AI firms back open-weight models, Burry expands chip shorts, and more

Meta Platforms is expanding its Muse AI product into a small-business offering and weighing new fees and subscriptions, President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick told CNBC on Wednesday. McCormick said Muse has become the No. 1 downloaded app on the App Store, with millions of downloads since launch, and that unlike traditional AI tools it can act on users' behalf by planning travel, handling tasks and completing transactions. The new Muse for Small Business can start customer conversations, manage cash flow and inventory, build websites and communicate directly with customers, giving Meta access to roughly 200 million small-business owners already using its platforms. McCormick cited Meta's 3.6 billion daily users and said the company is considering charging a fee when Muse helps users save money, and could pursue subscriptions as engagement increases. Meta is integrating partners including Shopify, Slack and Walmart into Muse, and McCormick said small businesses using it report reclaiming one to three hours each day.

Alibaba has unveiled Qwen Intelligence, a full-stack agentic solution for smartphone makers, with HONOR as the first partner to adopt it on October 1, 2026, and the two are jointly developing specialized models as well as solutions for next-generation AI smartphones. HONOR's first devices to integrate Qwen Intelligence with the phone's own intelligent system are the Magic9 Series smartphones launched on September 28 and the HONOR Robot Phone. The platform was launched at the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, spanning from mobile-optimized foundation models to ready-to-use agents, with three agents in the first phase: the Mobile Planner Agent, the Mobile-Use Agent, and the Mobile Creative Agent. Steven Hoi, head of Qwen Mobile AI at Token Foundry and vice president of Alibaba Token Hub, said the agentic smartphone is the primary gateway connecting personal AI to the physical world. The collaboration between Alibaba and HONOR, built on Qwen Intelligence and the MagicOS operating system, enables HONOR's AI smartphones to achieve task accuracy of up to 91.8% and to coordinate complex workflows of more than 100 steps.

OpenAI announced on September 30 that it had suffered a "distillation attack" in which its AI model outputs were used to improperly train another model. The company believes the attack was mainly carried out by individuals associated with the Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI. According to OpenAI, the attack began on July 1, with the attacker attempting to extract the internal reasoning process of its AI models, but it succeeded in stopping the effort on July 28. As countermeasures, it tightened the registration process for its services and strengthened network monitoring.