Tech Brew Ride Home - Is Elon Musk Coming For Your Phone Plan?

Starting point is 00:00:04 Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Friday, October 9th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. Fired Open AI safety researchers disputed their dismissals and Open AI pushed back. The FT said Open AI's annualized revenue was nearer $50 billion than $70 billion, rattling AI stocks. SpaceX bought Spectrum to take on carriers and Apple lines up a second October event. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. now you can make your voice heard too. Vanguard investor choice makes it easy to set your proxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds, whether you hold a Vanguard fund directly

Starting point is 00:00:49 or through another brokerage firm. All it takes is a few clicks to select your proxy voting preference and be heard on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections. Visit vanguard.com slash investor choice to learn more. It's your shares, it's your voice. It's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of our index funds and those funds own shares of the company. companies they invest in Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. So remember this whole saga? AI researcher McKita Belsny says he believes OpenAI fired himself, Tomek Kourbach, and Jasmine Wang for, quote, prioritizing safety over the near-term interests of Open AI.

Starting point is 00:01:30 Quoting in Gadget, three Open AI safety researchers have posted an open letter to OpenAI disputing their dismissals. Jasmine Wang, Makita Belseney and Tomek Korbach wrote that the The very public manner of the company's communications around the firings could have a chilling effect on employees at a time when the world's safety depends on them. Last week, OpenAI dismissed three employees who allegedly shared information with an external AI safety organization. The company said in a statement that the employees violated our policies on accessing and handling sensitive company information, breaking the trust essential to our work. In the face of recent serious and potentially illegal OpenAI agent hacks of Hugging Face and other organizations, though, The firing of safety employees raised awkward questions and caught the attention of lawmakers.

Starting point is 00:02:16 We have become concerned that internal and external communications around our firing have made our former colleagues afraid to speak and operate in ways that until last week were an integral part of working at OpenAI. The joint letter from the dismissed employee states, we could raise safety concerns and disagree openly before and were encouraged to draw on the expertise of independent safety organizations. This is part of what made Open AI special and why we are immensely proud to have been part of the team. The researchers stated that they acted in line with OpenAI's mission and within the working norms of the time and that the firing leaves us worried that the norms inside OpenAI are shifting and that employees are now unclear on where they stand.

Starting point is 00:02:55 Addressing other rumors, Wang, Belseney, and Corbac also said they were not the leak source for the information article involving Open AI's new less-monetrable architectures and don't believe they engaged with external parties outside their mandate. They added that communication with external parties was done in coordination and discussion with board members and the C-suite and that Wang notified an executive when she accidentally clicked on a sensitive email. In parting, the former employees made several recommendations to OpenAI. They said that the company should adhere to its public commitments to embed third-party safety auditors and not use their firing as a, quote, pretext for stepping away from those partnerships. They added that OpenAI must preserve the monitorability of Frontier. and maintain an open and transparent culture of dialogue between its safety researchers and

Starting point is 00:03:45 the rest of the safety ecosystem, end quote. Now, for its part, Open AI says, no, no, no, that is not what happened, quoting the verge. Open AI is standing firm on its decision to fire three safety researchers after an investigation found they committed a significant breach of trust and a post on X on Friday. The company said, the three were dismissed for violating clear policies on handling sensitive information. It insisted the decision was not about the trio speaking out about the company and their concerns about AI safety. The post is a direct response to an open letter. The researchers published on Thursday urging Open AI to become more transparent about the decision. In it at a series of

Starting point is 00:04:25 social media posts, the group said they believed they were fired for raising safety concerns and had acted in line with Open AI's mission and working within the norms of the time. Open AI said an internal investigation uncovered breaches, quote, beyond what's outlined in the letter, but did not provide details, end quote. Apple has announced a welcome home event to be held on October 13th at 9 a.m. Eastern Time in New York City, where it is expected to unveil a home pad, a new Apple TV, LG home accessories, and more. But also, quoting Mark German, there could be more this month, quoting Bloomberg.

Starting point is 00:05:06 Apple is planning a second launch in October to introduce its first touchscreen MacBook and a new iPad mini. The product launch is scheduled on or around Tuesday, October 27th, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The end-of-month announcements will also include versions of the 14-inch MacBook Pro and iMac with M6 chips, said the people who ask not to be identified because the plans aren't yet public. Like its smart home event on October 13th, the next launch will include an online video

Starting point is 00:05:35 presentation and in-person component for the press. The Mac and iPad debut will be geared toward creative professionals who work in video production, photo editing, and music production. Apple last held such a showcase around new products in Los Angeles in 2024. The Mac and iPad event will mark Apple's long-awaited move into touch-based computers. The new MacBook Pros codenamed K-114 and K-116 will be lighter than current models and offer OLED screens, a sharper display technology that's short for organic light emitting diode. The devices will also have the dynamic island on-screen interface that's familiar to iPhone users, Bloomberg News first reported on the project in 2023.

Starting point is 00:06:19 The new M6 Max codename J804 and J833 will look like their current versions, while the new iPad Mini codenamed J510 will also include an OLED screen, a video conferencing camera that moves to the landscape side and a revamped speaker system. The company is planning several other new Macs and iPads for the first half of next year, Bloomberg has reported, end quote. Anthropic has launched something called OSS scanner, which provides free opt-in security audits for open source projects by sending AI generated reports without human review, quoting and gadget. Anthropic is offering open source projects a new way to check for vulnerabilities with its OSS scanner.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Projects that join will receive thorough, periodic security scans by our strongest models at no cost, the company announced. As they've shown recently, AI models are excellent at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities. The new scanner could give open source coders early alerts about potential security issues for free, albeit with the tradeoff that reports won't be reviewed by humans. The outputs of this opt-in vulnerability scanner will be fully model-generated. without human review or triage. Anthropic explained. This will enable faster and more frequent scanning, but means that it is possible reports will be incorrect or invalid. These reports will be generated by our strongest models, including Claude Mythos, to give open source projects the largest defensive

Starting point is 00:07:50 advantage. As Anthropic mentions, it was inspired by OSS-F, open-source software scanner, created by Google and OpenSSSSF, OpenSource Security Foundation, that has been available since 2016. Anthropic already has a paid product called Claude Security that can perform general access code scanning and patching, but OSS scanner performs similar security audits at no cost. Google and Anthropic aren't necessarily providing these products out of altruism. Both companies rely heavily on open source code projects that underpin the internet, often run by unpaid workers. Security vulnerabilities in such code are highly dangerous, with a recent example of that being the XZ Util's backdoor that could have handed hackers, administrative control over millions of systems around the world, end quote. Teams that struggle to scale aren't falling behind because they're lacking headcount or budget.

Starting point is 00:08:50 It's because critical knowledge isn't documented. That's what today's sponsor, Scribe, was built to fix. When specialists or experts leave your team, their knowledge disappears too. That's where Scribe comes in. Scribe is a specialized intelligence platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500. It captures workflows in real time and automatically general. generates the documentation for how your company works with no manual writing. It automatically redacts sensitive information like names and account numbers from screenshots. Plus, your team can launch

Starting point is 00:09:17 real-time on-screen guidance showing exactly where to click step-by-step inside the actual tool. And these captured workflows give your AI agents real context so they can operate on how work actually happens, not guesses. Learn more at Scribe.com.com. And mention TechBrew Ride Home for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans. That's S-C-R-I-B-E-D-HOWS slash Ride Home. If you're still basing your pricing on seats, it's time to rethink how you determine pricing because of L-L-M and inference costs. The cost of serving a customer now depends on how much they use your product, not just how many people use it. And your product teams are shipping new features, models, and AI agents that a PACE legacy billing systems weren't designed for.

Starting point is 00:10:08 Charge B can help. They provide metering, billing, and monetization infrastructure to support both seat-based and usage-based pricing models. So your engineering team doesn't have to build and maintain the whole thing from scratch every single time you ship a product, feature, or agent. Chat with an expert about pricing and monetization at chargeb.com slash ride home. That's C-H-A-R-G-E-B-E-E-E-D-E-E-E-D-O-E-E-E-E-LAS. Nvidia, Oracle, Corweave, and other AI stocks all fell yesterday after a report that OpenAI's annualized revenue at September's end was $20 billion less than previously reported. The report in question came from the FT, quote, Open AI's annualized revenue is about $20 billion less than the company had signaled, according to financial documents shared with investors, a massive gap likely to damp optimism about the growth of AI demand.

Starting point is 00:11:01 The company has recently told investors its revenues were approaching $50 billion on an annualized basis at the end of September, far short of the $70 billion reported by the FT and other media outlets late last month based on information that was provided to investors. The metric, along with the equivalent figure for Open AI's rival Anthropic, is the most important indicator of overall demand for AI and underpins vast infrastructure spending and the growth of public equity markets. U.S. tech stocks fell sharply following the FTs report on Thursday, extending losses from earlier in the session with the NASDAQ-100 closing down 1.4%. Chipmaker, Nvidia, fell 2.9%, Oracle dropped 5.5%, and Micron declined 4.8%. The discrepancy arose from attempts by opening eyes investors to produce a direct comparison with Anthropics' annualized revenues, said a person familiar with the matter. The pair calculate the figure in different ways, with Anthropic including the revenue from sales via cloud partners such as Amazon's AWS and Google Cloud, while OpenAI does not. Investor's efforts to gross up. OpenAIs annualized revenue prompted reports that the figure was about $40 billion in July, said the person. The company later told its backers that its annualized revenues had jumped more than 70% since July prompting reports that the figure was about $70 billion at the end of September, a number the company did not deny.

Starting point is 00:12:26 However, the new investor presentation shows close to $30 billion annualized revenues in July. The $50 billion in annualized revenues reported in September still points to a rapid rate of expansion for the AI company since the summer, but the gap against investors' expectations will exacerbate concerns over the trajectory of large private AI companies whose prospects are central to the U.S. stock market and have helped fuel strong growth in the U.S. economy, end quote. Speaking of stocks falling, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon shares each fell more than 6% after hours. After further signs, Elon Musk is serious about becoming a major mobile carrier in the U.S. Quoting Bloomberg, SpaceX is closing in on a crucial swath of spectrum needed to turn Elon Musk's rocket satellite and AI company into a major mobile carrier, setting the stage for a clash with stalwarts like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T, and T-N-T&T, The new spectrum, which SpaceX is acquiring from Investment Furn Grain Management LLC,

Starting point is 00:13:34 allows the company to beam cell service to devices indoors from its Starlink network of over 10,000 satellites. Once the company receives approval from the Federal Communications Commission, it will combine its satellite to cell services with a terrestrial network that can connect devices everywhere. But building a nationwide service on part with the largest telecom providers will require much more, including launching more satellites, developing the company's Starship Rocket and building out land-based infrastructure to complement its space-based service. That process could take years and massive investments from the company. In a post on X on Thursday, Musk said that the low-band spectrum is the last critical piece of the spectrum puzzle needed for SpaceX to provide complete phone coverage in America.

Starting point is 00:14:18 Shares of major telecom providers like AT&T plunged as much as 8% after SpaceX's announcement. SpaceX's satellite internet business already beamed data directly to mobile phones, providing cell service in dead zones for existing ground-based networks. The company currently doesn't have any terrestrial infrastructure of its own to pair with its satellite network. Constructing and operating nationwide networks requires billions of dollars in physical infrastructure, along with scarce government-regulated airwaves. To speed up that process, SpaceX could partner with one of the large telecom companies today to adopt their terrestrial infrastructure. Last year, Musk said that he hadn't ruled out acquiring a telecom operator completely to support Starlink Mobile's efforts.

Starting point is 00:15:01 This spectrum acquisition is a doubling down on their commitment or threatened commitment to go it alone in the absence of finding a carrier that's willing to work with them, said David Barden, an analyst at New Street Research. It is conclusive evidence that they intend to leverage their balance sheet and their largest to wage maximum leverage warfare on the incumbent carriers, end quote. That was fast. Jev developer TypeSafe AI has raised around $870 million led by A16Z at a 7.5 billion dollar valuation with Sequoia and others participating. Quoting Bloomberg. The deal came together just weeks after the Jev launch video went viral, which TypeSafe co-founder Diego Almeida said led to a surge of interest in the company from other chief executives, developers, investors. Jev is now used by about a third of Fortune 500 companies, according to the startup, which declined to disclose any names. The models surpassed 1 million users in a matter of days,

Starting point is 00:16:04 it said. Jev, which was created by researchers from OpenAI, meta, and Alphabet to Google, is the startup's first public AI model for developers. Unlike models from the likes of OpenA.I. and Anthropic, Jev doesn't chat, write emails, or generate code. Instead, the model plugs into software to make decisions, and because it doesn't generate text token by token, it can perform tasks more cheaply and quickly than large language models, according to the company. TypeSafe has been a years-long work in progress, Almeida said in an interview. The chief executive officer who started the company in 2024 said, he's watched AI players over-promise and under-deliver for years.

Starting point is 00:16:40 The company aims to make a difference in AI trust by providing a reliable and affordable option with Jev and updates that are planned in the next several months, he said. Many current AI models have fractured jaggedness of intelligence, Al-Miedaida said, If you get Einstein 95% of the time, but Mr. Bean, the other 5% of the time, that is completely useless for automation. TypeSafe, which now has a skeleton crew of just over 20 staffers plans to use its new capital to help scale up the development of its products, hire more staff, and secure more computing capacity. The startup said it now processes trillions of tokens every day, end quote. It was less than a month ago. That TypeSafe announced its $40 million seed round at a two

Starting point is 00:17:24 million dollar valuation. So from 200 million to 7.5 billion in less than 30 days. Finally today, you can't be mean to Claude anymore. Anthropic has updated its usage policy to ban sustained and needless, abusive, or cruel behavior toward Claude. Ending chats is the primary enforcement mechanism, if you're being a meany. Quoting The Verge. Last August, the company announced it would allow Claude to end conversations with persistently harmful or abusive users as part of its research into model welfare. The new update says that terminating conversations is still the, quote, primary enforcement mechanism. Anthropic did not provide a comment on whether there would be further enforcement mechanisms, such as potential user bans. Anthropic wrote that the new policy update is meant to apply only in extreme cases where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models with no discernible purpose.

Starting point is 00:18:26 It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback, dark, creative themes, or model testing and research. Beyond the model welfare change, Anthropic has also gathered several scattered existing restrictions into a new ban on deceptive commercial or political campaigns, addressing the growing issue of AI-generated propaganda. It restricts efforts to obscure who is behind a message or amplify content through fake accounts or posts. Its election section also prohibits voter deception and election disruption, including spreading misinformation about candidates or how to vote impersonating candidates or election officials are trying to suppress turnout, Anthropic wrote. Anthropic also added a new rule that when Anthropics' AI models are connected to hardware that takes autonomous physical actions and which might be capable of

Starting point is 00:19:12 causing injury, then a qualified operator must be able to observe the equipment and stop it if needed. It's not clear if that operator must be human or not. This reflects the growing trend of AI labs investing in robotics and other hardware to give AI systems physical embodiments and may offer hints at Anthropics' future partnerships in that field. Over the past year, Anthropic has repeatedly flirted with the idea that its AI models could be conscious in some way. Questions about potential internal experience, consciousness, moral status, and welfare are serious ones that were investigating as models become more sophisticated and capable. Kyle Fish, who leads the company's model welfare research told the verge in February that same month. Anthropic CEO Dario Amadai said on a

Starting point is 00:19:56 podcast, we don't know if the models are conscious, end quote. I'm sorry, I just now realize that it is Friday. So, final link on the show notes is to not a long read exactly, but how somebody used AI to reverse engineer Adobe's entire software suite and open source to clone. of it. It's called Software is Over if you want to read what this is about. And frankly, it makes a good case for software being over. So not a long read, but more a weekend project to see if this project is actually any good. Also, I know I promised you some weekend content this weekend, but I need one more week for that to bake. So talk to you on Monday.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Is Elon Musk Coming For Your Phone Plan?

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