Edition, Sun, 18 Oct 2026.

Meta drops the language that could have let it scrape news sites for AI

After publisher and legal-expert backlash, Meta removed the commercial-terms clause critics read as a free right to scrape publisher content, including news sites, for AI training.

After publisher and legal-expert backlash, Meta removed the commercial-terms clause critics read as a free right to scrape publisher content, including news sites, for AI training.

Meta updated its commercial terms to delete the provision saying it could "use any content" from a business account's domains, web pages, or URLs to "provide, develop, improve, research, train, and maintain" its products. Legal experts, including Cornell digital-and-information-law professor James Grimmelmann, had interpreted the clause as letting Meta supersede robots.txt blocking instructions and train on publisher content at no cost.

Meta first pushed back, with a spokesperson insisting there was "no change to how Meta uses web crawlers," and then removed the contested language entirely. Spokesman Daniel Roberts told The Verge that the consolidated crawling terms "only applied to our ads and business products," that content owners can still use robots.txt to signal preferences, and that "this is not about scraping news sites." The move comes as publisher lawsuits against AI companies over training data continue even after Meta won a high-profile copyright case last year.

SpaceX is making a multibillion-dollar bid to become a fourth U.S. carrier

With roughly $28 billion spent on spectrum and 15,000 approved direct-to-device Starlink satellites, SpaceX is building the terrestrial network it needs to challenge AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

With roughly $28 billion spent on spectrum and 15,000 approved direct-to-device Starlink satellites, SpaceX is building the terrestrial network it needs to challenge AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

SpaceX purchased 800 MHz of low-band spectrum, formerly held by Nextel and T-Mobile, for $8 billion, on top of the roughly $20 billion it has spent on EchoStar spectrum, and the FCC has approved 15,000 next-generation Starlink satellites with direct-to-device capability. LightShed Partners analyst Walter Piecyk, speaking on The Verge's Decoder podcast, noted that satellites alone cannot serve phones indoors or in dense cities, so macro towers are inevitable, with an initial build-out estimated at $10 to $15 billion.

Piecyk pointed out that incumbent carriers enjoy around 60 percent EBITDA margins, "so there's a lot of fat there that can be eaten off," and called Verizon the most exposed competitor because of its weaker low-band spectrum position and lack of differentiation. The stakes extend beyond telecom: the move puts a trillion-dollar enterprise-value U.S. business in play.

Anthropic's Clark: AI could lift U.S. GDP by nearly 50% by 2030

At the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark cited an internal model forecasting U.S. output near $44 trillion by 2030, up from just over $30 trillion today.

At the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark cited an internal model forecasting U.S. output near $44 trillion by 2030, up from just over $30 trillion today.

Clark, who serves as Anthropic's head of public benefit, acknowledged the figure "sounds very outlandish" but said the forecast assumes technology keeps improving and that new industries and inventions would arise to power an expansion that large. He warned policymakers that the window to act is "a small number of years," described a coming "singularity" in which AI development outpaces human control, and called for international cooperation to set "unusual and serious rules" for transformative technology.

Clark also flagged job losses in high-AI-exposure fields such as call centers, while noting AI is boosting employment in scientific research. His remarks come as Anthropic prepares for an initial public offering expected in November that could value the company at up to $2 trillion.

Replit makes OpenAI its default model, dropping Anthropic from the top spot

CEO Amjad Masad said cost, performance, and partnership strength all pointed to OpenAI, and that "ChatGPT is better now."

CEO Amjad Masad said cost, performance, and partnership strength all pointed to OpenAI, and that "ChatGPT is better now."

Speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, Masad said OpenAI will replace Anthropic as Replit's default model provider, though Claude remains available to customers. Because most customers stick with the default rather than choosing a model, the shift could significantly reduce Replit's spend with Anthropic. The company had been a top-five Anthropic customer, and the Claude partnership helped Replit's revenue grow substantially; insiders familiar with the relationship pushed back on the "no longer working with Anthropic" framing, saying the partnership itself is still in place.

Masad also shared growth details: enterprise was about 2 percent of Replit's revenue last year and is now about 15 percent, with more than half of revenue coming from B2B, and he expects more than half to come from enterprise and government customers by 2027.

TikTok permanently bans the "Musk" documentary's account

Just ahead of the wider release of Alex Gibney's four-hour film about Elon Musk, TikTok permanently suspended the documentary's promotional account, citing its political content.

Just ahead of the wider release of Alex Gibney's four-hour film about Elon Musk, TikTok permanently suspended the documentary's promotional account, citing its political content.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's distributor, Bleecker Street, was told the account had received a "permanent suspension." The ban escalates a run of platform friction: YouTube and Meta initially rejected ads for the film before reversing and calling it an "error," while X, which Musk owns, has continued to refuse to carry them. There is a dash of irony in the timing, since the account posted shortly before being removed that people should see the movie "before it gets shut down."

TikTok's U.S. operations are partly owned by Larry Ellison, who appears in the film in a text message offering to help fund Musk's Twitter purchase. The film opened in just four theaters last weekend, is rolling out more broadly now, and is slated to stream on HBO next year.

ServiceNow's AI Control Tower faces a reality check

theCUBE Research calls the AI governance product a strong system of action, but not yet a complete enterprise AI control plane.

theCUBE Research calls the AI governance product a strong system of action, but not yet a complete enterprise AI control plane.

ServiceNow says its AI Control Tower can discover and govern any agent, work across models and clouds, track cost and value, and shut down behavior that violates policy. The product is gaining real traction: more than 500 customers were live in its first six months, and it underpins an AI business that crossed $1 billion in annual contract value in Q2, with a full-year target of $1.5 billion.

But a new theCUBE Research analysis, based on 15 in-depth interviews with large enterprises, is more cautious. It argues Control Tower is strongest at governance workflow, ownership, approvals, and audit trails, layered on the Now Platform's CMDB, ITSM, and IRM base, while model evidence and real-time runtime enforcement often stay external or human-mediated. In the field study, 14 of 15 respondents described runtime enforcement as external, custom, or manual, and only one company had a positive, limited pilot of the kill switch that CEO Bill McDermott has touted. The analysis also flags pricing friction: ServiceNow's new Foundation, Advanced, and Prime tiers carry price uplifts of roughly 20 to 30 percent, and 12 of 15 enterprises called total cost an acute concern.

ServiceNow chases a $30B-plus subscription target by 2030

AI contract value just crossed $1 billion, and investors are debating whether the growth numbers justify the premium price.

AI contract value just crossed $1 billion, and investors are debating whether the growth numbers justify the premium price.

ServiceNow's AI business has crossed a milestone most enterprise software companies spend years chasing: $1 billion in annual contract value, with agentic deployments up 9x in nine months and AI net new ACV growing more than 40 percent quarter over quarter. Million-dollar-plus AI deals have tripled, and level 1 AI agents now close 80 to 85 percent of service requests with no human involvement.

The numbers landed on top of solid Q2 results: revenue of $3.987 billion, up 24 percent year over year, non-GAAP EPS of $0.90 against an estimate of $0.86, cRPO of $13.2 billion, renewals steady at 98 percent, and free cash flow of $634 million. With the $30 billion-plus subscription revenue target set for 2030, a cybersecurity business now above $1 billion helped by the Armis and Veza acquisitions, and ProPlus price uplifts above 30 percent, the question for investors is whether AI monetization can keep compounding, and 24/7 Wall St. carries a $246.50 price target on the stock.

Emerald Wealth says deep system roots protect ServiceNow in the AI era

the Zurich firm's Q3 investor letter credits the platform's 35 percent quarterly rally to how deeply it is woven into customers' processes.

the Zurich firm's Q3 investor letter credits the platform's 35 percent quarterly rally to how deeply it is woven into customers' processes.

In its Q3 2026 investor letter for the Focused Equity Strategy, Emerald Wealth Partners, an independent asset and wealth management firm based in Zurich, highlighted ServiceNow as one of the fund's main contributors to an 8.9 percent gross quarterly return, alongside Microsoft.

The letter addressed the SaaSpocalypse debate, in which investors feared AI agents would replace software users and companies would build their own applications. Emerald's answer: Microsoft and ServiceNow sit deep inside their customers' businesses, in systems that contain data, permissions, and controls, and are woven into thousands of processes, and large organizations do not casually replace infrastructure like that because the cost, disruption, and risk are simply too high. ServiceNow closed at $148.57 on October 15, with a market capitalization of about $153.6 billion.

ServiceNow rolls out Flow, a new AI-native service desk

the startup within the company lets teams automate workflows directly in chat channels using natural language, ahead of Q3 earnings on October 28.

the startup within the company lets teams automate workflows directly in chat channels using natural language, ahead of Q3 earnings on October 28.

ServiceNow has announced the rollout of Flow, a new AI-native service desk startup within the company that targets instant deployment for AI-native users. Its core feature is chat automation: teams can turn chat requests into automated actions directly inside chat channels using natural language, without heavy setup.

The product news arrived as ServiceNow shares rallied in sympathy with Accenture, which jumped about 19 percent after reporting a quarterly beat and optimistic fiscal 2027 guidance. ServiceNow's next major catalyst is its Q3 2026 earnings report, scheduled for October 28, with estimates of about 85 cents per share on roughly $3.93 billion of revenue.

ServiceNow CFO: 14-hour days set a terrible example

President and CFO Gina Mastantuono says leaders who work long hours and sleep little undermine their own teams.

President and CFO Gina Mastantuono says leaders who work long hours and sleep little undermine their own teams.

ServiceNow president and CFO Gina Mastantuono said leaders who work 14 hours and get 4 hours of sleep "set a terrible example for their employees," adding that "recovery is part of the performance."