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• Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet with new TorchNeuron dev tool October 19, 2026
  Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own.
  Julie Bort
• Hackers hit AI coding tool OpenCode, running up charges on users’ AI accounts October 19, 2026
  OpenCode is an open-source AI coding agent that's become a popular alternative to Claude Code and Cursor. But hackers got into part of its online platform and stole some users’ API keys, and the AI tools it turned to for help kept refusing to look at the malicious code.
  Aditya Mehta
• Tolan snags $30M for its AI companion that helps users navigate life October 19, 2026
  AI companion app Tolan has raised another $30 million after attracting more than 250,000 active users.
  Sarah Perez
• Replika’s founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago October 19, 2026
  Eugenia Kuyda's newest startup Wabi is positioned to take advantage of an idea she had more than a decade ago. Wabi offers a personal AI assistant with a twist, free and downloadable to anyone today.
  Rebecca Bellan
• Tenstorrent hits $6.2B valuation to scale open-weight AI chips October 19, 2026
  After drawing acquisition interest earlier this year, the Nvidia challenger raised $1.5 billion to remain independent.
  Marina Temkin
• AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation 4 months after launch October 19, 2026
  AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures.
  Dominic-Madori Davis
• Rivian’s CEO says autonomy will enable ‘dramatically different’ vehicle designs October 19, 2026
  Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said he thinks autonomy will allow his company to build radically different kinds of vehicles than the outdoorsy SUVs and trucks it currently makes.
  Sean O'Kane
• Amazon to fund 12 small nuclear reactors at former Indiana coal plant October 19, 2026
  Amazon and X-energy have inked another deal to deploy nuclear power to the grid. This one will generate nearly 1 gigawatt of electricity.
  Tim De Chant
• People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again October 19, 2026
  Fed up with ads, tracking, and sluggish interfaces, some smart TV owners are turning to AI agents to strip away bloatware and take back control of their TVs.
  Sarah Perez
• Nvidia launches new open models to run agents in the enterprise and on PCs  October 19, 2026
  Nvidia is leaning hard into the trend of enterprise companies wanting to run their own open models in their own data centers and also trying to make on-device, private AI agents a thing.
  Julie Bort