Key points
- China blocks SoftBank's takeover of ABB Robotics' China business, putting the $5.4bn deal for the whole division in question.
- OpenAI's unreleased model finds 948 exploitable Linux kernel flaws in one run, with fixes, costing about $1.2m.
- 600,000 NVIDIA H200 chips are stuck in Hong Kong as Beijing withholds approvals, tripling eight-chip server prices past 6m yuan.
China blocks SoftBank's $5.4bn ABB Robotics takeover
Funding and deals
- Agility Robotics. Humanoid robot maker going public as the first US company of its kind, raising about $465m gross through a merger and a Foxconn-led financing.
- Zipline. Drone delivery company now valued at $21.5bn after a new financing, up from $7.6bn in January, with partner Walmart adding 300 drone locations.
- Viridian. Munich startup building the Microliner, a nine-seat electric aircraft, raised over €120m, €30m in venture capital and €94.5m from the EU innovation fund.
- Solid Labs. Berlin startup founded by Patrick Prokesch raised a seven-figure pre-seed led by Lucid Capital for its AI video advertising engine.
Guest interviews
- Felix Steffens, Co-founder and CEO of Workmotion. Lifted, a wholly owned Upwork subsidiary, is acquiring the Berlin employer-of-record provider Workmotion. Steffens tells Jan Thomas how the exit came about and why Workmotion continues as an independent brand.
News
- China blocks SoftBank's ABB Robotics deal. China's foreign investment security review authority barred SoftBank from buying ABB Robotics' China business, putting the $5.4bn purchase of the whole division in question. Leonard Menger calls it a setback for Masayoshi Son's physical AI strategy.
- OpenAI model finds 948 Linux flaws. An unreleased OpenAI model scanned the Linux kernel in one run and found 948 exploitable flaws, each with a suggested fix, at a cost of about $1.2m. Unpatched machines could be taken over with a simple user account.
- NVIDIA chips stuck in Hong Kong. Around 600,000 NVIDIA H200 chips sit in Hong Kong because Beijing is not approving imports at scale, though Washington allows sales to approved buyers. An eight-chip server cost over 6m yuan in late October, three times a year earlier.
- SpaceX promotes Starfall cargo capsule. SpaceX is promoting Starfall, a capsule that holds up to 1,000kg of cargo in orbit for weeks and returns it to Earth, making it a competitor to Vienna's Tumbleweed. Tumbleweed's CEO says rideshare slots have become scarcer and pricier.
- Apple cuts internal AI budgets. Apple cut some developers' daily AI spending limit from $300 to $200 in October, with non-engineering teams capped at $25, while research and development spending rose 32% in fiscal 2026. Microsoft and Tesla are also capping internal AI costs.
- Blocks hits €25m ARR in seven months. The Berlin startup, founded by Flink's Oliver Merkel and Andreas Schröder, reportedly reached €25m in annual recurring revenue after seven months, a figure from a LinkedIn post by Sepp Johnson. It cuts companies' cloud costs with AI agents.