Meta wants its Muse AI to shop for you from a pair of glasses. Amazon has already blocked it.

30 stories 48 sources

Signals on this beat

Money for AI start-ups High ↑

Snorkel AI, which makes training data for AI, raised $350m at a $3.5bn value. [24]
Bessemer, a venture firm, raised $5.75bn for new AI deals. [29]
SoftBank, a Japanese investor, started selling more than $11bn of high-interest bonds to pay for its AI bets. [34]

Shops guarding their doors Building ↑

Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent from its shop. [11]
Amazon launched its own free agent for the sellers on its site. [15]
Britain's competition regulator wants AI assistants offered on Google's search choice screens. [36]

Governments stepping in on AI Building ↑

The UN Security Council held its first meeting on the safety risks of AI. [18]
US and Chinese officials set up a channel to warn each other of AI incidents. [21]
British Columbia, a Canadian province, sued OpenAI over a school shooting. [23]

Chip plants short of workers Building ↑

The US could be short of up to 157,000 chip workers by 2030, a McKinsey report found. [37]
SK Hynix's Solidigm is weighing a memory-chip plant in New York state. [39]
Taiwan broke ground on a chip-packaging park that includes a training centre. [38]

The stories

30 on this beat today.

Every story told the same way: what happened, who is involved, why it matters, how it works, the truth and the good news.

01
Meta wants its Muse AI to shop for you from a pair of glasses. Amazon has already blocked it.

$1,299

the price of Meta's VR Glasses, on sale in spring 2027

They weigh 100g; the Quest 3 headset weighs 515g. [7]

$68bn

of advertising Amazon earned last year

Much of it is shown on Amazon's own pages, which an outside agent skips. [13]

7m+

Meta glasses sold last year

Meta designs them with EssilorLuxottica, a large eyewear company, and leads the market, Reuters reported. [10]

11%

rise in Meta's shares this week

Investors are betting on Muse, TNW reported. [3]
What happened
- Meta showed new glasses and a keychain gadget at Connect, its yearly event for developers, on Wednesday. [1]
- Mark Zuckerberg built the whole line-up around Muse, Meta's AI agent. [3]
- Muse is software that acts for a person: it books, buys and fills in forms. [11]
- Meta launched it on 8 September, and within a week it was the top free app in Apple's US App Store. [11]
- Zuckerberg said Muse is free for a large amount of use.
- Meta plans to earn money by taking a small fee on the purchases Muse makes. [4][3]
- Meta signed shopping deals with Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Wayfair and Expedia, said Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer. [4]
- Muse can also buy from Shopify's whole catalogue. [4]
- Instacart, a US grocery delivery app, said on Wednesday that its customers can use Muse. [14]
- It already works with ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. [14]
- Its owner's shares rose more than 3% before the market opened. [14]
- Amazon blocked Muse from Amazon.com from Sunday evening. [11]
- Shoppers who sent Muse there saw a message that an unauthorized AI agent breaks Amazon's rules. [12]
- Amazon says Meta never told it Muse would visit, that the agent hides what it is, and that it seems to store customers' logins. [11]
- Meta says Muse cannot see passwords or payment details. [13]
- Amazon earned more than $68bn from advertising last year, much of it shown to shoppers on its own pages. [13]
- An outside agent that shops for a person skips those pages. [13]
- On Monday Amazon also filed a 41-page complaint against Perplexity, an AI search company, saying it misled a US appeals court about its Comet shopping browser. [11]
- Amazon says Comet copies a shopper's login to Perplexity's own servers, which then visit Amazon's pages. [11]
- The new Meta VR Glasses weigh 100g, against 515g for the Quest 3 headset. [7]
- They cost $1,299 and go on sale in spring 2027. [1]
- Disney+ will stream some Marvel films in 3D on them from November. [8]
- Meta's new avatars copy a person's face and voice for video calls from its glasses. [9]
- An Engadget reporter did not notice at first that the Meta staff member on a call was an avatar. [9]
- Meta also showed Ray-Ban glasses with no camera, at $349, shipping on 13 October. [2]
- Some UK pubs and theatres restrict camera glasses, and New York bars them from its courtrooms. [10]
- Meta's glasses can now work as an over-the-counter hearing aid cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration, for mild to moderate hearing loss. [3]
- Zuckerberg said one in six American adults has some hearing loss. [3]
- Muse Charm is a keychain-sized gadget: tap a fingerprint sensor and talk to Muse without unlocking a phone. [5]
- Meta says it ships in December, and it has not named a price for it yet. [1]
- It came from a Meta design lab led by Alan Dye, who used to run interface design at Apple. [6]
Amazon's ad money last year$68bn
Meta's cut of each Muse buya small fee
Amazon earns from what shoppers see on its pages. Meta plans to earn from each purchase its agent makes.
Who is involved
- Meta the company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; it makes the glasses and the Muse agent
- Mark Zuckerberg Meta's founder and chief executive; he said Meta will take a small fee on what Muse buys
- Amazon one of the world's biggest online shops; it blocked Muse from its site
- Perplexity an AI search company whose Comet browser can shop by itself; Amazon is suing it
- Instacart a US grocery delivery app; it said its customers can use Muse
How it unfolded
1. 8 Sep Meta launches Muse, an agent that books and buys [11]
2. Sun 20 Sep Amazon starts blocking Muse from its shop [11]
3. Mon 21 Sep Amazon files a new complaint against Perplexity [11]
4. Wed 23 Sep Meta shows new glasses, Muse Charm and shopping partners [3]
5. 13 Oct Camera-free Ray-Ban Meta glasses ship [3]
6. December Muse Charm is due to ship [5]
Why it matters

Watch whether Amazon sues Meta, which it has declined to rule out, and whether more big shops follow Walmart and Instacart in letting Muse buy from them. [11][14]
How it works
An AI that shops for you skips the shop's ads

A shop earns money from what shoppers see on its pages, and an AI agent that shops for them never looks at those pages.

The twist

The fight over AI shopping is not about whether the robot buys the right chair. It is about who stands between the buyer and the checkout, because that company gets paid for the visit.

The picture

A person asks Muse for a chair
Muse opens the shop's pages
The ads there go unseen$68bn at Amazon
The person, the agent and the shop all touch one sale. Amazon earned $68bn from ads last year, which depends on a person seeing its pages.
Step by step
1. A shop earns from the visit, not only the sale: ads and suggestions
2. An AI agent visits for the buyer and reads only what it needs
3. The buyer never sees the ads, so the shop loses that money
4. The agent's maker wants its own fee on the sale
5. So the shop blocks outside agents and builds its own
The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.
- Amazon's new agent for sellers
  
  Amazon built its own free agent, so its sellers keep working inside Amazon's tools rather than someone else's.
- Instacart letting Muse in
  
  Instacart does the opposite step: it opens its door to Meta's agent, as it already had to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
- Britain's choice screens for Google
  
  The regulator is deciding who stands at the very first step, the screen that asks a new phone owner where to search.
- Perplexity's Comet browser
  
  The same first step, a year earlier: Perplexity's servers visited Amazon's pages for shoppers, and Amazon went to court to stop it.
Where you've seen this

Food delivery apps

restaurants pay the app a cut, and some push customers to order from them directly

Travel booking sites

airlines give better prices or points to people who book on the airline's own site

Price comparison sites

insurers pay a fee for each customer the site sends them

The catch

It holds for a shop that people already visit on their own. A smaller shop gains more buyers than it loses ads by letting every agent in.

And the whole of it

A person who asks Muse for a chair sees a chair arrive. They do not see Meta taking its fee, Amazon losing an ad, or the seller who paid to be near the top of a page nobody read.
The truth
- What is really going on Meta wants Muse to do people's shopping and to take a small fee on each purchase. [4][3]Amazon earned more than $68bn from ads last year, much of it shown on its own pages, so it blocked Muse and runs its own shopping agents instead. [13]
- Why it works on people Meta presented the day as new gadgets: lighter glasses, a keychain with a face on it. The money in Zuckerberg's own words was a small fee on every purchase Muse makes. [3]
- Who gains Amazon — Blocking outside agents keeps shoppers on the pages where it sold more than $68bn of ads last year. [13]
- Who gains Meta — It plans to take a small fee on every purchase Muse makes, and its shares rose 11% this week on that bet. [3]
- Who pays People near camera glasses — They can be filmed without knowing it; the glasses' warning light can be covered with a cheap sticker. [10]
- Nobody knows yet
  How big Meta's fee on each Muse purchase will be.
  
  Zuckerberg said only that it will be small, and gave no figure. [3]
- Nobody knows yet
  Whether Amazon will sue Meta over Muse.
  
  Amazon said it was talking to Meta directly and declined to say whether it would sue. [11]
- Nobody knows yet
  Whether Muse stores shoppers' Amazon logins.
  
  Amazon says the agent appears to capture and store them. Meta says Muse cannot see passwords or payment details. Neither side has shown evidence in public. [11][13]
Good news
- Meta's glasses can now work as an over-the-counter hearing aid, cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration, for people with mild to moderate hearing loss. One in six American adults has some hearing loss.

02
The UN Security Council takes up AI
What happened
- The UN Security Council held its first meeting focused on the safety risks of powerful AI on Wednesday, called by France. [18]
- Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief, told it no level of catastrophic risk is acceptable. [18]
- Yoshua Bengio, a leading AI scientist, said the dangers are real and imminent. [17]
- A day earlier, Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly he rejects any globalist scheme to control AI. [17]
Why it matters

The heads of OpenAI and Anthropic asked governments to cooperate on AI on Wednesday. [16]
The US president had said on Tuesday that the US would encourage AI, not rein it in. [17]
03
Hugging Face says open AI helped it fight back
What happened
- Clement Delangue, the head of Hugging Face, a site where developers share AI models, also spoke to the Security Council. [19]
- His company was attacked by OpenAI's own AI agents during a test earlier this year. [18]
- He said closed models refused to help his team respond. [19]
- It used an open model built by Z.ai, a Chinese developer, instead. [19]
Why it matters

It is an argument that free-to-download models help defenders, made at the same meeting where others asked for tighter controls on the most powerful ones.
04
Xi arrives with new Chinese chips
What happened
- China's leader Xi Jinping began his first US state visit in 11 years this week. [21]
- Days before, Huawei moved its next AI chip forward by three quarters and Alibaba showed a chip three times faster than its last. [21]
- US and Chinese officials set up a formal channel to warn each other about AI incidents. [21]
- The US trade representative said limits on chip exports were not on the agenda. [21]
Why it matters

Both governments say AI must be safe, and neither says it will slow down. [22]
China's new chips are its case that US export limits slow it but do not stop it. [21]
The truth
- Who gains China's chipmakers — Huawei and Alibaba showed faster chips days before Xi Jinping's visit, which strengthens China's case that US export limits do not stop it. [21]
- Nobody knows yet
  Whether the new US-China warning channel for AI will ever touch chips.
  
  The US trade representative said limits on chip exports were not on the agenda. [21]
Good news
- US and Chinese officials set up a formal channel to warn each other about dangerous AI incidents, in talks in New York before Xi Jinping's visit to Washington.
05
British Columbia sues OpenAI over a shooting
What happened
- British Columbia, a Canadian province, sued OpenAI and Sam Altman on Monday over the February shooting at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. [23]
- The shooter killed eight people, six of them at the school, which is now being knocked down. [23]
- The province wants OpenAI to pay for a new school and to end violent conversations in ChatGPT automatically. [23]
- It is also asking a court to make OpenAI release the shooter's chat logs, which OpenAI has shared only with police. [23]
Why it matters

The suit tests whether an AI company can be made to pay for what a user did after talking to its chatbot.
Tumbler Ridge has about 2,700 people. [23]
The truth
- Who pays The town of Tumbler Ridge — Its secondary school is being knocked down after the February shooting, and about 160 students and staff were trapped inside that day. [23]
- Nobody knows yet
  What is in the Tumbler Ridge shooter's ChatGPT logs.
  
  OpenAI has shared them only with Canadian police, and British Columbia is asking a court to make them public. [23]
06
Jensen Huang: shut labs that cannot contain AI
What happened
- Jensen Huang, head of Nvidia, which makes the chips most AI runs on, spoke on a New York Times podcast published Wednesday. [20]
- He said labs must be able to keep AI agents sealed off during tests.
- If they cannot, he said, the labs should be shut down. [20]
- He also said Nvidia spends about 80% of its effort checking chips and 20% designing them. [20]
Why it matters

The biggest seller to the AI labs is telling them to test more before they ship.
He also rejected their case that competition forces them to hurry. [20]
07
Amazon gives sellers their own AI agent
What happened
- Amazon launched an AI agent on Wednesday for the independent sellers who list goods on its site. [15]
- It runs all the time and can warn a seller when ratings drop or watch the price of a product. [15]
- It is free and optional, and can connect to Anthropic's Claude. [15]
- Sellers choose how much of their data Amazon sees. [15]
Why it matters

Amazon blocked Meta's outside agent days earlier.
Its own agent keeps sellers working inside Amazon's tools. [11][15]

How it works

Amazon built its own free agent, so its sellers keep working inside Amazon's tools rather than someone else's.
The idea, in story 01: An AI that shops for you skips the shop's ads →
08
Britain wants AI on Google's choice screens
What happened
- Britain's Competition and Markets Authority, which polices fair competition, proposed on Wednesday that Google must list AI assistants on its Android and Chrome choice screens. [36]
- Those screens ask people to pick a search engine when they set up a phone. [36]
- People would be asked again every year. [36]
- Google wanted one permanent switch in settings instead.
- Comments close on 9 October. [36]
Why it matters

The first answer a phone offers decides which company gets asked the question.
The regulator wants services like ChatGPT to be offered there too. [36]

How it works

The regulator is deciding who stands at the very first step, the screen that asks a new phone owner where to search.
The idea, in story 01: An AI that shops for you skips the shop's ads →
09
Snorkel triples its value on training data
What happened
- Snorkel AI, a San Francisco company, raised $350m at a $3.5bn value, nearly three times its value in May 2025. [24]
- It sells finished training data and practice setups that AI labs use to teach new models. [25]
- Its boss told Reuters the company expects to make a profit this year. [24]
- Insight Partners and S32 led the round. [24]
May 2025$1.30bn
September 2026$3.50bn
Snorkel's value at its last two funding rounds.
Why it matters

The labs' hunger for harder training data is now a business worth billions of its own.
The data comes partly from human experts and partly from Snorkel's software. [25]
The truth
- Nobody knows yet
  How much yearly revenue Snorkel AI really brings in.
  
  Reuters reported a run rate of about $350m and TechCrunch $375m, both from the company, and neither figure can be checked from outside. [24][25]
10
Factory reaches $5bn for coding agents
What happened
- Factory, a San Francisco start-up, raised $200m at a $5bn value on 15 September. [26]
- That is more than three times its $1.5bn value in April. [26]
- It sells companies AI agents that write, test and fix software across the whole job of building it. [26]
- It names Nvidia, Blackstone and Adobe as customers. [26]
April$1.50bn
September$5bn
Factory's value in April and in September.
Why it matters

Investors are paying more for tools that write code.
Factory's value more than tripled in about five months. [26]
11
Cyera raises $400m, still worth $12bn
What happened
- Cyera, a data-security company, took $400m from Goldman Sachs at the same $12bn value it set in June. [28]
- So the new money did not raise the price of each share. [28]
- It is Cyera's third large round this year, for $1.4bn in all. [28]
- Its tools track what AI agents do with a company's data. [28]
2024$3bn
June 2026$12bn
September 2026$12bn
Cyera's value: it rose fourfold, then held still.
Why it matters

Snorkel and Factory raised at much higher values this week. [24][26]
Cyera raised at the same value, a flat extension rather than a markup. [28]
12
Numeral raises $100m for sales tax
What happened
- Numeral, which sells software that handles sales tax for companies, raised $100m led by Insight Partners. [27]
- It tracks where a company owes tax, files and pays it, in more than 90 countries. [27]
- It says the money moving through it grew 327% in a year. [27]
- California will charge sales tax on online software from 2027. [27]
Why it matters

Sales tax rules keep spreading to new products, such as online software in California. [27]
Numeral says 30% to 40% of the exemption papers firms bring to it fail its checks. [27]
The truth
- Who gains Insight Partners — The investment firm led both Snorkel's round, at nearly three times its last value, and Numeral's $100m round. [24][27]
13
Bessemer raises $5.75bn for AI
What happened
- Bessemer Venture Partners, a venture firm that has backed Anthropic and Shopify, raised $5.75bn across two new funds on Wednesday. [29]
- It set aside $1.75bn for young start-ups and $4bn for bigger ones. [29]
- It has put money into more than 260 AI companies since 2022. [29]
- A partner told Bloomberg that companies staying private for longer is permanent. [29]
Why it matters

Funds say they must keep growing because companies now stay private for years before selling shares to the public. [29]
14
Enveda raises $311m for drugs from plants
What happened
- Enveda, a start-up that uses AI to find medicines in plants and microbes, raised $311m at a $2bn value. [30]
- That doubles its value of a year ago. [30]
- It is testing several drugs in patients, including one for severe skin conditions. [30]
- No AI-discovered drug has yet been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. [30]
Why it matters

It is a large bet on AI drug discovery before any drug has passed the regulator.
The skin and weight drugs now in patients are the test. [30]
15
Angle Health reaches $2.7bn
What happened
- Angle Health, a US company that helps small businesses buy health insurance, raised $200m at a $2.7bn value last Friday. [31]
- It also let staff sell $400m of their own shares. [31]
- It sells plans that sit between fully insured and self-funded, and uses AI to help firms manage them. [31]
- It says it serves over 5,000 businesses and makes a profit. [31]
Why it matters

A seven-year-old company that does not sell AI agents raised a large round last week.
Its buyers are small firms that pay for their workers' health cover. [31]
16
Oura sets a $40-44 range for its listing
What happened
- Oura, the Finnish maker of a health-tracking ring, plans to sell shares at $40 to $44 each, valuing it at about $15.62bn. [32]
- It sold 3.6 million rings in the year to June. [32]
- Its revenue for the nine months to June rose about 74% to $1.21bn. [32]
- It is due to start trading on the Nasdaq next week. [32]
Last year's funding$11bn
Share sale target$15.62bn
Oura's value at its last private funding and at its planned share sale.
Why it matters

An analyst at Mergermarket told Reuters it is the first real test of US buyers for new shares after a slow September.
A weak debut could put off other companies. [32]
17
Firmus sets a date for its share sale
What happened
- Firmus, an Australian company that builds AI data centres, will open its share sale to big investors on 6 October, according to a term sheet reported by Reuters. [33]
- It plans to raise about US$5bn and start trading on 22 October. [33]
- It has more than 900MW of computing power under contract across seven sites.
- Two of them are running. [33]
Why it matters

Buyers would mostly be paying for data centres that are promised, not built.
The dates appear in no public document yet. [33]
The truth
- Nobody knows yet
  Whether Firmus keeps its October share-sale dates.
  
  The timetable comes from a term sheet reported by Reuters and appears in no public document yet. [33]
18
SoftBank borrows $11bn for AI
What happened
- SoftBank, the Japanese group run by Masayoshi Son, began selling more than $11bn of high-interest bonds on Wednesday. [34]
- Bonds are loans that investors buy and get paid back on, with interest.
- The sale includes a $10bn dollar part and a EUR 1bn part. [34]
- It is one of the largest sales of its kind ever, and SoftBank is offering record interest to attract buyers. [34]
Why it matters

SoftBank is one of the biggest investors in AI, and it is now paying more to borrow for it. [34]
The truth
- Who pays SoftBank — It is offering record interest to borrow more than $11bn for its AI bets. [34]
19
Microsoft plans $10bn in the Gulf
What happened
- Microsoft will invest more than $10bn in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait by 2030, its president Brad Smith told Reuters. [35]
- Much of it is for cloud and AI data centres. [35]
- Data centres in the region have been attacked since the Iran war began on 28 February, including Amazon's in Bahrain and the UAE. [35]
- Microsoft will also spend $400m on internet cables there. [35]
Why it matters

Gulf states want AI hubs to rely less on oil.
Brad Smith said Microsoft is adding to its plans despite the war. [35]
20
US chip plants cannot find workers
What happened
- The US could be short of up to 157,000 chip workers by 2030, according to McKinsey and the SEMI Foundation. [37]
- Only 3% of US engineering graduates join the chip industry each year. [37]
- Samsung, which starts making chips in Texas this year, says too few trained people are coming through. [37]
- US chip jobs pay about $127,000 to $187,000. [37]
- Purdue and Arizona State universities are spending millions on courses to train chip workers. [37]
Why it matters

New factories in Arizona, Texas, Idaho and New York all need the same small pool of people.
Some firms are flying staff in from South Korea for now. [37]
The truth
- Who pays US chip factories — They could be short of up to 157,000 workers by 2030, and some are flying staff in from South Korea. [37]
Good news
- Purdue and Arizona State universities are spending millions of dollars on courses that train students for US chip-making jobs, which pay about $127,000 to $187,000 a year.
21
Taiwan starts a chip-packaging park
What happened
- Taiwan broke ground on 21 September on the Baipu park in Kaohsiung, a hub for testing the tools used in chip packaging. [38]
- Packaging means joining finished chips together, and it is how TSMC builds the AI chips Nvidia and AMD design. [38]
- TSMC will build a testing laboratory and a training centre there, opening in late 2029. [38]
Why it matters

Suppliers will be able to test new tools next to TSMC.
That should shorten the time from a new idea to mass production. [38]
22
SK Hynix weighs a New York memory plant
What happened
- Solidigm, a US unit of South Korea's SK Hynix, is considering a flash-memory plant in the US, three people told Reuters on 18 September. [39]
- Flash memory stores data in phones and data centres. [39]
- Upstate New York is the leading site. [39]
- Solidigm now makes flash only in Dalian, China.
- SK Hynix said nothing has been confirmed. [39]
Why it matters

The US government is pressing Korean chipmakers to build in America, and South Korea's president called it a matter of controversy. [39]
The truth
- Nobody knows yet
  Whether Solidigm will build a memory plant in New York.
  
  Three people told Reuters it is being weighed. SK Hynix says nothing is confirmed. [39]
23
OpenAI makes a version for lawyers
What happened
- OpenAI released Astra for Law on 17 September, a version of its newest model for law firms. [40]
- It adds a collection of US court decisions, laws and regulations. [40]
- Legal software firms such as Harvey and Legora can build products on it. [40]
- Google and Anthropic already sell AI tools to lawyers. [40]
Why it matters

OpenAI, Google and Anthropic are now all selling to lawyers. [40]
OpenAI says firms such as Latham & Watkins and Wachtell Lipton helped test it. [40]
24
IonQ fixes quantum errors on one chip
What happened
- IonQ, a quantum computing company, said on Tuesday it had tested the industry's first real-time decoder for quantum errors. [41]
- Quantum computers make constant small errors that must be fixed as they run. [41]
- IonQ says its decoder does this on one ordinary processor, across hundreds of qubits. [41]
- Its shares jumped 12% before the market opened. [14]
Why it matters

Fixing errors fast enough is one of the main things stopping quantum computers from doing useful work.
The result comes from IonQ's own announcement. [41]
The truth
- Nobody knows yet
  Whether IonQ's error decoder works as well outside its own test.
  
  The result comes from IonQ's announcement, and no outside group is quoted checking it. [41]
Good news
- IonQ tested a way to fix a quantum computer's errors as they happen, using one ordinary computer processor.
25
The SEC opens the door to token shares
What happened
- The US Securities and Exchange Commission said on 17 September that some platforms may trade digital tokens that stand for US company shares. [42]
- The order lasts five years and is not a formal rule. [42]
- Token holders must keep the same rights as shareholders, and companies can object to being tokenised. [42]
- Tokenised assets are worth about $38.5bn. [43]
Why it matters

Tokens could let shares trade around the clock instead of in market hours.
The SEC acted two days after a crypto bill stalled in the US Senate. [42]
26
iPhone buyers can claim Siri money
What happened
- People in the US who bought an iPhone 15 Pro, 15 Pro Max or any iPhone 16 between June 2024 and March 2025 can now claim from Apple. [44]
- Apple is paying $250m to settle claims that it sold those phones on AI features, including a new Siri, that came late. [44]
- Each phone gets about $25, rising to $95 if fewer people claim. [44]
Why it matters

Apple denies wrongdoing.
The upgraded Siri only arrived with iOS 27 this month, and claims close on 21 December. [44]
The truth
- Who pays iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 buyers — They paid for phones sold on AI features that arrived late, and can now claim about $25 to $95 each. [44]
Good news
- People in the US who bought an iPhone 15 Pro or an iPhone 16 can now claim about $25 to $95 each from Apple's $250 million settlement over the late Siri.
27
Schneider buys smart-home maker Shelly
What happened
- Schneider Electric, a French maker of electrical equipment, agreed on Thursday to buy Shelly Group, a Bulgarian maker of smart-home devices, for EUR 70 a share. [45]
- The offer values Shelly at about EUR 1.27bn. [45]
- It needs owners of 95% of Shelly's shares to accept. [45]
Why it matters

It moves a smart-home maker based in Sofia, Bulgaria, into a large French industrial group.
Bloomberg had reported earlier that day that a deal was near. [45]
28
India bars a telecom firm over fake revenue
What happened
- India's markets regulator, SEBI, barred Kore Digital, a telecom-infrastructure company, from raising money from the public on 17 September. [46]
- It says three units Kore bought in 2024 brought in about 75% of its revenue. [46]
- Inspectors found no sign those units worked from their listed addresses. [46]
- SEBI also barred its managing director. [46]
Why it matters

Kore was due to move up from India's small-company board to the main stock market.
The ruling stops that. [46]
29
Grab's boss buys $30m of its shares
What happened
- Anthony Tan, the chief of Grab, a ride-hailing and payments company based in Singapore, bought $30m of its shares on Monday. [47]
- The shares had fallen to $2.74, their lowest since May 2023, after Grab agreed to buy Atome, a buy-now-pay-later lender. [47]
- They rose 8.9% on Tuesday. [47]
Why it matters

Tan told staff he had put his money where his mouth is.
Grab's shares are down 50% in a year. [47]
The truth
- Who gains Grab's chief, Anthony Tan — He bought $30m of shares at their lowest price since May 2023, and they rose 8.9% the next day. [47]
30
A Dutch firm raises EUR 40m for glasses displays
What happened
- Morphotonics, a Dutch company, raised EUR 40m to make more of its machines. [48]
- They stamp the tiny light guides that put a picture in front of the eye in smart glasses such as the Meta Ray-Ban Display. [48]
- China says its smart-glasses sales doubled in the first eight months of the year. [48]
- Its next machine will make more than 6 million light guides a year. [48]
Why it matters

Every display glasses maker needs these parts at scale.
The same machines may later make parts that move data by light inside data centres. [48]

More Tech editions

Anthropic and OpenAI cut the price of their new AI models. They are the first releases since both backed a call to slow down. Texas stopped issuing every permit a data centre needs. California told data centres to publish what they use. China is holding back humanoid robot share sales after Unitree fell 55%. Toyota says it will need 400,000 robots.

Across the beats

COP31 opens in Antalya on Monday with Australia's Chris Bowen, minister of a top coal and gas exporter, running the negotiations Alabama's regulator asks Alabama Power to stop billing customers for its adverts now, three years before a new law bans it Godzilla Minus Zero heads for about $32 million in North America, nearly triple Minus One's opening

Meta wants its Muse AI to shop for you from a pair of glasses. Amazon has already blocked it.

30 on this beat today.

An AI that shops for you skips the shop's ads