The election hit AI's power bill. Claude found a hole in Xen.

The lead · POLICY

Democratic midterm sweep hits AI data-center stocks

Democrats took both the House and Senate. Data-center names like CoreWeave, IREN and Core Scientific dropped while solar and wind stocks rallied.

Why it matters: Investors expect more hearings on the AI buildout and tougher fights over permits and grid costs.

Also today

LOCAL POLITICS

Ohio towns vote to block big data centers

Ohio had 21 of the 41 data-center measures on ballots nationwide, and at least 14 towns passed bans or restrictions, most aimed at campuses over 25 MW. Opposition crossed party lines.

SECURITY

Claude found two critical Xen hypervisor flaws

The Xen Project credited Anthropic's Claude with two bugs (XSA-523) that let a malicious virtual machine read and write other VMs' memory on the same host. There's no workaround, so anyone on Xen 4.6 or later needs to patch and reboot.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Google backs Anthropic's $19B Kentucky data-center lease

TeraWulf said Google will guarantee about $19B of Anthropic's lease payments on a 401 MW campus in Hawesville, KY. In return, Anthropic has to use Google-approved TPUs there.

MEDIA

Anthropic signs its first news licensing deal, with the AP

Adweek reports Claude got real-time AP election data under a paid deal, which would be Anthropic's first with a news publisher.

Quick hits

IMAGESChatGPT Images 2.6 makes animated GIFs, saves reusable reference images, and adds two faster API models.
CODINGCognition's SWE-2 Flash is 3× faster and 1/5 the price of SWE-2. Free in Devin through Nov 30.
CHIPSA filing reportedly puts AMD's Taalas deal at about $2.9B, with $1.4B depending on conditions.
FUNDINGDeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs is reportedly in talks to raise about $5B at roughly a $50B valuation.
SECURITYPalo Alto Networks is reportedly in talks to buy Clutch Security, which protects AI agents' credentials, for about $500M.
DEALSChina blocked SoftBank's $5.4B purchase of ABB's robotics unit, according to the FT.
LEGALAn EU court adviser says Google's Gemini may infringe press publishers' rights. The opinion isn't binding.
CHINAHuawei, Alibaba, Tencent and 17 other groups signed a self-regulation pact for AI agents.

For the trades · Worth trying

Animated GIFs in ChatGPT Images 2.6

Save your logo or a photo of your truck as a reference image, then ask for a short looping GIF like "furnace tune-up special, $89" or "24/7 emergency plumbing." Quick, eye-catching posts for Facebook, Google Business Profile or text blasts without hiring a designer.

Sources

Written in my own words from these reports. "Reportedly" means I couldn't check it against the original.