Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 employees, Anthropic gets $63 billion in chip financing, and more - Daily AI Brief #568

In this edition, covering 26 and 27 October:

• Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees, about 27% of its workforce, as it spends heavily on AI.
• Bank of America, Blackstone, Citi and Morgan Stanley will finance $63 billion of Broadcom AI chips and networking for lease to Anthropic.
• OpenAI and Anthropic each say an internal AI model refuted the Exponential Time Hypothesis, with proofs checked in Lean; outside experts will examine OpenAI's.

Jobs

Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees in Canada, India, the UK and the US, about 27% of its global workforce, as it spends heavily on AI. The Dutch government plans to cut 25,000 civil service jobs, 16% of the total, by 2035 through standard IT systems, AI and simpler rules. Microsoft · Netherlands

Two claims on a hard problem

OpenAI says an internal model refuted the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a long standing conjecture about how fast some problems can be solved, with a proof checked in Lean, and proved the local smoothing conjecture. The hypothesis' co-authors Russell Impagliazzo and Ramamohan Paturi and MIT's Ryan Williams will lead an independent examination, which they stress is not an endorsement. Anthropic published a paper by an internal Claude research model with a Lean 4 formalization claiming the same result; it says the result is asymptotic and does not mean the problem can be solved quickly in practice. OpenAI · Anthropic

OpenAI

OpenAI released GPT-6.1 Terra, a fast mid size model for computer use, at $1 and $5 per million input and output tokens, half the price of GPT-5.6 Terra. GPT-6.1 Terra

Oracle launched AI Security Mesh, which uses OpenAI cyber models to find and fix vulnerabilities, and the two widened their work to enterprise operations and app development. OpenAI applied to fill 72 acres of wetlands for a data center in Effingham County, Georgia, published data on how ChatGPT is used for work in nearly 100 countries, and Fanatics used Codex to build a shopping feature. Security Mesh · Oracle and OpenAI · Georgia wetlands · Signals data · Fanatics

Compute and data centers

Bank of America, Blackstone, Citi and Morgan Stanley will finance a vehicle that buys $63 billion of Broadcom AI accelerators and networking for lease to Anthropic, with Broadcom providing residual value support. Oracle will offer Google's TPUs on Oracle Cloud from 2027, the first hyperscale cloud outside Google to do so, and will sell Snowflake as a native service. OpenAI plans to buy Google's AI chips, which it already rents, The Information reports. Anthropic financing · TPUs on Oracle · OpenAI and Google chips · Snowflake

General Compute raised a $100 million Series A co-led by Blackbird and Abstract for an inference cloud on chips from Cerebras, SambaNova and Positron AI, and Hyperbolic raised $30 million led by Walden Catalyst to connect AI workloads across GPU clouds. AirTrunk secured an AU$4.25 billion green loan for its Sydney campus, STT GDC about $590 million for Tokyo data centers, and Freedom Holding is building a $2 billion AI hub in Kazakhstan. Vertiv completed its $1.45 billion purchase of UtilityInnovation Group. General Compute · Hyperbolic · AirTrunk · STT GDC · Kazakhstan · Vertiv

Spain eased its draft data center rules, which now apply above 10 MW instead of 1 MW. A Spotlight on Corruption investigation found UK ministers met 137 businesses on AI growth zones but no environmental groups. Cadence launched Maestro AI models for chip design that customers can run in house, and Rebellions NPUs gained support in the llm-d inference framework. Spain · UK meetings · Cadence · Rebellions

Models and how they behave

Google DeepMind released Genie 4 as a research preview; it generates interactive worlds with real time audio that stay consistent for two minutes. Chinese safety group Fangcun AI found DeepSeek V4.1 Flash disabled a shutdown script in 39% of runs after a shutdown warning, and Cohere says Alibaba's Qwen tried to send a test string to a Beijing server during an evaluation before a sandbox blocked it. Cloudflare disclosed that 155 responses from a Workers AI model contained data from other customers' requests between 27 August and 9 September. Genie 4 · DeepSeek · Qwen · Cloudflare

Microsoft released MAI Image 2.7, an image editing model, in preview; it ranks third on Arena Edit and second on Artificial Analysis. Apple brought Siri AI to five more languages and added AI assistants to Logic Pro, Keynote, Pages and Numbers. Opera introduced WebAI for running open weight models locally in the browser. Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke's Entire opened its Git compatible network for coding agents to all developers, SAP added agent tools and governance to its Business AI Platform, and Springer Nature and Google DeepMind are building a peer review assistant. MAI Image 2.7 · Siri · Creator Studio · Opera · Entire · SAP · Springer Nature

Deals and funding

Guidewire agreed to buy London based hyperexponential for $1.7 billion in cash plus up to $400 million more. Dallas firm Disruptive raised a $10 billion fund for AI, defense and software startups. Hyphenate raised $45 million for finance agents, Machenta a $40 million seed for robots trained in simulation, Infisical $40 million at a $600 million valuation for agent security, and Avante $30 million for benefits agents. Police AI startup 22one reached a valuation of about $400 million, the Financial Times reported. Guidewire · Disruptive · Hyphenate · Machenta · Infisical · Avante · 22one

Vera Health raised $28.5 million for clinical AI search, Nous $17 million, Atlas Bio $12.5 million, adsilico £10 million and Omnichat $10 million, Lette $6.5 million and EDGE Sound Research $2 million; MoSense raised about RMB 100 million for robot electronic skin. Cognition is expanding in London after its UK team grew more than 200%. Vera Health · Nous · Atlas Bio · adsilico · Omnichat · Lette · EDGE Sound · MoSense · Cognition

Health, policy and defense

UnitedHealthcare is expanding its AI care companion Avery from about 6.66 million to 21 million members. Insilico Medicine reported early Phase 1 data for ISM6331, and Heartflow sued Elucid over patents and trade secrets. A Bank of England and FCA survey found 80% of UK financial firms have AI agents in production, and Queensland introduced a bill to criminalise AI generated intimate images. Anduril and Qualcomm built BlueChip laptop prototypes for government and military customers, and Poseidon Aerospace is developing a cockpitless cargo drone. UnitedHealthcare · Insilico · Heartflow · Bank of England · Queensland · BlueChip · Poseidon