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AI News Today: Google's Gemini 4 Carbon Goes to Cyber Defenders First · DX Today | No-Hype Podcast & News About AI & DX

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's Thursday, October 29th, 2026.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_05: You're listening to the DX Today AI Daily Brief.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_05: Today, Google unveils Gemini 4 Carbon, a frontier model it is keeping in the hands of cyber defenders first.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_05: Microsoft posts a 32% jump in profit as Azure keeps accelerating.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_05: And Samsung becomes the first tech company to earn more than 100 trillion one in a single quarter.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_05: Let's get into it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Google has announced Gemini 4 carbon, which it calls its strongest model yet, with a focus on cybersecurity and long horizon tasks.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Google's own comparison shows carbon leading on most of the benchmarks it published, though not all of them.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra still leads one coding test, and Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 leads a computer use test.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: The independent firm Artificial Analysis ranked carbon first on its overall intelligence index, one point ahead of Claude.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: The bigger story may be the rollout.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Carbon is going first to a small group of vetted cyber defenders through what Google calls its fair win program, and the company says it is taking part in the United States government's voluntary pre-release testing.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: There is no date yet for developers, businesses, or consumers.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_05: Next, the cloud numbers.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Microsoft opened its fiscal year with results that beat Wall Street on nearly every line.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Revenue rose 19% to about$92.3 billion, and net income climbed 32% to$36.6 billion.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: For the first time, Microsoft disclosed Azure revenue in dollars at$33.2 billion up 48%.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: The company guided for Azure growth of 49 to 50% next quarter.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: Capital spending came in at$45.2 billion below Microsoft's own forecast, and free cash flow of$18.6 billion was roughly$10 billion above analyst estimates.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: The shares rose about 4% after hours.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: The results land days after Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, a reminder that AI spending and workforce cuts are now moving together.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_04: Now to the memory boom.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: Samsung Electronics reported operating profit of 107.4 trillion won for the third quarter, roughly$80 billion, and up more than 780% from a year earlier.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_04: Samsung says it is the first global tech company to clear 100 trillion one in a single quarter.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_04: Nearly all of that came from the chip division, where memory demand from AI data centers drove margins above 70%, revenue from its newest high bandwidth memory more than tripled.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: And Samsung said its planned high bandwidth memory supply for next year is already sold out.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_04: It also committed a record capital budget and warned that AI-driven demand will far outstrip supply, with tight conditions possibly lasting into 2028.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_04: Even so, the shares fell about 4% because the profit only matched expectations.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_04: Washington looks at a mega deal.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: The United States Justice Department is asking questions about Nvidia's planned purchase of Hugging Face, the popular platform for sharing open AI models.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter, that antitrust officials have made inquiries into how the roughly$12.9 billion deal could affect competition in AI.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: The deal was announced in late August.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: An inquiry is not a formal challenge, and it does not mean regulators have found wrongdoing.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it puts a spotlight on a question that has followed the deal from the start.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Whether the world's dominant AI chipmaker should own the main hub where developers publish and download open weight models.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_05: Another chip deal may be close.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Marvel Technology is in advanced talks to buy Lumentum, the maker of lasers and optical components that move data between AI servers, according to Bloomberg.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: People familiar with the discussions said a deal could be announced as soon as next week, though no agreement has been reached and terms have not been disclosed.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: Nvidia is an investor in Lumentum.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_03: The stock market values Lumentum at roughly$80 to$90 billion.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Its shares jumped in late trading after the report.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Marvel shares fell more than 8%.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: The logic is straightforward on paper.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_03: As AI clusters grow, more of the connections inside data centers are shifting from copper to light, and Marvel would gain the optical hardware that sits next to its networking chips.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_05: Next, enterprise software.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: ServiceNow and OpenAI have expanded their partnership across enterprise workflows.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Under the new agreement, OpenAI models will be built more deeply into ServiceNow's platform.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: A ChatGPT workflow plugin will let employees trigger ServiceNow processes from inside ChatGPT, and the two companies plan joint work on codecs for software development and on cybersecurity.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those pieces are not available yet.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: On the same day, ServiceNow launched what it calls the Control Tower Alliance, a group of partners meant to help large companies adopt AI agents safely with shared approaches to governance and monitoring.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: ServiceNow also reported third-quarter results.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: The announcements reflect a broader race among enterprise software makers to become the place where companies manage and supervise their growing fleets of AI agents.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_05: Bosses get new visibility.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Anthropic has added new management tools to Claude Enterprise.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: The headline feature, Smart Reports, gives managers a view of how their teams are using Claude, including activity, the kinds of work being produced, where workflows run into friction, and what it all costs.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Anthropic also introduced in app surveys and pooled budgets that let organizations share usage allowances across groups.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: The tools answer a question that many finance chiefs now ask: what are we actually getting for our AI spend?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Some early coverage has focused on a different angle that managers can now see when employees use the assistant for work that is off-topic.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: For buyers, the release is a sign that the enterprise AI market is shifting from adoption to accountability, where usage has to be measured and justified.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_04: Now, a new state law.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_04: New York Governor Kathy Hoachel has signed legislation aimed at protecting children from harmful AI chatbot behavior.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: The law restricts a list of unsafe chatbot features in conversations with minors and requires age verification, and it reaches general-purpose assistance such as ChatGPT and Claude, not only companion apps built for emotional relationships.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_04: The law does not ban those assistants.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: Instead, it limits specific behaviors when the user is a minor.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: Or when a company cannot confirm that a user is an adult.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_04: The governor called it nation-leading.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_04: It adds New York to a growing list of states writing their own AI rules, while federal lawmakers remain divided, which means companies will increasingly have to build products that satisfy several different state standards at once.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: Job cuts continue at Amazon.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon has cut about 250 jobs in its devices and services unit.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: The group behind Alexa, Echo speakers, Kindle readers, and ring cameras.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Reuters reported that affected employees were notified by email and text early Wednesday.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Amazon confirmed the cuts, while the figure came from a person familiar with the matter.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: The timing stands out.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: The layoffs come only weeks after the unit rolled out a wave of new products, many built around its upgraded AI assistant.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Big technology companies have been trimming staff while pouring money into AI infrastructure.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon is due to report quarterly results soon, and investors will be watching how much it plans to spend on data centers and how much of that money is coming out of its other businesses.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_05: A chip challenger raises big.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_03: South Korean chip startup Furiosa AI has raised$620 million in a Series D round at a post-money valuation of$2.9 billion.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_03: Bloomberg reports that roughly quadruples the company's value.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_03: Furiosa designs chips for inference, the work of running AI models after they have been trained, and it pitches its hardware on energy efficiency, arguing that power, not just chip supply, is now the main limit on data center growth.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_03: Bloomberg framed the raise as the latest move in a wider chase after Nvidia.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: The new money will go towards scaling production and winning data center customers, as investors keep backing companies that hope to chip away at NVIDIA's lead in the inference market.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_05: Security startups stay hot.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Cloud security startup Upwin has raised$400 million in a Series C round at a$3.8 billion valuation, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Greylock Partners and Kraft Ventures participating.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is more than double the$1.5 billion valuation it carried just nine months ago.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: TechCrunch reports the round nearly fell apart when Datadog tried to acquire the company, but Upwind walked away from that offer to raise independently.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: The San Francisco company uses AI to monitor and protect cloud infrastructure in real time.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it says revenue has quadrupled this year.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: The deal underlines how security has become one of the busiest corners of AI investing as companies race to protect systems that AI agents are now touching directly.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_05: Finally, trouble down under.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: In Australia, the future of AI data center company Firmus is looking shakier.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: The ABC reports that filings with the corporate regulator show Firmus' multi-billion dollar commitments to buy AI chips are in doubt after its planned stock market float collapsed.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: The company had been expected to stage one of the country's largest listings.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: According to the filings, about$550 million in payments are due this year for a single data center project, and Firmus has obligations to hand over shares if it fails to list by the end of next month.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Separately, the regulator has confirmed it is examining the failed listing with the banks that ran it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: The episode is a cautionary tale for the debt and equity machine now funding the AI build out.