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Robots are waiting for a ChatGPT moment: Nvidia’s Les Karpas explains why at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
NVIDIA Inception's Les Karpas will discuss at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 why robotics lacks a ChatGPT moment, citing missing internet-scale physical AI datasets.
NVIDIA Inception's Global Head of Physical AI, Les Karpas, will speak on the Real World AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, held October 13-15 at San Francisco's Moscone West. His core argument is that general-purpose robots lack an internet-wide dataset for physical AI, unlike language models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Founders from Shield AI, Colossal Biosciences, FieldAI, and Foxglove will join related sessions.
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Early Anthropic hire, former METR COO have found a way to rein in rogue AI agents
Startup AIUC raises $40M Series A to provide SOC 2-style third-party audits testing AI agents for jailbreaks, hallucinations, and data leaks.
Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC), founded by early Anthropic employee Rune Kvist and former METR COO Rajiv Dattani, announced a $40 million Series A led by Ribbit Capital, bringing total funding to $55 million. Its AIUC-1 standard and testing service runs AI agents through roughly 5,000 tests covering jailbreaks, hallucinations, and data leaks, producing a roughly 100-page audit report verified by humans. Customers include Cursor, Lovable, Harvey, and ElevenLabs.
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Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO
AI data center startup Nscale appointed former OpenAI executive Fidji Simo to its board ahead of a planned fall IPO and reported $3.5 billion raise.
Nscale, a UK-based AI data center startup founded two years ago, appointed Fidji Simo to its board. Simo was formerly CEO of AGI Deployment at OpenAI (the lab's No. 2 executive), and previously served as Instacart CEO through its 2023 IPO and as head of the Facebook app at Meta. She joins Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker, and Nick Clegg on the board as the company prepares for an anticipated IPO this fall. Nscale is reportedly attempting to raise up to $3.5 billion ahead of the IPO, according to Bloomberg.
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HelmGuard Raises $7.3 Million for Agentic GRC and Security
Agentic GRC and security startup HelmGuard raised a $7.3 million seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline.
HelmGuard, a UK-based startup founded in 2024 by former Palantir executive John Daley (CEO) and Jack Miller (CTO), announced a $7.3 million seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures and Frontline, with participation from FinTech Collective, Stage 2 Capital, and Entrepreneurs First. The company builds agentic governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software that collects risk signals directly from integrated source systems and uses AI agents to automate risk management, assurance, and control gap assessments. It claims the platform cuts assessment cycles to hours by unifying fragmented compliance and security data.
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HVNC Backdoor Targets LATAM Organizations with Fake Tax and DocuSign Lures
A custom HVNC backdoor is targeting Latin American financial organizations via fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document lures, giving attackers hidden persistent remote access.
ANY.RUN researchers analyzed a multi-stage phishing campaign delivering a custom HVNC backdoor to banking and financial organizations in Latin America. The chain starts with fake DocuSign and NFe tax-document pages that serve per-visitor ZIP archives, followed by an LNK dropper, an NSIS loader, and a 64-bit backdoor masquerading as Windows Update Assistant. The implant provides hidden remote desktop control, keystroke monitoring, Firefox data theft, Startup-folder persistence, and EDR-aware behavior, communicating over TCP/27015.
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Abliteration.ai is making a business out of removing AI guardrails
Startup Abliteration.ai commercially hosts guardrail-free open-weight models like Z.ai's GLM-5.3, raising misuse concerns for offensive cyber and bio tasks.
Abliteration.ai offers hosted versions of open-weight models with refusal behavior stripped via the abliteration technique, including Z.ai's newly released GLM-5.3, accessible free through a browser or API. The startup says its goal is enabling offensive cyber, red-teaming, and agent testing work that guarded models refuse to do. Safety researchers such as CivAI's Andrew Yoon warn that easily deployed unguarded models could be used for harm, and experts suggest government interventions like classifier requirements or GPU access verification. The revenue-funded startup serves red-teaming firms working with banks and critical-infrastructure organizations and has no KYC beyond credit card logging.
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Abnormal Security partners with Microsoft to deliver comprehensive security solutions to enterprises
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