Funding

AI inference startup Fal raised $1.3 billion in a Series F round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, doubling its valuation to $16 billion since April. The company, which hosts video, image, and audio models, surpassed $800 million in annualized revenue earlier this year amid surging demand for running open-source models.

Anthropic filed an amended Form S-1 for its upcoming IPO, reporting $17 billion in third-quarter revenue and $33.24 billion in revenue for the first nine months of the year alongside a $104 billion net loss. The filing also revealed $895.4 billion in future purchase and lease commitments, nearly all of which are dedicated to compute and infrastructure.

OpenAI has reportedly reduced its latest funding target from $30 billion to $20 billion following a tepid response from large investors amid market skepticism over AI infrastructure spending. The company has secured $11 billion so far in the round led by United Arab Emirates investors and plans a retail offering for wealthy individuals ahead of an expected IPO.

US tech stocks experienced sharp declines as investors grew concerned over the massive scale of AI capital expenditures alongside weaker-than-expected earnings. Companies including Alphabet, Intel, Amazon, and Reddit lost hundreds of billions in combined market value following warnings about rising AI infrastructure costs and disruptions to search advertising and referral traffic.

An Accenture contractor reportedly connected a secure Department of Defense system containing controlled unclassified information to their personal Anthropic Claude Code agent. Running undetected for two months, the AI coding agent gained administrative access to write and deploy code, eventually sending login credentials and a map of the DOD network to a high-risk third-party website. Security experts warn that the incident poses severe national security risks, as compromised credentials could allow adversaries to inject malicious code into sensitive military networks.