Tech Brew Ride Home

Trump said the FBI was looking into Jensen Huang’s affair, and Nvidia’s stock sank 4.3%. Uber launched in-app parking in 15 cities. Anthropic released Mythos and Fable 5.2, which it says formalized Fermat’s Last Theorem and solved black hole problems.

rump says the FBI is “looking into” Jensen Huang’s affair, and the Nvidia CEO told him that he “had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy” (AP)

A Commerce Department probe into Megaspeed for allegedly smuggling Nvidia chips to China was handed to the DOJ after Nvidia’s general counsel emailed investigators and invoked the name of a top Commerce official (NYT)

Sources: Jensen Huang has used Heller, a crisis PR firm known for handling sex scandals, since at least October 2025, well before his affair became public (Wired)

Huang’s fate now rests with a weak, long-tenured Nvidia board with no successor in sight and a CEO with 50+ direct reports, raising a governance crisis (Semafor)

Uber launches Uber Parking, an in-app parking reservation tool powered by its SpotHero acquisition, in 15 US cities, including Chicago, NYC, and San Francisco (The Verge)

Anthropic releases Mythos 5.2 and Fable 5.2, saying they are “best for the most ambitious, open-ended technical work”, with outputs up to 30% faster than 5.1 (Anthropic)

Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 post new benchmark highs while API prices drop 20% to $8 per million input tokens and $40 per million output; Mythos stays reserved for vetted Project Glasswing users (VentureBeat)

Anthropic says during prerelease testing Mythos 5.2 and Fable 5.2 formalized the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem and solved two open black hole physics problems (The Verge)

About 1,000 Fable 5.2 agents turned the Fermat proof into a computer-verifiable one in 30 hours and coded a working OS in eight days, though the black hole papers haven’t been peer reviewed (Gizmodo)

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Jensen Huang’s scandal blew up: Nvidia’s board opened a probe after he admitted an affair with an alleged Chinese spy, Rubio’s memo surfaced, and shell firms got H200 approvals. Also, I covered Apple’s John Ternus pushing Siri toward agents.

Sources: US officials believe Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, who they allege was recruited to spy for China’s top spy agency, MSS (Financial Times)

Nvidia’s board launched a probe into whether Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign spy plot, after he admitted to the board he’d been intimate with an executive US intelligence determined to be a Chinese spy; Huang apologized and will keep leading Nvidia during the inquiry (The New York Times)

Jensen Huang’s scandal poses a rare crisis in US corporate history, given the national security stakes, his centrality to Nvidia, and its role in the AI race (Semafor)

Sources: John Ternus wants more urgency in Apple’s AI efforts, pushing Craig Federighi to move beyond Siri AI tweaks to agentic and other advanced capabilities (Bloomberg)

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Investors grew skeptical Anthropic’s IPO could land a $1.5T valuation after a brutal chip selloff. Thinking Machines unveiled Inkling 2 Small, Tesla announced it would wind down the Cybertruck, and Anthropic launched Personal Finance in Claude. Plus, Microsoft’s buyouts.

Sources: major investors are increasingly skeptical Anthropic’s IPO can proceed at a $1.5T valuation after a market selloff; one says it could be closer to $1T (WSJ)

The Nasdaq 100 fell 6% on Thursday, losing a record $2.3T in value, as the Philadelphia chip index fell 12% and vol control funds were expected to sell about $135B of US equity futures (Bloomberg)

Thinking Machines Lab debuts Inkling 2 Small, a MoE model with 594B total and 17B active parameters, and plans to release weights next week after safety testing (Thinking Machines)

Inkling 2 Small scored 31 on Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index, an 18-point jump, but used roughly four times as many output tokens per task; Thinking Machines is reportedly nearing a $5B round led by Accel (TechStrong.ai)

Elon Musk says Tesla plans to wind down production of the Cybertruck at its Texas Gigafactory around mid-2027 “to make room for increased Cybercab production” (Financial Times)

Anthropic launches Personal Finance in Claude, letting users connect bank and credit card accounts via Plaid with read-only access to analyze spending trends (ZDNet)

Longreads

How employees at Microsoft, long known for its stability in the tech industry, are grappling with its decision to offer buyouts to 60,000 people as AI spending grows (The New York Times)

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OpenAI pledged to rethink data center deals, dropping NDAs, after the blue wave rattled AI. Motorola launched a $1,599 flagship, OpenAI released GPT-6 Cyber, and Apple’s touchscreen MacBook Pro reviews said the screen’s gorgeous, but you don’t have to touch it.

OpenAI pledges to change how it handles data center deals, including avoiding NDAs and lowering power usage during peak times, after Democrats’ midterm wins (Bloomberg)

AI’s biggest names watched Figaro at the San Francisco Opera on election night as results turned against the data center build-out; OpenAI leaders weighed resetting next year’s capacity expectations, CoreWeave fell nearly 10%, and Brad Gerstner says 25% to 35% of next year’s US build-out could be at risk (WSJ)

Motorola launches the $1,599+ Signature 27, featuring a Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset, a 6.8-inch Tandem OLED display, and seven years of OS updates (9to5Google)

Motorola’s Signature 27 is its first all-out slab flagship, matching the Galaxy S26 Ultra at $1,599 with 512GB and 12GB of RAM and adding GrapheneOS support, but it lacks built-in Qi2 magnets and $1,600 is a steep hill to climb (The Verge)

OpenAI launches GPT-6 Cyber, which it says outperforms GPT-6 Astra on cyber benchmarks, is better at finding vulnerabilities, and is less likely to go rogue (The Verge)

MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display review: gorgeous screen, touch is useful, strong performance and speakers, and a Dynamic Island, but pricey and no Face ID (Tom’s Hardware)

The Verge gives the PROLED MacBook Pro a 9 out of 10: touch is nearly unusable as a touch-first experience, with no onscreen keyboard and no Apple Pencil support, so it’s a laptop that happens to have a touchscreen, but it’s the one to get if you’re coming from an M1-era Mac (The Verge)

The PROLED display is the best you can buy, but touch adds little and there’s no Apple Pencil support; the $400-cheaper M5 Max MacBook Pro performs identically, and the OLED premium may become the only option with the M6 Max (PetaPixel)

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