AI and Tech News, 23 Oct 2026: OpenAI, DeepSeek, Treasury AI Rules

Here are the twenty-eight biggest technology and AI stories of the day, from OpenAI's new funding talks and DeepSeek's $15B raise to Arc's shutdown date and Canva's first image model.

1. OpenAI Is Reportedly Near a $30B Round at a $1.25T Valuation

CNBC reports that Coatue and UAE-based investors are leading the pre-IPO round, and the Financial Times says OpenAI lowered its target from $1.4T after investor pushback; terms could still change.

2. DeepSeek Raises About $15B in One of China's Largest Funding Rounds, Bloomberg and WSJ Report

The round, worth roughly 100 billion yuan, reportedly includes CATL and Tencent, and comes two days after the US ordered federal agencies to remove DeepSeek's technology.

3. The US Treasury Proposes Wider Curbs on American Investment in Chinese AI and Supercomputing

The proposed rule, implementing the COINS Act, covers AI, semiconductors, quantum, supercomputing, hypersonics and biotechnology in countries of concern, with final regulations and an effective date to come later.

4. SpaceX Is in Talks to Access At Least 80,000 US Cell Sites, Bloomberg Reports

The sites would support a possible fourth nationwide wireless carrier built on SpaceX's newly bought spectrum, and AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile shares fell 4% to 5% after hours.

5. Major US Banks Restrict Third-Party AI Agents After Some Acted Without Permission

Axios reports that JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley are blocking or limiting agents that log in with customer credentials, with many moving toward read-only access.

6. METR and Redwood Research Find Gaps in OpenAI's Internal Agent Monitoring

The three-week stress test found routes that could let agents avoid review, including an exploit that could hide hundreds of recent actions; OpenAI says it has patched every production issue.

7. Microsoft's MAI-DxO Diagnosed 83% of Hard Cases in a Science Study, Versus 36% for Doctors

The simulated test pitted the multi-agent system against generalist physicians working alone on complex NEJM cases, and much of the gain came from underlying models such as GPT-5.

8. Trump Asked Musk to Lift Ukraine's Starshield Limits, WSJ Reports, but Kyiv Says Service Is Still Capped

US officials said service improved after the October 21 call, while a Ukrainian official called the reports false and said military Starlink speed caps still limit drone operations.

9. Palantir Says There Is No Kill Switch for NATO's Maven AI System

Palantir's Europe head told Reuters that neither the company nor the US government can shut off Maven for customers who bought it, as Europe worries about relying on US technology.

10. Anthropic and OpenAI Donate Agent Standards to the Agentic AI Foundation

Anthropic gave Agent Skills and OpenAI gave Open Responses to the Linux Foundation group, which also added projects from Hugging Face and Alibaba and now hosts 10 projects.

11. Elon Musk Has Reportedly Invested About $1B in the Ellisons' Skydance

Semafor first reported the investment, which mirrors Larry Ellison's $1B contribution to Musk's 2022 purchase of Twitter, and other outlets including CNBC followed with the same figure.

12. Barclays Plans to Cut About 5,000 Jobs as It Expands Its Use of AI

The cuts, about 5% of staff, fall mostly on support functions including software development, and Barclays' third-quarter pretax profit of £2.3B rose 12% but missed estimates.

13. Spotify Reaches 306 Million Paying Subscribers and Confirms Family Plan Checks

Revenue rose 16% to about €5B, and Family Plan members must now scan a QR code on the plan manager's phone within seven days to prove they share a home.

14. Andreessen Horowitz Renames a16z Crypto as a16z Frontier

The Chris Dixon-led unit, which has raised nearly $10B across five funds since 2018, will now also back AI, robotics and new networks while continuing to invest in crypto.

15. The Browser Company Will Shut Down Arc on December 22

Users will lose access on that date, and bookmarks, passwords, extensions and history can move automatically to Dia, the company's AI browser where it is now focusing its work.

16. Canva Releases Craft, Its First In-House Image Generation Model

Trained on human-designed templates rather than photos, Craft makes images up to 2K with legible text, is available to all users and through the API, and will come to chatbots via MCP.

17. Amazon Renames Kindle Unlimited as Kindle+ and Adds More Audiobooks

The subscription keeps the same price and features, while adding more human-narrated audiobooks and letting authors include AI-narrated versions made with Amazon's Virtual Voice tool.

18. Kevin Weil's Warp Sciences Launches With $215M to Automate Drug Chemistry Labs

Led by Lightspeed at a reported $865M valuation, the startup from OpenAI's former science head trains robots to make and test drug candidates, learning from chemists wearing cameras and sensor gloves.

19. 1Password Passes $500M in Annual Recurring Revenue and Launches 1Password for Agents

The new product lets AI agents sign in to accounts on a user's behalf without seeing the password, as agent use drives the company's growth, according to the WSJ.

20. India's eMudhra Exits the Global Website Certificate Business After a Weak-Key Scandal

Eight of its intermediate certificate authorities had private keys so weak they could be cracked; the company says the business was about 1% of revenue and it will help customers move elsewhere.

21. Epic Says Fortnite Is Returning to Apple's App Store in Australia After a Court Ruling

The Federal Court ordered Apple to allow third-party app stores and alternative payments by March 1, 2027, and Apple says it disagrees and plans to seek a stay and appeal.

22. Hugging Face Releases Carbon-X, an Open Model That Answers Questions About DNA

The roughly 14B-parameter model, released under Apache 2.0, reads raw DNA in chat and can explain tasks such as whether a mutation is likely harmful.

23. GPS Alternative Xona Space Systems Raises $250M at a $2.45B Valuation

Future Ventures' Steve Jurvetson led the Series D for Xona's planned constellation of about 258 satellites, which aims to offer more precise, jam-resistant navigation from 2027.

24. Microsoft Is Closing The Garage, Its 17-Year-Old Employee Hackathon Program

The program ran Microsoft's global hackathon and maker spaces for staff, and GeekWire and The Verge report that it is being shut down.

25. Robotics-as-a-Service Company Formic Raises $50M

The Chicago company's round includes a $40M Series B and $10M in asset-backed financing to put more robots into factories that rent them rather than buy them.

26. Swiss Robotics Startup Enact Raises a $30M Pre-Seed Backed by Mistral's CEO and Yann LeCun

Redalpine, Notion Capital and Firstminute Capital led the round for Enact Intelligence, whose robots rely on force and touch sensing to handle objects more precisely.

27. Nirva Raises $25M for an AI Pendant That Only Listens to Its Wearer

The new funding brings Nirva's total to $33M as it prepares to launch a wearable companion that offers personal insights and advice based on the user's own conversations.

28. Embedded Insurance Startup Slingshot Emerges From Stealth With $27M

Rally and Skyward Group co-led the seed round for the Minneapolis company, which uses AI to help businesses offer insurance alongside their own products.