FYI: We're now omitting links in @Techmeme tweets. Why? 1. Links limit reach (see embedded study) 2. The cost for posting links using X's API increased today by 1900%. Links may return later, but we're still exploring how we might accomplish that.

President Trump says he called Sundar Pichai to ask Google Maps to rename the Atlantic Ocean, though he would "probably pass" following Pichai's pushback (@victoria_craw / Washington Post) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Minneapolis-based Slingshot, which uses AI to help businesses offer embedded insurance, emerges from stealth with a $27M seed co-led by Rally and Skyward Group (@bayareawriter / Crunchbase News) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Apple is rolling out a new "Made for iPhone Duo" badge in the App Store, and touts Netflix, Prime Video, Zoom, Word, and Outlook as Duo-optimized apps at launch (@emroth08 / The Verge) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Sources: the Pentagon quietly establishes the Technology Support Office (TSO), an agency to execute covert sabotage, cyberattacks, and supply chain disruptions (Politico) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

1Password passes $500M in ARR, up from $400M in November 2025, driven by enterprise AI coding assistants and agents, and announces 1Password for Agents (@eschisgall / Wall Street Journal) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Ukraine says the abrupt throttling of US-funded Starshield grounded dozens of drones mid-flight, costing one unit $1M+, and halted some strikes for three days (New York Times) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Enact, which develops full-stack tech for general-purpose robots, emerges from stealth with a $30M pre-seed from Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch, Yann LeCun, and more (@joneddyreynolds / Tech․eu) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Sources: Visa is in late-stage talks to buy stablecoin custody and infrastructure provider Fireblocks for ~$2.5B, its first acquisition in the stablecoin sector (@shenlucinda / Axios) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Israeli security company Lava finds 32 Nvidia Blackwell Ultra B300 chips connected to systems linked to state-owned operator China Telecom, despite US controls (@qianerliu / The Information) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Xona, which plans to deploy a 258-satellite low-Earth orbit constellation as a commercial alternative to GPS, raised a $250M Series D at a $2.45B valuation (@mhunterhart / Forbes) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Filing: Meta reports ~$825B in total future commitments for leases and contracts, up from nearly $700B in July; off-balance-sheet leases total $355.7B to 2036 (@sarahfrier / Bloomberg) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Source: a16z plans to drop "crypto" from its flagship blockchain fund, rebranding it to "a16z frontier" and broadening its investment strategy beyond crypto (@leomschwartz / The Information) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Meta reports 18% YoY ad revenue growth in Europe for Q3, down from ~40% in Q1 and 24% in Q2, lagging the US and Canada, after rolling out Less Personalized Ads (Isabella Ward / Wired) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

At GTC Berlin, Jensen Huang says he urged UK-based neocloud Nscale to "work around the clock" to resolve data center delays amid investor doubts about its IPO (Bloomberg) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

How the AI boom is boosting paint maker PPG's sales: its specialized gray coatings serve critical functional needs and total $3M to $8M per data center, per JLL (@emmymrtin / New York Times) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Hugging Face releases Carbon-X, an open-source, 14B-parameter multimodal AI model to let users query DNA sequences via natural language, trained on 300B tokens (@emilylmullin / Wired) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Spotify reports Q3 revenue up 16% YoY to €4.97B, below €4.98B est., subscribers up 9% to 306M, MAUs up 11% to 788M, meeting est., and €672M operating income (@ashleyrcarman / Bloomberg) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Palantir says that neither the company nor the US government has a "kill switch" for its Maven platform that NATO uses, after Ukraine's Starlink disruptions (@andrew_r_gray / Reuters) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

A look at Huawei and DeepSeek's mutual reliance, where Huawei provides compute hardware while DeepSeek contributes model workloads and kernel optimization (SemiAnalysis) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)

Barclays plans to cut 5,000 jobs, or ~5% of its workforce, by the end of 2026 as part of AI-driven cost cutting, with ~60% coming from support and developers (@williamshaw546 / Bloomberg) (Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)