHP2Shell? Cyber Experts Weigh in With AdviceMore hacks & breaches →AI Tools Are Generating Massive Attacks for Little CostIn Other News: Tor Exit Relays Hijacked, Banks Spot Rogue AI Agents, Self-Rebuilding macOS Ransomware

NEW IN HAVE I BEEN PWNED

Assurance Retraite: 70,372 accountsGîtes de France: 117,574 accountsCrunchbase: 559,908 accountsSharecare: 318,185 accounts

Breach data: Have I Been Pwned (CC BY 4.0)

FAILED & FOLDED

AI COMPANIES AND PRODUCTS THAT SHUT DOWN OR WENT BANKRUPT

We Investigated Character.AI and Found a Horror Show. Now It’s Bankrupt.12 Million Monthly Users Couldn't Prevent Character.AI’s BankruptcyWebsites shut down globally after AI finds cybersecurity flaw affecting 70% of the internetAn AI chatbot files for bankruptcy. Is it a bad omen for the industry?

AI POLICY

LAWS, RULES AND GUIDANCE FROM GOVERNMENTS

r/opensource just banned AI, non-English speakers, and moreVirginia governor orders statewide plan to address AI cyberattacksSwedish government offices to ban ChatGPT and ClaudeOpenAI urges Newsom to strengthen California’s AI safety law with additional safeguardsAI’s hidden storage bill: What inference leaves behindMore AI policy →What’s new in Homeland Security’s updated AI policyAI sovereignty: preserving UK agency in an AI-enabled world

INTERNATIONAL

KOREA Korea Investment Management enters Hong Kong ETF market with chip fundINDIA From Carnegie to Claude: AI wealth could reshape philanthropyEUROPE Exclusive: Monzo founder Tom Blomfield backs AI agent startup Nous in $17m raiseUK 'Dear ChatGPT': 12-year-old wins top youth prize at Australian Poetry Slam – videoINDIA Talent, compute and R&D key to India's AI ambitions: ReportMore international news →KOREA AI shoppers get first say in Korea's retail raceCHINA Alibaba Cloud founder on how AI can unlock human potentialCHINA Weapon or armour? The contentious debate over China’s open-weight AI

DAVID AND GOLIATH

SMALL TEAMS TAKING ON THE GIANTS

MICROSOFT These 3 Linux apps replaced all my favorite dead Windows appsMICROSOFT After using 4 Microsoft 365 alternatives for a month, one is a clear winnerMICROSOFT I finally found a Microsoft Office replacement I don't hateMICROSOFT My favorite alternative to Notion isn't Obsidian or OneNote, it's something that works offline and still syncs everywhereMICROSOFT My top 5 Linux alternatives to Windows (none of them are Mint)More David and Goliath stories →OPENAI Gerty: Private ChatGPT alternative that sets itself up on your MacADOBE Can free AI clones really replace Photoshop? I put LightCraft and PhotoCraft to the testTHE BIG APPS I replaced Notion, Obsidian, and Todoist with Anytype; now I handle my notes and tasks in one appADOBE I tried the free Adobe Acrobat clone – and finally have a pro PDF editor on LinuxTHE BIG APPS Strafe: A new open-source, E2E Encrypted, and federated alternative to Discord

AI NEWS

Image: The Verge

Google’s AI search changes upended online publishing The Work Moves Outward Nvidia open-sources Flora to make robot video labeling 125x cheaper than GPT-6 Astra What the US Movement Against Data Centers Can Learn From Abroad OpenMobile-2 proves open-source smartphone agents can rival proprietary models
Blue Planet III is keeping the rough edges in the age of AI The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it Pennsylvania will require labels on AI-generated ads More AI news →Block’s new voice model sounds eerily human Here are the top AI agents that can live in your text messages
The PHP Meltdown Shows How AI Makes Bugs More Exploitable Jensen Huang Brings Four Robot Ducks On Stage in Berlin. A Day Later, Preorders Pass 20,000 OpenAI says it will no longer train its AI models on the live internet, citing “significant risks” OpenAI now trains its frontier AI models with no internet access Updated Google privacy policy says your Gmail might be used for advertising
Jack Dorsey’s Block made an AI model that talks to you like an awkward new friend Intel gets waiver after worries fuzzy US ban on foreign-made robots may hit fabs Designing an AI serving harness built to last The Social Society Helping Women Join the AI Boom The Foundations of Scalable AI
Hackers got a four-day head start on epic PHP2Shell vulnerability Meet Mori, a Cute Robot Mushroom That Doesn’t Really Say (or Do) Anything Making the case for context-aware AI The new human-crafted Apple Music brand matters in an AI world OpenAI's latest AI models are coming to Google Cloud and Antigravity
Judge rejects Trump’s wild claim EPA can dismiss data center pollution lawsuits

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AI AND JOBS

WHO'S HIRING, WHO'S CUTTING, AND THE WORK ITSELF

Entry-Level Workers Are Being Relegated To AI Babysitting And We Ought To Be Worried Sick About ItHow Dropbox plans to prevent AI brain rot in its workersCIOs unprepared for agentic workforce shiftTech Layoffs 2026: 196,000 Workers Affected as Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft Cut JobsGoldman Sachs sees AI-fueled layoffs displacing nearly 10% of workersUber doubles down on ChatGPT for workers after last month's layoffsLayoffs linked to changes in corporate AI spendingBarclays is latest to redirect spending toward AI as it trims its workforceMore AI and jobs news →VetClaims.ai Surpasses 80,000 Veterans’ Claims Developed, Expands AI-Powered Services With 438-Person WorkforceThe best enterprise AI is the AI employees barely noticeWorkforce gaps keep supply chain AI stuck in pilot modeAmerican Express is cutting 5% of its workforce to 'prepare for AI'Electronic Arts lays off 400 in latest blow to beleaguered gaming industryCEOs say they’re not yet seeing transformational change from AIAI is splitting HR into 2 archetypes, study showsAI Job Boom Favors Men As Female Employment Growth Stalls

NOW HIRING

1,303 open AI roles · 304 new this week · most wanted: Solutions & customer · top pay $850K

AMAZON Data Scientist, WWGS SSG Strategic Initiative Development Shanghai, CHNOPENAI Applied AI Architect, OpenAI for Government Munich, GermanyCITI Machine Learning Analyst-Python and SQL Gurugram Haryana IndiaHARVEY Legal Engineer, Product Specialist SeoulNVIDIA Senior DFX Software Engineer - Machine Learning US, CA, Santa ClaraAll active AI listings →Hiring for AI? List your jobs →

AI & TECH IN EDUCATION

SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND CAMPUSES

MisconceptDialogue: Evaluation Criteria Shape Measured Success in LLM Math TutoringNYC’s AI ban confusion: what’s allowed and what’s banned in city schoolsOpinion: Educators Need to Engage With AI in Order to Learn the Best Ways to Use ItAI is stealing students’ ability to think critically–Journalism 101 may be an antidoteI run an edtech platform I hope you barely useMore AI education news →The Trump official who compared ed-tech to the tobacco industryHow K–12 Districts Can Use Student Voices To Guide Ed Tech PurchasesHow AI Is Breaking the Way We Reward High-Achieving StudentsHigh schoolers oppose full-day cellphone bans amid safety concernsIPS board candidates discuss school closures, AI, and legislative funding at forum

TOP TECH, AI & BUSINESS PODCASTS THIS WEEK

  1. 1All-In: AI Cyber Panic, Ken Griffin’s Bubble Warning, The Fall of France?802K views this week · 3 episodes
  2. 2Moonshots: SpaceX’s AI Business Up 830%, OpenAI Agents Lie, and Startup Turns Mercury Into Gold653K views this week · 2 episodes
  3. 3Prof G Pod: AI Stock Market Crash: Are We Repeating 1873?374K views this week · 5 episodes ▲1
  4. 4Hard Fork: A Spoiler-Filled Guide to 'You Can See Everything'255K views this week · 1 episode ▼1
  5. 5a16z Podcast: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the $220 Billion AI Buildout222K views this week · 4 episodes NEW
Complete list: all 19 shows by weekly rank →

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!

ROBOT ROLL CALL: where each one stands →Ten humanoid robots side by side, drawn to scaleDream Labs raises $90 million seed funding to ‘build the brain for everyday robots’US engineers could help NASA detect if a drone’s motors or propellers are damaged using soundCargo drone built to carry supplies can shoot down enemy drones with laser-guided rocketsAre Delivery Robots Scanning You Into a Database Scarier Than Flock?Teradyne Robotics partners with Sereact to scale physical AI in retail and logisticsMore robot news →Nvidia open-sources Flora to make robot video labeling 125x cheaper than GPT-6 AstraSubaquatic robot leverages biomimetics for natural movementNHTSA proposes cyan lights for robotaxis, following Mercedes/ChinaEka Robotics raises $150M to scale its vision-force-action model for robotsJensen Huang Brings Four Robot Ducks On Stage in Berlin. A Day Later, Preorders Pass 20,000

AI FOR ENTERTAINMENT

HOLLYWOOD, MUSIC, TV AND GAMES

From Spotify’s giant profits to yet another legal fight for Suno…it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-Up

AI AND RETAIL

ONLINE AND BRICK-AND-MORTAR

Walmart unveils AI agent shopping controls, spending limitsEtsy updates AI use policies to emphasize craftsmanshipWalmart welcomes external AI agents — with some guardrailsMore than a Store: Can AI plan my Thanksgiving meal?

BUILDERS & RESEARCH

Validating the Comparison, Not Just the Scorer: Why Overall Accuracy Can Mislead in Interactive LLM Evaluation Rethinking Structured Generation: Can Graph-Based Reasoning Resolve Ambiguity? Multi modal perceived conversation success prediction for spontaneous autistic and non-autistic dyadic interactions The Schema Coherence Inventory: Measuring Whether an Assigned Belief Organizes a Language Model's Cognition Seam Cutter
battledrones v14: Compass Rose, a four player map Quick Study Introducing Kimi K3.1 Pro More builders & research →Donating Agent Skills to the Agentic AI Foundation Quoting Armin Ronacher
Claude Now Works with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Claude Duet Show HN: Omnara – Open-source alternative to Claude Managed Agents