Edition, Tue, 13 Oct 2026.

Character.AI files for bankruptcy, sells assets to Disney for $20 million

Five years after founding, the breakout generative AI chatbot startup has collapsed under legal and operational headwinds, and Disney is the lead bidder for its assets.

Five years after founding, the breakout generative AI chatbot startup has collapsed under legal and operational headwinds, and Disney is the lead bidder for its assets.

Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, listing estimated liabilities between $50 million and $100 million. The company has faced mounting lawsuits over safety concerns, including a 2025 case involving a minor's suicide, which forced the platform to ban underage users. It raised over $193 million from investors including a16z, Lightspeed, and SV Angels, but high compute costs and regulatory pressure proved unsustainable. As part of the proposed sale, Disney would pay $20 million for certain assets and receive a nonexclusive license to unspecified intellectual property. The company continues to operate during the sale process, which is expected to close by late November or early December.

Meta unveils Muse Wonder, its first frontier-class AI model

After months of teasing its push into the top tier of AI, Meta has released Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, models it says rival the output of OpenAI and Anthropic's latest offerings.

After months of teasing its push into the top tier of AI, Meta has released Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, models it says rival the output of OpenAI and Anthropic's latest offerings.

The models were trained at Meta's Prometheus data center in Ohio and deliver state-of-the-art performance on agentic tasks, including law, finance, and health domains. According to Meta's internal testing, Wonder scores comparably to Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra on benchmarks, and leads on MemoryBench, a benchmark for continual learning. The larger Wonder Full model will be exclusive to Muse Code subscribers. Pricing through the Meta Model API is $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, roughly equivalent to GPT-6 Sol. Both models feature "active memory" to retain user context across conversations.

Apple launches HomeView, its first smart home display

Apple has entered the smart display market with a $299 device featuring a 7-inch screen, a built-in speaker, and a 12-megapixel camera, debuting at its "Welcome Home" event on Tuesday.

Apple has entered the smart display market with a $299 device featuring a 7-inch screen, a built-in speaker, and a 12-megapixel camera, debuting at its "Welcome Home" event on Tuesday.

The HomeView uses an A18 chip with a Secure Exclave for on-device privacy processing of camera and microphone data. It functions as an Apple Home Hub, Matter controller, and Thread Border Router, supporting up to 6 user profiles via facial recognition and iPhone presence on the home network. The screen switches between shared and personal modes depending on the user. It ships November 13 in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, and India. The device faces steep competition from Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show, and reviewers note it currently lacks a uniquely compelling use case beyond what an iPhone already does with Siri AI.

Tencent launches $5 billion bond sale to fund AI investments

The Chinese tech giant has begun marketing dollar and offshore yuan bonds to support its escalating investments in artificial intelligence, according to Bloomberg.

The Chinese tech giant has begun marketing dollar and offshore yuan bonds to support its escalating investments in artificial intelligence, according to Bloomberg.

Tencent has set initial price guidance for 10-year and 20-year dollar bonds at around 115 and 140 basis points above comparable US Treasuries, respectively, and is also marketing 10-year and 30-year offshore yuan-denominated notes priced around 2.9% and 3.5%. The offering underscores the massive capital requirements of frontier AI development and the willingness of well-capitalized tech companies to raise funds in capital markets to stay competitive in the AI race.

American Express launches framework to authenticate AI agent purchases

Amex has introduced the "Intent Intelligence Framework" to ensure that AI shopping agents only make transactions their users have authorized, a first-mover move in agentic commerce.

Amex has introduced the "Intent Intelligence Framework" to ensure that AI shopping agents only make transactions their users have authorized, a first-mover move in agentic commerce.

The framework captures a customer's purchase intent, authenticates the customer's identity, and creates an Intent ID with a Proof of Intent Token that serves as a secure digital payment credential — replacing the user's actual card number at checkout. Amex says this approach pulls intent earlier into the transaction flow, preventing unauthorized purchases before they occur. The company is positioning the framework as an industry standard and is already in discussions with payments partners. It follows an April launch of the ACE Developer Toolkit, as surveys show 66% of US consumers say they are likely to use AI agents to research product prices within the next 12 months.

ServiceNow pushes Flow as a fast, AI-first ITSM entry point

Flow targets organizations that want conversational service desk automation without a full ITSM implementation project.

Flow targets organizations that want conversational service desk automation without a full ITSM implementation project.

ServiceNow launched Flow, a conversational AI service desk that lets employees describe requests in natural language and complete or escalate them from Slack and Microsoft Teams. The company says teams can deploy it in one day without additional infrastructure, and Flow is backed by more than 100 prebuilt connectors to knowledge, asset, ticketing, and automation systems.

Flow is positioned toward first-time ITSM buyers, small teams, remote offices, and newly acquired business units. It is consumption-based, offers a free trial, and can draw on existing AI assists for current ServiceNow customers. ServiceNow also plans to extend the conversational model beyond IT into customer support and procurement.

ServiceNow’s AI workflow push puts valuation back in focus

Investors are debating whether the company’s rapid Flow-led expansion justifies a rich premium even as earnings lag revenue.

Investors are debating whether the company’s rapid Flow-led expansion justifies a rich premium even as earnings lag revenue.

ServiceNow’s stock has rebounded sharply after its second-quarter report, with revenue rising 24% while earnings fell 22.6% as the company invested more heavily in sales and engineering to support AI workflow products. The share price remains elevated, trading around $140 and well below some bulls’ fair-value estimates, though still above the average analyst target cited in the coverage.

The debate centers on whether ServiceNow can keep converting its enterprise AI story into durable growth. The company’s Q2 results included strong revenue of $3.987 billion and non-GAAP free cash flow of $634 million, but analysts remain watching for execution around Flow, federal demand, and large workflow deals ahead of third-quarter earnings.

Wall Street leans bullish on ServiceNow ahead of earnings

Analysts are pointing to enterprise AI demand, federal spending, and cybersecurity opportunities as catalysts before the company reports.

Analysts are pointing to enterprise AI demand, federal spending, and cybersecurity opportunities as catalysts before the company reports.

ServiceNow received bullish commentary from analysts as investors look ahead to its third-quarter earnings, which the company has set for after the close on October 28. The optimism reflects the company’s enterprise workflow momentum, recent wins, and expectations that AI adoption can expand ServiceNow’s customer base beyond traditional ITSM deployments.

Third-quarter guidance points to subscription revenue of $3.975 billion to $3.980 billion, up 20.5%, and cRPO growth of 19.5%. Analysts on TIKR expect total revenue growth of about 20% and normalized EPS around $1.03, setting up another key test for ServiceNow’s AI-driven growth narrative.

ServiceNow stock gains as enterprise software sentiment improves

Bank of America’s Salesforce upgrade and Wells Fargo’s Adobe downgrade highlighted a broader rotation in enterprise software names, with ServiceNow moving higher alongside Salesforce.

Bank of America’s Salesforce upgrade and Wells Fargo’s Adobe downgrade highlighted a broader rotation in enterprise software names, with ServiceNow moving higher alongside Salesforce.

ServiceNow climbed about 3% as Wall Street reassessed major enterprise software names. Bank of America lifted Salesforce from Underperform to Buy with a $285 target, arguing that AI concerns had been overblown, while ServiceNow benefited from the improving sentiment around software platforms with strong enterprise workflows and AI positioning.

The move comes even as Wells Fargo cut Adobe to Underweight with a $225 target, underscoring a sharper split among software names based on AI readiness, growth, and valuation. ServiceNow’s strength reflects its faster revenue growth, enterprise workflow expansion, and recent product momentum, including its push into AI-powered service desk automation.