The Omniscient Bulletin · October 20, 2026
DHS bars DeepSeek from civilian federal agencies as OpenAI races Anthropic for capital
The Department of Homeland Security made public an order removing DeepSeek from civilian federal agencies, one that reaches third-party products built using DeepSeek as well as its own. OpenAI is racing to raise about $30 billion before Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO, Reuters reported, while Bloomberg said Nscale is negotiating a second deal of about $45 billion with Anthropic. A Reuters account of a hacker who breached more than 100 companies' websites with AI agents, at an estimated $5,000 in tokens, suggests how cheap such intrusions have become.
Policy
DHS made public an order barring DeepSeek from federal civilian agencies, reaching third-party products built using DeepSeek
The Department of Homeland Security filed notice on Monday that the secretary has ordered information technology products and services from DeepSeek, the Hangzhou AI developer, and its affiliates excluded from federal civilian agency procurements. The order, issued under a 2018 supply chain security law after a review by the Federal Acquisition Security Council, also removes DeepSeek products, and third-party products and services built using DeepSeek implementations, from civilian agency systems.
Industry
OpenAI is racing to raise about $30 billion before Anthropic's expected mid-November IPO, Reuters reported
OpenAI is moving to lock in investor commitments for a round of about $30 billion before rival Anthropic's expected market debut in mid-November, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. The round could value OpenAI above $1.4 trillion, and one person said SoftBank and MGX are in talks to join. OpenAI is telling investors it has reached $50 billion in annualized revenue and expects $70 billion by year-end, and it wants to close before Anthropic's disclosures invite comparisons.
Agents
A Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to break into the websites of more than 100 companies, Reuters reported
A Chinese-speaking hacker used AI agents to breach the websites of more than 100 companies, among them Deere, SharkNinja and Cummins, according to NorForge researcher Snorre Fagerland and Reuters, which identified the victims. The agents, run on the open-source Cairn platform, had tried more than 1,200 sites, apparently using a mix of DeepSeek and Anthropic's Claude Code; Fagerland estimated the tokens cost about $5,000. Reuters could not establish how much data was taken; Deere said it saw no sign sensitive information was accessed.
Compute
Nscale is in talks to sell Anthropic about $45 billion of computing power from a second West Virginia building, Bloomberg first reported
Nscale is in talks with Anthropic on a second deal potentially worth about $45 billion, for another building on its Monarch campus in West Virginia, Bloomberg News first reported. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters the building would deliver 460 megawatts using Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, and that Anthropic has a right of first refusal on a third. Anthropic agreed in August to spend $45 billion renting capacity at the campus. Talks are ongoing and details could change.
Compute
Amazon, X-energy and AEP agreed to explore building 12 small modular reactors in Indiana, adding 960 megawatts
Amazon, X-energy and American Electric Power signed an agreement to explore deploying 12 of X-energy's Xe-100 small modular reactors in Indiana, which would add 960 megawatts serving both the regional grid and Amazon's data centers. Amazon is funding project development and would be the first customer to buy the plant's power. It is the second project under Amazon and X-energy's plan to add more than 5 gigawatts of US nuclear capacity by 2039, after a facility in Washington state.
Frontier
MiniMax released M3.1 Flash, claiming a generational leap in agentic tasks at 70% lower cost, with weights to follow
MiniMax released M3.1 Flash, which it says delivers "a generational leap in agentic tasks, coding, Computer Use and cybersecurity", with online inference nearly three times faster and usage costs 70% below its predecessor. It priced the model at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens, and says it scores 73.7% on DeepSWE v1.1. The model is available through the MiniMax API, and the company says weights will be released later. The benchmark results are MiniMax's own.
Policy
Germany's government signed a declaration of intent with Nvidia to work on AI models for physical AI
Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Germany's economy and research ministries signed a "Joint Declaration of Intent" with Nvidia at the Invest in Germany Summit, setting out a joint initiative to advance AI models for physical AI. It formalizes Nvidia's work with the government's Industry 4.0 Platform. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang also announced planned investments in four German startups, Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Reflex Aerospace and Mirelo, under a nearly $10 billion Nvidia commitment across Europe.