Ferrari is tapping into crypto markets and tech-rich youngsters with a planned new digital token that its wealthiest fans will be able to use in an auction for a Ferrari 499P, the endurance car that won three straight Le Mans titles. From a report: The plan for now is limited in scope and is an effort by the Italian sports car maker to tap into a trend among luxury brands seeking access to the growing wealth of younger tech entrepreneurs, as AI and data centres drive investment and markets around the world.

It comes after Ferrari, which is also developing its first electric car, began accepting Bitcoin, ethereum and USDC for car purchases in the United States in 2023 and extended the service to Europe last year. Ferrari is working with Italian fintech Conio to launch the 'Token Ferrari 499P' for members of its Hyperclub -- which groups 100 of its most exclusive clients, with a passion for endurance races -- to trade amongst themselves and bid on the racing model.

IBM will cut thousands of roles this quarter while it continues to shift focus to higher-growth software and services, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. From a report: "We routinely review our workforce through this lens and at times rebalance accordingly," Bloomberg quoted a company spokesperson saying. "In the fourth quarter we are executing an action that will impact a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce."

Amazon has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity AI demanding that the AI search startup stop allowing its AI browser agent, Comet, to make purchases online for users. From a report: The e-commerce giant is accusing Perplexity of committing computer fraud by failing to disclose when its AI agent is shopping on a user's behalf, in violation of Amazon's terms of service, according to people familiar with the letter sent on Friday. The document also said Perplexity's tool degraded the Amazon shopping experience and introduced privacy vulnerabilities, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

In response, Perplexity said Amazon is bullying a smaller competitor with a rival AI agent shopping product. The clash between Amazon and Perplexity offers an early glimpse into a looming debate over how to handle the proliferation of so-called AI agents that field more complex tasks online for users, including shopping. Like OpenAI and Alphabet's Google, Perplexity has pushed to rethink the traditional web browser around AI, with the goal of having it streamline more actions for users, such as drafting emails and conducting research.

A long-simmering battle over who controls credit scoring in America has erupted into open warfare. Fair Isaac, whose FICO score is used in about 90% of consumer-lending decisions in the U.S., announced it will double the price of its mortgage credit score to $10 next year. The company also said it will bypass the three credit-reporting firms that have supplied the data feeding into its algorithm for decades.

Equifax, Experian and TransUnion created VantageScore in 2006 as an alternative to FICO and collectively own the scoring system. The move came months after Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would allow lenders to use VantageScore for mortgage approvals. The three credit-reporting firms responded by offering VantageScore free for many loans. Fair Isaac had charged a few cents per score for decades before chief executive Will Lansing began raising prices several years ago. Revenue from selling credit scores reached $920 million in fiscal 2024, nearly five times what it was a decade earlier.

TechCrunch reports: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing "well more" than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments.

His comments came up during a joint interview on the Bg2 podcast between Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the partnership between their companies. Host Brad Gerstner (who's also founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital) brought upreports that OpenAI is currently bringing in around $13 billion in revenue — a sizable amount, but one that's dwarfed by more than $1 trillion in spending commitments for computing infrastructure that OpenAI has made for the next decade.

"First of all, we're doing well more revenue than that. Second of all, Brad, if you want to sell your shares, I'll find you a buyer," Altman said, prompting laughs from Nadella. "I just — enough. I think there are a lot of people who would love to buy OpenAI shares."
Altman's answer continued, making the case for OpenAI's business model. "We do plan for revenue to grow steeply. Revenue is growing steeply. We are taking a forward bet that it's going to continue to grow and that not only will ChatGPT keep growing, but we will be able to become one of the important AI clouds, that our consumer device business will be a significant and important thing. That AI that can automate science will create huge value...

"We carefully plan, we understand where the technology — where the capability — is going to go, and the products we can build around that and the revenue we can generate. We might screw it up — like, this is the bet that we're making, and we're taking a risk along with that." (That bet-with-risks seems to be the $1.4 trillion in spending commitments — but Altman suggests it's offset by another absolutely certain risk: "If we don't have the compute, we will not be able to generate the revenue or make the models at this kind of scale.")

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, added his own defense, "as both a partner and an investor. There has not been a single business plan that I've seen from OpenAI that they have put in and not beaten it. So in some sense, this is the one place where in terms of their growth — and just even the business — it's been unbelievable execution, quite frankly..."

OpenAI "hasn't yet turned a profit," notes Wall Street Journal business columnist Tim Higgins. "Its annual revenue is 2% of Amazon.com's sales.

"Its future is uncertain beyond the hope of ushering in a godlike artificial intelligence that might help cure cancer and transform work and life as we know it. Still, it is brimming with hope and excitement.

"But what if OpenAI fails?" There's real concern that through many complicated and murky tech deals aimed at bolstering OpenAI's finances, the startup has become too big to fail. Or, put another way, if the hype and hope around Chief Executive Sam Altman's vision of the AI future fails to materialize, it could create systemic risk to the part of the U.S. economy likely keeping us out of recession.

That's rarefied air, especially for a startup. Few worried about what would happen if Pets.com failed in the dot-com boom. We saw in 2008-09 with the bank rescues and the Chrysler and General Motors bailouts what happens in the U.S. when certain companies become too big to fail...

[A]fter a lengthy effort to reorganize itself, OpenAI announced moves that will allow it to have a simpler corporate structure. This will help it to raise money from private investors and, presumably, become a publicly traded company one day. Already, some are talking about how OpenAI might be the first trillion-dollar initial public offering... Nobody is saying OpenAI is dabbling in anything like liar loans or subprime mortgages. But the startup is engaging in complex deals with the key tech-industry pillars, the sorts of companies making the guts of the AI computing revolution, such as chips and Ethernet cables. Those companies, including Nvidia and Oracle, are partnering with OpenAI, which in turn is committing to make big purchases in coming years as part of its growth ambitions.

Supporters would argue it is just savvy dealmaking. A company like Nvidia, for example, is putting money into a market-making startup while OpenAI is using the lofty value of its private equity to acquire physical assets... They're rooting for OpenAI as a once-in-a-generational chance to unseat the winners of the last tech cycles. After all, for some, OpenAI is the next Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla wrapped up in one. It is akin to a company with limitless potential to disrupt the smartphone market, create its own social-media network, replace the search engine, usher in a robot future and reshape nearly every business and industry.... To others, however, OpenAI is something akin to tulip mania, the harbinger of the Great Depression, or the next dot-com bubble. Or worse, they see, a jobs killer and mad scientist intent on making Frankenstein.

But that's counting on OpenAI's success.

San Francisco's local newscast ABC7 runs a consumer advocacy segment called "7 on Your Side". They received a disturbing call for help from Dave Dornlas, treasurer of a nonprofit supporting a local library: GoFundMe has taken upon itself to create "nonprofit pages" for 1.4 million 501C-3 organizations using public IRS data along with information from trusted partners like the PayPal Giving Fund. "The fact that they would just on their own build pages for nonprofits that they've never spoken to is a problem," [Dornlas] said. "I'm a believer in opt-in, not opt-out...." Dornlas says he struggled to find anyone to contact from GoFundMe about this... Dave's other frustration is tied to the company's optional tipping feature on the platform. "GoFundMe also solicits a tip of 14.5%. In other words, 'We're doing this and we're great people. Give us 14.5% to do this' — which doesn't have to happen," Dornlas said. "That's what bothers me." When 7 On Your Side checked, the optional tip was actually set for 16.5%. The consumer is required to move the bar to adjust accordingly... The tip would be in addition to the 2.2% transaction fee GoFundMe charges nonprofits, plus $0.30 per donation. That fee goes up to 2.9% for individual fundraisers.

Now both GoFundMe pages of Dornlas's nonprofits have been removed from the site. Any organization can do so, by clicking "unpublish" on the platform.
But GoFundMe's move drew strong criticism from the Center for Nonprofit Excellence (a Kentucky-based membership organization with over 500 members). GoFundMe's move, they say, creates "confusion for donors and supporters who are unsure of the legitimacy of the fundraising pages. In some cases, GoFundMe included incorrect information, outdated logos, and other inaccuracies that compromise and misrepresent nonprofits' brand, mission, strategy, and message."

And GoFundMe's processing fees and tips "ultimately result in fewer resources for nonprofits than if donors contributed directly through the organization." But there's more... GoFundMe has initiated SEO optimization as the default for the donation pages to improve their visibility when individuals search forinformation about nonprofits online. This could result in GoFundMe'spages ranking higher than the nonprofit's own website, pulling away potential donors and supporters...

Without adequate safeguards in place, nonprofits report serious issues, ranging from unauthorized individuals claiming donations and the inability to remove pages without first agreeing to GoFundMe's terms and conditions or sharing sensitive banking information.
The Center for Nonprofit Excellence has now joined with the National Council of Nonprofits — America's largest network of nonprofits, with over 25,000 members — to officially urge GoFundMe to immediately rectify the situation.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Arrogant-Bastard for sharing the article.

Disney's channels, including ESPN, ABC, FX, and NatGeo, have gone dark on YouTube TV after Google and Disney failed to renew their carriage agreement before the October 30 deadline, with each side blaming the other for using unfair negotiating tactics and price hikes. YouTube TV says it will issue a $20 credit to subscribers if the blackout continues while negotiations proceed. Engadget reports: "Last week Disney used the threat of a blackout on YouTube TV as a negotiating tactic to force deal terms that would raise prices on our customers," YouTube said in an announcement on its blog. "They're now following through on that threat, suspending their content on YouTube TV." YouTube added that Disney's decision harms its subscribers while benefiting its own live TV products, such as Hulu+Live TV and Fubo.

In a statement sent to the Los Angeles Times, however, Disney accused Google's YouTube TV of choosing to deny "subscribers the content they value most by refusing to pay fair rates for [its] channels, including ESPN and ABC." Disney also accused Google of using its market dominance to "eliminate competition and undercut the industry-standard terms" that other pay-TV distributors have agreed to pay for its content.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Coinbase's quarterly earnings call wrapped up Thursday, its chief executive, Brian Armstrong, didn't finish with profit guidance or statements of confidence. He closed it out with a list: "Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking and Web3." Those weren't random buzzwords. They were part of an $84,000 betting market [non-paywalled source].

Across prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, users had wagered on which words would be spoken during the call -- part of a niche category known as mention markets, where the outcome isn't tied to earnings, price moves or sports games, but to what people say in some public forum. With the final analyst question complete, several terms listed in contracts were still unsaid. Armstrong ticked them off one by one.

"I was a little distracted because I was tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call," he said in his parting remarks. "I just want to add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, and Web3 -- to make sure we get those in before the end of the call." The exchange's CEO had just moved a market -- even if only a small one.

Mention markets are one of the more curious byproducts of the broader prediction market boom, but also one of the more controversial. Platforms like Kalshi, which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Polymarket, which is in the process of returning to the US market, let users wager on the outcomes of real-world events. That can mean elections, policy decisions, or sports -- but also, increasingly, corporate rituals and even common jargon.

Snowflake filed an 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week after its chief revenue officer gave financial projections in a TikTok video. Mike Gannon told an influencer outside the New York Stock Exchange that the data-storage company would exit the year with just over $4.5 billion in revenue and reach $10 billion in a couple of years.

The filing stated that Gannon is not authorized to disclose financial information on behalf of the company and that investors should not rely on his statements. Snowflake reaffirmed its August guidance of $.395 billion for fiscal year 2026. The video appeared on an account called theschoolofhardknockz and drew more than 555,000 views on TikTok. Gannon told the interviewer he watches the videos all the time.

ArsTechnica: When graphic design platform-provider Canva bought the Affinity image-editing and publishing apps early last year, we had some major questions about how the companies' priorities and products would mesh. How would Canva serve the users who preferred Affinity's perpetually licensed apps to Adobe's subscription-only software suite? And how would Affinity's strong stance against generative AI be reconciled with Canva's embrace of those technologies.

This week, Canva gave us definitive answers to all of those questions: a brand-new unified Affinity app that melds the Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps into a single piece of software called "Affinity by Canva" that is free to use with a Canva user account, but which gates generative AI features behind Canva's existing paid subscription plans ($120 a year for individuals).

This does seem like mostly good news, in the near to mid term, for existing Affinity app users who admired Affinity's anti-AI stance: All three apps' core features are free to use, and the stuff you're being asked to pay for is stuff you mostly don't want anyway. But it may come as unwelcome news for those who like the predictability of pay-once-own-forever software or are nervous about where Canva might draw the line between "free" and "premium" features down the line.

[...] There's now a dedicated page for the older versions of the Affinity apps, and an FAQ at the bottom of that page answers several questions about the fate of those apps. Affinity and Canva say they will continue to keep the activation servers and downloads for all Affinity v1 and v2 apps online for the foreseeable future, giving people who already own the existing apps a way to keep using the versions they're comfortable with. Users can opt to link their Serif Affinity store accounts to their new Canva accounts to access the old downloads without juggling multiple accounts. But those older versions of the apps "won't receive future updates" and won't be able to open files created in the new Canva-branded Affinity app.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company's latest big round of layoffs -- about 14,000 corporate jobs -- wasn't triggered by financial strain or AI replacing workers, but rather a push to stay nimble. From a report: Speaking with analysts on Amazon's quarterly earnings call Thursday, Jassy said the decision stemmed from a belief that the company had grown too big and too layered. "The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven -- not right now, at least," he said. "Really, it's culture."

Jassy's comments are his first public explanation of the layoffs, which reportedly could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people -- and would be the largest workforce reduction in Amazon's history. The news this week prompted speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Earlier this year, Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that he expected Amazon's total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI. But his comments Thursday framed the layoffs as a cultural reset aimed at keeping the company fast-moving amid what he called "the technology transformation happening right now."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Adobe brought together 10,000 marketers, filmmakers and content creators to its annual conference this week to persuade them that the company's software products are adapting to AI and remain the best tools for their work. But it's Adobe's investors, rather than its users, who are the most skeptical that generative AI technology won't disrupt the company's business as the top seller of software for creative professionals.

Despite a strong strategy, Adobe is "at risk of structural AI-driven competitive and pricing pressure," wrote Tyler Radke, an analyst at Citigroup. The company's shares have lost about a quarter of their value this year as AI tools like Google's video-generating model Veo have gained steam. In an interview with Bloomberg Television earlier this week, Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said the company is undervalued as the market is focused on semiconductors and the training of AI models.

OpenAI is reportedly preparing for a massive IPO that could value the company at up to $1 trillion. It follows a recent corporate restructuring that loosened its dependence on Microsoft and aligned its nonprofit foundation with financial success. Reuters reports: OpenAI is considering filing with securities regulators as soon as the second half of 2026, some of the people said. In preliminary discussions, the company has looked at raising $60 billion at the low end and likely more, the people said. They cautioned that talks are early and plans -- including the figures and timing - could change depending on business growth and market conditions. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar has told some associates the company is aiming for a 2027 listing, the people said. But some advisers predict it could come even sooner, around late 2026.

[...] An IPO would open the door to more efficient capital raising and enable larger acquisitions using public stock, helping to finance CEO Sam Altman's plans to pour trillions of dollars into AI infrastructure, according to people familiar with the company's thinking. With an annualized revenue run rate expected to reach about $20 billion by year-end, losses are also mounting inside the $500 billion company, the people said. During a livestream on Tuesday, Altman addressed the possibility of going public. "I think it's fair to say it is the most likely path for us, given the capital needs that we'll have," he said.

AI "cheating" app Cluely's CEO and cofounder, Chungin "Roy" Lee, said most startups flop because their products don't get seen. From a report: "Engineers just cannot make good content," Lee said during a Wednesday interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 "There's a bunch of shallow replicas, but I challenge you to find one video you think is like, 'Yo, this is as tough as Cluely,'" he told TechCrunch.

Every startup needs to focus more on distribution. And most startups flop because they fail to get seen, even if they have product-market fit, Lee said. Cluely launched earlier this year as a tool to help software engineers cheat on their job interviews, among other use cases. The startup earlier this year posted a tongue-in-cheek video of Lee trying to use Cluely to impress a woman on a date, which went viral.

Carmakers in the EU are "days away" from closing production lines, the industry has warned, as a crisis over computer chip supplies from China escalates. From a report: The European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) issued an urgent warning on Wednesday saying its members, which include BMW, Fiat, Peugeot and Volkswagen, were now working on "reserve stocks but supplies are dwindling."

"Assembly line stoppages might only be days away. We urge all involved to redouble their efforts to find a diplomatic way out of this critical situation," said its director general, Sigrid de Vries. Another ACEA member, Mercedes, is now searching globally for alternative sources of the crucial semiconductors, according to its chief executive, Ola Kallenius. The chip shortage is also causing problems in Japan, where Nissan's chief performance officer, Guillaume Cartier, told reporters at a car show in Tokyo that the company was only "OK to the first week of November" in terms of supply.

More than a half dozen federal departments and agencies have backed a proposal to ban future sales of the most popular home routers in the United States on the grounds that the vendor's ties to mainland China make them a national security risk, Washington Post reported Thursday, citing people briefed on the matter. From the report: The proposal, which arose from a months-long risk assessment, calls for blocking sales of networking devices from TP-Link Systems of Irvine, California, which was spun off from a China-based company, TP-Link Technologies, but owns some of that company's former assets in China.

The ban was proposed by the Commerce Department and supported this summer by an interagency process that includes the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Defense, the people said. "TP-Link vigorously disputes any allegation that its products present national security risks to the United States," Ricca Silverio, a spokeswoman for TP-Link Systems, said in a statement. "TP-Link is a U.S. company committed to supplying high-quality and secure products to the U.S. market and beyond."

If imposed, the ban would be among the largest in consumer history and a possible sign that the East-West divide over tech independence is still deepening amid reports of accelerated Chinese government-supported hacking. Only the legislated ban of Chinese-owned TikTok, which President Donald Trump has averted with executive orders and a pending sale, would impact more U.S. consumers.

Alphabet reported its first-ever $100 billion quarter, fueled by a 34% surge in Google Cloud revenue and booming AI demand. The tech giant also announced an increase in expected capital expenditures for the fiscal year of 2025. CNBC reports: "With the growth across our business and demand from Cloud customers, we now expect 2025 capital expenditures to be in a range of $91 billion to $93 billion," the company said in its earnings report (PDF) Wednesday. "Looking out to 2026, we expect a significant increase in CapEx and will provide more detail on our fourth quarter earnings call," said finance chief Anat Ashkenazi on the earnings call with investors Wednesday.

Earlier this year, the company increased its capital expenditure expectation from $75 billion to $85 billion. Most of that goes toward technical infrastructure such as data centers. The latest earnings show the company is seeing rising demand for its AI services, which largely sit in its cloud unit. It also shows the company is continuing to spend more to try and build out more infrastructure to accomodate the backlog of customer requests. "We continue to drive strong growth in new businesses. Google Cloud accelerated, ending the quarter with $155 billion in backlog," CEO Sundar Pichai said in the earnings release.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Substrate, a small U.S. startup, said on Tuesday that it had developed a chipmaking tool capable of competing with the most advanced lithography equipment made by Dutch firm ASML. Substrate's tool is the first step in the startup's ambitious plan to build a U.S.-based contract chip-manufacturing business that would compete with Taiwan's TSMC in making the most advanced AI chips, its CEO James Proud told Reuters in an interview. Proud wants to slash the cost of chipmaking by producing the tools needed much more cheaply than rivals. [...]

An engineering feat that has eluded even large companies, lithography needs extreme precision. ASML is the only company in the world that has been able to make at scale the complex tools that use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) to produce patterns on silicon wafer at a high rate of throughput. Substrate said that it has developed a version of lithography that uses X-ray light and is capable of printing features at resolutions that are comparable to the most advanced chipmaking tools made by ASML that cost more than $400 million apiece. The company said it has conducted demonstrations at U.S. National Laboratories and at its facilities in San Francisco. The company provided high resolution images that demonstrate the Substrate tool's capabilities. "This is an opportunity for the U.S. to recapture this market with a homegrown company," Oak Ridge National Laboratory director Stephen Streiffer, an expert on high-energy x-ray beams, said in an interview. "It's a nationally important effort and they know what they're doing."

Nvidia is taking a $1 billion stake in Nokia, sending the Finnish telecom giant's shares up 22%. The two companies also struck a partnership to co-develop next-generation 6G and AI-driven networking technology. CNBC reports: The two companies also struck a strategic partnership to work together to develop next-generation 6G cellular technology. Nokia said that it would adapt its 5G and 6G software to run on Nvidia's chips, and will collaborate on networking technology for AI. Nokia said Nvidia would consider incorporating its technology into its future AI infrastructure plans. Nokia, a Finnish company, is best known for its early cellphones, but in recent years, it has primarily been a supplier of 5G cellular equipment to telecom providers.