Industry

Shenzhen's Xingchen Intelligent (Astribot) has announced a RMB 1 billion round at a RMB 15 billion valuation, led by Shenzhen Investment Holdings' Toukong Donghai, according to a report published by 21st Century Business Herald on Oct. 13. The report says it is the company's fourth round in about six months. Xingchen says it mass-produces rope-driven robots, including a T1 humanoid priced from RMB 89,900.

London-based Scarlet, a certification body for AI and software medical devices, raised a $50 million Series B led by Headline, with Notion Capital joining and Atomico, Creandum, Kindred and Entrepreneurs First returning, the company said on Oct. 12. It plans US and Asia-Pacific expansion. Scarlet holds EU, UK MHRA and US FDA third-party review designations and says it cuts a year or more from certification timelines.

Sarvam AI is in early talks to raise $250–300 million at about a $3 billion valuation, double its June mark, The Economic Times reported on Oct. 13, citing people aware of the discussions. The amount and valuation could change; the report includes no comment from Sarvam. The Bengaluru startup builds Indian-language models for government and enterprise customers.

At DBS's Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Oct. 12, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan agreed that the cost of capital may now be the biggest constraint on AI build-out. Using OpenRouter data, he estimated the world spends about $200 billion a year on tokens for about $150 billion in revenue, said most enterprises have no return yet, and likened many AI investors to casino gamblers.

DeepSeek is set to lead a seed round of tens of millions of dollars for Winverse AI, a months-old robotics-AI startup founded by former Tencent scientist Hu Han, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 12, citing people familiar. Meituan's Long-Z has also committed; the deal would value Winverse at roughly $400 million. Terms are not final, and no company has confirmed.

Character Technologies filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware on Oct. 12 to sell substantially all of its assets. Disney is the stalking-horse bidder for a non-exclusive perpetual license of certain IP and claims, for $20 million plus transition services, subject to higher bids. The platform stays up for now but will be wound down if no buyer keeps it running; the sale is expected to close in late November or early December.

Nvidia is in early talks to increase its investment in Reflection AI or supply it with computing power, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 11, citing one person familiar with the matter; no terms have been reached. The Financial Times reported earlier that the talks could lead to an acquisition offer, with structures including an acqui-hire with a technology licence, a chip-supply deal or a bigger equity stake, according to Bloomberg's account of the FT story. Reflection declined to comment; Nvidia did not immediately respond.

Mosi Intelligence, incubated in late 2024 from Fudan University's OpenMOSS team under Prof. Qiu Xipeng, said on Oct. 12 it closed a Pre-A round of more than 1 billion yuan led by Huakong Fund, with several Shanghai state-linked funds joining. The money goes to real-time multimodal research and global commercialization, including a coming MOSS Live system. No valuation, customers or revenue were disclosed.

South Korea's KOSPI closed down 3.65% at 6,384.24 on Oct. 12, its steepest fall since Sept. 2 and 8.85% below its Oct. 6 level, as Samsung Electronics fell 4.39% and SK hynix 4.52%. A Mirae Asset analyst tied the drop to renewed AI-bubble worries after OpenAI revenue reports; other accounts point to Middle East tensions, US yields and doubts over how long memory margins last.

Amazon is in talks to acquire Decart, the startup behind the real-time video model Lucy and the simulation model Oasis, in a deal valued at around $7 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 11, citing people familiar with the matter, according to Reuters. A deal could come soon if talks hold, the Journal said. Anthropic, which explored a deal for Decart at about $6 billion in August, decided last month not to pursue it, Bloomberg has reported. Amazon declined to comment and Decart did not respond.

Bloomberg reported on Oct. 9 that TypeSafe AI, the startup behind the Jev model that launched only weeks ago, has raised about $870 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Per a write-up of the Bloomberg story, Sequoia Capital also took part. TypeSafe says about a third of Fortune 500 companies use Jev and that it passed one million users within days; neither figure has been independently checked, and every detail traces back to Bloomberg's single report.

The Financial Times reported on Oct. 9, citing people familiar with the matter, that SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son is seeking to raise up to $100 billion from Gulf investors and has held talks in recent weeks with senior figures, including in the United Arab Emirates. According to the FT, as relayed by Reuters, the money would set up a fund that acquires companies and improves their operations using AI and other advanced technologies. Reuters could not verify the report and SoftBank did not respond. No investor, commitment or timetable has been reported.

Arena, formerly LMArena, said on Oct. 8 it raised a $200 million Series B at a $3.1 billion valuation, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, and that it has passed $100 million in annualized revenue. It also previewed an Alignment Index that scores 27 models on three failure modes found in about 90,000 Agent Arena sessions, using an LLM judge and rubrics Arena wrote. On Arena's numbers, OpenAI models take the top five places. The methodology and results are Arena's own.

SpaceX is in early talks to borrow about $40 billion for Nvidia AI chips, the Financial Times and Bloomberg report. The FT, via Reuters, puts the structure at roughly $10B bank loans plus $30B investment-grade debt, with Apollo expected to lead and Pimco among lenders, targeting a 2027 close. Bloomberg independently confirms talks and Pimco interest, and stresses the discussions are early-stage and may not happen. The borrower is SpaceX — not xAI. No party has confirmed a deal.

AWS said on Oct. 5 that Z.ai’s open-weight GLM 5.3, which it describes as a 753B-parameter mixture-of-experts model for coding and long-horizon agent work, is available on Amazon Bedrock to eligible enterprise customers through managed APIs. On Oct. 6 Zhipu’s Hong Kong shares rose 7.7% to HK$716 in morning trade; etnet tied the move to a Chinese media report that AWS will share revenue with Zhipu based on usage. That revenue share is not in AWS’s post and has not been confirmed.

Anthropic will deploy up to 2 GW of AMD Instinct MI450 in Helios racks (first GW targeted H1 2027); AMD commits up to $5B equity and Claude–ROCm co-optimization. Named multi-GW deals re-price the chip race—capacity path, not a single cluster power-on.

Bloomberg reported Moonshot AI distributed a shareholder resolution seeking approval for a Hong Kong listing as early as within six months—after Kimi K3 and mid-WAIC. Financing process, not a priced date; converts open-path model splash into a listing race under Chinese listing rules.

The New York Times reported Meta is in early talks to lease AI data-center capacity to Anthropic for up to ~$10B over two years—monthly payments, early exit either side, Anthropic proposed in June. Both declined comment; talks may not close. Roughly one-third the SpaceX–Anthropic compute pact.

Bloomberg and CNBC say banks are scheduling Anthropic investor meetings, with a possible listing as soon as October—not a priced IPO. After a June confidential S-1 and $965B Series H, Claude’s growth and compute stack enter public-market narrative season.

Anthropic committed $10M CAD to Amii, Mila, Vector, universities, and hospitals—plus Claude startup credits—and published a Canada Economic Index brief (8th globally, 2nd per capita among top countries). Modest dollars; deliberate geopolitical research footprint.

CNBC: Greg Brockman keeps direct oversight of ChatGPT product, GTM, enterprise, and compute after Fidji Simo stepped down—no replacement planned. Fewer external product executives; more co-founder ownership of the P&L stack that must justify a mega-cap valuation.

Apple sued OpenAI in N.D. Cal. alleging trade-secret theft for consumer hardware—naming Tang Tan, Chang Liu, and IO Products after the Jony Ive deal. Soft partnership meets hard line on recruitment “show and tell”; ChatGPT-in-iOS fate unstated.

FT and wires: OpenAI in early talks on a ~5% U.S. government stake (~$40B+ notional) and a broader lab-allotment vehicle modeled on Alaska’s permanent fund. Not a signed deal—sovereign upside on the page after export-control and gated-preview season.

Microsoft launched Frontier Company—$2.5B and ~6,000 embedded experts under Rodrigo Kede Lima—to co-design and deploy AI inside customer environments. Competing on deployment and outcomes, not only model access; customers retain co-built IP by default framing.