AI and Tech News, 26 Oct 2026: SpaceX Debt, iPhone Duo, MacBook Pro

Here are the eighteen biggest technology and AI stories of the day, from SpaceX's $40B GPU debt deal and iFixit's iPhone Duo teardown to a new anti-fraud tool in Apple Stores.

1. Musk Says SpaceX Has Closed $40B of Debt Financing for GPUs

Elon Musk said on X that the mostly callable debt will pay for chips arriving in the first half of 2027, credited SpaceX's investment-grade status, and predicted a shakeout among more than 200 neoclouds.

2. iFixit's iPhone Duo Teardown Points to the Hinge as a Possible Cause of Cracked Screens

iFixit gave the foldable a provisional 5 out of 10 for repairability and said reported cracks cluster near the hinge, though it could not confirm the cause without more testing.

3. Apple Will Reportedly Unveil a Touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro on Wednesday

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says 14-inch and 16-inch models with OLED touch displays and a Dynamic Island will be announced on October 28, priced above the current MacBook Pro models.

4. SK Hynix Is Reportedly Weighing a Special Dividend of About $12B

South Korea's Dong-A Ilbo reported a payout of about 16 trillion won from Kioxia gains, while SK Hynix told Bloomberg it is reviewing shareholder returns but has not decided.

5. Apollo's Chief Economist Says AI Has Delivered Zero Financial Payoff Outside Tech

Torsten Slok wrote that profit margins and revenue per worker look flat across the S&P 500 excluding the seven biggest tech companies, with no evidence yet that AI is lifting productivity.

6. AI Data Center Tenants Now Seek More Than $5M a Day in Late-Delivery Penalties

The Information reports the penalties have risen from about $1M a day this spring, leading insurance broker Marsh to offer delay-in-delivery coverage to developers that miss their deadlines.

7. Apple Stores Are Reportedly Getting a Device That Checks iPhones Inside Sealed Boxes

Gurman reports the tool runs diagnostics on boxed iPhones to catch return fraud, such as empty or tampered boxes, so staff no longer have to open returns to check them.

8. Apple Says a macOS Update Will Close a Gap Left by Compromised eMudhra Certificates

Safari, Mail and apps using Apple's frameworks have blocked the certificates since October 19, but command-line tools such as curl and git can still accept them until the update ships.

9. Elvis Presley's Rightsholders Sue Anthropic Over 274 Songs, Seeking About $41M

Authentic Brands Group and other rights holders say the songs were used to train Anthropic's models without permission and seek up to $150,000 per work; Anthropic said it will defend the case.

10. Asian Chip Stocks Slip on Monday Ahead of Samsung and SK Hynix Earnings and the Fed

South Korea's Kospi fell about 1% and Japan's Nikkei 0.4% in morning trade, with Samsung Electronics down more than 1% and several Japanese chip stocks off over 3%.

11. A Zelenskyy Adviser Rejects Musk's Claim That Ukraine's Military Broke Starlink's Terms

Serhii Beskrestnov said civilian Starlink terminals in Ukraine are capped at 70 to 90 km/h and do not work over Russia, so they cannot be used for deep or medium-range strikes.

12. Netflix Users Are Opening the App on Fewer Days a Month, Bloomberg Reports

Citing internal data, Bloomberg says the average subscriber is also watching less, although total viewing hours still rose slightly in the first half of 2026 thanks to subscriber growth.

13. Apple Puts Victor Yin in Charge of Display Development as Two 30-Year Veterans Step Back

Gurman reports that Wei Chen and John Zhong are moving into adviser roles, and that Apple has also promoted three connectivity hardware and software leaders to vice president.

14. A Researcher Publishes 11 Unpatched Tailscale Flaws, Including an SSH Route to Root Access

Erica Windisch's Tailworm report says one hacked device could gain root on other servers when Tailscale SSH forwarding is on; Tailscale has the report but has not released a fix.

15. Reddit's r/opensource Bans Projects That Use AI, Are Made With AI or Are Built for AI

Moderators also now require projects to be at least a year old and posters to have year-old accounts, and they turned away non-English posts, citing AI translation concerns.

16. Global Tech Outlet Rest of World Will Stop Publishing as a Standalone Site in January

Founder Sophie Schmidt told donors she is looking for a new institutional home for the six-year-old outlet, which Semafor says has lost much of its search and social traffic.

17. L Catterton Makes a Strategic Investment in AI Shopping Platform Glance

The undisclosed investment will help Glance, which is also backed by Google and Jio Platforms, expand its agentic shopping service across phones and TVs, particularly in the US.

18. Video News Startup Newpress Raises $12M and Hires Former 60 Minutes Chief Bill Owens

Emerson Collective led the round for the creator-led journalism company, and Owens will join as executive producer in March once his noncompete with CBS ends.