Quantinuum Quantum Breakthrough, Samsung Foundry Revival, and More Tech News

AI

Non-Abelian Anyons Demonstrate Universal Quantum Computing

A joint team from the University of Chicago, Harvard, Stony Brook, and Quantinuum has demonstrated universal quantum computing operations using non-Abelian anyons. Working on Quantinuum’s 54-qubit trapped-ion H2 processor, they prepared the ground state of the quantum double of S3. By combining anyon braiding and fusion, they implemented the full gate set needed for universal quantum computation.

The key result is the direct preparation of quantum “magic states” through topological operations alone. Conventional approaches require an expensive distillation process that consumes a large fraction of available qubits. Non-Abelian anyons offer a path around this bottleneck.

Topological quantum computing had remained largely theoretical until now. This Nature paper demonstrates practical implementation on real hardware, establishing a new avenue toward fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Hindsight: Agent Memory Surges on GitHub

Vectorize-io’s Hindsight gained 2,152 stars in a single day, climbing to GitHub’s #2 trending spot with 31,006 total stars. The open-source project tackles the long-term memory problem for AI agents.

Hindsight mirrors human memory with four networks: World (factual knowledge), Experiences (agent history), Opinion (beliefs with confidence scores), and Observation (complex mental models derived from facts and experiences). Agents learn through retain, recall, and reflect workflows.

Running locally with Ollama requires no API keys or cloud costs. Agent memory is clearly emerging as its own technology category, distinct from RAG and vector search.

Big Tech

Samsung Foundry Eyes First Profit in Four Years

Samsung’s foundry division is on track for its first quarterly profit since 2022, according to TrendForce. Utilization stands at 70-80%, with the goal of reaching 100% in H2 2026.

Two factors are driving the recovery. HBM4 base die demand is surging. Orders for Samsung’s 2nm process from U.S. customers including Qualcomm, AMD, Google, and Tesla have increased 130%. Yields on the 2nm node have passed 60%, approaching the 70% threshold for favorable mass production economics.

Whether Samsung can credibly challenge TSMC’s dominance in leading-edge foundry depends on sustaining these yield improvements through volume ramp.

Discord Rolls Out Behavioral Age Verification

Discord launched its age assurance system globally on September 23. The system uses behavioral signals such as account tenure, device information, and activity patterns to classify users into three groups: adult, teen, or unconfirmed. Over 90% of users are sorted automatically.

Users who need active verification can use a credit card, Apple App Store, Google Play, Google Wallet, or AgeKey. ID scans and video selfies remain as options. Teen accounts face content restrictions.

The rollout follows a February privacy incident in which a third-party vendor was breached, exposing ID photos and selfies from roughly 70,000 users. Discord shifted away from biometric verification as a result.

Startups

Go.AI Raises $85M for On-Prem AI in Regulated Industries

Go.AI closed an $85 million Series A led by Updata Partners, bringing total funding to $90 million. The company provides on-premises AI hardware and software for financial services, healthcare, aerospace, defense, and manufacturing.

More than 200 customers process over 12.5 million queries per day on Go.AI deployments. ARR has grown 8x year over year while remaining profitable. The company rebranded from Go Abacus earlier in September.

In a market dominated by cloud AI, regulated industries are carving out a distinct on-prem category. Auditability requirements are the primary driver.

Brahma AI Hits $2B Valuation with $150M Raise

Brahma AI, a subsidiary of DNEG (the VFX studio behind the Dune series), raised $150 million led by Indian PE firm Multiples. The round values the company at $2 billion, with interest in an additional $100 million.

The platform integrates visual AI, digital humans, voice, and multilingual content generation for enterprise clients. Warner Bros., the NBA, and Mayo Clinic are among its customers. Revenue is projected to exceed $130 million in 2026, up from roughly $45 million in its 2024 founding year.

The deal illustrates how VFX studios are converting their visual technology assets into enterprise AI products, extending entertainment industry capabilities into B2B markets.

New Technology

Motorola Signature 27: First Non-Pixel Phone to Support GrapheneOS

Privacy-focused Android fork GrapheneOS has confirmed support for the Motorola Signature 27. This breaks the Pixel-only barrier that has constrained GrapheneOS adoption since its inception.

New security features in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chipset made the partnership possible. The device is expected in November, with plans for models that come with GrapheneOS preinstalled. Pricing has not been announced.

For privacy-conscious users, this is a significant expansion of choices beyond Google’s hardware ecosystem.

Samsung Galaxy S26 Gets Stable One UI 9 (Android 17) in the US

Samsung has begun rolling out stable One UI 9 based on Android 17 to Galaxy S26 owners in the United States. T-Mobile users received it first, with AT&T expected to follow shortly. The update is approximately 4.1 GB and includes the September 2026 security patch.

South Korea received the update on September 16 after five months of beta testing across seven releases. Samsung had originally planned a September 21 global rollout but pushed it to September 28.

The T-Mobile release arrived ahead of the revised schedule, suggesting Samsung accelerated deployment for the U.S. carrier.

Open Source

NVIDIA Model Optimizer: Unified Model Compression Library

NVIDIA’s Model Optimizer has reached GitHub’s #3 trending position with 4,636 stars. The library unifies quantization, pruning, neural architecture search, knowledge distillation, and speculative decoding into a single toolkit.

It targets model compression for deployment frameworks including TensorRT-LLM, TensorRT, and vLLM. A PyPI release on September 23 accompanied a Blackwell NVFP4 performance update.

Model deployment optimization is shifting from individual techniques to integrated tooling, tightly coupled with NVIDIA’s hardware ecosystem.

Audacity 3.7.9: FFmpeg 9 Support and Data Loss Prevention

Open-source audio editor Audacity released version 3.7.9. The update adds FFmpeg 9 support and enables ASIO device selection memory per host on Windows.

The release focused heavily on preventing data loss. Fixes address work loss when running out of disk space, disconnecting a drive right after closing a project, and closing a recovered project without saving. A startup freeze caused by incorrect font configuration was also resolved.

Gaming

King Signs Collective Bargaining Agreement with Swedish Unions

Candy Crush developer King has signed a CBA with Swedish unions Engineers of Sweden and Unionen. A planned strike for September 25 was withdrawn.

Negotiations began in May 2025 and reached a breakthrough after both unions filed strike notices on September 15. The agreement covers roughly 100 unionized workers among King’s approximately 500 employees in Malmo and Stockholm.

The CBA includes the right to advance notice during reorganizations and takes effect April 1, 2027. A CBA at a Microsoft subsidiary signals broader momentum for labor organizing in the games industry.

Undead Labs Goes Independent from Xbox, Announces Major Layoffs

State of Decay developer Undead Labs has separated from Xbox to become an independent, employee-owned studio. However, the studio announced a “significant number” of layoffs on the same day.

Some of those affected worked on the in-development State of Decay 3, which continues production. The studio had been under Xbox Game Studios management since Microsoft’s acquisition in 2018.

Independence came with workforce reduction. The move is part of Xbox’s broader organizational restructuring.

Bethesda Absorbs Obsidian, Collaborating on New Fallout

As part of Xbox’s restructuring, Obsidian Entertainment is moving under Bethesda’s umbrella. After seven years of independent management under Xbox Game Studios, Obsidian’s reporting structure is changing to Bethesda.

Bethesda’s president told Obsidian employees that the studio would retain its creative identity. The makers of Avowed and The Outer Worlds are now collaborating with Bethesda Game Studios on a new Fallout title.

Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas remains a fan favorite in the series. The reunion of these two studios raises expectations for where Fallout goes next.

References

Universal gates from braiding and fusing anyons on quantum hardware — Nature
vectorize-io/hindsight — GitHub
Introducing Hindsight: Agent Memory That Works Like Human Memory — Vectorize
Run Hindsight with Ollama — Hindsight Blog
Samsung Foundry Eyes 2H26 Full Utilization — TrendForce
Samsung foundry profit rebound may come in 3Q26 — Digitimes
Getting Global Age Assurance Right — Discord Blog
Discord’s age-verification era is upon us — TechCrunch
Go.AI Raises $85 Million Series A — Yahoo Finance
Indian AI firm backed by Dune VFX studio valued at $2 billion — CNBC
Motorola Signature 27 confirmed to support GrapheneOS — 9to5Google
Motorola’s Signature 27 will be the first non-Pixel phone to support GrapheneOS — Android Police
Galaxy S26 stable One UI 9.0 update released — SamMobile
Samsung starts rolling out Android 17 with One UI 9 — 9to5Google
NVIDIA/Model-Optimizer — GitHub
nvidia-modelopt — PyPI
Model Optimizer documentation — NVIDIA
Audacity 3.7.9 Release — GitHub
King signs collective agreement — UNI Europa
King signs collective bargaining agreement — Game Developer
Undead Labs makes significant layoffs — Game Developer
Bethesda takes over Obsidian — GamesRadar
Bethesda president says Obsidian will retain creative identity — Aftermath