Amazon-Decart $7B Talks, Reflection Beam Launch, RTX 5090 Halt, and More

AI

Amazon in Talks to Acquire AI Chip Software Startup Decart for $7 Billion

Amazon is negotiating to acquire Decart, an AI startup whose software lets models run across different chip architectures, for roughly $7 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Decart’s core product DOS supports NVIDIA GPUs, Google TPUs, and Amazon’s own Trainium chips.

The startup raised $300 million in a Radical Ventures-led Series B in May, reaching a $4 billion valuation. It also builds models, including the real-time video model Lucy and the simulation-environment generator Oasis.

Anthropic previously explored acquiring Decart at around $6 billion but walked away after due diligence, per Bloomberg. Neither Amazon nor Decart has commented publicly.

Reflection AI Debuts Beam, Its First NVIDIA-Backed 501B Open-Weight Model

Reflection AI, backed by NVIDIA, has released Beam, a 501-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model designed for coding, reasoning, and agentic workloads. It was trained on 23.8 trillion tokens from a mix of online and licensed datasets.

Reflection says Beam needs three to four times less inference compute than comparable open models. That figure is the company’s own measurement; independent benchmarks have not been published yet.

The launch marks the first major Western open-weight competitor to Chinese models like DeepSeek and Qwen. Reflection’s backers include NVIDIA, Sequoia, B Capital, Eric Schmidt, and Lightspeed. The company also signed a compute contract with SpaceX worth up to $6.3 billion.

White House Announces $6 Billion Science Package with $1.8B for Virtual Biology

The Trump administration unveiled over $6 billion in science commitments at its ‘Science: A New Golden Age’ summit on October 8. The two biggest pieces are AI computing and virtual biology.

Biohub, the Department of Energy, and the NIH are investing $1.8 billion to build an AI-powered ‘virtual cell’ predictive model. The initiative aims to create the largest coordinated collection of AI-ready biological data to date, with a five-to-ten-year horizon for accelerating biomedical discovery.

The Genesis Mission Consortium commits $2.4 billion in AI compute from 11 companies. NVIDIA pledged $1 billion, AMD $500 million, OpenAI $200 million, and Anthropic and Google $150 million each. The DOE separately launched a $215 million Quantum Genesis Q Competition.

Big Tech

NVIDIA Reportedly Ends RTX 5090 Production, Redirects GB202 Die to Pro and AI Cards

Multiple hardware leakers report that NVIDIA has stopped manufacturing new GeForce RTX 5090 units, redirecting all future GB202 die supply to higher-margin RTX Pro 6000 and 5000 series cards. China-specific D variants are reportedly included in the halt.

The RTX Pro 6000 ships with 96 GB of memory and sells for several times the price of a consumer GeForce card. Professional and AI demand now far outstrips the revenue that gaming GPUs generate from the same silicon.

NVIDIA has not confirmed the reports. Existing retail stock can still be sold, but with no fresh supply, street prices have climbed to $8,000 and above against a $1,999 launch MSRP.

Trump Awards National Medal of Science to Musk, Brin, Huang, and Su

President Trump presented National Medals of Science to Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang, and Lisa Su at the White House science summit. Satya Nadella and Michael Dell received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

Musk was cited for contributions to space exploration, intelligent systems, communications, and American manufacturing. Huang was recognized for turning the GPU into a general-purpose computing architecture. Su was honored for processor architecture and chiplet-based integration that powered the first exascale supercomputer.

The National Medal of Science, established by Congress in 1959, is the highest U.S. recognition for scientists and engineers. Brin was selected for foundational algorithms in information retrieval and data processing.

Startups

Hadrian Raises $40 Million Series B for Agentic AI Offensive Security

Amsterdam-based cybersecurity startup Hadrian closed a $40 million Series B on October 6, co-led by Forgepoint Capital International and SmartFin. HV Capital, Motive Partners, and Picus Capital also participated. Total funding now stands at $65 million.

Atlas maps an organization’s external attack surface and uses AI agents to determine which exposures are actually exploitable. Nova provides on-demand agentic penetration testing. The company claims 10x greater visibility into critical exposures and 80% faster resolution compared to manual pen testing.

The funds will go toward expansion across EMEA and the United States and additional engineering investment.

Rivercell Closes $25 Million Seed Round for AI Virtual Cell Platform

Paris-based biotech-AI startup Rivercell closed a $25 million seed round led by HV. The company is building AI models and a data platform to predict how human cells respond to treatments.

The “virtual cell” concept is a cell-level digital twin. It can simulate the effects and side effects of drug candidates before lab testing. The timing aligns with the White House’s $1.8 billion virtual biology initiative announced the same week.

Rivercell’s core value proposition is reducing failure rates in early-stage drug discovery by filtering out ineffective candidates computationally.

Open Source

LineageOS 24.0 Ships on Android 17

LineageOS 24.0 launched on October 11, rebased on Android 17. The team completed the rebase faster than expected after Android 17 AOSP dropped in June.

A new Canvas image editor joins the app lineup, and existing apps have moved to Google’s Material 3 Expressive design language. Streaming updates are now enabled by default on A/B-partition devices, shortening install times.

A browser-based flashing tool has also been introduced. It uses WebUSB to support Fastboot, ADB, and Samsung’s Odin protocol. Security patches cover August 2025 through October 2026.

Flathub Reverses AI App Ban, Switches to Disclosure Requirement

Linux app store Flathub has reversed its May 2026 blanket ban on AI-generated applications. Starting October 8, the platform requires disclosure instead.

Developers must declare AI-generated content and its approximate extent. Disclosure does not guarantee approval; reviewers can still reject submissions based on AI content ratio and code quality or maintainability concerns.

AI-generated code in Flathub manifests remains prohibited. AI agents also cannot submit PRs, write commit messages, or author review comments. Using AI solely for research, discussion, or debugging does not require disclosure.

Gaming

Unity Ships Day-One Engine Support for Meta VR Glasses

Unity announced immediate engine support for Meta VR Glasses, the lightweight headset unveiled at Meta Connect. Developers need Unity 6.6 or higher and the Meta XR All-in-One SDK v207.

Existing Quest projects can be ported with minimal changes. The update adds wider eye and hand tracking, spatial audio tools, and a rendering mode that reduces GPU cost. Developers can preview interactions in the Unity Editor without the hardware.

The glasses default to look-and-pinch input with no controllers. Compatible controllers are sold separately. Retail availability is set for spring 2027, with pricing still undisclosed.

Epic Games Integrates Claude and Gemini AI into Unreal Engine 6

At State of Unreal 2026, Epic Games announced full AI integration into Unreal Engine 6. AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor connect directly to the editor via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Generative AI workflows also cover 3D asset creation, with human artists handling final polish. The feature is already available in beta within UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite).

UE6 Early Access is targeting late 2027. A GDC 2026 survey found that 52% of game developers view generative AI’s industry impact as negative, making Epic’s move one of the more polarizing decisions in game development this year.

References

Amazon in Talks to Buy AI Startup Decart for Around $7 Billion — KFGO (WSJ)
Amazon Decart Acquisition Talks $7 Billion AI Chip Software — RuntimeWire
Nvidia-Backed Reflection AI Preps First Open-Weight Model — AI Weekly
Scoop: Powerful Open Model Is Set to Shake Up AI Race — Axios
White House Announces Over $6B in Science Initiatives — GovConWire
Trump Administration Unveils $6B Science Initiative — IBTimes Singapore
NVIDIA May Scrap RTX 5090 Production To Feed Surging AI Demand — HotHardware
Trump Gives Musk, Huang, Su and Brin the National Medal of Science — The Next Web
Amsterdam’s Hadrian Raises $40M for AI-Powered Offensive Security — The Next Web
Hadrian Raises $40 Million To Expand Agentic AI Offensive Cybersecurity Platform — Pulse 2.0
Rivercell World Model Drug Discovery Seed Round — Sifted
Rivercell Raises $25 Million Seed Round — Pulse 2.0
LineageOS 24.0 Open-Source Mobile OS Released with Android 17 — Linuxiac
Flathub Reverses AI-Generated App Ban, Now Requires Disclosure — Linuxiac
Flathub Walked Back Their Generative AI Ban — GamingOnLinux
Build for Meta VR Glasses with Unity — Unity Blog
Unity Adds Support for Meta VR Glasses Development Environment — InvenGlobal
Unity Day-One Support Meta VR Glasses — Technobezz
Epic Is Building Claude and Gemini into Unreal Engine 6 — The Next Web
Unreal Engine Embraces AI at State of Unreal 2026 — Full Cleared