Plus: Dartmouth provost resigns after AI use review; Anthropic asks Newsom to let courts block risky AI models
Happy Friday, pull up a chair, because today's headlines move fast.
DEALS
馃彔 Thrive Holdings buys ADT for $15.3B
Image source: techcrunch.com
Thrive Holdings has acquired physical security company ADT for $10 per share or about $7.6 billion in equity. The total enterprise value of the deal is $15.3 billion.
The details:
Thrive Holdings is the holding company spinout from Josh Kushner鈥檚 VC firm Thrive Capital.
OpenAI is a partner and investor in Thrive Holdings.
Thrive Holdings currently holds over 75 companies.
Santiago Schnell resigned as provost of Dartmouth University on Wednesday. The AI detector Pangram flagged Schnell's Washington Post editorial as at least 80 percent AI generated.
The details:
A faculty-led review committee concluded that Schnell used AI to meaningfully alter his writing and fell short of academic integrity standards.
Schnell's resignation came less than two weeks before a scheduled no-confidence vote by faculty leaders.
Pangram determined that Schnell's work was 96 percent AI-written across nine professional articles published this year.
鈿栵笍 Anthropic asks Newsom to let courts block risky AI models
Anthropic sent a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom dated October 15, 2026, proposing that courts should be able to block AI models posing a serious risk.
The details:
Anthropic's proposal includes independent safety evaluators embedded at AI companies reporting risks to California's Attorney General.
The Attorney General could seek a court order to suspend a model's deployment, internal use, or further development if there is a near-term risk of catastrophic harm.
Anthropic's letter responds to an executive order Governor Newsom signed in September, which set up a working group to suggest AI safety law improvements.
OpenAI generated $10 billion in revenue for Microsoft in the quarter ended Sept. 30. Search and advertising, including Bing, generated $6.6 billion in the quarter.
The details:
Xbox brought in $5.4 billion in the quarter.
Microsoft has invested $12.0 billion of a promised $13.0 billion into OpenAI.
Azure revenue rose 48% to $33.2 billion in the quarter.
