Tech Brew Ride Home - The Bloodbath In Crypto

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

What happened with Cloudflare this morning. Grok’s new model wants to be creative. Catching you up on the bloodbath in crypto if you were unaware. Databricks is 12 years old but it seems to be one of the big AI winners. And debt continues to pile in to the AI buildout. A massive Cloudflare outage brought down X, ChatGPT, and even Downdetector (The Verge) Grok 4.1 has arrived — and it's bringing the fight to ChatGPT with these new features (Tom's Guide) Crypto market sheds $1.2tn as traders shun speculative assets (Financial Times) Google boss says trillion-dollar AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality' (BBC) Amazon Raises $15 Billion in First US Bond Sale in Three Years (Bloomberg) Databricks in Talks to Raise Capital at a Valuation Above $130 Billion (The Information) Roblox will require age estimation to chat starting next year (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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GoogleFi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the TechBrewrite Home for Tuesday, November 18th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. What happened with Cloudflare this morning? GROC's new model wants to be creative, catching you up on the bloodbath and crypto, if you were unaware. Databricks is 12 years old, but it seems to be one of the big AI winners so far, and debt continues to pile into the AI buildout. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Conducting business online can feel a little scary these days, especially with AI creating new opportunities. for fraud. In fact, Salent estimates that AI was behind roughly 20% of the fraud perpetrated in 2024. Spotting bad agentic AI while allowing good agents to continue with their tasks isn't

easy. Thankfully, Momoto Continuous Captcha can spot malicious agents pretending to be people at the point of account creation or registration. Unlike past Captcha solutions, it runs behind the scenes with no puzzles for users. Full disclosure, I believe in Momoto's mission so much, I'm an investor through the Ride Home Fund. Mimoto is offering TechBrew Ride Home listeners early access with a special price for Mimodo Continuous Captcha right now. Our listeners can purchase a year of Mimodo Continuous Captcha for $5,000, a 20% discount on their lowest price plan. To learn more, head to mimoto.com. That's mimoto.com.aI slash ride home. As ever, I hope this is resolved by the time you hear this, but in case you want to know what

was happening this morning. Cloudflare at the time of this writing says, The issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented hours after a major outage impacted X, chat chTPT, and others starting at 1148 UTC, quoting the verge. Many sites displayed an error message saying, please unblock challenges.cloudflare.com to proceed on Cloudflare's status page. The most recent update from the company at 934 a.m. Eastern Time says, we've deployed a change which has restored dashboard services. We are still working to remediate broad application services impact. In a statement to the verge, Cloudflare spokesperson Jackie Dutton says the company noticed a spike in unusual traffic to one of its services starting

at 6.20 a.m. Eastern Time, causing some traffic passing through Cloudflare's network to experience errors. Dutton adds, we do not yet know the cause of the spike in unusual traffic. We are all hands on deck to make sure the traffic is served without errors. The company is also planning to investigate the cause of the unusual spike in traffic. Other online services, including Indeed, Grindr, Uber, Canva, Spotify, New Jersey Transit, League of Legends, and archive of our own experienced issues during the outage while digital outlets like Axios, the information, and Politico also went down. The Cloudflare outage comes less than a month after a huge Amazon Web Services crash, took down Fortnite, Alexa, Snapchat, and other services, which was followed by issues at Microsoft

Azure that brought Xbox offline for hours, end quote. XAI has unveiled GROC 4.1, saying its hallucination rate is three times less compared to its previous models. Also, GROC 4.1 thinking, which apparently holds the top spot on LM Arena's text arena, quoting Tom's guide. The new launch announced on XAI yesterday signals a shift in attitude aiming to turn GROC from a rebellious wildcard into a more reliable user-friendly companion. This isn't just a routine update either. It's a major move that seeks to redefine how GROC interacts with people, making it, quote, exceptionally capable and creative, emotional, and collaborative interactions. GROC 4.1 uses smarter learning methods to deliver smoother, more natural

conversations, prioritizing emotional intelligence, and more engaging dialogue. Behind the scenes, GROC 4.1 carried out a silent rollout between November 1st and 14th, allowing XAI to record user feedback. In blind tests, users picked GROC 4.1 over GROC 4.0, about 65% of the time, indicating a marked difference. XAI claims that GROC 4.1 leads in emotional intelligence intelligence, three test, emotional intelligence benchmark for AI models. According to the announcement, this means GROC 4.1 is best at understanding human emotions and responding with empathy, making conversations more comfortable and supportive. When it comes to creativity, GROC 4.1 also, quote, excels in creative writing V3, ranking among leading models for creative responses. These results show that GROC 4.1 not only delivers accurate and relevant information, but also stands out in imaginative text generation, offering thoughtful and

aging replies, whether the conversation is sensitive or creative in nature. XAI also claims that this update brings noticeable changes to GROC's thinking abilities, capable of handling more complicated tasks with greater efficiency. When tested on its versatility, cultural context, and linguistic precision, GROC scored number one on the LLM Arena test, suggesting that this could quickly become the go-to platform for creative writing. Most importantly, this update sees XAI try to follow in the footsteps of two of its biggest competitors, Anthropic with Claude, and OpenAI with ChatGPT. Both companies have recently seen

huge improvements in their personalities offering more human interactions. According to XAI, this is a big part of the change that has been put in place with GROC 4.1. AI companies seem to be moving to a more personable version of the AI chatbot experience. For some that will feel great, making interactions feel more emotional. For others, it might start to feel a bit fake or a put-on, end quote. If you're into crypto, you're definitely aware of this, but if you're only crypto adjacent, you should know that the total market value of more than 18,000 crypto coins, basically the entire crypto ecosystem, is down 25% in value since October 6th, thereby wiping out around $1.2 trillion in wealth. Bitcoin has fallen 28% to around 89,000 and a half.

Its lowest level since April, quoting the FT. Losses for traders in high-octane leveraged bets over the past month have accelerated the pace of the selling, analysts say. The sell-off is also being seen in equity markets. Despite all the institutional adoption and positive regulatory momentum, crypto market gains have now been wiped out on the year, said Brett Knoblock, a crypto analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. doubts about whether the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates when it meets in December have in recent weeks added to worries about the sky-high valuations attached to the Silicon

Valley tech companies at the forefront of the artificial intelligence investment boom. Lower interest rates polish the allure of crypto tokens and other risky assets because they reduce how much investors can earn from holding short-term U.S. government debt. Falling odds of a December cut by the Fed, which has lowered rates by half a percentage point so far this year, have also weighed on stocks. dragging the benchmark S&P 500 index down about 3.5% from a record closing high hit in October 28th. But it was President Trump who precipitated the worst day of the recent market wobble. On October 10th, the president's threat to impose, quote, massive tariffs on China

triggered the liquidation of $20 billion in leverage crypto positions, the largest single-day decline on record across exchanges monitored by trading platform Coinbase. Crypto investors love leverage, said Ryan Rasmussen, head of research at Bitwise Asset Management. What we see time and time again is that traders get out over their skis. They think this time is different, end quote. The size and speed of the declines across the crypto market on October 10th have left a lasting mark. Investors who had borrowed money to boost their returns, leaving them particularly exposed when prices fell, now solemnly refer to the sell-off as 10-10. What we are seeing now is, not a collapse in crypto markets, it is the extended aftershock of October's liquidation event,

said David Namdar, chief executive of CEA Industries, a vaping company that earlier this year began buying vast quantities of a token issued by Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. The scale of the sell-off is different this time because positions are larger, leverage ran deeper, and the unwind takes longer, Namdar added, the fundamentals have not changed, end quote. PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal, everything you need, to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer.

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Sooner Pichai said, while the growth of artificial intelligence investment has been an extraordinary moment, there was, quote, some irrationality in the current AI boom. Asked whether Google would be immune to the impact of the AI bubble bursting. Mr. Pichai said the tech giant could weather that potential storm, but issued a warning. I think no company is going to be immune, including us, he said. In comments echoing those made by U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 1996, warning of irrational exuberance in the market while ahead of the dot-com crash. Mr. Pichai said the industry can overshoot in investment cycles like this. We can look back at the internet right now.

There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound, he said. I expect AI to be the same, so I think it's both rational and there are elements of irrationality through a moment like this. AI will also affect work, as we know it, Mr. Pichai said, calling it the most profound technology humankind has worked on. We will have to work through societal disruptions, he said, adding that it would also create new opportunities. It will evolve and transition certain jobs and people will need to adapt, he said. Those who do adapt to AI will, quote, do better.

It doesn't matter whether you want to be a teacher or a doctor. All those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools, end quote. And debt continues to enter the AI bubble chat. Amazon has raised $15 billion in its first U.S. dollar bond offering in three years. Sources say the proceeds will be used for acquisitions, CAPEX, share buybacks, and more, quoting Bloomberg. The proceeds of the deal topped initial estimates by $3 billion. At its peak, the bond attracted about $80 billion in demand before orders were cut in half as borrowing costs fell during the sale process, said the people who asked not to be identified discussing private details. Monday's sale comes after Google Parent Alphabet earlier this month

sold $25 billion of debt in the U.S. and Europe. Meta Platforms issued $30 billion of corporate bonds last month, the biggest such offering of the year, while Oracle raised $18 billion through high-grade notes in September. The issuance spree from the tech companies has helped push global issuance to a record of more than $6 trillion this year. J.P. Morgan Chase and company expects the fresh wave of spending to finance investments in artificial intelligence to drive issuance in the U.S. high-grade grade market to a record $1.81 trillion next year. Amazon sold investment grade notes in six parts, the people said, pricing on the longest portion of the deal a 40-year bond, tightened to 0.85 percentage points above treasuries from 1.15 percentage point initially,

the people added. Amazon's capital expenditures are expected to top $147 billion next year, roughly three times the level seen as recently as 2023, according to the average of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. This is a, quote, opportune time for Amazon, which has so far relied primarily on its own cash flow to fund investments to incorporate debt into its capital structure to expand funding flexibility, J.P. Morgan wrote in a note last week. Amazon could also look to private credit markets to structure financing around its extensive data center footprint. J.P. Morgan added, citing the potential for sale leaseback or joint venture-style vehicles. The power capacity of Amazon's data center fleet has doubled since 2022, and Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has said he expects it to double again by 2027.

Earlier this month, the company's cloud unit signed a $38 billion deal to supply open AI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units as part of a seven-year. computing deal. Amazon last tapped the U.S. high-grade market in November 2022 when it raised $8.25 billion, end quote. Sources say Databricks is in talks to raise funds at a more than $130 billion valuation, up about 30 percent from September when it raised a $1 billion series K at a $100 billion valuation. Quoting the information, the possible capital raise reflects investor interests in companies providing cloud software to AI developers, and which are generating cash. Databricks hasn't signed a term sheet with any investment firm yet, one of the people said.

The 12-year-old company this year has been touting products that let customers use AI models to query and analyze their data and to build AI agents that automate white-collar tasks. The company, which has raised more than $15 billion, could use the money to do acquisitions and hire researchers and keep pace with Snowflake, a rival database provider, that sports an $86 billion market capitalization. Around the time, Databricks said it had raised $1 billion in funding at a valuation of more than $100 billion, Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramoswamy dismissed valuation comparisons with Databricks. He told his colleagues in an email that private valuations, quote, are negotiated behind closed doors,

often with terms that inflate the headline number. At the time, Databricks said its AI business recently passed $1 billion in annualized sales and was generating $4 billion in annualized sales overall in its July quarter, up 50% year-over-year, and had become free cash flow positive over the prior 12 months. Snowflake has roughly similar revenue, generating $1.1 billion in the July quarter, up 31% year-over year, but unlike Databricks, Snowflake also generates substantial cash from its operations. Databricks's business has been buoyed in part by OpenAI, a long-time customer. Databricks has been a longtime candidate for an initial public offering, although CEO Ali Goetzee has said he enjoys running the firm privately.

The company has regularly held employee share sales and has allowed its outside investors to sell some shares. It is nearing 10,000 employees, end quote. Finally today, a follow-up to something we've been tracking. Roblox is just throwing in the towel on the age thing. Well, at least short of banning younger users entirely, Roblox plans to require all users to undergo an age estimation process to access chat features starting in January of 2026. Quoting the verge. Roblox has come under significant scrutiny over child safety on the platform

with multiple states filing lawsuits this year against the company. The plan to require age estimation for chats is just one of several safety-related announcements the company has made in recent months. Beginning in the first week of December, Roblox will require users in some markets, including Australia, the Netherlands, and New Zealand to go through the age estimation process to be able to chat with others. In early January, the requirement will expand to other countries where you're able to use Roblox's chat. After going through the age estimation process, Roblox will assign users into groups like under 9, 9 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18 to 20, and 21 plus. Users will only be able to talk to users in their same group and similar age groups as appropriate.

Roblox VP Rajiv Batya said in a briefing, in its newsroom post, Roblox gives a couple examples of how these groups work and who they let people chat with. For example, Elisa, estimated age 12. Elisa has access to chat with users age 15 or younger in experience chat. All users 16 or older are prevented from initiating or engaging in chat with her. Marcus, estimated age 18. Marcus has access to chat with users aged 16 or older and could add a younger sibling as a trusted connection as long as they are 13 or older. The images and video used for Roblox's age verification checks are processed by persona.

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