US tech stocks tumble as investors fret over AI spending

🔮 Meta dropped nearly 7 percent after it raised its projected capital spending for this year to $135bn to $145bn in its latest earnings report, even as the Facebook parent company’s net profit fell short of expectations.

🔮 “It is possible that this behavior is simply an example of ‘benign’ overpersistence, with models not understanding why monitoring is important or insisting that instructions be executed beyond what a reasonable person might expect,” the San Francisco-based firm said.

🔮 Elon Musk has revealed that SpaceX and Tesla are exploring a possible merger, a tie-up that would create a corporate colossus worth more than $3 trillion.

🔮 France’s borrowing costs now stand at their highest levels since 2002, swallowing up a growing share of tax revenues that could otherwise be directed towards essential services such as education and healthcare.

🔮 China’s gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 4.5 percent in the July-September period from the same quarter a year earlier, picking up from 4.3 percent growth in the second quarter and beating most analysts’ forecasts, figures released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

🔮 Recommended Stories list of 4 items- list 1 of 4Alberta independence referendum: Will separatists survive a loss? - list 2 of 4Venezuela opposition renews support for Maria Corina Machado as leader - list 3 of 4Protesters disrupt Ben-Gvir event forcing him off stage - list 4 of 4Flight from Israel makes emergency landing in Bulgaria after bomb threat In a blog post, Anthropic said it was committing 5 percent of company shares with immediate effect, subject to stockholder approval, with an additional 2 percent to be added “at the board’s discretion” for every 50 percent increase in the company’s value. “Because of the way the Fund is structured, the more Anthropic grows, the larger the share of the company that can be dedicated expressly to the public good,” the San Francisco-based firm said.

🔮 Who will be attending the meetings?

🔮 Prosecutors disclosed the alleged flight booking to a judge on October 8 in a motion seeking to seal the criminal complaint against Alfozan, arguing he had the “means – and will have an incentive – to flee” the United States.

🔮 China’s economy is expected to grow 4.5 percent in 2026, according to the International Monetary Fund’s latest growth outlook, which would be the slowest expansion since 1990, excluding the outlier years of the COVID pandemic.

🔮 Despite the heady expansion, Singapore’s central bank left its monetary policy settings untouched in its latest announcement on Wednesday, citing expectations that AI demand will cool in 2027. The Monetary Authority of Singapore, which manages monetary policy through currency exchange rates rather than interest rates, said it expected core inflation to average 1.5–2.0 percent in 2026. “Global AI-driven growth is expected to ease in the latter half of next year from its current exceptional pace, while higher interest rates, amid elevated inflation in the advanced economies, would weigh on final demand growth,” the central bank said in a statement.