Gaby Del Valle / The Verge:
A look at growing bipartisan opposition to AI data centers in drought-stricken Arizona, where TSMC's chip fabs were welcomed but newer projects face backlash  —  Industry has drained the state's water reserves for decades.  Data centers are the breaking point.  —  AA hulking gray giant rises from the desert.

Andrew E. Freedman / Tom's Hardware:
When talking about local inference, Sam Altman says supply-constrained DRAM is better used in data centers than sitting in PCs and “being used 5% of the time”  —  With data centers full of RAM, your PC is apparently the problem. … OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has data centers full of memory …

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: neoclouds CoreWeave, Nebius, and Nscale have effectively been shut out of the bond market in recent weeks as lenders and investors demand tougher terms  —  Lenders and investors are getting choosier about their bets and demanding stricter terms, as the AI build-out enters a new phase

Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
S&P downgraded Meta's outlook from stable to negative, citing high capex and negative free cash flow; META fell 15% in October, its worst month in four years  —  Meta's outlook has been revised downward by S&P Global Ratings on concerns surrounding cash flow and AI spending.

Steven Levy / Wired:
John Ternus says Apple doesn't “want to ship AI for AI's sake” and that Tim Cook is “available to help wherever I ask” on policy; Ternus has yet to meet Trump  —  Apple doesn't need fixing, and it doesn't want drama.  Its new leader is a “product guy” who bleeds six colors.

Berber Jin / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI has secured ~$11B in commitments for its latest funding round, less than half its initial $30B target, and expects to raise more in coming weeks  —  The ChatGPT maker's latest funding round values it at $1.25 trillion, less than its $1.4 trillion target

Financial Times:
Sources: OpenAI now seeks ~$20B at a $1.25T valuation for its latest round, from $30B at a $1.4T valuation, as some investors cut commitments amid an AI selloff  —  ChatGPT maker is now seeking about $20bn at a $1.25tn valuation as it tempers its ambitions  —  OpenAI has slashed the target …

Bloomberg:
Sources: Baseten is raising ~$2B in two tranches, one valuing it at $26B and the other at $30B; Baseten was valued at $13B in June after raising $1.5B  —  Artificial intelligence startup Baseten is set to raise new funding that would more than double its valuation to about $30 billion, according to people familiar with the efforts.

Bloomberg:
Sources: Google is in talks with the DOD on a new effort to secure the data that feeds into software being built for the Golden Dome missile defense program  —  Alphabet Inc.'s Google is in talks with the US Defense Department to work on a new data security effort underpinning …

Kurt Schlosser / GeekWire:
Filing: Vancouver, WA-based Powerlattice, which makes a power delivery chiplet to reduce AI compute power needs by 50%+, raised $86M, after raising $31M in 2025  —  Powerlattice, a Vancouver, Wash.-based startup developing chips that cut the power demands of AI processors, has raised $86 million, according to an SEC filing on Friday.

Emma Roth / The Verge:
OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic say they will adopt a new standard that publishers can use to opt out of being scraped by AI across multiple crawlers  —  The new control will allow publishers to apply their AI training preferences across multiple crawlers.

Reuters:
OpenAI tightens limits on the weapons-related information that ChatGPT provides teens, even when a question appears harmless, as part of new safeguards  —  OpenAI said on Friday it is tightening limits on the weapons-related information ChatGPT provides to teens, even when a question appears harmless …

CNBC:
Intel stock closed down 28.58% on Friday, its worst day since the 1970s and wiping ~$12B off US government's stake, after issuing weaker-than-expected guidance  —  Intel shares plummeted 29% on Friday, their worst day since the 1970s, after the chipmaker issued weaker-than-expected guidance due …