Daily Roundup: Anthropic's Public Benefit Fund, AI Agent Hacks and Bitcoin Back Above $82K
Anthropic sets aside 5% of its shares for the public good, DHS orders DeepSeek off federal systems, one attacker's AI agents breach 100+ sites, Bitcoin recovers above $82K, Hoskinson teases a Midnight "magnum opus", and Tenstorrent raises $1.5B.
Here is what mattered in tech, AI and crypto over the weekend, plus a big weekend for Ultra Labs.
AI
Anthropic pledges 5% of its shares to a Public Benefit Fund
Anthropic announced on October 18 that it will commit 5% of its shares to a new Public Benefit Fund, subject to stockholder approval. The board can add another 2% for every 50% rise in company value above a baseline. Combined with the co-founders' pledge of 80% of their equity and the employee matching program, roughly 20% of the company's shares are now set aside for public good. Anthropic also committed $200M to studying how AI affects the labor market, saying "bolder approaches may be needed" (Anthropic).
DHS orders DeepSeek off federal civilian systems
The Department of Homeland Security has ordered civilian agencies, including the EPA and FCC, to remove DeepSeek products and has barred the company from federal contracts, citing the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act of 2018. The notice warns DeepSeek models could "contain malware or other security vulnerabilities" (Engadget, The Next Web). The order lands days after DeepSeek released V4.1-Flash, an open 552B parameter model with a one million token context window, under the MIT license.
Replit switches its default to OpenAI
Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 17, Replit CEO Amjad Masad said the company is no longer working with Anthropic, citing cost, terms and performance. OpenAI models now power Replit Agent by default, though users can still choose Claude. "I think ChatGPT is better now," Masad said. One person familiar with the matter disputed the account and said the partnership remains in place (TechCrunch).
OpenAI is building a humanoid robot
Sam Altman confirmed that OpenAI will build a humanoid robot, with 27 robotics roles now listed on its careers page. There is no design, price or release date yet. "I think we'll have a cool demo in 2027," Altman told Fortune (Engadget).
Crypto
Bitcoin climbs back above $82K
Bitcoin dipped below $80,000 during last Thursday's selloff, touching a low near $79,806, before recovering. It traded around $82,673 on Monday morning, up 1.3% on the day, helped by stronger than expected Chinese GDP growth of 4.5% and rising Nasdaq futures (Admiral Markets, crypto.news). Headwinds remain: the Fed hiked in September and is signaling another, and US spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen $617.2M in net outflows so far in October. Bitcoin sits about 35% below its October 2025 all time high of $126,210. Cardano's ADA traded near $0.21 after a 12% weekly drop (CoinDesk).
On the calendar: Meta and Tesla report earnings on October 21, and the Fed meets October 27 and 28 (crypto.news).
Hoskinson teases his "magnum opus" for Midnight
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson says he is close to finishing the design of a concept for Midnight that he calls the magnum opus of his career, something he says only Midnight can bring to crypto. He shared no technical details yet. Asked whether Cardano would be complete after the Leios scaling upgrade, he answered: "After Leios, yes. It has everything I wanted to do" (The Crypto Basic).
Nine companies block tokenized trading of their stock
OKXICE, a joint venture between ICE and an OKX affiliate, planned to offer around-the-clock trading of 63 tokenized US stocks on Uniswap v4 under the SEC's September 17 tokenized stock exemption. Nine companies, including Broadcom, CoreWeave, Verizon and UnitedHealth, have filed objections. Under the SEC framework a written objection is binding, so those listings are off the table (crypto.news). It is an early sign that tokenized equities will need issuer buy-in, not just exchange ambition.
Tech and security
One attacker's AI agents breached more than 100 company sites
Security firm NorForge found that a single Chinese-speaking attacker used the open source agent platform Cairn to probe more than 1,200 websites starting September 25, breaching more than 100 of them for roughly $5,000 in AI tokens, or about $50 per intrusion. Reuters named Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins among those affected, and Deere said it saw no sign that sensitive data was accessed. "It's not script kiddie stuff," NorForge's Snorre Fagerland told Reuters (Reuters, The Next Web).
The takeaway for every business: attacks that once took a skilled team now cost the price of a nice dinner. Patching, monitoring and basic hardening matter more than ever. If you want a second set of eyes on your exposure, our cybersecurity and compliance team can help.
Tenstorrent raises $1.5B at a $6.2B valuation
Jim Keller's RISC-V AI chip company closed a $1.5B Series E led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, ARK Invest and T. Rowe Price participating. The valuation more than doubled from $2.6B in December 2024, and the money will scale production of its Galaxy servers. "The future of compute is open, scalable and owned by the people building on it," Keller said (SiliconANGLE).
From Ultra Labs
It was a big weekend here. We opened early access to two new products:
- SpikeCamp, a free live map of every US wildfire with offline tactical maps, Meshtastic radio relay and crew tools, built on the fireline in Washington. Try it at spikecamp.app.
- Glyphwood Academy, a storybook academy for homeschool families where kids earn glowing glyphs as they learn. Explore it at glyphwood.com.
See everything we build on the Ultra Labs brands page.