September 26, 2026: Will Last Week’s Move Up Hold?

Last week, Dow Jones was up 0.3%, S&P 500 gained 1.2%, Nasdaq composite advanced 2.1% – despite a jump in treasury yields. During the week, NASDAQ Composite hit a record high; however, no trend has sustained since early June. Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5, claiming performance equal to or better than Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1 at 40% lower cost. OpenAI launched GPT-6 Sol and Luna at half the price of their predecessors. Anthropic is also in early talks to lease up to 1 GW from Apollo-controlled Stream Data Centers, and said Claude helped identify a possible CRISPR-like gene-editing system. Oracle sent a force majeure notice to Blue Owl’s Stack Infrastructure over delays at OpenAI’s New Mexico Project Jupiter, and both stocks fell over 5%. SB Energy’s US$5-7 billion IPO at a ~US$50 billion valuation is meeting investor skepticism and will likely slip to October. Oura filed to raise US$2.2 billion at up to a US$15.6 billion fully diluted valuation. Databricks acquired Excel rival Row Zero. Microsoft relaunched Copilot as a “super app” and authorized 30 to 50% seat discounts for large, usage committed customers. Meta’s Muse agent passed 500,000 users in its first week. Amazon blocked it, and Meta then added Walmart, Best Buy and Sephora as partners. Alibaba unveiled its Zhenwu V900 AI chip and is targeting 20+ GW of data centre capacity by 2032. Z.ai fell ~12% on reports that China’s CAC is probing data leaks to Anthropic. Binance invested US$100 million in Circle at US$80.84 per share. In Canada, TD committed up to $25 million over three years to an AI collaboration between its Layer 6 unit and Cohere. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Intermap signed a three-year flood risk and property valuation subscription with Fairfax-owned Colonnade Insurance, starting in the Czech Republic. Renoworks launched Renoworks.ai, its AI-native remodeling platform. 01 Quantum will demo quantum-safe encrypted AI at GCXpo 2026. Hybrid Power Solutions closed a $617,500 private placement.

Sophic Client Hybrid Power Solutions (HPSS-CSE, HPSIF-OTC) announces closing of Non-Brokered Private Placement.

Hybrid Power Solutions announce dthe closing of a non-brokered private placement (the “Offering”). The Company issued 12,350,000 units (the “Units”) at a price of CDN$0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of CDN$617,500 (the “Closing”). Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (a “Common Share”) and one common share purchase warrant (a “Warrant”). Each Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one additional Common Share at an exercise price of CDN$0.06 for a period of 24 months from the closing date of the Offering. The Warrants are subject to an acceleration clause whereby, if, on any 20 consecutive trading days occurring after four months and one day has elapsed following the Closing, the closing sales price of the Common Shares as quoted on the Canadian Securities Exchange (“CSE”) is greater than a weighted average price of CDN$0.15 per Common Share, the Company may accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants by issuing a news release, in which case the Warrants will expire on the 30th day after the date of such news release. In connection with the Offering, the Company paid aggregate cash finder’s fees of CDN$14,370 to arm’s length finders and issued an aggregate of 287,400 finder warrants (the “Finder Warrants”). Each Finder Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share at a price of CDN$0.06 for a period of 24 months from the Closing. All securities issued under the Offering are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day from the date of issuance, in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws, with such hold period expiring on January 19, 2027. The net proceeds of the Offering are expected to be used to repay outstanding convertible debenture indebtedness and for general working capital and corporate purposes. The Offering remains subject to final acceptance of the CSE. https://tinyurl.com/5yjpn9nk

Sophic Client Intermap (IMP-TSX, ITMSF-OTC) expands global insurance business with three-year Fairfax Financial subscription.

Intermap announced a three-year subscription agreement with Colonnade Insurance S.A. (“Colonnade”) for an integrated flood risk and property valuation solution. Colonnade is a Luxembourg-based non-life insurance company owned by Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Canadian international financial services holding company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Through its subsidiaries, Fairfax is engaged in property, liability and casualty insurance, reinsurance and investment management. The agreement advances Intermap’s strategy to scale recurring insurance analytics solutions across global markets. The solution enables Colonnade to assess flood exposure, market value and replacement value within a single operational workflow using detailed, current and traceable property information. “Insurance is a global growth market for Intermap, and this agreement demonstrates how our model scales,” said Patrick A. Blott, Chairman and CEO of Intermap Technologies. “Intermap is increasingly providing valuable business intelligence solutions that leverage our proprietary global geospatial data, software and expertise. We solve complex business problems by transforming geospatial information into recurring subscription solutions that can be deployed across customers, portfolios and geographies. The Colonnade deployment combines immediate operational value with a path to broader adoption, reflecting how we intend to grow our commercial insurance business worldwide.” The agreement illustrates how Intermap applies its global geospatial intelligence and analytics to solve market-specific challenges for insurers across jurisdictions. The solution is designed to strengthen residential underwriting, portfolio review and customer-facing insurance processes while reducing the need to reconcile information from separate sources. “Establishing an appropriate insured value is fundamental to protecting our clients,” said Marián Bátovský, CEO of Colonnade Insurance in the Czech Republic. “Combining property valuation and flood exposure in one digital workflow supports more consistent underwriting today and provides a scalable foundation as our business develops across markets.” The subscription begins in the Czech Republic, with planned expansion into Slovakia and Hungary in 2027. Intermap and Colonnade have established an objective of extending the offering more broadly across Colonnade’s operations in Central and Eastern Europe by 2028, providing a defined path from an initial deployment to multi-country adoption. Recent natural catastrophes, including volcanic activity in Indonesia, a major earthquake in Colombia and catastrophic flooding in Nepal, underscore the critical need for timely, location-specific risk intelligence. These events demonstrate the importance of geospatial intelligence in supporting disaster preparedness and response, guiding development and infrastructure decisions and helping governments, insurers and businesses allocate capital and resources efficiently and effectively. Property insurers worldwide require reliable hazard intelligence and current valuation data to establish appropriate coverage, identify potential underinsurance and manage concentrations of risk across diverse portfolios. Munich Re’s NatCatSERVICE estimates that natural disasters caused approximately US$224 billion in global losses during 2025, of which insurers covered approximately US$108 billion. Intermap’s combined offering supports online market valuation of residential units, replacement value calculations for family homes and consistent property-level analysis across insurance workflows. Swiss Re Institute reports that global insured natural catastrophe losses have increased by 5% to 7% annually in real terms over the long term, driven primarily by rising exposure and costs. Intermap’s insurance solutions combine proprietary, public and commercially available datasets with a 3D data foundation spanning more than 300 million square kilometers across more than 150 countries. This global foundation enables the Company to deliver location-specific risk intelligence for underwriting, accumulation management and portfolio monitoring through a repeatable enterprise subscription model. Learn more about Intermap’s global insurance solutions here. https://tinyurl.com/3fh74zem

Sophic Client 01 Quantum Inc (ONE-TSXV, OONEF-OTCQB) to showcase quantum-safe encrypted AI analytics at GCXpo 2026.

01 Quantum announced that Invest Ottawa has selected and approved 01 Quantum as an exhibitor at GCXpo 2026, The Epic Canadian Next-Gen Tech Demonstration Showcase, hosted by Area X.O and operated by Invest Ottawa, in partnership with government and industry stakeholders. The Company is deploying a quantum-secure Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) AI model to showcase encrypted-prompt inference for image recognition, secure data sharing, and anomaly detection. This system facilitates fully private AI processing for highly sensitive telemetry, including Autonomous vehicle imagery, Perimeter monitoring, and Watchlist and fraud detection. Data is encrypted at the simulated edge (e.g., drones or client devices) using quantum-resistant cryptography. The AI processes this data and returns an encrypted response without decrypting the prompt. By maintaining all computations in a strictly private, encrypted state, no sensitive cleartext is ever exposed to the AI operator, host server, or network, thus enabling new operating models, efficiencies and resiliency associated with shared infrastructures and training datasets. Executive Commentary: Andrew Cheung, CEO of 01 Quantum, stated, “AI systems are increasingly being trusted with sensitive data across the public sector, transportation and finance industries, and more, yet many organizations have not adapted their security measures for the coming quantum era. With Q-Day on the horizon and harvest-now-decrypt-later attacks already a threat, Post Quantum Cryptography (“PQC”) is becoming essential. The most straightforward approach is to encrypt the user data with our technology. At GCXpo, we will be demonstrating how our encrypted AI analytics can help safeguard critical information today while preparing Canada for tomorrow’s quantum challenges.” https://tinyurl.com/bhpm8k4t

Sophic Client Renoworks Software Inc. (RW-TSXV, ROWKF-OTC) launches Renoworks.ai.

Renoworks Software announced the launch of Renoworks.ai, the Company’s next-generation AI native platform designed to transform how building product manufacturers, distributors, retailers and contractors engage and monetize homeowners throughout the remodeling journey. Renoworks.ai represents a significant evolution of the Company’s technology platform, combining next-generation generative AI with Renoworks’ extensive building product data, visualization expertise, homeowner engagement tools, analytics and lead-generation capabilities. These new capabilities provide greater design realism, stronger product accuracy and more effective homeowner engagement, all of which improves engagement with customers and increases close rates. Renoworks has been working with all stakeholders and these new features are what customers and partners have been asking for. The new platform produces highly photorealistic remodeling designs while maintaining an important distinction from general-purpose generative AI tools: designs are connected to actual building products, colors and product configurations offered by Renoworks customers. Rather than simply generating an inspirational image, Renoworks.ai is designed to connect homeowner inspiration with real products and ultimately with the companies that manufacture, distribute and install them. For a brief demo of the new platform click here. Renoworks currently serves more than 200 enterprise customers in the North American building products industry across numerous building product categories, and facilitates millions of annual product interactions between homeowners and building product brands. Existing Renoworks customers can migrate their product libraries to Renoworks.ai while maintaining their current integrations and continuing to operate Renoworks Classic during the transition. The Company expects customer migrations to occur progressively rather than through a single platform-wide conversion. Renoworks has spent more than two decades digitizing building products and working with leading manufacturers across the remodeling industry. Renoworks.ai builds upon that foundation by evolving traditional product libraries into a Product Intelligence Platform designed to create a structured, continuously manageable source of product information for AI-powered applications. Product Intelligence also creates the potential to expand Renoworks’ relationship with customers beyond individual visualization applications. By establishing a centralized product intelligence layer that can support multiple digital experiences, Renoworks believes it can become more deeply integrated into how building product manufacturers manage and activate their product information across the remodeling ecosystem. “Renoworks.ai represents the largest step-change in our platform since the Company entered the visualization market,” said Doug Vickerson, Chief Executive Officer of Renoworks. “Generative AI has fundamentally changed what is possible in-home design. We believe the larger opportunity, however, is not simply creating a better image. It is connecting that experience to real products, homeowner intent, data and ultimately the transaction, resulting in greater value across the entire home design experience. In addition, we expect this new product to drive higher homeowner engagement, resulting in continuous improvement in our domain knowledge of homeowner purchase behavior and intent, which will further improve our value to building product manufacturers, distributors, retailers and contractors by driving higher close rates.” Renoworks.ai is being introduced progressively to existing and new enterprise customers. The Company will continue expanding the platform’s capabilities as part of its broader strategy to provide an integrated AI-powered technology platform for the remodeling and building products industry. The Company believes Renoworks.ai creates additional opportunities to expand recurring revenue by increasing platform adoption, enabling customers to deploy Renoworks technology more broadly across brands and product categories, and introducing additional AI-powered capabilities over time. https://t.co/75dW52mftG

Kanin Energy raises $138 million for waste heat to power development.

Calgary cleantech company Kanin Energy has secured significant capital for its “energy-as-a-service” (EaaS) business. Kanin announced a $138 million new equity financing round on Sept. 16. The round was led by Chicago’s S2G Investments and Canada Growth Fund (CGF), both of which supplied US$50 million (around $69 million). Capital will support the development of Kanin’s waste-heat-to-power (WHP) projects in both the US and Canada. https://tinyurl.com/ytctr92v

Altis Labs raises US$25 million Series A to expand AI for cancer trials.

Altis Labs has new funding to help give drug makers a better look into how treatments can affect more types of cancer. The Toronto-based healthtech startup has closed a US$25-million ($35-million) Series A round to expand its AI-powered prognosis platform for clinical trials. The round was co-led by New York City-based biotech investor OrbiMed and Qiming Venture Partners USA, the US-based branch of Chinese investor Qiming Venture Partners. Clinical oncology trials rely on endpoints, or outcomes that have to be achieved to prove whether a treatment is effective. Altis claims its flagship AI model, IPRO, can automatically generate survival predictions from radiology scans, allowing drug developers to detect treatment effects earlier and more reliably. https://tinyurl.com/ym4y7b7h

Heidi invests nearly $26 million to establish Toronto as North American headquarters.

Australian AI healthcare platform Heidi will use Toronto as its home base for a North American expansion. Heidi announced on Tuesday morning that it will invest $25.4 million to grow its footprint in Canada, including establishing its North American headquarters in Toronto. The company, which makes an AI scribe platform for doctors, said the Toronto headquarters will carry out research and development and manage partnerships across the region. Heidi has already hired 17 employees in Canada and expects to create an additional 30 jobs in its engineering, clinical, and commercial departments. The investment in Toronto comes as Heidi secures US$340 million ($477 million) in new funding, at a valuation of US$900 million. https://tinyurl.com/hkatwxhh

TD’s Layer 6 and Cohere embark on $25 million AI collaboration.

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) announced late Tuesday an initial investment of up to $25 million over three years to support AI development and adoption across its operations. That money will fund a strategic collaboration between TD’s AI research centre, Layer 6, and Toronto-based large language model (LLM) developer Cohere. Canada’s second-largest bank says this partnership will explore how Cohere’s secure enterprise AI models could be applied within TD to improve productivity, decision-making, and client experience, as the two firms work alongside each other at MaRS Discovery District. This work will span AI agents and enhanced workflows. https://tinyurl.com/ynrf8ptw

Axya closes $17 million Series A to modernize manufacturing procurement.

Montréal-based supply chain software startup Axya has secured $17 million in equity and debt Series A funding to automate procurement for manufacturers with the help of AI. The round consisted of $12 million in equity primary capital and $5 million in venture debt from CIBC Innovation Banking. The equity portion was led by Toronto’s McRock Capital, with support from Yamaha Motor Ventures and existing backers like the Business Development Bank of Canada’s Industrial Innovation Venture Fund and Montréal’s Real Ventures. https://tinyurl.com/mr42kdxf

Bird&Be raises US$13-million Series A for fertility support platform.

A Canadian reproductive wellness startup has raised new funding amid rapid growth in the North American fertility tech market. Toronto-based Bird&Be, which sells subscriptions to fertility and wellness supplements and test kits, announced the all-equity, US$13-million ($18.3 million) Series A round on Tuesday. The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)’s Thrive Fund co-led the round with consumer-focused VC BFG Partners. Supporting were BAM Ventures, Founder Collective, Rejuvenation Ventures, and HSR Ventures. https://tinyurl.com/57bf6ehv

Thri5 raises US$5.4 million to expand AI platform for retail businesses.

Two ex-Loblaw Digital alumni have raised fresh funding to scale their AI retail platform that helps align business strategy with execution. Thri5, which is developing an AI execution layer for retail business, says it has raised US$5.4 million ($7.5 million) in seed funding, with plans to use the capital to roughly double its 10-person team over the next year, as well as accelerate its go-to-market strategy. Whitecap Venture Partners, Mistral Ventures, the MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, N49P, Amar Varma, and Farhan Thawar, as well as several undisclosed individual investors, contributed to the fund. https://tinyurl.com/bw7y3p2b

Canada ‘very well positioned’ to become a rocket launch hub, says astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

At the Global Business Forum, Hansen said Canada is “very well positioned” to become a hub for future rocket launches, meeting growing demand. As Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen weaved through a crowded conference, the hum of Elton John’s 1972 hit “Rocket Man” was quelled only by the roar of applause. At the Global Business Forum, Hansen said Canada is “very well positioned” to become a hub for future rocket launches, meeting growing demand. “Canada would be providing additional capacity that is needed,” Hansen, who flew around the moon this year, told Postmedia Calgary in an interview. Earlier this year, the federal government signed a 10-year, $200-million agreement to lease a dedicated launch pad in Nova Scotia, where commercial, scientific and defence-related cargo could be fired off into space. There are limited areas on the planet fit for launches, and Canada’s proximity to the North Pole makes it an energy-efficient place to launch from, Hansen said. https://tinyurl.com/5xt7mwuf

PitPro’s first tire-changing robot goes live in Canada.

If you live in Canada, this year’s set of snow tires might be installed by a robot. San Francisco startup PitPro Automation said Wednesday that it has installed its first automatic tire-changing system at a tire shop in Calgary, Alberta. The startup says its robotic system, first revealed last year, can swap a full set of four tires in under 15 minutes. The first deployment is at a Kal Tire location — one of Canada’s largest independent tire service chains. PitPro is one of myriad startups trying to disrupt different parts of the car ownership experience. https://tinyurl.com/bdfhrnvz

Smart-ring maker Oura files to sell US$2.2 billion in IPO.

Oura is looking to sell US$2.2 billion in shares during its initial public offering, the company said in its updated S-1 filing on Monday. Oura, which makes smart rings that track biometrics including sleep quality and heart health, could reach a US$15.6 billion fully-diluted valuation from the sale. The company itself is offering 13.5 million shares, while existing shareholders are offering 36.5 million shares, with a stock price expected to be between US$40 and US$44, according to the filing. The bulk of the shares sold will be from early investor Forerunner Ventures, which is selling its entire 9.3% stake in Oura during the IPO. The filing notes that pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly could buy up to US$100 million in shares in the IPO, and funds affiliated with Dragoneer Investment Group were interested in buying up to US$300 million in shares at the IPO price. Oura said it intended to use US$526.4 million of US$567 million proceeds to satisfy tax obligations from vesting employees’ restricted stock units, and use the remaining proceeds for its corporate expenses. Oura’s net income for the nine months ended in June rose from US$1.6 million in 2025 to US$60.8 million in 2026. Its revenue grew 74% year-on-year to US$1.2 billion, with revenue from memberships more than doubling to US$240 million, the filing shows. Oura reached a US$11 billion valuation in a round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company last October. https://tinyurl.com/emjf5e5s

SB Energy faces investor skepticism in IPO, report says.

SB Energy’s initial public offering is facing investor skepticism, The New York Times reported Monday. The SoftBank majority-owned company is planning to raise US$5 billion to US$7 billion in a public offering to help develop a massive data center complex OpenAI plans to lease, which is set to be backed with a US$105 billion credit guarantee from Nvidia and use Nvidia chips. Nvidia has pledged to invest up to US$3 billion in the IPO. But investors have been worried about the high expected valuation of US$50 billion, the report said. The IPO was expected to list as soon as this month but it’s more likely to happen next month, the report said. SB Energy, which currently generates revenue from the sale of electricity to power authorities, had no data center capacity operating but reported future contracted revenue of US$439 billion, per a securities filing earlier this month. https://tinyurl.com/7px3tzr9

Databricks acquires Microsoft Excel competitor Row Zero.

Databricks is acquiring Row Zero, a five-year-old Microsoft Excel competitor that sells spreadsheet software that’s designed for analyzing massive amounts of data. The deal could help Databricks attract more non-technical users to Genie, a chatbot it launched last summer that lets business analysts ask questions and get answers from their corporate data. Genie has passed US$100 million in annual recurring revenue, the value of contracts over the next 12 months, according to a person with direct knowledge of the figure. Row Zero, founded by former Amazon Web Services managers, says on its website that its spreadsheet software is faster and more secure than Microsoft Excel, while also being compatible with that product. Row Zero has raised US$13 million since its founding, including a US$10 million seed round last May led by IA Ventures. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The deal shows how Databricks, which spent its early years selling primarily to data engineers and data scientists, is increasingly targeting business users—a move that’s certain to heighten its already intense competition with Snowflake, its main rival. Databricks said in August that it had surpassed US$7 billion in annualized revenue based on sales in its July quarter, representing growth of more than 80% compared to last year. That same month, Databricks closed a US$5 billion funding round led by Coatue, at a US$190 billion valuation. https://tinyurl.com/bdf3mbz8

Anthropic in talks to lease Apollo-controlled Stream Data Centers.

Anthropic is in early talks to lease up to 1 gigawatt in compute capacity from Stream Data Centers, a developer majority-owned by Apollo Global Management, which could house tensor processing units designed by Broadcom and Google, The Information reported Tuesday. Anthropic could also house other AI chips in the facilities, such as Nvidia’s graphics processing units. Anthropic has also discussed the possibility of Google providing a credit guarantee for the project, the report said. The agreement with Stream Data Centers, if completed, would represent a significant advance in the AI model maker’s efforts to secure more direct control over the facilities that run and train its AI. Anthropic depends on cloud providers like Amazon, Google and SpaceX for its compute needs. More data center leases like the one under consideration with Stream could allow it to lower costs. Previously Anthropic has entered such lease arrangements with smaller data center providers such as the former bitcoin miners Hut 8 and TeraWulf. https://tinyurl.com/3v4shcpc

Oracle invokes Force Majeure in aim to protect itself from data center cost overruns.

Oracle, which is set to lease a New Mexico data center on behalf of OpenAI, sent a notice to the project’s developer asserting its contractual rights to withhold payments if project delays persist, according to Bloomberg. Oracle sent a notice that cited “force majeure” to a developer owned by Blue Owl Capital called Stack Infrastructure, the newswire reported today. Force majeure is a term in many contracts that can release a party from its contractual obligations in extraordinary or unusual circumstances. The Information previously reported on delays at Project Jupiter in July after New Mexico state officials denied a permit for a natural-gas pipeline that would have fueled the turbines set to power the proposed 1,400-acre, two-plus gigawatt site. Oracle pivoted to using fuel cells from Bloom Energy, which are less polluting than turbines, but also more expensive. Analysts previously estimated that the new set up would cost about US$8 billion, likely billions more than the original cost. OpenAI is set to use the facility when it is completed. “Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward,” Oracle posted to its account on X, formerly Twitter, this morning. “Blue Owl, STACK Infrastructure and Oracle remain fully aligned on Project Jupiter,” a Blue Owl spokesperson said in a statement. “This notice does not change the financial commitments to this multiyear project.” The stock prices for both Oracle and Blue Owl tumbled more than 5% in early stock market trading. https://tinyurl.com/4eb6ttpx

OpenAI releases proposal for international AI safety coordination.

OpenAI released a proposal on Monday that would create international coordination around AI safety. In a blog post, OpenAI called for national AI safety institutes, such as the U.S. Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, to set standards around areas including model evaluation, risk assessment and incident reporting. The proposal said that the standards would not serve as a system of licenses or mandatory prelease review, which has been a sticking point in U.S. negotiations for safety measures. OpenAI has previously advocated for international action. In a blog post earlier this month, global affairs head Chris Lehane argued that the U.S. needed to first establish standards at home in order to lead internationally, though he added that international standards would soon be necessary. Any U.S. action, however, has hit stumbling blocks, as the White House waffles on regulatory policy and Congress debates a wide-range of legislative options. Meanwhile, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic continue to discuss an industry-led standards body, The Information previously reported. OpenAI’s proposal on Monday argued that international AI standards will be crucial as AI research moves toward recursive self-improvement, or the concept of AI systems being able to train themselves. Those standards should include human oversight over automated AI research and reporting around alignment, OpenAI said. The post comes ahead of a summit between the U.S. and China, where the two superpowers will discuss AI development and safety. https://tinyurl.com/5v7v2v56

Alibaba unveils new AI chip and data center expansion plan.

Alibaba on Tuesday unveiled a powerful new AI chip for training and running models, highlighting the rapid progress in China’s domestic semiconductor capabilities. During its annual Apsara tech conference, Alibaba said its new AI chip, Zhenwu V900, delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, Zhenwu M890, which was released in May. The V900 is scheduled for mass production and commercial release in the first quarter of next year, it said. Alibaba also plans to launch new central processing units designed for agentic AI workloads, Yitian 720 and Yitian 730, next year. CEO Eddie Wu said the company aims to boost the total capacity of its data centers around the world to more than 20GW by 2032, as it tries to narrow the gap with U.S. hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Liu Dayiheng, Alibaba’s head of LLM development, said that the company’s next-generation model, Qwen4, is currently in training and will be coming out soon. Liu also announced a roadmap for future generations of models including Qwen4.5 and Qwen5, which are expected to be much larger in size, with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters. Alibaba’s chip unit, T-Head, has an important role to play as China accelerates its adoption of domestic chips to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. On Sunday, DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng told investors that a major priority for his company is to use more domestic chips to train its models, adding that he expects Huawei Technologies to start delivering training chips to DeepSeek as early as the fourth quarter this year. https://tinyurl.com/ycy9hp6a

Shares of Chinese AI model firms fall after report of regulatory probe.

Hong Kong-listed shares of Z.ai and MiniMax plunged on Wednesday, after The Information reported that China’s internet regulator is probing potential data leaks to Anthropic. Z.ai, also known as Zhipu, dropped 12.4%, MiniMax fell 4% and Alibaba declined 4.4%. The benchmark Hang Seng Index dipped 1%. The Cyberspace Administration of China is investigating potential breaches of data security regulations, after Anthropic alleged in a detailed report earlier this month that Chinese AI model developers had been rerouting sensitive government and military data to Claude models, in order to extract Claude’s capabilities. The CAC summoned all seven companies named in the Anthropic report and is zeroing in on DeepSeek and Moonshot, both of which are preparing to go public, The Information reported. The five other companies named by the report were Alibaba, Z.ai, SenseTime, MiniMax and Xiaomi. https://tinyurl.com/yeywnk2f

Quantum stocks jump after IonQ reports a technological breakthrough.

Quantum computing stocks jumped on Wednesday, with IonQ leading a rally in the sector after reporting a breakthrough and a new deal to install its quantum tech in Nvidia’s Accelerated Quantum Research Center. After a burst of burst of momentum throughout 2025, IonQ stock has struggled this year, down about 4% year to date after Wednesday’s gain. The stock popped as much as 13% before paring. IonQ’s peers in the sector also got a boost. Here were the big moves intraday in other quantum stocks: Here’s where some of the sector’s top movers were as markets opened on Wednesday. Infleqtion: +7%. D-Wave Quantum: +7%. Quantum Computing Inc: 7%. Rigetti Computing: +7%. Quantum computing will be the next big tech trend to have a major impact on marketing, says Citi CMO Alex Craddock. The rally in the space on Wednesday was being driven by an announcement from IonQ regarding a breakthrough in “real-time quantum error-correction,” marking a major technical milestone for the nascent technology. While the company’s researchers showcased their work in this area in a paper published on September 3, they released a statement detailing further progress on Tuesday, highlighting what it describes as a significant milestone in quantum advancements. The gain was also being driven by news of a deal for IonQ to bring its quantum computing technology to an Nvidia research center mean to “help drive the new breakthroughs needed to turn qubits into useful, large-scale quantum supercomputers capable of solving the world’s hardest problems.” Wednesday’s momentum sparked enthusiasm from retail traders in online forums. The day trader crowd piled into quantum stocks during their big 2025 rally, and have been angling for a repeat this year, with little to show for it so far. Quantum machines perform computational tasks by leveraging the principles of quantum mechanics. By leveraging quantum bits, known as qubits, of information, they are able to solve problems at a higher speed than classical computing machines. However, their systems are sensitive and prone to error. As IonQ noted in its statement, this has been a constant challenge for companies working in the space. “Successfully validating real-time decoding across hundreds of logical qubits and over millions of logical operations is an important milestone,” said Nicolas Delfosse, a researcher at IonQ. “Moreover, the fact that our decoder runs on a single CPU provides a practical path to commercial-scale fault-tolerant quantum computing.” https://tinyurl.com/3wtahup6

Microsoft to boost Copilot discounts as it launches AI ‘super app’.

Microsoft leaders told sales staff this week that it is authorizing steeper discounts of 30% to 50% on subscriptions of its Copilot AI software for corporate customers who commit to purchase a large number of seats and commit to additional payments based on their usage of certain features, according to a person with direct knowledge of the change. The discounts will begin as soon as October, the person said, and coincide with Microsoft’s planned launch of its revamped Copilot super app. The new version of Copilot, set to launch as soon as this week, will combine features like AI coding tools and OpenClaw-style AI agent features in a single app, according to a person with knowledge of the plans. Some of the app’s features will cost extra based on how much subscribers use them. Microsoft is planning the discounts on monthly Copilot subscriptions—which start at US$30 per user per month—in hopes of winning more subscribers that will also generate usage-based revenue from the new features, according to the person with knowledge of the plan. “As the Copilot product rapidly evolves and its business model expands to include both seats and usage, there is strong economic alignment between customer value and our long-term monetization,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. “Our go-to-market strategy reflects both this customer value and our opportunity wherein every seat can also be a driver of usage-based growth.” The planned discounts build on smaller discounts Microsoft recently began offering. After withholding Copilot discounts from all but its biggest customers, Microsoft in recent months had started giving corporate customers discounts of around 10% cost of Copilot when they committed to purchase at least 2,000 seats. Now Microsoft plans to offer even more generous discounts of roughly 30% per seat for customers with over 1,000 Copilot seats, ramping up to 50% discounts for customers with over 10,000 seats, said the person with knowledge of the change. https://tinyurl.com/5brmczvx

Anthropic releases cheaper model in first launch since slowdown calls.

Anthropic announced the release of its newest model, Claude Opus 5.5, saying it performs as well or better than Anthropic’s previous most powerful models, Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1, in domains including coding, reasoning, business workflows, and safety. At the same time, it will cost 40% less to run, according to the announcement on Tuesday. The release is the first from Anthropic since its chief executive, Dario Amodei, led an industry-wide call earlier this month to slow the development of frontier AI to prioritize safety. Anthropic says Opus 5.5 performed the best of any of its recent models on an automated suite of evaluations testing for malicious or overeager actions and deceptiveness. The cheaper option comes as Anthropic faces stiff competition and rising costs weigh increasingly heavily on their enterprise customers. OpenAI, facing similar pressures, released cheaper ChatGPT-6 models on Tuesday at half the price of their ChatGPT-5.6 counterparts. https://tinyurl.com/hac2nrhr

OpenAI announces cheaper GPT-6 family models.

OpenAI on Tuesday announced GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna, which it describes as cheaper and faster models in the GPT-6 Astra family. The company said that the new models show significant improvements compared to their predecessors, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.6 Luna, in areas like professional work, coding, computer use and accuracy. Additionally, OpenAI said that it had been able to make optimizations in running these models which has allowed them to lower prices for customers; the new models are half of the price of their predecessors. Such price cuts could help to entice customers who are concerned by the costs of AI spending. OpenAI said that the new models will be rolling out throughout Tuesday in ChatGPT Work and Codex for all Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users, while Free and Go users would be able to access GPT-6 Luna in the ChatGPT desktop app. The company said that the models will not initially be available to users in the “chat” tab in ChatGPT. https://tinyurl.com/4ekf36rh

Meta’s Muse surpassed 500,000 users after first week.

Meta’s new personal AI agent, Muse, had more than 500,000 people try it out roughly a week after launch, including more than 250,000 daily active users. Users have also submitted more than 2 million prompts. The data indicate there has been strong initial interest since Meta launched Muse on Sept. 8, initially making it available in the U.S. through a standalone app and WhatsApp. The company is positioning Muse around the idea of an AI agent taking “busywork” off users’ plates—such as researching and booking a trip, finding deals, tracking expenses and managing scheduling conflicts. Muse has climbed to the top spot on Apple’s App Store, with more than 31,000 ratings. The early popularity offers an early indication that Meta’s vision for personalized AI assistants may be starting to resonate with consumers, though it remains to be seen whether that interest will translate into lasting usage and justify the company’s hefty investments in AI. Muse’s competitors include a startup app called Instinct, which has amassed more than 100,000 users despite limited availability. Broader success of such products will ultimately depend on whether large numbers of users are comfortable giving AI agents access to their personal data, accounts and other sensitive information and trusting them to take actions on their behalf. Other major AI companies also are moving toward more autonomous products. OpenAI has discussed developing a personal AI assistant to compete with Meta’s Muse. The ChatGPT maker is also developing features to compete more directly with SpaceX’s recently launched Grok Bot, which helps customers create always-on AI “teammates” to handle routine tasks, manage software, and collaborate in the background. https://tinyurl.com/afm9xt36

Meta announces new retail partnerships for agent Muse.

Meta Platforms announced partnerships with Walmart and other retailers for its AI agent Muse days after e-commerce giant Amazon blocked the personalized agent from accessing its shopping site. At Meta’s annual Connect conference on Wednesday, Chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said the company is also expanding its Muse retail partners to include Best Buy and Sephora, among others, to integrate with Muse and enable new shopping experiences. Meta has already integrated Muse with other partners including Shopify, PayPal, Stripe, and Instacart, but the addition of Walmart and other large retailers gives it a counterweight to Amazon. Meta at Connect also unveiled new camera-free smart glasses, virtual reality glasses, and an audio version of Muse that will roll out across its eyewear products. The products are part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s bet that smart glasses will become the primary way that people interact with AI as Meta pursues his broader vision for superintelligence. In his keynote speech Wednesday, Zuckerberg said Muse will “grow into the personal superintelligence that billions of people around the world are going to use.“ The Information reported earlier this month on Meta’s plans for camera-free smart glasses as well as virtual reality glasses code-named Phoenix. Meta said Wednesday the VR glasses will ship in the spring and will be priced at $1,300. Meta said the camera-free glasses, Ray-Ban Meta Audio, will cost US$349. Meta also announced the third generation of its flagship glasses, Ray-Ban Meta, with a slimmer design and longer battery life, priced at US$449. Zuckerberg also unveiled a small keychain-like device called Muse Charm, which is connected to Muse. He said it would be available to order around the holidays. Meta Connect continues on Thursday with sessions focused on developers to try out the new products. https://tinyurl.com/ymxarjky

Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse agent.

Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse personalized AI agent from accessing its shopping site, Amazon confirmed, saying that agents such as Muse “should operate openly and respect provider decisions about whether or not to participate.” The block appeared to even prevent Muse from browsing Amazon’s site. When this reporter asked Muse to check on an item, it reported that Amazon had “put up a notice blocking automated access, so I can’t browse it on my own right now.” Meta didn’t contact Amazon before Muse started trying to browse on Amazon. The shopping giant has previously blocked shopping bots from OpenAI and Google from browsing its site, and Amazon sued to stop Perplexity’s AI agent scraping its website. https://tinyurl.com/4dz5ppa2

Microsoft launches revamped Copilot ‘super app’ with Muse competitor.

Microsoft on Friday launched a revamped version of its Copilot app that combines features that had previously been sold separately, including AI coding tools, features that automate tasks in Office 365, and an always-on “Autopilot” agent similar to Meta’s Muse. The overhaul is meant to make Copilot more intuitive and useful, and Microsoft executives have internally described the redesign as part of a broader effort to prove Copilot’s “right to exist” for customers, The Information previously reported. CEO Satya Nadella said Friday that the redesign aims to make “Copilot as a new OS for work.” Microsoft isn’t changing the pricing for those features; the AI features in Office 365 start at US$30 per user per month and cost extra depending on how much subscribers use additional AI features like Autopilot. Like Meta’s Muse and SpaceX’s Grok Bot, Autopilot was heavily inspired by the OpenClaw open source AI agent. But Microsoft is now planning to shift its sales strategy by offering enterprise customers more aggressive discounts on Copilot’s US$30 per seat subscription in the efforts of wooing firms to have more employees using the pay-as-you-go features. https://tinyurl.com/mt866uw5

Anthropic says its AI helped discover a possible new gene-editing tool.

Anthropic said that Claude helped discover a previously unknown molecular system that the company said could represent a new gene editing tool akin to CRISPR, which has transformed the creation of new gene therapies. In a post on X, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei cautioned that the “precise function, biotechnological utility (if any), or level of significance” of Claude’s discovery isn’t yet clear. But he heralded it as a promising sign of possible future medical breakthroughs by AI. “It’s easy to dismiss this as a one-off or curiosity, but we’ve repeatedly seen a pattern where AI performance in new intellectual domains goes from weak to superhuman in a matter of a few years,” he wrote. The discovery was the first notable achievement of a new biotech research group that Anthropic formed in the spring. Amodei said that the milestone was the result of a collaboration between Claude and the company’s life sciences team, who suggested a broad area of research for the AI. Claude then scoured medical literature and genome data and proposed experiments for the Anthropic scientists to carry out to verify the AI’s findings. https://tinyurl.com/4wvvrmfp

Google’s first Suncatcher orbital data center test launches October 1.

Google is taking its first step toward making Project Suncatcher a reality. Announced last year, Suncatcher is Google’s “moonshot” effort to design orbital AI data centers, which AI boosters like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have pitched as an alternative to divisive terrestrial data centers. Google’s first experimental satellite will launch on October 1 with the aim of validating Google’s vision for a constellation of AI satellites. The satellite, dubbed MVP, is about the size of a refrigerator. Inside, it has four of Google’s custom TPU AI accelerators, which are used to train AI models and run inference to generate tokens for AI workloads. On Earth, a data center will run thousands of these chips, which consume massive amounts of power—one of the reasons putting solar-powered AI hardware in space is so attractive. https://tinyurl.com/2caudnnz

New York sues Polymarket over alleged illegal gambling.

New York has sued Polymarket for allegedly running an illegal gambling operation, expanding the state’s fight against prediction markets after earlier suing rival startup Kalshi and others. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the action against Polymarket on Thursday. The state has previously launched cases against Coinbase and Gemini over their prediction markets operations. The prediction market companies have argued that their contracts, which allow people to bet ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the outcome of an event, are swaps contracts regulated by the CFTC. State lawmakers argue the prediction market firms are flouting state gambling regulations. Polymarket chief legal officer Neal Kumar said the Attorney General’s “decision to copy/paste a recycled lawsuit is disappointing” and that the company would “fight for our users.” Kumar said the company had chosen to engage with the state to work through its concerns but lawmakers instead decided to sue the startup. Earlier this month, New Jersey regulators asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether sports bets offered by the startups fall outside of state gambling regulations. https://tinyurl.com/38mmm24r

U.S. and China discussed AI safety system, Bessent says.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the U.S. and China had discussed setting up a mechanism called the U.S.-China AI dialogue to address potential threats. Speaking to reporters at the JPMorgan headquarters in Manhattan at the conclusion of a day of talks with Chinese officials, Bessent said the countries planned to meet again to scope out the notification system, which would create alerts for AI incidents that rise to the national security level. “We think that just like any cross-border activity, moving from opaque to more transparency between the number one and number two AI powers in the world is very important,“ Bessent said. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer added that U.S. export controls on advanced AI chips had not been on the agenda. The talks between the U.S. and a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng came ahead of a summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping in Washington, D.C. scheduled for this week. While U.S. policymakers have floated the need for an AI slowdown agreement between the two superpowers to prioritize safety given the pace of model development, Trump has pushed back against the idea amid an AI race with China. https://tinyurl.com/ms4zdukx

Amazon gives merchants tools to manage Walmart, Shopify inventory.

Merchants that sell on Amazon can now use Amazon’s software tools to manage their inventory at rival retailers, including Walmart, Shopify, eBay and TikTok, Amazon announced Thursday at its annual conference for sellers. Merchants will be able to update their product listings and track orders for all retailers from their Amazon Sellers Central dashboard. In an interview, vice president of worldwide selling partner experience Mary Beth Westmoreland said that Amazon’s 2021 acquisition of ecommerce startup Veeqo enabled the new features. Veeqo provides the “plumbing” to connect various retailers’ sites and data with one another, she said. Amazon says 95% of the independent sellers on its marketplace sell across multiple channels, although Amazon has been taking up an increasing share of merchants’ retail mix recently. Amazon has for several years offered multi-channel fulfilment, where merchants can use Amazon’s logistics network to fulfil orders from other retailers. The data sellers put into the tool will be ring-fenced, meaning it stays within Sellers Central and is not accessible to other parts of Amazon’s business. Amazon said it won’t use the data to help its own shopping business. https://tinyurl.com/434ntajk

Binance invests US$100 million in Circle.

Binance has made a US$100 million strategic equity investment in Circle, as the two companies enter a new, five-year agreement to promote Circle’s stablecoins USDC on the Binance platform. Circle will also pay a monthly fee to Binance, based on a percentage of the amount of USDC held through Circle’s wallet infrastructure service, according to a filing. Binance acquired the shares on Sept.17 at US$80.84 per share in a private placement, reflecting a 5% discount to Circle’s market price prior to closing. Circle shares rose 0.1% Tuesday to trade at US$94.60 per share. Binance, the biggest crypto exchange globally, is a major distribution platform for Circle, making it important for Circle to court Binance. Of the US$75 billion USDC stablecoins in market circulation, about US$12 billion are held on Binance, according to data estimates from Blockworks. Coinbase, a longtime Circle partner and the biggest distributor of Circle’s USDC stablecoins, recently joined Open Standard, a consortium backed by Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard, which issues a new stablecoin OpenUSD. https://tinyurl.com/yfxkm7fh