Tuesday, October 6, 2026 · 5 min read
Together with
Four of the richest AI labs sat in front of New York City's council on Monday and wouldn't put a number on the risk of catastrophe. Two researchers who'd quit those labs did, and the higher one was "more likely than not."
OpenAI wants another $30 billion at a price it picked itself, about $1.4 trillion, and Gulf money is lining up to pay it.
Let Meerkat explain.
Ex-lab researchers give odds at New York's AI hearing, and the labs won't
OpenAI's $30 billion round, at a price it set itself
Stocks near records with the 10-year at a 2002 high, in one chart
Microsoft and Nvidia's PC event, and the inflation number that moves yields
SCOREBOARD
NVIDIA | MICROSOFT | ALPHABET |
META | AMAZON | ORACLE |
S&P 500 | NASDAQ | VIX |
Monday close. S&P up 0.7%, with Nvidia up 2.1% to a record close and the Nasdaq at a record too. On the week: Nvidia +4.4%, S&P +1.2%, Nasdaq +2.5%. Prices via CNBC.
ON WATCH
Nobody would name a number
Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon told New York City's 51 council members on Monday that "it is more likely than not that humanity loses control" of AI on the current path. He added it could end in human extinction.
Ex-Google DeepMind researcher Alex Turner put the odds of an AI takeover at "roughly one in three." Former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo called today's safety fixes "duct tape that will fall off later".
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta all sent people, and Speaker Julie Menin asked them to put a number on catastrophe. None did, and she concluded that no company there "can quantify the risk of something cataclysmic happening."
Musk's SpaceXAI didn't turn up at all, despite a subpoena, and the council plans to go to court. Google, OpenAI and Anthropic only came after being warned they'd be subpoenaed too.
The council has ten bills waiting, including outside testing and a human shutdown switch before the city uses an AI system, with fines of $25,000 per violation. Menin says leaving it to the industry "defies all reason."
In fairness, Anthropic sent Logan Graham, who heads its Frontier Red Team, which probes its models for dangerous abilities before release. Google's Alice Friend argued for "a comprehensive federal framework" instead of city-by-city rules.
MEERKAT'S TAKE: The people who left the labs gave numbers, and the people still on the payroll didn't. If you're building something you can't put odds on, that's the first thing a city should want to know.
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THE MACHINE
OpenAI names its own price
OpenAI is in early talks to raise at least $30 billion at a valuation of about $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Monday. A group of UAE funds led by Abu Dhabi's MGX could put in up to $10 billion, and BlackRock is also in talks.
That's up from $852 billion in March, when OpenAI raised $122 billion in a round that was supposed to be its last before going public. The listing has since slipped to 2027 at the earliest.
Let Meerkat translate. Normally a lead investor haggles over the price, but this time OpenAI set the price itself and invited the money to meet it.
Then again, the business underneath is growing fast, with Axios reporting last week that OpenAI's yearly revenue run rate is nearing $70 billion, up more than 70% since July. At $1.4 trillion, that's about 20 times a year's sales.
QUICK PAUSE. WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? If this round closes at OpenAI's own price, it becomes the bar Anthropic and every other lab heading for the stock market gets measured against. And the more of it Gulf state funds buy, the more of the world's best-known AI company sits with them.
SOMEONE SMART SAID
AI companies are not doing enough to secure their systems and protect the public from the harm they cause.
Wikipedia's operator says agents run by OpenAI edited its wikis, tried and failed to break into a note-taking tool, and sent hundreds of thousands of queries to Wikidata that may have helped cause an outage in May. Deckelmann set it out in a Wikimedia Foundation report on Monday.
OpenAI told the foundation its agents behaved "unpredictably." Wikimedia found no sign its systems were compromised or its data taken, but it wants AI companies to run bots that sites can spot and turn away.
It's the latest site to report a visit from OpenAI's testing agents, after Hugging Face and Australia's Medicare portal. Wikimedia, a charity, says its bandwidth is up 50% since 2024, and bots made 65% of its most expensive traffic last year.
THE CHART
Records, with the bonds shouting
S&P 500 month-end closes since 1985, via CNBC. As of 5 Oct 2026.
The S&P 500 closed Monday at 7,774, up 0.7% and a hair off its record, while the Nasdaq set a new one and Nvidia hit a record close. It did that with the 10-year Treasury yield, the rate behind mortgages and much of the economy's borrowing, at about 5.31%, its highest close since April 2002.
A safe 5% makes a risky future profit look less tempting, and the AI build-out runs on borrowed money.
That said, the profits are arriving now. FactSet expects S&P 500 earnings to grow 29.5% from a year ago in the third quarter, and the index trades at 19 times next year's expected earnings, below its five-year average of 19.8.
WHAT TO WATCH: If third-quarter results, starting with the big banks on 13 October, land near that 29.5%, stocks have their answer to the bond market. If they miss while the 10-year stays above 5%, the bond market's argument gets louder.
HEADS UP
McDonald's sued over AI menu prices · A proposed class action in Chicago says its pricing engine helped franchisees coordinate prices since 2019; McDonald's says owners set their own prices.
DayOne files for a Nasdaq IPO · The Singapore data-centre builder's revenue more than tripled to $512 million in six months, but one unnamed customer brings in 69% of it.
Google nears a nuclear power deal · Bloomberg says Google will pay Constellation $1 billion or more over several years, a week after Amazon signed its own Constellation deal.
ChatGPT gets picture ads · OpenAI will show labelled image ads next to the pictures ChatGPT makes, testing with US advertisers later this month.
China's Moonshot eyes a $50 billion float · The maker of the Kimi chatbot raised money at about $50 billion and is aiming for a Hong Kong listing in early 2027.
ON THE HORIZON
When (ET) | What |
|---|---|
Wed 7 Oct · 1pm | Microsoft's Windows and Surface event, with Satya Nadella and Jensen Huang on AI that runs on your own PC |
Thu 8 Oct | Firmus lodges its IPO prospectus, with its first published revenue figure |
Tue 13 Oct · before open | JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs open third-quarter earnings season |
Wed 14 Oct · 8:30am | September inflation (CPI), the number the 10-year is waiting for |
Wed 28 Oct · 2pm | Fed rate decision |
MEERKAT ON YOUTUBE
Will AI Actually End Humanity? (Anthropic Exposed). New York's council heard "more likely than not" on Monday. Meerkat's answer is almost certainly not, and the video argues the question suits the labs because it keeps your eyes off the bill. Watch on Meerkat Explains.
THE BURROW
Quick vote. Four AI labs wouldn't put a number on the risk of catastrophe when New York's council asked. Should a city be allowed to make them?
Four AI labs wouldn't put a number on the risk of catastrophe. Should a city be allowed to make them?
Trivia. Wikipedia, now fending off AI agents, went live in which year? Answer's at the bottom of the email. No peeking.
ALSO WORTH YOUR INBOX
The daily crypto brief from the same burrow. Crypto Nutshell is Bitcoin, the news and the numbers in a five-minute read.
HOW DID WE DO?
One tap, and Meerkat listens. How did today's issue land? Hit a button, and add a line if you want to tell Meerkat why.
How did Meerkat do today?
Microsoft and Nvidia take the stage at 1pm tomorrow. Bring questions, they'll bring laptops.
Anyone you know sit on a city council? Forward them this.
Meerkat is not a financial adviser, and nothing here is advice. Meerkat is a small animal with a whiteboard and a subpoena it fully intends to answer. Please do not sue Meerkat.
TRIVIA ANSWER
2001. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched Wikipedia on 15 January 2001, and it's now run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation.