Walmart wires ChatGPT to checkout, giving OpenAI 270 million weekly shoppers and landing an AI answer to Amazon's Rufus. But fresh food's exclusion reveals exactly where conversational commerce still hits operational walls.
Good Morning from Las Vegas, where Oracle World Conference kicks off today. OpenAI announced a multi-billion-dollar chip partnership with Broadcom
Oracle's betting AI agents run where data lives, not where clouds want them. The company just shipped quantum-resistant encryption across its database stack and drew $1.5 billion in partner commitments—before the platform hit GA.
Good Morning from Las Vegas, where Oracle World Conference kicks off today.
OpenAI announced a multi-billion-dollar chip partnership with Broadcom on Monday. Broadcom's stock surged 9%. Minutes later, the company's chip president clarified: OpenAI isn't actually the mystery customer behind September's $10 billion purchase order. The market shrugged off the confusion and added $150 billion in market cap anyway.
Oracle shipped quantum-resistant encryption across its entire database—before quantum computers exist to crack anything. Partners committed $1.5 billion to build on the platform before general availability. Someone's clearly betting big on future threats.
Salesforce wants Slack as your agent coordinator. OpenAI wants ChatGPT as your work interface. ServiceNow has other plans entirely. Three companies, one market to win.
More inside.
Stay curious, Marcus Schuler
Broadcom and OpenAI announced a 10-gigawatt custom-chip partnership Monday. Shares surged 9%.
Minutes later, Broadcom's chip president clarified: OpenAI isn't the mystery customer behind September's $10 billion purchase order. That belongs to someone else—likely Google, Meta, or ByteDance.
The market shrugged. Broadcom added $150 billion in market cap on a deal worth "multiple billions" with payment terms undisclosed and deployment starting late 2026. OpenAI now has 26 gigawatts committed across Broadcom, Nvidia, and AMD—hundreds of billions in obligations against $13 billion annual revenue while burning $10 billion yearly.
Here's the financing tool: announcements create vendor equity value today while payment sits years out. When your commitments bind suppliers to your fate, vendor dependency substitutes for traditional debt. It's brazen. It works until it doesn't.
Why this matters:
Robert Brown
Prompt:
in the style of Wes Anderson, create a photographic image of two women sitting at a Restaurant table, both looking at camera. The table is set for dinner and each lady has a wine glass. The lady on the left has long brown hair and is wearing a pink shirt. the lady on the right has a blonde bob and is wearing a creme suit.
Oracle released AI Database 26ai on October 14 with NIST-approved quantum-resistant encryption across network and storage layers and AI agents that execute inside transactional systems instead of separate cloud services.
The company says rivals implement post-quantum crypto in one layer or the other, not both. It's available across OCI, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud with no database upgrade required for 23ai customers.
The partner money tells the real story. Accenture, Cognizant, KPMG, and PwC committed $1.5 billion to train 8,000-plus professionals and build 100-plus industry use cases before platform launch. Systems integrators don't staff at that scale without client pipelines.
The shift: agents query live data and return actions without ETL'ing petabytes to separate AI platforms. Less movement, lower latency, fewer governance gaps. Oracle's betting enterprises won't rewrite data layers every budget cycle—even when clouds provide the infrastructure.
Why this matters:
• Quantum encryption deployed now preempts harvest-and-decrypt attacks before quantum computers arrive at commercial scale.
• Database-as-runtime flips AI economics: agents act where data lives, cutting petabyte movement costs and security exposure.
Marcus Schuler
Metaview records and transcribes your interviews automatically. The AI captures what candidates say, generates notes, and helps you review conversations later without manual typing.
Tutorial:
Instagram has announced major updates to overhaul its platform for teenage users, implementing age-gating for inappropriate content and adopting a PG-13 movie rating approach to content moderation. The changes come in response to mounting criticism and outrage over the social media platform's impact on teen well-being and safety.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure announced plans to deploy 50,000 AMD Instinct MI450 graphics processors beginning in the second half of 2026. The MI450, which AMD announced in June, represents the company's first chip specifically designed for rack-sized systems and positions AMD as a competitive alternative to Nvidia in the AI chip market.
Google has announced plans to invest $9 billion in South Carolina through 2027, focusing on scaling up its existing Berkeley County data center campus and supporting the construction of two new sites in Dorchester County. The investment will also fund construction projects, energy affordability initiatives, and workforce training programs throughout the state as the tech giant expands its AI infrastructure capabilities.
OpenAI is undertaking massive financial deals as CEO Sam Altman promotes a vision of world-changing artificial intelligence technology while employing sophisticated financial engineering strategies. The company's ambitious fundraising efforts are targeting over $1 trillion in capital, representing one of the largest financing initiatives in corporate history as Altman seeks to transform his AI vision into reality through unprecedented deal-making.
China has imposed export controls on chipmaker Nexperia, prohibiting the company from exporting products manufactured in China, according to the company. The ban represents Beijing's retaliation against the Dutch government's decision to take over management of the Wingtech-owned semiconductor manufacturer.
Finnish health technology company Oura has raised $900 million in funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, valuing the smart ring manufacturer at approximately $11 billion. The funding round represents more than double the company's $5.2 billion valuation from its $200 million funding round in December 2024, with Oura reporting total sales of 5.5 million smart rings to date.
Salesforce launched Agentforce 360 globally Monday, adding voice capabilities and pledging $15 billion to San Francisco, moves that reframe the company as orchestration infrastructure rather than application vendor.
The pitch: let Salesforce coordinate everyone's AI agents through Slack. The bind: stock's down 25% this year and fewer than 5% of 150,000 customers pay for Agentforce despite 12,000 implementations.
Agent Script, a JSON-based language, encodes deterministic business rules while preserving language model flexibility. Agentforce Voice hooks into existing phone systems from Amazon, Genesys and Five9. It's table stakes—OpenAI and Anthropic handled voice conversations a year ago.
Three incompatible futures collide: OpenAI wants ChatGPT as work's front door. ServiceNow pushes AIx. Salesforce bets Slack becomes the "agentic OS." Winner controls procurement budgets. Loser becomes invisible plumbing at commodity margins.
Why this matters:
Marcus Schuler
Oura built the smart ring category from scratch and now owns it. The Finnish company turned sleep tracking into a subscription empire worth more than most hardware startups dream about.
1. The Founders
2. The Product Ring 4 costs $349 (ceramic version hits $499). It reads heart rate, HRV, temperature, blood oxygen, movement—then converts raw data into Sleep, Readiness, and Activity scores. The real lock-in? A $5.99/month membership that unlocks AI coaching, women's health tracking (pregnancy, perimenopause), and glucose integration via Dexcom. October 2025 brought Health Panels: $99 blood tests through Quest that sync into the app. Oura stopped selling hardware and started selling insight 💡
3. The Competition
Samsung launched Galaxy Ring with scale and marketing muscle. Whoop fights from the wrist with similar recovery metrics. Ultrahuman and RingConn tried the budget play—Oura crushed them with ITC patent rulings that blocked U.S. imports. Market share? Oura holds ~80%. Everyone else splits crumbs.
4. Financing October 2025: $900M Series E led by Fidelity values Oura at ~$11 billion. Previous rounds pulled in $200M (Dexcom strategic), $100M (Chernin Group), $28M (Forerunner, Square). Revenue doubled to $500M+ in 2024. The company expects $1B+ this year. Units sold: 5.5M rings, with half moving in 12 months.
5. The Future ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Oura dominates a tiny category that's compounding fast. It converted hardware into recurring revenue and now layers on health services—labs, glucose, enterprise contracts. Risks exist (battery durability, Big Tech copycats, privacy scrutiny from military deals). But with $900M fresh capital, 80% market share, and a path from tracking to clinical action? Oura doesn't just own smart rings. It's redefining what wearables do.
Good Morning from San Francisco, 🟡 Meta offered a co-founder enough money to leave his eight-month-old startup just three months after
Good Morning from San Francisco, 👉 Former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak now advises Microsoft and Anthropic. Both roles cleared under
Good Morning from San Francisco, Nineteen percent of high schoolers report romantic relationships with AI. Federal orders accelerate school adoption
Good Morning from San Francisco, Sam Altman promised one AI that follows you everywhere. The bill arrived. OpenAI signed $1
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