Nugget

Tech News · The field notes

Personal Tech — Thursday, November 12, 2026

Nvidia's CEO scandal rattles Chinese AI firms, Anthropic's IPO is oversubscribed with pricing set for November 18, Fractile raises $720M for memory-first AI chips, plus DeepMind's AlphaGenome 2, IBM's quantum roadmap, and New York's RAISE Act registration.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang scandal (NYT/Reuters Nov 12)

  • US authorities concluded Alice Huang, ex-Megaspeed exec, was a Chinese intelligence asset
  • Huang admitted infidelity
  • Nvidia board investigating, removal reportedly on the table
  • Chinese AI firms rushing to rent Nvidia capacity outside China fearing tighter curbs
  • Remote Access Security Act (RASA) could close remote-access loophole, House passed 369-22 in Jan, awaits Senate
  • Chinese AI shares fell in Hong Kong (Alibaba -7.1%, Z.AI, MiniMax -7%+)
  • follows Nov 11 report of PLA-linked university buying restricted Nvidia H200 chips

Anthropic IPO (Nov 12)

  • official IPO page live
  • pricing Nov 18, Nasdaq debut Nov 19, ticker ANT
  • Bloomberg: multiple times oversubscribed, up to $90.4B raise via IPO + private placement, valuation near $1.4T
  • Q3 revenue $17B (12x YoY), 11,900+ customers paying $100K+, 15% adjusted operating margin, $23.3B net loss incl $21.9B non-cash charge
  • private placement: Google $10B, Nvidia $10B, AMD $2.5B, Broadcom/Micron/Microsoft $1B each, TSMC up to $500M
  • +$10B Microsoft/Google cloud commitments thru 2033 (Azure $49.2B, Google Cloud $121.6B total)
  • Lambda $35B deal may be cancelled after missed deadline
  • price range $70-$78, FT: bankers may lift top end toward $1.5T

Funding

  • Fractile (London, memory-first AI inference chips) $720M Series C at $7B valuation, led by Lightspeed/Founders Fund/Thrive/Redpoint, CapitalG/BlackRock/UK sovereign AI fund in
  • UForce (Ukraine-founded drones) $700M at $6B, Valor + UK National Wealth Fund co-led, US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund in
  • SoftBank backs Agile Robots (German humanoids) $500M at $8.5B valuation

DeepMind AlphaGenome 2 (Nov 11)

  • DNA model predicts variant effects per individual cell type/state, trained on 107M+ cell profiles across 68 tissues
  • research use only, not clinically validated

IBM Nighthawk r3 quantum processor (Nov 11)

  • 520 programmable qubits, 2,034 physical qubits, 10,000 operations
  • 2027 plan to link two into 1,040-qubit system
  • Nighthawk r2 ran 34B circuits since Sept
  • r3 a design target, not yet built

New York RAISE Act registration portal opened Nov 10

  • frontier developers >$500M annual revenue must register by Jan 1, 2027, publish safety frameworks, report critical incidents within 72 hours, issue transparency reports
  • fines up to $1M first / $3M subsequent
  • enforced by Office of DIGIT
  • NY Center for AI Responsibility and Research at SUNY Binghamton launched
  • follows California SB 53

OpenAI

  • Businesses in ChatGPT beta (1.2B weekly users)
  • acquired Odessia AI travel agent (booked $60M travel last summer, founded by Sonder's Francis Davidson)
  • Q3 revenue reportedly >$10B record
  • GPT-6.2 Astra rumored in Codex repo/cloud quota pages — UNCONFIRMED

Rapid-fire

  • Nebuly $21M Series A led by Planven (ROI measurement for enterprise AI agents)
  • Helix $6.2M led by Chicago Ventures (voice-powered human verification)
  • Araceli Biosciences $4.5M (cellular imaging, used by 10 of top 20 pharma)
  • custom AI chip tally: 21 named across Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Meta/OpenAI, 10 in service, incl Microsoft Maia 200 running Copilot

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