This Week in Tech (Week Ending Oct 17, 2025)
TL;DR - 🥭The new tech acronym; 👵🏻Age gating; 6️⃣7️⃣
Hey folks!
Happy Friday! 😎 Tech news below.
TL;DR -
🥭 The new acronym to know: MANGO — Microsoft, Anthropic, Nvidia, Google DeepMind and OpenAI.
Some age-gating related stuff: OpenAI plans to relax restrictions for adult users; Spotify expanded parent-managed accounts for kids to more countries; Instagram users under 18 will now by default only see content that adheres to PG-13 ratings.
🤜🥊The White House and Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, are in a war of words over AI regulation.
⭐️🛒 Walmart is working with OpenAI on a new feature that will allow customers to give ChatGPT broad instructions like “plan a weeknight taco dinner” or “reorder my staples” and check out in one step
Plus, why is 67 so annoying? see below
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
🇮🇱 The last 20 living Israeli hostages from the Oct 7, 2023 attacks left Gaza this past week. In exchange, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are being let go.
🇷🇺 President Trump said he plans to meet in person with Russian leader Vladimir Putin within the next few weeks, as he tries to broker a deal to end the war in Ukraine.
🇻🇪 President Trump has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert action in Venezuela, and said land strikes are also possible, in a broadening campaign against alleged drug trafficking.
🤯What to expect: The government shutdown is expected to hit more of the economy. Civilian government workers missed their first paychecks on Wednesday, which would most likely lead to reduced consumer spending.
⏮️ The White House scrambled last weekend to take back more than half the 1,300 layoff notices that went out to employees at the Centers for Disease Control.
📰 The Defense Department’s new rules for journalists, which include sharp limitations on access and raises the prospect of punishment for simply requesting information on matters of public interest, have proven extremely unpopular, as nearly every Pentagon reporter turned in their press badges after refusing to sign the rules.
The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for work that explains how the world has sustained — for the first time in history — two centuries of economic growth.
JPMorgan is planning a $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative aimed at bolstering sectors critical to the U.S. economy over the next decade, including up to $10 billion in direct equity and venture investments.
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
🥭 The new acronym to know: First it was FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google), then it was Magnificent 7 or Mag 7 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla). Now, in the age of gen AI, the new term appears to be MANGO — Microsoft, Anthropic, Nvidia, Google DeepMind and OpenAI. Why it matters: It’s a reflection of the moment. The companies commanding attention today are the ones leading the AI revolution.
🙅🏻♀️🇨🇳Microsoft, Amazon and Google are ramping up efforts move production of their products and data centers outside of China, citing supply chain sources.
Apple TV+ is now just Apple TV. Which is confusing bc it’s now the same name as Apple’s streaming media hardware, a low-selling product that is one of the minor parts of Apple’s product line
Facebook is reintroducing job listings to users in the U.S., focusing on entry-level, trade, and service jobs.
Kayak travel is bringing AI directly to its main platform with a new “AI Mode” that lets travelers research, plan, and book trips through a built-in chatbot
Meta is shutting down the Messenger desktop apps for Mac and Windows.
Spotify expanded parent-managed accounts for kids to more countries. Managed Accounts are available to Spotify Premium Family plan members, and allows account holders to manage a separate music-only listening experience for their kids under the age of 13
Instagram users under 18 will now by default only see content that adheres to PG-13 ratings applied to movies, avoiding themes like extreme violence, sexual nudity, and graphic drug use.
Amazon’s One Medical is expanding into pediatric care with a new pay-per-visit virtual health service for children ages 2 to 11. Starting at $29 for message-based visits and $49 for video calls, the service treats common conditions like pink eye, eczema, and rashes, and also handles medication renewals
Erebor Bank, a cryptocurrency-focused bank co-founded earlier this year by Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, has been conditionally approved a bank charter application.
Visa is using a new “Trusted Agent Protocol” that helps retailers distinguish legitimate AI shopping agents from malicious bots. Why it matters: Visa’s move helps lay the groundwork for “agentic commerce” — when your digital assistant can safely browse, compare and buy on your behalf.
How the job search has become a humiliation ritual: “As of August 2025, approximately 1.9 million Americans have been looking for work for six months or more, the highest share of long-term unemployment since the pandemic years….But now, the promise of upward mobility and identity through a job is starting, slowly, to dissolve, leaving a generation of laptop workers confronting a new, hostile economic and cultural landscape.”
Layoffs: Amazon is preparing to lay off as much as 15% of its human resources staffers. Nestlé is cutting 16,000 jobs over the next two years as the Swiss food giant retrenches to improve its financial performance.
🤖 AI News
🤜🥊The White House and Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, are in a war of words over AI regulation. Anthropic’s cofounder and policy head shared a short essay earlier this week titled “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear”, arguing that too many people are pretending that AI cannot threaten humanity and that we need to acknowledge a different reality before figuring out how to “tame it and live together.” White House AI czar David Sacks responded by claiming that “Anthropic is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”
Anthropic is nearing $7 billion in annualized revenue this month, up from around $5 billion in July. Anthropic has also projected annualized revenue will climb to $9 billion by year-end and between $20 billion to $26 billion in annualized revenue by the end of 2026. So what’s it gonna do with all that money? 🛍️ Shopping spree obvi - Anthropic has told investment bankers it seeks to do more acquisitions “that could enhance its artificial intelligence models and products as well as the technology underlying them.”
A co-founder of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Labs, Andrew Tulloch, is headed to Meta Platforms.
Google released Veo 3.1: Veo 3 already has edit features such as adding reference images to drive a character, providing the first and last frame to generate a clip using AI, and the ability to extend an existing video based on the last few frames. With Veo 3.1, Google is adding audio to all these features to make the clips more lively.
OpenAI CEO said that the company plans to relax restrictions for adult users of its chatbot. The company will fully roll out “age-gating,” or age verification features, by December, at which point verified adults can interact with more mature content, including erotica. OpenAI in September introduced parental controls that restricted content for users under 18.
Are we all just reading AI slop? AI is writing about half of the articles on the internet, but thankfully, there’s almost no AI content on the most prominent news sites. 86% of articles ranking in Google Search were written by humans, and 14% were generated by AI.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Apple is in talks to acquire computer vision startup Prompt AI.
Warner Bros. Discovery has rejected Paramount Skydance’s initial takeover bid of $20 per share. Why it matters: WBD has said that it plans to split into two publicly traded companies — one that would house its cable channels and the other its streaming and studio assets.
Fivetran, a data startup, will merge with data management company dbt Labs in an all-stock deal.
Mammoth Brands, the parent company of Harry’s razors and Lume deodorant, acquired Coterie, a maker of premium-price diapers and other baby care goods. The deal values Coterie at potentially more than $1 billion
A group of investors including BlackRock and Abu Dhabi’s MGX acquired Aligned Data Centers in a roughly $40 billion deal, the latest big investment in companies building data centers for the tech giants.
Fundraising
Anysphere, which makes popular coding assistant Cursor, is planning to raise at least $1 billion in new capital at a $27 billion valuation before the investment.
Kalshi, a U.S.-regulated prediction market, said it raised more than $300 million at a $5 billion valuation led by Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. Kalshi and Polymarket are the two biggest prediction markets.
Zepto, an Indian quick-commerce startup, raised $450M at a $7B valuation
Oura is raising new funding of $900 million as its valuation reaches nearly $11 billion. Oura’s audience is learning much more towards young women, who are drawn by features like fertility insights, while ‘gym rats’ and young men lean toward competitors like Whoop.
Deel raised $300mill, hitting $17.3b. Deel says it’s been profitable for three years and surpassed $1 billion in ARR.
Reducto AI, a startup that’s combining OCR (optical character recognition) with newer AI technology to understand documents, just raised a $75mill Series B that tripled its valuation to $600mill
Partnerships
Oracle will be the first cloud provider to offer a large cluster of Advanced Micro Devices’ next-generation artificial intelligence server chips next fall.
Arm, a semiconductor firm, is partnering with Meta to enhance Meta’s AI systems amid an unprecedented infrastructure buildout.
OpenAI is to design its own AI chips in collaboration with Broadcom.
Spotify is bringing select video podcasts to Netflix starting in early 2026.
⭐️🛒 Walmart is working with OpenAI on a new feature that will allow customers to give ChatGPT broad instructions like “plan a weeknight taco dinner” or “reorder my staples” and check out in one step
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
67 - the new number to ban: Apparently it’s so annoying schools are banning it. So what does “6-7” actually mean? The numbers can be traced back to a song called “Doot Doot,” released in 2024, in which a rapper sings: “6-7, I just bipped right on the highway (bip, bip).” From there, a video of a boy yelling “6-7” into the camera at a basketball game went viral; thus was born a new meme. Otherwise, it’s just a brainrot number 🤷🏻♀️
To all the single folks: There’s a viral Hinge hack going around to get better matches.
👻🍫🍬Now for some apples, sweets and chocolate bc it’s Halloween month and the season for candy apples
🍎💁🏻♀️We all love a diva: A little history about America’s favorite apple, the Honeycrisp, which apparently farmers dislike bc she’s “an absolute diva”.
What’s new in sodas: Americans’ affinity for soda has declined in recent years, and soda giants are trying to lure them back with smaller servings, and TikTok-able flavors.
Coca-Cola will debut 7.5-ounce mini can singles in convenience stores
PepsiCo is rolling out Dirty Mountain Dew Cream Soda Dew, its first “creamy” flavor and a play on the viral “dirty soda” trend.
Coca-Cola Cherry Float launches in February.
🍫Speaking of viral - this chocolate really is everywhere: Ghirardelli just released a limited edition Dubai-style chocolate, based on the global TikTok trend, which originated with Dubai-based Fix Dessert Chocolatier’s viral bars.
🍫🧑🍳More chocolate but make it high end: Pastry chef Cedric Grolet was just a little-known chef specializing in making haute patisserie for the world’s .0001 percent 5 yrs ago and now he has a whole dessert empire. On IG he has almost 13mill followers, more than Martha Stewart, Ina Garten and Bobby Flay combined. See him in action and check out his gorgeous chocolate shop below, which includes a literal wall of flowing chocolate:
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