Trump says new data centers must make their own power, Legora raises $550M at $8.8B, and more - Daily AI Brief #563

In this edition, covering 21 October:

• President Donald Trump said new large US data centers will have to generate their own electricity and supply excess power to nearby communities or the grid.
• OpenAI committed $1 billion in subsidised Daybreak access for organisations with limited security resources, after two critical PHP vulnerabilities were found.
• Legal AI company Legora raised $550 million in a Series E led by Atreides Management at an $8.8 billion valuation.

From our lists

A list of nine voice to text apps, from Willow Voice, Wispr Flow and Superwhisper to Monologue and Typeless.

9 Voice to Text Apps

OpenAI

OpenAI president Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, gave $25 million to Leading the Future, a political group spending millions in at least 48 US congressional races to oppose AI rules that could limit development. The group also supports federal rules that would stop states from enforcing their own AI laws. OpenAI says the donation was made personally, not on the company's behalf, Reuters reported. Leading the Future

OpenAI says it coordinated PHP maintainers, Wiz, Cloudflare, security providers and government agencies after two critical PHP vulnerabilities were found. Calif identified one flaw with an OpenAI model, Wiz independently found and reported both, and the PHP maintainers led the fixes and releases. OpenAI also committed $1 billion in subsidised Daybreak access for organisations with limited security resources. The PHP flaws

Government websites and public services in the Netherlands, France, Denmark and Finland were taken offline as the response to the PHP flaws widened. The flaws have been patched, and agencies are urging immediate updates because they are being actively exploited. The fallout

OpenSSL maintainers say AI tools are helping find bugs in the widely used encryption library, but the rise in mostly low severity reports is overwhelming human reviewers. The project increased its authorised code reviewers from 18 to 30 and keeps human approval for fixes. OpenSSL

OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days. It describes a separate ad system, led by a post trained language model, that picks and ranks ads and runs auctions without influencing ChatGPT's answers. The ad stack

OpenAI is adding ChatGPT Ads in 26 more countries, bringing them to 89 markets. More than 100,000 advertisers have used the service since launch; ads run on the Free and Go plans, while Plus, Pro and Enterprise stay ad free. From 30 October, creative enhancements that can change ad text, resize images, optimise destination URLs and translate content will be switched on for new and existing self serve campaigns, and advertisers can opt out in Ads Manager. 26 more countries · Creative enhancements

OpenAI is hiring local executives and expanding partnerships in Israel, while Anthropic and SpaceX are entering the market through local firms to sell AI services to banks, healthcare providers, government ministries and defense organisations. OpenAI in Israel

Anthropic

Anthropic opened a research preview of Claude Duet, an app built on Claude Opus 5.5 that watches connected apps, sends updates, completes tasks in the background and asks for approval before sending messages, making payments, signing documents or deleting data. It is available by waitlist to Pro and Max users in the US. Claude Duet

Meta

Meta reported third quarter revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26% from a year earlier, and net income of $9.86 billion, including a $9.89 billion legal charge tied to teen mental health litigation. It plans to create publicly listed non voting Class C shares in January 2027. Meta's results

NVIDIA at GTC Berlin

NVIDIA says it plans to take 13 more minority stakes in European AI companies, following CEO Jensen Huang's pledge to announce $2 billion in new European investments. It has invested in 26 European tech companies over the past three years, but has not disclosed how much of its European spending went to equity rather than infrastructure, and some deals have not formally closed. NVIDIA's European stakes

NVIDIA says European AI cloud, infrastructure, energy and cooling companies are adopting its DSX platform to build and run AI factories. The platform uses closed loop liquid cooling and dry coolers to cut facility cooling water use to near zero, and can generate the same number of tokens with up to 30% less power. DSX

NVIDIA also announced its OpenShell Reference Architecture for controlling AI agents through secure runtimes, infrastructure and monitoring, and BBVA plans to explore it for agent safety and governance in banking. Red Hat and NVIDIA expanded their partnership to secure autonomous AI agents, govern access to models and support deployments on NVIDIA's upcoming Vera Rubin infrastructure, combining Red Hat AI Factory with OpenShell runtime controls and BlueField based security monitoring. OpenShell · Red Hat and NVIDIA

Greenpeace protesters interrupted Huang's keynote, asking about reports that Nvidia Jetson chips were found in Russian drones and raising environmental concerns. Security staff escorted them out after Huang asked that they be allowed to speak. Nvidia says it does not sell the modules in Russia and cannot track the resale of used chips. Greenpeace protest

Cars and engineering

Bolt has chosen NVIDIA's Alpamayo Stack for its planned European autonomous ride hailing programme with Lucid. The programme is due to start in Madrid in 2027, subject to regulatory approval, and targets at least 25,000 vehicles before expanding across Europe and the wider UNECE region. Bolt

Volkswagen Group, Porsche, CARIAD, Voxel51, NVIDIA and Microsoft are building a shared data system that connects fleet data with simulation, training and validation for autonomous vehicle development. The partners expect it to reduce repeated physical test drives by up to 90% and AI regression test cycles by up to 85%. Separately, Microsoft says Volkswagen Group has given more than 330,000 employees Copilot, with more than 26,000 active agents, and the two plan to expand the group's data foundation on Microsoft Fabric. Volkswagen's data system · Volkswagen and Copilot

Mistral and NVIDIA will develop AI based engineering workflows using Mistral models, NVIDIA accelerated computing and physics modelling tools, covering faster simulation, CAD to simulation workflows, 3D scene generation and public benchmarks for physics AI and engineering agents in aerospace, automotive and semiconductor work. Mistral and NVIDIA

Data centers and power

SpaceX reported third quarter revenue of $14.58 billion, with AI revenue up more than ninefold to $7.6 billion, mainly from renting computing capacity to companies including Google, Anthropic and Reflection AI. It spent $16.4 billion on AI infrastructure and plans to add 10 gigawatts of compute by 2027. SpaceX's results

President Donald Trump said new large data centers will have to generate their own electricity and provide or sell excess power to nearby communities or the grid, a policy he said is meant to prevent higher electricity costs. Meta, Amazon and Google are among the companies that have agreed to cover added energy costs under a ratepayer protection pledge. Trump's rule

The Memphis City Council rejected an 18 month pause on new data centers and expansions in a 6 to 6 vote, after concerns about pollution, water and energy use, noise and the expansion of xAI's Colossus facility; Mayor Paul Young is running a separate 90 day review. In Texas, a FracTracker and Public Citizen analysis found 35 permitting actions by the state's environmental agency after Gov. Greg Abbott told it on 21 September to halt data center permits; the two disagree on what the pause covered. Memphis · Texas

Amazon and Loudoun County, Virginia, agreed to end plans for four data centers at George Washington University's Ashburn campus. Amazon will donate 25 acres valued at about $65 million for a community arts center and indoor sports facility, rezone the remaining land for mixed use including housing, and give $5 million to the county's Housing Fund. Amazon in Ashburn

Australian operator NextDC cut its 2027 revenue and EBITDA forecasts and paused new development projects and land purchases after electricity network delays at its M3 Melbourne site deferred about A$140 million in contracted revenue; its shares fell 44%. Singapore based DayOne Data Centers is considering delaying its US IPO or cutting it to about $2.5 billion to $3 billion from up to $5 billion, and has not made a final decision. NextDC · DayOne

Peak Energy raised $108 million in an oversubscribed Series B led by GM Ventures to expand domestic manufacturing, fill more than $1 billion in customer orders and bring its passively cooled sodium ion storage systems to data centers. Peak Energy

Finance

The UK Financial Conduct Authority wants financial firms to include significant AI failures and near misses in their incident reports. It also explained how its existing rules apply to firms using AI, calling for clear senior accountability, risk based controls, human oversight, stress testing, fallback plans and independent checks of third party systems, and warned about AI tools that appear to give financial advice. FCA incident reports · FCA rules

Starling Bank says an AI agent built into its core system can investigate transaction monitoring alerts, record the audit trail and reach a decision within 17 seconds. The UK bank is also working with Nvidia on a transactional foundation model planned for production in early 2027. Starling Bank

Visa, BILL and Billtrust started a live US pilot in which authorised AI agents pay approved buyer invoices through supplier portals, using Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol and tokenised payment credentials. San Francisco based CapitalOS, which gives B2B platforms cards, wallets and bill pay, raised a $21.9 million Series A led by LGVP. Visa, BILL and Billtrust · CapitalOS

Health and biology

Radical Numerics launched Omnii-1, a biological AI model trained on DNA, RNA, proteins and other molecular data. Researchers used it to design a bacteriophage that was given to a patient with a drug resistant bacterial infection. Omnii-1

OpenAI, PerturbAI and Scripps Research used thousands of GPT-Rosalind agents to analyse data from millions of mouse brain cells in 32 minutes, linking gene disruption results with scientific literature to point to possible links with brain diseases. GPT-Rosalind

The FDA will issue draft policy on generative AI medical devices within months, said Rick Abramson, director of its Digital Health Center of Excellence. The FDA and the UK MHRA are developing frameworks that could support faster reviews. FDA

Defense

The US Marine Corps told units across its commands to give authorised personnel Maven Smart System accounts on approved networks, under expanded enterprise licensing that took effect on 1 October. German defense company Helsing is in talks to take a minority stake in Dutch drone maker Destinus at a valuation of about $6.7 billion, Bloomberg reported; no agreement has been finalised. Maven Smart System · Helsing and Destinus

Seattle based Watchtower Labs emerged from stealth with $35 million in seed funding led by Shield Capital and Conviction, for AI, simulation and optimisation tools for military planners. A Pentagon pilot using AI and simpler workflows cut average Army civilian hiring time from 161 days to 47. Watchtower Labs · Army hiring

Funding

Legora raised $550 million in a Series E led by Atreides Management at an $8.8 billion valuation, with annual recurring revenue above $200 million. The legal AI company will expand in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and invest in its agentic operating system and new legal products. Legora

Fireworks AI is in early talks to raise money at a valuation of $30 billion to $40 billion, Business Insider reported. It raised $1.505 billion at a $17.5 billion valuation in July and says its annualised revenue is above $1 billion. Fireworks AI

Paris based Pigment raised $250 million in a Series E at a $2.3 billion valuation, led by the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT, with a planned investment from NVIDIA. Estonia founded Blackwall raised a $100 million Series C at a $2.2 billion valuation led by AVP, to expand into 12 regions and build traffic security products for hosting and cloud providers. Pigment · Blackwall

Copyright and public opinion

US District Judge Eumi Lee will hear Anthropic's fair use defense in San Jose against claims by Universal Music Group, Concord and ABKCO that training Claude on song lyrics infringed their copyrights. The Writers Guild of America East is giving members free access to Cloak, software that makes scripts harder for AI models to scrape or use for training; nonmembers can use it for $10. Anthropic's music case · Cloak

An ABC News, Washington Post and Ipsos poll found that 57% of Americans see AI as bad for society, 66% oppose new US data centers and 72% oppose one in their own community. About two dozen activists rallied outside OpenAI's San Francisco office on 20 October as part of the Irreplaceable walkout across 50 US cities and campuses, calling for a pause in AI development until safeguards are in place. The poll · The walkout

Also

Oracle announced AI Agent Studio, a no code and low code platform for building and managing industry specific AI agents across its applications and OCI, planned for the US within 12 months. Cloudflare switched on its beta WebMCP edge implementation for nearly 100,000 Commerce.com storefronts, letting AI agents use structured shopping tools in a shopper's browser; merchants can opt out. Oracle AI Agent Studio · Cloudflare WebMCP

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai says Google will keep giving computing resources to frontier AI research even when that reduces short term cloud revenue. Pichai