Top stories today:

1. Tesla unveils much-anticipated robotaxi Cybercab, Robovan
2. CPI, Core CPI come in higher than expected as inflation progress stalls
3. Chinese researchers launch open AI model claimed to beat OpenAI’s Sora
4. AMD launches new AI chip to compete with NVIDIA’s Blackwell
5. U.S., UK partner to improve children’s online safety

0. Data and calendar

1. Tesla unveils much-anticipated robotaxi Cybercab, production aimed for 2026

Elon Musk unveiled the Cybercab at Tesla’s event “We, Robot” on Thu:

• <$30K price.

• No steering wheel or pedals and two gull-wing doors.

• Unclear how ready full self-driving on city streets is.

• 20 cents per mile operating cost projected.

• “Inductive charging” instead of a plug-in.

• Tesla owners will be able to list vehicles as robotaxis.

Additionally, Tesla unveiled Robovan as a commercial vehicle carrying up to 20 people

• “The Robovan is what’s gonna solve for high density,” Musk said.

• He also claimed “Unsupervised” full-self driving (FSD) will come to Texas and Calif. in 2025 for select models.

Tesla also presented its Optimus robots walking out alongside the Robovan, doing daily human tasks

• The humanoid is projected to “transform physical labor in industry setting.”

• “I think this will be the biggest product ever, of any kind.”

• Tesla unveiled the Gen 2 of its Optimus bot last year.

• April: Musk said Optimus could be sold “externally by the end of next year.”

• Tesla stock -6% in the pre-market, with investors disappointed by the news.

3. CPI, Core CPI come in higher than expected as inflation progress stalls

• CPI: 0.2% MoM / 2.4% YoY in Sep., vs. 0.1% / 2.3% expected, from 0.2% / 2.5% in Aug.

• Core CPI: 0.3% / 3.3%, vs. 0.2% / 3.2% expected, from 0.3% / 3.2%.

4. Chinese researchers launch open weights text-to-video AI model claimed to beat OpenAI’s Sora

Pyramid Flow surpasses OpenAI’s Sora AI across most benchmarks:

• Generates 10-sec. videos at 768p resolution and 24FPS or 5-sec. video sat 348p and 24FPS.

• Autoregressive model with support for image-to-video and text-to-video.

• Trained on open-source datasets within 20.7K A100 GPU hours.

• Based on “pyramidal flow,” generating multiple videos that merge at the final stage.

• Released under the MIT License for a wide range of uses.

5. AMD launches AI chip Instinct MI325X to compete with NVIDIA’s upcoming Blackwell

• 256GB of HBM3E with 6.0TB/s support.

• Q4 2024 shipments expected.

• In contrast, NVIDIA said its Blackwell will start shipping early next year in significant quantities.

AMD said the new AI chip delivers 1.8x capacity, 1.3x bandwidth, and 1.3x peak theoretical F16 and F8 compute performance vs. the existing NVIDIA H200

• Additionally, AMD has updated its ROCm computing software with 2.4x+ inference performance and 1.8x+ training improvements.

7. U.S., UK partner to improve children’s online safety

• A joint working group was announced by the U.S. and UK to cooperate on safeguarding efforts.

• The group will promote “better transparency” from social media platforms to understand impacts and risks.

• “Currently, there is limited research and evidence on the casual impact that social media has on children and young people,” the U.S. and UK said.

8. OpenAI launches MLE-bench to assess AI agents’ ML engineering performance

• Consists of 75 ML engineering-related competitions sourced from Kaggle.

• Human baselines for each competition.

• Uses open-source agent scaffolds to evaluate LLMs.

• Benchmark code is open-sourced for broader adoption and community-driven improvements.

9. Cybersecurity VC funding -51% QoQ in Q3, lowest deal flow since 2013

• $2.1B invested in cybersecurity in Q3, vs. $4.3B in Q2.

• -4.5% YoY from Q3 2023 when $2.2B were invested.

• 116 deals were closed in Q3 2024, vs. 178 in Q2 and 198 in Q3 2023.

• 4 rounds of $100M or more in Q3, vs. 10 in Q2.

Funding to Israel-based VC-backed cybersecurity startups -62% YoY in Q3 to $135M

• 8 deals were closed in Q3 in the region known for cybersecurity.

• $80M round for CTERA Networks was the largest in Q3.

10. Interesting videos, posts, and memes

11. Other headlines

AI

• Intel unveils Arrow Lake desktop processors with dedicated, AI-focused NPU.

• Abridge raising $250M at $2.5B for AI for doctors’ conversations.

• TikTok cuts 700+ jobs in Malaysia amid shift toward AI moderation: report.

Tech

• Microsoft’s Xbox to sell games directly in Android app next month.

• LinkedIn says freelancer pages on Services Marketplace +48% YoY to 10M.

Tech & law

• Facebook’s antitrust case in Germany ends with Meta agreeing to data limits.

Biotech

• Arda raises $43M for “targeting cells to treat disease.”

• FDA adcomm favors Stealth’s ultra-rare disease drug.

• Glooko diabetes management app creator raises $100M.

• Sanofi in talks to sell 50% stake in consumer health business to CD&R.

Business

• Beijing expected to deploy as much as $283B in stimulus over weekend.

• FTC finalizes new merger-filing requirements.

• Boeing files unfair labor practice charge against striking union.

• Nippon Steel to sell Calvert JV to ArcelorMittal if U.S. Steel deal completed.

• Berkshire cuts stake in BofA to below 10%.

• Delta warns of revenue hit from presidential election.

Crypto

• Stripe reintegrates crypto payments in U.S. after disabling in 2018.

• Uniswap Labs launches ETH layer-2 blockchain Unichain.

• Razzlekhan, 120K BTC launderer, should get 18 months in jail: prosecutors.

U.S. politics

• Biden calls for Congress to return for Hurricane Milton emergency aid bill.

• Trump courts auto workers with car loan tax break, China crackdown.

• Obama targets male voters in Pennsylvania campaign swing for Harris.

• Trump calls for CBS to lose broadcasting license amid 60 Minutes controversy.

• Trump, Harris both “anti-trade”: CEO of U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

World

• Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japan group of atomic bomb survivors.

• Iran threatening Gulf states if their territories, airspace used for attack on Iran.

• Gulf states urge U.S. to stop Israel from bombing Iran’s oil sites.

• Israel cabinet meeting ends with no Iran decision.

• U.S. officials say Iran has not decided to build nuclear weapons.

• Iran’s top military commander Qaani may be Israel’s spy.

• Putin visits Turkmenistan, talks of need for new world order.

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