Nvidia board opens investigation into chief executive Jensen Huang, Thinking Machines Lab reportedly seeks $5 billion, and more - Daily AI Brief #578

Saturday's Daily AI Brief #577 reached every subscriber twice because of a sending error, which is now fixed. Sorry for the extra email.

In this edition, covering 7 to 9 November:

• Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into chief executive Jensen Huang after reports that he was targeted by Chinese intelligence.
• Anthropic took over orders for 1.7 GW of Caterpillar gas fired generators for $3.4 billion in late September, the Financial Times reports.
• Thinking Machines Lab is seeking $5 billion at a $40 billion valuation, with Accel to lead, Business Insider reports.

From our lists

A new AI Brief list covers AI sports analysis tools for clubs and coaches.

AI sports analysis tools for clubs and coaches

Nvidia

Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation into chief executive Jensen Huang after reports that he was targeted by Chinese intelligence, and House chairs want him at a closed door briefing on 18 November. A US intelligence memo claimed Megaspeed executive Alice Huang was recruited to spy on the Nvidia CEO, reports say; the Financial Times says the memo also claimed a romantic relationship, and Nvidia says the interactions were not unusual. Board investigation · Intelligence memo

Chinese firms cleared to buy Nvidia H200 chips include New Matrix and Maginfra, which had empty offices and links to sanctioned suppliers Wise Road and Inspur, the New York Times found. At AI Day Seoul, Nvidia showed physical AI work with Hyundai, Doosan, SK hynix and LG, including production line simulation with Hyundai and door polishing robots with Doosan. H200 buyers · AI Day Seoul

Rebellions will connect its R200 chips to Nvidia's NVLink Fusion platform for Korean sovereign AI systems that SK Telecom plans to deploy in 2028. Rebellions and SK Telecom

Anthropic, Microsoft and Apple

Anthropic took over OnePWR Solutions orders for 1.7 GW of Caterpillar gas fired generators for $3.4 billion in late September, according to the Financial Times. Anthropic generators

John Langford says he left Microsoft and its AI Frontiers group has ended, after a move from Microsoft Research to Microsoft AI caused conflicts over research priorities. Apple wants Siri to pursue goals on its own and could make it more like an agent as early as next year, Bloomberg reports. AI Frontiers · Siri as an agent

Suno, books and television

Elvis Presley rights holders including Authentic Brands Group and Eminem publisher Eight Mile Style filed separate federal lawsuits accusing Suno of copyright infringement, and the Presley suit also cites Tennessee's ELVIS Act. Suno lawsuits

Philippe Jaenada, winner of France's 2026 Prix Goncourt, says he used AI only three times in his novel, including a hidden 10 word sentence, after another shortlisted author was dropped over AI use. OLM, the Japanese animation group known for the Pokemon anime, built an AI coloring tool that learns a show's style from three hand painted frames and cut painting work by about 30% in testing. Fuji Television plans to use generative AI in all its live action dramas from October 2027, and AI shots in a current drama took 70% to 80% less time than VFX, Nikkei reports. Goncourt winner · OLM coloring tool · Fuji Television dramas

Models and agents

Nous Research released Arete-27B, a fine tuned version of Alibaba's Qwen3.8-27B, and says answers containing propaganda fell from 22% to 0.9% in its 803 prompt evaluation. Perplexity says its Teammates agents in Computer can manage ongoing work in marketing, sales, support and operations with tools such as Slack and GitHub, for Max subscribers on the web. DeepSeek's first usage figures for its open source agent framework Harness show 1.54 million daily users on its API, up from 429,000 in early October. Arete-27B · Perplexity Teammates · DeepSeek Harness

Funding and deals

Thinking Machines Lab, Mira Murati's AI lab, is seeking $5 billion at a $40 billion valuation with Accel to lead, after a $50 billion attempt broke down, Business Insider reports. Bremen startup Marble Imaging raised €6 million led by Cherry Ventures, sells AI analytics to defense and security customers and plans its first satellite launch in February 2027. Hanwha is moving to invest 70 billion won in robot dog maker LionRobotics, with Hanwha Systems expected to lead in a 100 billion won Series B, ChosunBiz reports. Thinking Machines Lab · Marble Imaging · Hanwha and LionRobotics

Dave Wehner is leaving his role as Meta's chief strategy officer to become CFO of Fireworks, which was valued at $17.5 billion in July and reportedly discusses a round at $30 billion to $40 billion. Firmly, which lets retailers sell through AI assistants without new integrations, raised a $15 million Series A led by Squarepoint Capital with J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard and Samsung NEXT. New York based Innodata reported third quarter revenue of $95.6 million, up 53% year over year, and raised its 2026 revenue growth guidance to 42% or more. Fireworks CFO · Firmly · Innodata

Groq, now rebuilding as an inference cloud after Nvidia hired its founder, is seeking an $8 billion valuation in a Series B, more than double its August valuation. European AI companies raised $27.6 billion in the first nine months of 2026, 3.2 times a year earlier, with London taking 54%, Tracxn finds. Groq · European AI funding

Robotics

SoftBank and ABB are considering a separate ownership structure for the China business after Beijing blocked their deal, and ABB is also weighing another buyer for the business, which could be valued at $2 billion to $3 billion. Amazon formed the Personal Robotics Group, including staff from its Astro project, to develop a new home robot after buying Sprout humanoid maker Fauna Robotics in March. Chinese company PrimeBOT says it produced its 10,000th personal robot, 14 days after reaching 5,000 units, as it delivers Q1 and T1 robots for homes, retail and education. SoftBank and ABB · Amazon home robot · PrimeBOT

Data centers and compute

Residents of Indonesia's Batam and Malaysia's Johor are protesting data center development amid water shortages, which Batam officials attribute to drought, low rainfall and an electrical fault. Thousands marched against data centers in Dublin and Helsinki on Saturday, and the Stop Dirty Data Centres coalition called for a moratorium on construction, Bloomberg reports. CoreWeave chief executive Michael Intrator asked Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned on a statewide data center moratorium, to work together and wrote that he supports her principles. Batam water protests · Dublin and Helsinki protests · CoreWeave and Texas

The Lowy Institute finds the US leads China in AI capabilities and adoption with much greater computing power, while China leads in critical minerals, open model downloads and aggregator use. Lowy Institute

Policy

Officials at CAISSI, the Commerce Department division that tests AI model safety, were recently asked to informally report to a White House office, two former officials told AP. The Dutch cabinet approved an AI vision on 6 November and is weighing a national AI safety institute, and its only funding is €120 million set aside in September. CAISSI and the White House · Dutch AI vision

About 30 House of Lords members have shareholdings or advisory roles in AI and data center firms, including six peers with data center interests, the Sunday National found in the Register of Lords' Interests. Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter said in Sydney that AI's near term effect is more demand and inflation pressure, with limited evidence so far of higher overall productivity. House of Lords ties · Reserve Bank of Australia

Security

Apiiro found 2,539 developer secrets in public GitHub repositories because Claude Code's "don't ask again" option saved approved commands to a project settings file that got committed, and Anthropic's Boris Cherny says the team is looking at fixes. Cloudflare and Tools for Humanity published Trusted Agent Delegation, a framework that combines graduated user identification with reputation so websites can tell legitimate agent traffic from abuse. Weill Cornell says patient records from its imaging service were processed with AI tools without authorization for a radiology study between 10 and 20 June, and it has suspended the research. Claude Code secrets · Trusted Agent Delegation · Weill Cornell data

Japan will use a 10 billion yen package to share cyber threat information, deploy response teams, use AI to detect network weaknesses and support active cyber defense after data breaches. In Vals AI's new cyber range benchmark, GPT-6 Sol via OpenAI's Daybreak program led with 27 of 31 objectives on the harder range, and open weight DeepSeek V4.1 Flash came close at about a tenth of the cost. Tencent chief AI scientist Vinces Yao Shunyu said AI models will soon master biology, with risks such as bioweapons, and Tencent says its Hy4 model remains below its high risk threshold for biology. Japan cyber package · Vals cyber benchmark · Tencent on bio risk

Also

In the 530 patient PARAMOUNT trial presented at AHA 2026, care guided by Cleerly's AI plaque analysis beat stress test based usual care with a win ratio of 2.00, and the results are not yet peer reviewed. A homelabber ran the 2.8 trillion parameter Kimi K3 on old Optane memory without a GPU at 0.85 tokens per second with 1 bit quantization, using fans to cool the memory, Tom's Hardware reports. Cleerly trial · Kimi K3 at home

Full time employment of 20 to 24 year olds in the most AI exposed occupations fell 14% since 2022 while overall employment held, the ifo institute finds. NYU Langone's PREVIA tool flagged all 30 trauma patients who later developed PTSD from what they said in the emergency room, against 89% for a specialist clinician. ifo · PREVIA