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AI News Today: Amazon Burns $42B in Cash Chasing AI · DX Today | No-Hype Podcast & News About AI & DX

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's Friday, October 30th, 2026.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: You're listening to the DX Today AI Daily Brief.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: Today, Amazon's cloud business posts its fastest growth in nearly five years, but AI spending drains its cash and shakes investors.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: Microsoft returns to the bond market for the first time in nine years with a$25 billion sale.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: And Canada takes a stake of up to$1.6 billion Canadian dollars in its homegrown AI, Champion, Cohere.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: Let's get into it.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon's shares fell more than 7% in extended trading Thursday after its third quarter results missed expectations.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: The cloud unit was the bright spot.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon Web Services revenue rose 39% to$46 billion, its fastest growth in nearly five years, driven by demand for AI computing.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the cost of chasing that demand is now visible on the balance sheet.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Over the past 12 months, Amazon burned through about$42 billion of free cash flow.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Most of that came from buying equipment for AI data centers.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Chief Executive Andy Jassy said the company expects to spend meaningfully more next year.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Guidance for the fourth quarter also trailed Wall Street forecasts, leaving investors to weigh accelerating cloud sales against a much heavier spending bill.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: Turning now to Wall Street's other giant, Microsoft has gone back to the debt markets.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_05: The company priced$25 billion of senior notes on Thursday, split across 10 tranches with maturities stretching from two to 40 years.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_05: It is Microsoft's first sale of United States investment grade bonds since 2017, and Reuters reported the deal drew more than$100 billion in orders, about four times its size.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_05: Microsoft's own filing says the proceeds are for general corporate purposes, which may include capital spending.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: Microsoft had been the main hyperscaler to stay out of the bond market during the AI build-out, funding data centers from cash flow.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_05: Its arrival shows that even the cash-richest tech companies now want outside money to keep pace with demand for computing power.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Next, a rough night for a chipmaker.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: Intel shares dropped about 22% in after hours trading Thursday, even though the chipmaker beat expectations for the third quarter.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: Revenue came in at$16.51 billion, up 21% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings of 52 cents a share topped estimates.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: The problem was the outlook.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: Intel forecast fourth quarter revenue of$15 to$16 billion, below what analysts wanted, and warned that weak personal computer demand could last into the first half of next year.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: The company also said a deadly October explosion at its plant in Kiryat Ghat, Israel, will erase roughly$600 million of revenue over two quarters and tighten supplies of AI server chips for cloud customers.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, in South Korea, Samsung Electronics has posted the biggest quarterly profit in its history.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: The South Korean giant reported third-quarter operating profit of about$80 billion.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: That is up 783% from a year earlier.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Revenue more than doubled from a year ago.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: The engine was memory chips, including the high bandwidth memory that feeds AI accelerators, as data center operators buy everything the industry can produce.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Rival SK Heinex also posted record results.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Samsung's quarterly profit now tops what Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta each earned in the same period.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: A striking reversal in which a supplier is out earning some of its biggest AI customers.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Samsung said it will push to win back market share in high bandwidth memory.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Now to Canada.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: Canada is taking an ownership stake in its leading AI company.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_04: Prime Minister Mark Carney announced in Montreal on Thursday that the federal government will invest up to$1.6 billion Canadian dollars in Cohere, the Toronto-based developer of AI models for businesses and governments.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_04: The money will be paid in stages as part of a larger Cohere funding round that could reach up to$7 billion Canadian dollars, with NVIDIA, the German retail group Schwartz, and the telecom company Bell among the backers.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: Ottawa framed the deal as a commercial investment in sovereign AI, tied to commitments to expand Canadian technical jobs and domestic computing capacity.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_04: It is one of the largest direct government equity bets on an AI model maker by any country so far.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: Next, AI debt goes global.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: The AI boom is driving a borrowing spree well beyond Silicon Valley.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Bloomberg reported Friday that AM Intelligence, an Indian AI infrastructure company set up by the founders of renewable energy producer Green Co, is seeking to raise as much as$3 billion.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: The money would fund a previously announced order for NVIDIA's next generation Ruben chips.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: The package could combine bond issues and bank loans, and people familiar with the talk said the terms are still being discussed and could change.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Hydrobod-based company says it is among the largest committed buyers of Ruben processors outside North America.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: The deal would be one of the biggest debt raises tied to AI hardware in India as the country races to build domestic computing capacity.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_03: Turning to defense technology.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_05: Salesforce is expanding its push into defense.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_05: The company signed a definitive agreement on Thursday to acquire Rune Technologies, a military logistics software startup founded in 2024 by veterans of the defense contractor And Dural.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_05: Rune Software helps troops forecast supply needs, plan the use of resources, and decide where to send them, including at the tactical edge where networks are a weak or absent.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_05: It will join Mission Force, the Salesforce unit that serves the United States military and government agencies.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_05: Salesforce said that business is growing 80% year over year, one year after its launch.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_05: Financial terms were not disclosed.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_05: The deal adds Salesforce to a growing list of enterprise software companies chasing defense budgets with AI tools.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now to startup funding.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Enterprise Automation Startup Serval has tripled its valuation in less than a year.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: The San Francisco company announced a$150 million Series C round on Thursday, led by Sequoia, valuing it at$3 billion, up from$1 billion last December.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: The round brings Serval's total funding to$277 million, with new investors, conviction, and headline joining existing backers, including General Catalyst and First Round.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Serval sells an AI-powered service management platform that lets employees build automations in plain language, and it is pitching itself as a replacement for legacy information technology help desk software at large organizations.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Its rise reflects investor appetite for AI agents that take direct aim at established enterprise software.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Another new unicorn.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: A startup building a shared AI assistant for groups has become a unicorn just weeks after launch.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: WABI, founded by Eugenia Quida, the creator of the companion app Replica, raised$55 million in a round led by IVP at a valuation of$1.25 billion.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Andreessen Horowitz, forerunner and the Amazon Alexa Fund, also took part, along with individual investors including Shopify chief executive Toby Lotka.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Wabi lets groups of friends, families, or coworkers talk with AI agents together in one conversation to plan activities and make decisions.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: The company recently shifted from building apps to focusing on this messaging product.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: It now enters a crowded field in which Meta and the major AI labs are all pushing personal assistance.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_03: Next to Europe.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Separately, the Actors Union SAG AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America, and the American Federation of Musicians filed their own brief on Thursday.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: The unions oppose any broad fair use exemption for AI training and warn of the harms of unlicensed training to creative workers.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_05: And finally, finally, a small round with a famous cast.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_05: Coachi, our operator collective, and Hustle Fund also invested, and the angel list includes Google's chief scientist, Jeff Dean, the AI researcher Andrei Carpathy, and Okta co-founder Frederick Kerrest.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_05: Mintive's software gives companies a way to provision, govern, and track the AI agents now acting inside their systems, the way identity tools manage human employees.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_05: As businesses hand agents access to email code and payments, the question of who or what is allowed to do what has become one of the hottest problems in enterprise security.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's your briefing for Friday, October the 30th, 2026.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: For DX today, stay curious.