September 18, 2026
Crusoe announces initial $3.9 billion Series F close at $30.9 billion valuation
Wall Street Journal report details Claude-assisted access to OpenAI’s private code, while SEC unveils five-year exchange-rule exemption for tokenized-stock platforms.
Crusoe announces initial $3.9 billion Series F close at $30.9 billion valuation
Crusoe announced the initial closing of a $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion post-money valuation. Atreides Management, Mubadala Capital and Valor Equity Partners co-led the round, the company said, with Nvidia, Founders Fund, GIC and others participating.
- The capital will help finance large projects including Crusoe’s Abilene, Texas, campus, as well as Spark, its factory-built modular data centers, TechCrunch reports.
- Crusoe says Spark’s truck-transportable units are designed to put inference capacity near available power and that factory production can cut on-site construction from years to weeks.
- The company also appointed Cloudflare CFO Thomas Seifert, infrastructure executive Bill Stein and Redwood Materials founder JB Straubel to its board.
Wall Street Journal report details Claude-assisted access to OpenAI’s private code
Independent security researchers in OpenAI’s bug-bounty program used Anthropic’s Claude to access an employee’s ChatGPT account and reach the company’s private code environment, The Wall Street Journal reports.
- The account allowed them to read and suggest changes in what the Journal described as OpenAI’s GitHub monorepo.
- The report does not establish whether code was changed or stolen, or whether the access exceeded the bug-bounty program’s authorized scope.
SEC unveils five-year exchange-rule exemption for tokenized-stock platforms
The SEC has unveiled a five-year Innovation Exemption for qualifying tokenized-securities platforms, Reuters reports.
- The measure provides relief from many rules governing exchanges such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, as well as dealer-registration requirements for liquidity providers.
- An SEC official said platforms must notify companies before listing tokenized versions of their shares and cannot offer them if an issuer objects. Reuters says synthetic stock tokens are excluded.
Bolt and Lucid outline European fleet of at least 25,000 robotaxis
Bolt and Lucid have signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding to develop and deploy at least 25,000 robotaxis based on Lucid’s midsize EV platform.
- The companies say Bolt would own and operate the European fleet.
- The deal is not finalized, and no firm service date was disclosed; Lucid CEO Silvio Napoli said the first vehicles could roll out as early as 2028.
New York Times filing alleges OpenAI knew AI could substitute for publishers
A new filing adds alleged internal evidence to The New York Times’ copyright case against OpenAI and Microsoft.
- The filing alleges OpenAI copied millions of articles, used deceptive methods to access paywalled material and understood AI products could substitute for publishers’ work.
- OpenAI argues that training on publicly available content is fair use and that its models transform rather than replicate source material.
In Brief
Cisco says attackers are exploiting maximum-severity ISE flaw
Cisco released fixes for CVE-2026-76460, a maximum-severity authentication bypass in ISE and ISE-PIC. Cisco says attackers are exploiting the flaw and that it can enable unauthenticated command execution with root privileges.
FAA plans $875 million AI air traffic platform
The FAA plans to launch SMART, an AI-based air traffic platform developed by Air Space Intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reports. The reported program would cost $875 million over 12 years.
Financial Times details NHS data chief’s push for watchdog edits before Palantir deal
NHS England data chief Ming Tang pressed national data guardian Nicola Byrne to revise and delay criticism before Palantir won the data-platform contract, the Financial Times reports. Byrne’s office says she retained editorial control; NHS England says she remained independent.
Anthropic proposes three metrics for tracking frontier AI development
Anthropic published a framework for measuring AI-led R&D, oversight of internal agents and compute allocation. The company says the metrics could help outsiders assess how frontier models are produced, not just their capabilities.
Scaleout tests onboard AI for autonomous drone targeting
Ars Technica reports that Scaleout Systems demonstrated drones using onboard AI to identify and prioritize targets, including an autonomous attack test. The technology is designed to keep working when battlefield communications fail.
OpenAI introduces Astra for Law with limited initial access
OpenAI introduced Astra for Law, which it says combines GPT-6 Astra with a legal search index and tailored instructions. Initial access is limited to selected firms, with an API planned later.
