October 12, 2025: There Will Be Volatility

Last week, Dow Jones fell 2.7%, S&P 500 lost 2.4%. Nasdaq composite was down 2.5%. The market was headed for a mixed week, owing to questions re. the AI trade and Friday’s tariff re-escalation led to the largest pullbacks in NASDAQ and S&P 500 in over six months. OpenAI’s dev event again showed a “halo effect,” with mere mentions lifting names like Figma, HubSpot, Salesforce, Expedia, TripAdvisor. At the same time, concern is building over dot-com-style stock pops (US$100 billion + intraday swings) and circular AI deal finance. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan flagged record AI-linked debt issuance. A report indicated Oracle’s Nvidia cloud margins averaged ~16%. Jensen Huang countered Oracle will be “wonderfully profitable” over a system’s life and noted AI compute demand has surged in recent months, with power constraints pushing toward on-site generation (natural gas, eventually nuclear). Prediction markets saw financings as Kalshi is raising at a US$5 billion valuation, and ICE will invest up to US$2 billion in Polymarket. xAI is targeting a US$20 billion round with an SPV to finance Nvidia GPUs. SoftBank will acquire ABB’s robotics arm for US$5.4 billion to fuse AI + automation. Reuters says Confluent is exploring a sale. ASML fell on renewed U.S. scrutiny of China exposure. In Canada, investors are rotating to defense, construction, and metals as Ottawa signals higher military spend and accelerated nation-building projects. A new US$100 million TSX SPAC targeting mission-critical Canadian tech (space/defense/services) was launched. Toronto legaltech, Spellbook raised a US$50 million Series B. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Legend Power signed a North America–wide channel deal with a Fortune 500 facilities franchise network, with 150+ partners, and ~10,000 buildings, broadening access for SmartGATE™ and aligning with an equipment-only, contractor-installed model. Plurilock announced a dedicated federal capture team, new Critical Services wins, and repeat U.S./Canadian federal orders.

Sophic Client Legend Power Systems Inc. (LPS-TSXV, LPSIF-OTC) enters into partnership agreement with leading North American Franchise network.

Legend Power Systems announced that on September 29, 2025 it has entered into a partnership with a franchise network operated by one of the world’s largest facility management companies, a Fortune 500 provider with more than 100,000 employees worldwide. This franchise group supports more than 150 partner organizations, including electrical and HVAC contractors operating across North America. Through this agreement, those partners will gain access to Legend Power’s SmartGATE™ platform and SmartGATE Insights™ Power Impact Assessment. This agreement expands the Company’s market access, while also providing additional sales resources and expertise in installation through the network’s established contractor base. “We believe this agreement represents an important opportunity to expand the availability of our SmartGATE platform through an established and respected network of service providers,” said Mike Cioce, Vice President, Sales and Marketing of Legend Power Systems. “Working with a contractor network of this scale helps us deliver our technology to more buildings where power quality is a known operational challenge. With over 10,000 buildings serviced across this network, we believe the scale of power quality challenges is significant, and addressing them presents a meaningful opportunity. Improving power quality at this scale can create value across the ecosystem, including building owners, tenants, franchise partners, and even the grid operators who benefit from more stable demand.” The partnership is intended to enable franchise organizations to help building owners and operators better understand how incoming electrical supply impacts the performance and reliability of core building systems, and to provide tools to address those challenges. Additionally, with a footprint of HVAC and electrical contractors across North America, installation services are a core part of the offering and align with Legend Power’s equipment-only sales strategy. https://t.co/tM6vQhsOyo

Sophic Client Plurilock (PLUR-TSXV, PLCKF-OTCQB) provides corporate update.

Plurilock Security Inc., announced a corporate update detailing progress on new defense-focused momentum and continued execution of its high-value Critical Services growth strategy. Building on its enterprise foundation, Plurilock has established a dedicated capture team to pursue competitive government cybersecurity opportunities across the U.S., Canada, NATO, and allied nations. Led by newly appointed CTO and Critical Services General Manager Michael Ruiz, this initiative positions the Company to compete for major federal cybersecurity contracts across allied nations, with a focus on critical national infrastructure and defense. Despite ongoing discussions in Washington around reducing IT budgets, the U.S. public sector remains a resilient and expanding cybersecurity market. In September, Plurilock added three new Critical Services customers, expanded work with two existing clients, and recorded one of its strongest months to date for new business pipeline development. These developments reflect steady progress in expanding client relationships and pursuing larger cybersecurity engagements through the Company’s strategic partner network. Plurilock also secured several repeat orders from U.S. and Canadian federal agencies, reinforcing the continuity of its government relationships. These revenue streams add visibility and support the Company’s organic growth trajectory. In support of its strategic growth agenda, Plurilock has appointed Dr. Chase Cunningham, a globally recognized cybersecurity strategist and creator of the Zero Trust Extended (ZTX) Framework, to its Industry Advisory Council. Dr. Cunningham brings over two decades of experience across cyber operations, government advisory, and security architecture. His background includes roles at Forrester Research, the U.S. Navy, the NSA, and Accenture. https://tinyurl.com/bd8yde4v

Canadian investors bet on defense, construction stocks as Carney targets nation-building projects.

Canadian defense, construction and metal mining shares stand to benefit as Ottawa commits to increased military spending and the speeding up of major infrastructure projects that could boost the economy, investors say. https://tinyurl.com/5dpb7mzn

Former Dye & Durham leaders resurface with US$100 million SPAC targeting Canadian tech.

Toronto-based MAK Acquisition Corp., led by former executives from legaltech company Dye & Durham, has filed a preliminary prospectus with Canadian regulators to perform a US$100 million ($139.5 million) initial public offering (IPO) on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Canaccord Genuity and CIBC Capital Markets are acting as lead underwriters for the IPO. The SPAC hopes to acquire technology businesses that provide “critical solutions in niche markets,” such as tech-enabled services, space, and defence. It says it will prioritize opportunities with high revenue retention, low customer concentration, and low capital expenditure requirements. The firm believes the lack of activity on the public markets in recent years provides a “unique opportunity” to acquire and scale technology companies that are looking for liquidity at a discount. “With solid fundamentals, strong sector leadership, robust capital markets, a scarcity of new issuance, Canada offers a compelling opportunity to deploy capital into a market that is outperforming globally and primed for growth,” MAK said in a statement. https://tinyurl.com/7dvfm7ps

Spellbook raises US$50 million Series B led by Khosla Ventures.

Toronto-based legaltech startup Spellbook, which provides an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered contract review platform for lawyers, has secured US$50 million ($69.9 million) in Series B funding. The all-equity round was led by one of Silicon Valley’s most notable venture capital firms, Khosla Ventures, under the direction of managing director Keith Rabois, who is joining Spellbook’s board. The round also saw participation from Threshold Ventures and returning investors Inovia Capital, Bling Capital, Moxxie Ventures, Path Ventures, and former Shopify CTO Jean-Michel Lemieux. Spellbook claimed its platform has reviewed more than 10 million contracts from nearly 4,000 customers across 80 countries, including Nestlé, eBay, and Kennedys Law. The company claimed it’s on pace to triple revenue this year. The fresh capital brings Spellbook up to a US$350 million post-money valuation. Spellbook has raised over US$80 million to date. The startup last raised US$20 million ($27 million) in Series A funding, led by Inovia, in January 2024. Founded as Rally out of St. John’s, NL in 2018, Spellbook’s self-described “AI co-pilot for lawyers” (or “Cursor for contracts”) helps legal practitioners review and draft contracts through a Microsoft Word integration. https://tinyurl.com/3cyd5yvb

Tech stocks fall across the board after Trump issues tariff threat.

Tech stocks fell across the board, as investors responded to President Trump’s threat to impose a “massive increase” in tariffs on Chinese imports, in the wake of new Chinese restrictions on the export of rare earths. Trump also said there was “no reason” for him to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping, as he is scheduled to do in two weeks. Among the worst hit was shares of chip designer Nvidia, which fell 4.5%, and AMD, which fell 7.7%. Big tech stocks such as Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms and Apple fell between 2% and 5%. The Nasdaq fell 3.6%, while the S&P 500 dropped 2.7%. Oracle, whose stock had rebounded after a selloff earlier this week sparked by The Information’s report on its cloud business’ gross margins, fell 1.3% to just below $293. Even despite the drop, Oracle shares have recovered all the ground it lost earlier this week. https://tinyurl.com/3d5aen36

OpenAI’s golden touch spreads as stocks soar.

OpenAI has already proved it has a golden touch when it comes to partnering with other tech firms to deploy its artificial intelligence products. Its power to move shares, though, is rapidly spreading to companies it even briefly discusses teaming up with. The company behind ChatGPT held its annual developers event Monday, and mere mentions of other publicly traded firms by presenters sent those shares soaring. Among notable movers: Figma Inc. climbed 7.4%, HubSpot Inc. added 2.6% and Salesforce Inc. gained 2.3%. Online travel companies also saw brief pops, with Expedia Group, Inc. and TripAdvisor Inc. both advancing at least 7% before paring those gains. Even shares of toymaker Mattel Inc. jumped nearly 6%, though it closed essentially flat. https://tinyurl.com/2d32m5sp

Dot-Com Fears rise with tech stocks seeing US$100 billion swings.

Investors are excited about OpenAI’s expansion driving big gains in technology stocks, but a rising number of Wall Street pros fear that the wild pops that add tens of billions of dollars in value in mere minutes are signaling an unhealthy market reminiscent of the dot-com era. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. took this rocket ride on Monday, as the company’s stock soared, briefly boosting its market capitalization by roughly US$100 billion at an intraday high, after the chipmaker signed a deal with OpenAI that could lead to billions of dollars in revenue. This follows a 36% jump in Oracle Corp. shares last month, which added US$255 billion to the software firm’s market value in a single session, after it gave blockbuster guidance for its cloud business, including an agreement with the ChatGPT operator worth US$300 billion over five years. “If any one of these deals falls through it has this domino effect downstream that I think is concerning,” said Brian Mulberry, client portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management Inc., which has about US$12 billion in assets. “It reminds me of what happened with telecom back in the mid-nineties.” The moves come amid growing concern about a bubble forming around artificial intelligence as the key players — namely Nvidia Corp. and OpenAI — pledge billions of dollars in deals with a cohort of companies making infrastructure for the technology. As more money is spent, there’s mounting fear that the trend will end in a crash the way it did 25 years ago following the dot-com euphoria, when heavy investments were made in anticipation of internet traffic that took much longer to materialize. Hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones said the current backdrop reminds him of the dot-com bubble in an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday. “All the ingredients are in place for some kind of a blow off,” he said. “Will it happen again? History rhymes a lot, so I would think some version of it is going to happen again,” adding that this environment is “more potentially explosive than 1999.” One of big concerns about the deals is their circular capital structures, with the companies using each other’s money to buy each other’s products, Mulberry said. https://tinyurl.com/3e8yzh2j

Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan flag rising debt levels at AI companies.

Soaring debt levels at companies funding the artificial intelligence boom have passed notable benchmarks, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase both said this week, marking a note of caution as tech companies increasingly turn to the credit markets to support the costs of developing AI. AI-related companies have issued a record US$141 billion of debt this year, more than the entire technology, media and telecommunications industry issued in 2024, according to Goldman Sachs research. That includes US$25.8 billion in total debt issued by Oracle, which is rapidly building computing capacity for OpenAI. “While not yet a cause for alarm, given both the high cashflow generation and low leverage among large tech companies, the shifting funding mix of capex beyond cash is worth monitoring,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote. Separately, JPMorgan this week said investment grade debt issued by AI-related companies had risen to US$1.2 trillion, making that grouping of companies a bigger component of the broader investment grade index than U.S. banks. JPMorgan analysts said large tech companies are still relatively cash rich, but debt levels at traditional utilities tied to the AI boom are elevated by high-grade credit standards. https://tinyurl.com/4hj8muu3

Stock market falls on The Information’s report on Oracle AI cloud margins.

Major stock indices dipped more than half a percent and shares of artificial intelligence cloud providers Oracle, Nebius and CoreWeave fell 3% to 5% following The Information’s report on challenges Oracle faces generating a profit from renting out Nvidia chip servers. Nvidia shares also sank into the red after trading up 2% before the report. According to the report, internal Oracle documents showed that renting out Nvidia chips to AI developers such as OpenAI generated a gross profit margin of 16% on average over the past year or so, lower than analysts had estimated and lower than many nontech businesses. The report showed Oracle is losing considerable sums on the newest Nvidia hardware, underscoring the lag between when new chips come online and when customers use them en masse. https://tinyurl.com/mrwdf5hf

Nvidia CEO says Oracle’s AI cloud will be “wonderfully profitable”.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Tuesday that Oracle, one of its largest customers, is going to be “wonderfully profitable” from renting out Nvidia artificial intelligence chips to cloud customers. Huang’s comments, made during an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC’s Investing Club, were in response to The Information, which reported Tuesday that Oracle’s gross margin from the Nvidia-powered cloud business was around 16% in recent quarters. “When you first ramp up a new technology, there’s every possibility that you might not make money in the beginning, but over the life of the system, they’ll be wonderfully profitable,” Huang said. The Information reported that in the three months that ended in August, Oracle lost nearly US$100 million from rentals of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, which arrived this year. That’s partly because there is a period between when Oracle gets its data centers ready for customers and when customers start using and paying for them. https://tinyurl.com/4dc9vuev

Nvidia shares rise after CEO Huang says AI computing demand is up ‘substantially’.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that demand is up huge this year as artificial intelligence models develop further from answering simple questions to complex reasoning. “This year, particularly the last six months, demand of computing has gone up substantially,” Huang said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” The CEO of the AI chip leader was answering a question about what investors ask him most about. Nvidia shares rose about 2% on Wednesday, helping to boost the Nasdaq Composite higher. AI reasoning models are using exponential amounts of computing power but they are also seeing exponential amounts of demand because their results are so good, Huang said. The artificial intelligence industry will need to build new power generation off the electric grid in order to move quickly to meet demand and insulate consumers from rising electricity prices, he said. Data centers should be outfitted with natural gas and then potentially nuclear power at some point in the future, the CEO said. “We should invest in just about every possible way of generating energy,” Huang said. “Data center self-generated power could move a lot faster than putting it on the grid and we have to do that,” he said. https://tinyurl.com/3m7fu398

Kalshi, a U.S.-regulated prediction market, said it raised more than US$300 million at a US$5 billion valuation led by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz.

The company will face new competition with the return of rival Polymarket to the U.S. market. Kalshi and Polymarket are the two biggest prediction markets, which allow people to bet on everything from elections to the length of the government shutdown. Polymarket said Tuesday it will raise up to US$2 billion from Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock exchange, at an US$8 billion valuation. Polymarket recently gained approval from U.S. regulators to re-enter the country after barring U.S.-based users under a settlement in 2022. Kalshi said existing investor Paradigm, which led its June round at a US$2 billion valuation, also made a significant investment. Other investors included CapitalG, Coinbase Ventures, General Catalyst, and Spark Capital. The company plans to use the funding to launch more types of bets and integrate with more brokerages. https://tinyurl.com/5e5emj7k

NYSE Owner to Invest up to US$2 billion in Polymarket.

Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, will invest up to US$2 billion in Polymarket, the prediction market that is aiming to return to the U.S. The investment values Polymarket at US$8 billion before the new money and gives it the backing of one of the world’s biggest exchange operators. Polymarket allows people to bet on everything from elections to the length of the government shutdown. ICE said it will distribute Polymarket’s data, which can serve as sentiment indicators on events for its clients. Polymarket has been seeking to raise capital. Polymarket raised funds at a valuation over US$1 billion earlier in the summer. The boost in valuation came after Polymarket said last month that regulators had given it the go-ahead to serve U.S.-based users. The agency had barred it from accepting U.S.-based trades three years ago, saying it was running an unregistered derivatives exchange. https://tinyurl.com/3zvj8d7v

xAI to raise US$20 billion after Nvidia and others boost round.

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is raising more financing than initially planned, tapping backers including Nvidia Corp. to lift its ongoing funding round to US$20 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The financing includes equity and debt in a special purpose vehicle that will buy Nvidia processors and rent them to xAI for use in its Colossus 2 project, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. That’s the name of its largest data center site, which is located in Memphis. Nvidia is investing as much as US$2 billion in the equity portion of the transaction, the people said, a strategy by the chipmaker that helps accelerate its customers’ AI investments. XAI’s fundraising effort, previously reported by Bloomberg at half the amount, may continue to grow. XAI’s financing would be split between about US$7.5 billion of equity and as much as US$12.5 billion of debt in the SPV, the people said. The vehicle will be used to buy Nvidia processors, and Musk’s artificial intelligence startup would then rent the chips out for five years, allowing Wall Street financiers to recoup their investment. The unique deal structure, backed by the GPUs as opposed to the company, could provide a playbook for tech firms looking to decrease debt exposure. Nvidia’s leaders have said they will use the company’s growing financial strength to speed up the deployment of artificial intelligence across the industry. In September, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress told the audience at a Goldman Sachs conference that Nvidia will repurchase stock and do strategic acquisitions where possible, but the priority is on using cash to help other companies use AI more quickly. https://tinyurl.com/yerdecjr

SoftBank to buy ABB’s robot business for US$5.4 billion in push to merge AI and robotics.

SoftBank Group has agreed to buy the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a US$5.4 billion deal, as the Japanese investor forges ahead with a strategy to fuse robotics and artificial intelligence. The acquisition, announced on Wednesday, is the latest by founder and CEO Masayoshi Son to establish Softbank as a core player in the development of artificial intelligence. SoftBank pushed into humanoid robotics a decade ago with its Pepper robot but later scaled back its ambitions. Its recent investments in the sector include Berkshire Grey and AutoStore, and it also led a US$40 billion funding round in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and in March bought chip design company Ampere for US$6.5 billion. The deal means ABB has abandoned its original decision to spin off and separately list the industrial automation business, which competes with Japan’s Fanuc and Yaskawa, as well as Germany’s Kuka in making factory robots. https://tinyurl.com/2zkuxh7x

Data streaming firm Confluent explores sale.

Data streaming platform Confluent is exploring a sale after receiving takeover interest, Reuters reported. Shares of Confluent jumped more than 11% on Wednesday morning. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Confluent helps companies to process real-time, massive data based on the open-source Apache Kafka technology it commercializes. Shares of Confluent have been sliding the past year. The company lost one-third of its market value in July after CEO Jay Kreps said in an earnings call that sales growth of their cloud products was declining and the company is losing business from a large AI customer. https://tinyurl.com/3wv292bt

Coinbase, Mastercard in talks to buy stablecoin startup BVNK.

Coinbase and Mastercard have each held advanced talks to buy BVNK, a London-based stablecoin infrastructure firm, in a deal that could value the startup at between US$1.5 billion and US$2.5 billion, Fortune reported, citing people familiar with the deal. The talks are not finalized and may not result in a deal, but Coinbase appears to have a lead over Mastercard in the bid, the publication said. Founded in 2021, BVNK helps enterprises such as Deel and Worldpay process stablecoin payments. It is a competitor to Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm acquired by Stripe for US$1.1 billion this year. BVNK, which is backed by Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Visa, and Citi Ventures, raised US$50 million at a US$750 million valuation in January. https://tinyurl.com/yc7hc6b3

ASML shares fall after US house panel slams its China business.

ASML Holding NV shares fell after US lawmakers accused the Dutch chip equipment maker of boosting China’s semiconductor industry, raising the specter of further export controls on the company’s lithography machines. The stock fell as much as 7.1% in Amsterdam Wednesday morning, the biggest intraday drop since July, before paring some of the losses. It’s up 14% over the last year. ASML and other equipment makers including Tokyo Electron Ltd, Applied Materials Inc., KLA Corp. and Lam Research Corp. “made sizeable returns selling equipment to Chinese state-owned and military-linked companies,” the House China panel said on Tuesday, citing the companies’ sales data. China’s advances in manufacturing chips “poses threats” to US national security, the panel said. Shares in the other semiconductor equipment companies are also trading lower. ASML is the world’s only producer of cutting-edge lithography machines needed to produce high-end chips used in everything from electric vehicles to military gear. The Dutch company has never been able to sell its most advanced machines to China because of US-led export restrictions. China is ASML’s second-largest market after Taiwan, accounting for 27% of its net system sales in the second quarter. https://tinyurl.com/36wuwmb3

OpenAI adds outside apps to ChatGPT.

OpenAI on Monday announced new features to allow users to access external apps, such as Zillow or Spotify, through ChatGPT. That paves the way for ChatGPT to become a “super app” that allows users to complete a range of tasks without leaving the app. At the company’s developer event, which was livestreamed, OpenAI also announced software to help companies develop AI agents that can take virtual actions, including software to evaluate the capabilities of agents and block inappropriate content. OpenAI previously announced a similar apps feature called “ChatGPT plugins” that was launched in March 2023 but deprecated in April 2024. While those plugins were mostly limited to text, the new apps feature is designed to work with other kinds of media, such as virtual maps. https://tinyurl.com/6v9mxu2z

OpenAI strikes six Gigawatt compute deal with AMD.

OpenAI and Advanced Micro Devices announced on Monday a new partnership that would see OpenAI deploy six gigawatts of AMD’s chips over multiple years, starting in the second half of next year. That deal is larger than the US$300 billion, 4.5 gigawatt cloud deal OpenAI struck with Oracle earlier this year. As part of the deal, OpenAI will receive the option to purchase up to 10% of AMD stock if it hits certain milestones. The deal is yet another sign of OpenAI’s insatiable appetite for computational power, as it looks to power its popular chatbot to over 700 million weekly active users, build new products like agents and develop new advanced models. The deal is also a major win for AMD, as it looks to take on Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip market. However, it’s still smaller than the deal OpenAI and Nvidia announced last month to deploy 10 gigawatts worth of Nvidia chips. AMD’s stock rose 35% during premarket trading on the news. https://tinyurl.com/bd9jh69s

CoreWeave extends deal streak with Monolith AI purchase.

CoreWeave said Monday it had bought startup Monolith AI for an undisclosed price, adding to the cloud provider’s software company acquisitions as it tries to expand beyond its core server rental business. Monolith AI, founded in 2016, sells software used by teams of engineers at companies including Nissan, BMW and Honeywell to develop and test new products. It previously raised an £8.5 million (US$11.5 million) round of funding in 2021 led by Insight Partners. CoreWeave last month acquired reinforcement learning startup OpenPipe and in March paid about US$1.7 billion to buy AI developer tools provider Weights & Biases. CoreWeave shares rose slightly in after-hours trading. https://tinyurl.com/2wpm5kym

Anthropic and IBM announce strategic partnership.

Tech behemoth IBM is teaming up with AI research lab Anthropic to bring AI into its software. Armonk, New York-based IBM announced it will be adding Anthropic’s Claude large language model family into some of its software products on Tuesday. The first product to tap Claude will be IBM’s integrated development environment, which is already available to a select group of customers. IBM also announced it created a guide in partnership with Anthropic on how enterprises can build, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade AI agents. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch reached out to IBM for more information on the future of the partnership. Anthropic has been making a big push into the enterprise sector since it released Claude Enterprise in September 2024. The company also announced a deal to bring Claude to consulting giant Deloitte’s nearly 500,000-person global workforce on Monday. Anthropic said this would be the largest enterprise rollout for the company yet. A July study conducted by Menlo Ventures found that enterprises prefer Claude models over any other AI models, including OpenAI’s. The study found that usage of OpenAI’s models by enterprises has been declining since 2023. https://tinyurl.com/7tydr6ys

Figure AI’s new Humanoid robot can fold your clothes, do the dishes.

The day that humanoid robots wash the dishes and do the laundry may be closer than you think. On Thursday, Figure AI introduced its next-generation robot, Figure 03, taking its technology beyond factory floors to the home. “Figure 03 is a general-purpose humanoid robot for every day,” the California startup said. In a video, it showed off the new model performing a wide range of chores at home, including watering plants, serving food, folding clothes, and tidying up a room. The robot is able to see and execute the complex actions through “Helix,” the company’s AI-powered system, which can control the robot in real-time, without following a predetermined script, the startup says. Figure was previously using OpenAI’s models but has since ditched them for the company’s own proprietary technology. The video portrays Figure 03 as a cutting-edge robot butler, which can wirelessly recharge itself through its feet by standing on a platform. The robot can also run for up to 5 hours on a single charge. Figure’s founder and CEO, Brett Adcock, added that “nothing in this film is teleoperated,” indicating that the robot is operating without any remote assistance. https://tinyurl.com/mw9pccs2

SEC investigates AppLovin’s data collection practices.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating mobile ad technology company AppLovin’s data collection practices, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The regulator is looking into whether AppLovin violated the terms of companies it partners with in its approach to targeted advertising, according to the report. AppLovin helps mobile apps sell and buy ads. Several short sellers have accused AppLovin of shady data collection practices, and also of charging advertisers for results it didn’t achieve. Those reports, and a whistleblower complaint, form the basis of the SEC’s probe, according to Bloomberg. AppLovin’s revenue and market capitalization have skyrocketed in the past year, fueled in part by besting competitors in the mobile advertising technology space, including Google, as reported earlier this year. AppLovin’s stock was down more than 14% in after hours training, though the company still has a market cap of nearly US$200 billion. “We regularly engage with regulators and if we get inquiries we address them in the ordinary course,” an AppLovin spokesperson said, noting material developments would be disclosed publicly. A SEC spokesperson said that the agency could not respond to many press inquiries due to the government shutdown. https://tinyurl.com/nhj68seh