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1.	Apple Finalizing Move to Google's AI for Siri Revamp By Aaron Tilley Source: Bloomberg

Apple is finalizing a plan to use Google's artificial intelligence model to power an overhauled version of its Siri voice assistant, according to Bloomberg.

Instead of building a large language model in-house to power a new Siri, Apple has been evaluating several external models over the past year. It has narrowed in on Google's Gemini, Bloomberg reported. Apple will pay Google around $1 billion a year, the news outlet reported. The new Siri powered by Google will likely release next spring.

Originally launched in 2011, Siri has fallen far behind the competition, especially with the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT. A team inside Apple attempted to build the company its own version of a ChatGPT, but they've struggled inside Apple's corporate culture, The Information previously reported. As a result, most of that team has departed.

2.	OpenAI CFO Suggests Government Guarantee for AI Financing By Laura Mandaro Source: The Information

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said Wednesday that government guarantees for financing artificial intelligence chips could help the U.S. stay competitive globally.

"We're looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental, the ways governments can come to bear," she said at a conference. "The backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing to happen. That can really drop the cost of the financing but also increase the loan-to-value, so the amount of debt you can take on top of an equity portion."

Friar later said on LinkedIn that "OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for our infrastructure commitments," but rather that both the private sector and government need to build the industrial capacity to sustain "American strength in technology."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said last week the company had financial obligations for $1.4 trillion in computing capacity, raising questions among some investors about how it planned to pay for this buildout.

3.	Amazon Sues Perplexity In Battle Over AI Agent Access By Ann Gehan Source: The Information

Amazon escalated its legal battle against Perplexity with a lawsuit filed late Tuesday, as the e-commerce giant seeks to block the AI search startup from accessing Amazon's site with its AI-powered browser, Comet. In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. district court in the Northern District of California, Amazon alleged Perplexity committed computer fraud and violated its terms and conditions.

In the complaint, Amazon said that it had repeatedly asked Perplexity over the course of nearly a year to stop using its AI agents to access its site, and that Perplexity did not comply with its requests. The complaint said that allowing Perplexity's agents to access Amazon's site and customer account information would be too risky because of security issues with Comet, and that Perplexity's agents didn't provide a good customer experience for shoppers. "Amazon's claims are without any merit whatsoever," a Perplexity spokesperson said in a statement. "Amazon has a problem with how its own users want to interact with its site when they choose to use an AI assistant of their choice."

Amazon said that Perplexity's agents try to disguise themselves to appear like they are human shoppers visiting Amazon's site, and that after Amazon implemented a security fix earlier this year that blocked Comet's access, Perplexity updated Comet with a workaround that would allow it to continue to access Amazon's site. Amazon said that Perplexity's continued use of the agents on its site violated its rules that AI agents need to identify themselves appropriately when accessing sites. Amazon also highlighted the issues that agents create for its advertising systems, which it said required Amazon to modify its ad systems in order to filter out agent traffic before billing advertisers.

4.	SoftBank Explored Takeover Of Chip Firm Marvell, Bloomberg Reports By Anissa Gardizy Source: Bloomberg

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group explored a potential acquisition of chipmaker Marvell Technology earlier this year, according to a report in Bloomberg.

Marvell and Softbank are not in active negotiations, according to the report. A deal would have been the largest in semiconductor buyout in history. Marvell, which has a market capitalization of $80 billion, designs chips for data centers and other industries.

SoftBank has been eyeing takeovers of firms that could boost chip designer Arm, in which it holds a majority stake. Earlier this year, for instance, SoftBank agreed to buy Ampere Computing, which makes traditional data center chips, for $6.5 billion.

The Information reported last month that OpenAI is in talks with Arm about using an Arm-designed central processing unit with OpenAI's AI server chip. The AI developer is pursuing a chip to lessen its reliance on Nvidia's graphics processing unit.

5.	Nvidia CEO Warns China Will Win AI Race By Wayne Ma Source: The Financial Times

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said China will win the artificial intelligence race because of the country's lower energy costs and looser regulations.

Speaking on the sidelines of a Financial Times conference in London, Huang said the U.S. government's new rules on AI could lead to dozens of new regulations, while China's subsidies for energy have made it easier for Chinese companies to operate datacenters containing their homegrown AI chips.

Huang has said that China is "nanoseconds" behind the U.S. in AI and chipmaking and that Nvidia should be allowed to sell its most advanced AI chips to China to maintain U.S. dominance over the technology.

However, the Trump administration has yet to allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced Blackwell chips to China. Earlier this month, Trump said in an interview on CBS that he would not allow the export of Blackwell chips to China, but didn't rule out the possibility of allowing the sale of a less powerful version of Blackwell.

6.	Snap's Stock Soars On Perplexity Partnership, Revenue Growth By Catherine Perloff Source: The Information

Snap shares soared more than 20% in after hours trading after the social media company reported a slight acceleration in revenue growth to 10% in the third quarter as well as a new partnership with Perplexity. The AI startup will pay Snap $400 million over one year, through a combination of cash and equity, to add its AI-powered answer engine to Snapchat, which reaches 943 million monthly active users, the companies announced.

The feature will come online next year, and Snap will consider partnerships with other chatbot firms, CEO Evan Spiegel said. Also on the call, Spiegel revealed that it was putting its forthcoming  Spectacles into a separate fully owned subsidiary which would "give us some options as we think about potential partners to work with to accelerate our leadership," Spiegel said. The Information reported earlier this year that Snap was considering spinning out the spectacles into a separate unit to allow it to raise outside money, just as Alphabet has done with Waymo.

While Snap's revenue growth was stronger than the last quarter, the company is still growing much more slowly than peers like Pinterest and Reddit. In the quarter, Snap's ad revenue grew only 5% , while revenue in North America, typically the region with the highest paying advertisers, grew by only 1%.

7.	DoorDash's Investment Plans Send Stock Falling By Martin Peers Source: The Information

DoorDash stock slumped as much as 20% in after-hours trading after the delivery firm revealed it expects to "invest several hundred million dollars more" in upgrading its technology and expansion next year than it did this year.

The investment is to unify the technologies used by the company and two European companies it has acquired, Wolt and Deliveroo, as well as to make its technology ready for AI services.

In the quarter, DoorDash reported revenue growth accelerated to 27% in the third quarter, thanks to healthy expansion in the dollar value of orders made through the delivery service. The company generated $723 million in free cash flow in the quarter, up from $444 million a year earlier.

8.	Ripple Raises $500 Million Round Led by Fortress, Citadel Securities By Yueqi Yang Source: The Information

Ripple said it raised a $500 million strategic investment at a $40 billion valuation from investors led by Fortress and Citadel Securities, as it builds out relationships with traditional financial firms.

Ripple provides crypto payments and issues a stablecoin, called RLUSD. It is also the firm behind XRP, the fourth-largest crypto token with a $138 billion market cap. Ripple had $4.8 billion in cash on the balance sheet as of September 30, according to an investor letter.

Both Fortress and Citadel Securities are new, strategic investors in Ripple. Other investors in the round included Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace. The valuation is a big jump from June, when Ripple offered to buy back shares from employees and investors at a $28 billion valuation. Ripple has bought back more than 25% of its shares in recent years.

Ripple has been on an acquisition spree this year. It bought crypto prime brokerage Hidden Road for $1.25 billion, corporate treasury management firm GTreasury for $1 billion, and stablecoin payments firm Rail for $200 million.

9.	China's Xpeng Aims to Mass Produce Humanoids by End of 2026 By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

Xpeng Motors, one of China's biggest electric vehicle makers, on Wednesday announced a new version of its humanoid robot and said it now aims to start mass production of advanced humanoids by the end of next year.

Xpeng, based in the southern city of Guangzhou, also said it will launch three robotaxi models in China next year and start trial robotaxi operations in Guangzhou and some other cities. In addition, the company unveiled a new six-seat flying car that is expected to have a range of 500 kilometers, and said it is currently conducting test flights. Meanwhile, Xpeng's previously announced vehicle that comes with a detachable two-person aircraft will be ready for mass production and delivery next year, it said.

Xpeng made those announcements at its annual AI Day event at its headquarters, where it showed some of its prototypes as well as existing products. Xpeng's focus on artificial intelligence and its latest plans highlight the similarity between Xpeng's ambitions and those of Tesla.

Xpeng's robotaxis, humanoids, flying cars and its driver assistance system similar to Tesla's Full Self Driving, will all be powered by the Chinese company's new open-source "physical world" AI model called VLA 2.0, it said. Xpeng said Volkswagen will be the launch customer of VLA 2.0.

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