OpenAI seeks up to $30B at $1.25T, Barclays cuts about 5,000 jobs, and more - Daily AI Brief #564

In this edition, covering 22 October:

• OpenAI is reportedly working on raising up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre money valuation, in a round led by Coatue and UAE investors.
• Barclays has closed 1,000 positions and expects to cut 4,000 more by the end of the year as it increases technology and AI investment.
• Microsoft says the China aligned actor Storm-0940 used the ARTEX agentic AI framework to automate attacks on hundreds of organizations, including the ConnectWise supply chain compromise.
• Walmart will launch Agent Profiles within a month, letting customers register AI assistants and set purchase approvals or spending limits.

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From our lists

A guide to 24 AI assistants that do research, drafting, contract review and retrieval of a firm's own work for corporate legal departments and law firms, from Harvey, Legora and Spellbook to CoCounsel and LexisNexis Protégé.

AI Legal Assistants

DeepSeek

DeepSeek has reportedly raised about $15 billion, according to TechCrunch citing Bloomberg, two days after the US ordered federal civilian agencies to remove its AI technology. CATL and Tencent are named as potential investors. The DeepSeek round

Security

Microsoft says the China aligned actor Storm-0940 used ARTEX, an agentic AI penetration testing framework, to automate attacks against hundreds of organizations worldwide, including the ConnectWise supply chain compromise. The activity reached more than 2,250 tenants through stolen OAuth application credentials, and some attacks gained privileged cloud access in under three hours. Microsoft says the activity did not result from a compromise of its own systems, and that successful authentication did not necessarily mean customer data was accessed or taken. Storm-0940

Railway says an unauthorized party may have accessed encrypted customer environment variables and obtained some decrypted secrets, including API keys and database credentials, in an attack it says was aimed at AI inference providers. The company paused deployments, advised all customers to rotate stored credentials and review logs, and published guidance for checking possibly exposed OpenAI keys and usage. Railway

1Password announced 1Password for Agents, which lets approved AI agents use passwords and other credentials without seeing or storing them. Users approve each sign in on their own device and 1Password fills in the credential. It is being developed with agents from Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXSI, Town and other partners. 1Password for Agents

Israeli startup Modelyo raised about $17 million in a round led by OlivTree for its confidential cloud platform, which targets organizations that need to protect sensitive data while using cloud and AI services. Amsterdam based Indurex raised €7 million led by Contrarian Ventures, with Axeleo Capital and Curiosity, for an AI platform that links cybersecurity alerts to physical processes in industrial systems; it plans to expand across Europe and the Middle East. Modelyo · Indurex

OpenAI

OpenAI is reportedly working on raising up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre money valuation in a round led by Coatue and investors in the UAE, according to TechCrunch citing CNBC. Terms are still being negotiated, and the UAE part could include more computing capacity for OpenAI. The $30 billion round

OpenAI published proposals for governments and industry to improve advanced AI safety, modernize cybersecurity and strengthen public institutions against cyber risks. The blueprint

OpenAI's updated Usage Policies will require services that give direct access to its models, including model routers and AI gateways, to be reviewed and approved before offering that access. Partners must also keep safeguards consistent with OpenAI's standards and investigate potential violations. Routers and gateways

AI agents that shop and trade

Walmart will launch Agent Profiles within a month, letting customers register AI assistants, set purchase approvals or spending limits and keep agent purchases separate from their own. Amazon, by contrast, blocks third party shopping agents. Walmart

Interactive Brokers introduced IBKR Autonomous Trading, which lets eligible clients authorize connected AI platforms to monitor more than 75,000 global stocks, options and ETFs and submit supported orders based on instructions the client sets. Trades run through a separately funded AI Partition within the existing account and are subject to account restrictions, eligibility rules and risk safeguards. Interactive Brokers

Catapult is deploying Sous Chef's AI agents across more than 600 restaurants in the United States and Canada to manage delivery operations, and gets access to Sous Chef's API for internal tools. French American startup Reduck raised $3 million in a pre seed round led by Daphni for its Reduck MCP platform, which lets agents use browser automation scripts on websites without APIs or MCP interfaces; its library has more than 1,200 scripts for over 250 websites. Catapult and Sous Chef · Reduck

Jobs

Barclays has closed 1,000 positions and expects to cut 4,000 more by the end of the year, reducing its global workforce by about 5%. Most cuts will affect operational, support and functional roles as the bank increases technology and AI investment. Barclays

Qualcomm plans worldwide job cuts after annual performance reviews, with affected employees expected to be told in November. CEO Cristiano Amon said the cuts will focus on employees who have consistently missed expectations, as the company shifts resources toward AI infrastructure, data center chips, automotive, personal computing and edge computing. Qualcomm did not disclose how many jobs are affected. Qualcomm

A Pew Research Center analysis of 480 US occupations found that men's employment grew 6.3% for each one point increase in an occupation's AI exposure score, while women's employment changed by 0.2%. It compared 2017 to 2019 with January 2023 to June 2026. CareerVillage received a multiyear $10 million grant from NextLadder Ventures to expand its Coach AI career guidance tool, which it says has served more than 150,000 people in more than 120 countries. Pew · CareerVillage

Policy and courts

Seventeen former US national security officials filed a bipartisan brief urging the D.C. Circuit to rehear Anthropic's appeal against the Pentagon's supply chain risk designation, which the court upheld. They argue the designation was retaliatory and could affect defense contractors nationwide. Anthropic's appeal

Italy's Legislative Decree 179/2026, in force from 23 October, aligns national rules with the EU AI Act. It names AgID as notifying authority and the body that imposes fines, has AgID and ACN set up an AI regulatory sandbox, and adds AI training requirements, workplace safeguards and fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global annual turnover. Italy's decree

Enterprise software

Tech Mahindra and SpaceXSI will combine Tech Mahindra's engineering and consulting services with SpaceXSI's Grok Build AI coding platform to help enterprises modernize applications and speed up software delivery, with joint customer programs and training on governed AI assisted development. Tech Mahindra and SpaceXSI

Replit appointed former US Treasury diplomat and AWS executive Michael Greenwald as president of corporate affairs as it expands its government business. It says its platform was used to build Jordan's Siraj AI learning assistant, which reaches 1.3 million users across 5,800 schools, and that it is working with Saudi Arabia's HUMAIN to give students AI coding agents. Replit

Thomson Reuters introduced the next generation of its agentic CoCounsel platform for tax, audit and accounting professionals in the United States, using authoritative sources, professional context and verified calculations to produce work products. CoCounsel

Data centers

Nebius secured a $3.5 billion, 364 day senior secured facility from Citi to fund data center development, GPU purchases and general corporate needs. Nebius

Endeavour and Trevi Systems will scale heat driven desalination and brine concentration systems that use data center waste heat to produce up to 200,000 gallons of clean water per day for each megawatt of computing capacity, starting at Endeavour's US data centers. Endeavour and Trevi

Robots and drones

Maxinsights raised $30 million in seed funding led by Peak XV, with Tola Capital, South Park Commons, INCE Capital and Alumni Ventures. It uses footage from more than 5,000 contractors in six countries to create training data for humanoid robots and physical AI, has captured over 2 million hours of footage and serves more than 30 customers. It is also developing MaxGlove with Genesis AI to collect grip force and object weight data. Maxinsights

Zurich based Enact Intelligence raised a $30 million pre seed round from Redalpine, Notion Capital and Firstminute Capital, with backing from Yann LeCun and Arthur Mensch. Tiger Global is leading a $10 million financing for FORT Robotics and committing another $10 million to a planned PIPE, tied to FORT's planned merger with Newbury Street II Acquisition Corp, bringing linked capital to more than $50 million. Enact Intelligence · FORT Robotics

Körber is acquiring a stake in NAiSE, whose software connects automated guided vehicles, autonomous mobile robots and manually operated industrial trucks in warehouses and factories; the two will explore more intralogistics uses, including humanoid robots. Portuguese drone maker Beyond Vision raised more than €28 million in a round co led by Índico Capital Partners and Lince Capital, to expand production and enter more markets in defense, security and infrastructure monitoring. Körber and NAiSE · Beyond Vision

Also

Eko Health received FDA clearance for CORE 300, an AI enabled stethoscope with up to 35 times amplification, active noise cancellation and access to Eko's FDA cleared AI for structural murmur detection; it is available in the US from 22 October, with Canada, the UK and some European markets to follow. Eko CORE 300

Nirva raised $25 million in a pre Series A round, bringing its total to $33 million, for a pendant that uses voice samples to process only its wearer's speech and discards audio and transcripts by default. It plans to take orders in November and ship the $249 device by the end of 2026. Nirva

The Allen Institute for AI released OlmoEarth v1.3, precomputed annual satellite embeddings covering the planet, with a browser based Embeddings Explorer for making maps of land cover and environmental change without signing in or using GPUs. OlmoEarth v1.3

Oxford spinout QuantrolOx raised a €12 million Series A led by IW Capital for its quantum computer tuning software and US expansion. Bengaluru based voice AI startup Karta AI raised $3 million in a seed round led by PeerCapital and Cedar Hill Capital to expand work with financial institutions. QuantrolOx · Karta AI