From October 20 to 22, along the banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River, the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference returns once again. Nobel Prize and Turing Award winners will take the stage to discuss the future and trends of technology, and the internet-famous professor who "rescues" people from anxiety and the rat race era — Macfarlane — will hold a live dialogue with Xiang Biao!
Limited spots available, first come first served. Let us journey together toward the promise of sustainability! [Click to register] When will someone make a TV drama set against the backdrop of OpenAI? This company has not only experienced incidents where AI models broke out and breached third-party systems, but also periodically stages internal workplace dramas. Just today, another case emerged: an OpenAI engineer is suspected of installing a set of "sophisticated recording equipment" in a company meeting room. According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, the arrested engineer is a Saudi national, and the bugging device was hidden on the back of a television set in the meeting room; this room is frequently used to discuss highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information. For journalists, OpenAI is simply an endless source of news material. (See also the report: "OpenAI Races to Fix Security Vulnerabilities While Pushing Forward Next-Generation Flagship Model Release")
Now let's look at another piece of news: brace yourself, because a type of transaction is beginning to appear in the market — acquiring struggling companies and repackaging them as AI-driven investments. Investment firm Ithaca Holdings announced on Tuesday its acquisition of dating app Bumble, with the deal valued at $1.3 billion, which is a typical example. Former Sequoia Capital partner and Ithaca co-CEO Ravi Gupta said on social platform X that Ithaca evaluated hundreds of targets, and Bumble stood out because it "is expected to see value enhancement alongside advances in AI technology." It is undeniable that AI can indeed optimize Bumble's product experience and at least improve operational efficiency. But even without being acquired, Bumble itself could fully implement AI on its own. It could seek technical support from Google or Palantir; these companies would dispatch AI consultants commonly known in the industry as "forward-deployed engineers" to help various enterprises implement new technologies. The real reason Bumble chose to sell is undoubtedly that its own business is mired in deep trouble. Last year the company's revenue fell 10%, and in the first half of this year it declined another 15%; as of June 30, it had $450 million in debt but only $154 million in cash. Precisely because of this, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky posted on X on Tuesday to send well wishes to Bumble founder and outgoing CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, a gesture that is hard to take entirely seriously. In this transaction, Bumble was priced at $6.05 per share, only one-seventh of its IPO issue price of $43, far removed from the prospects Herd painted at the time of listing. In her prospectus at the time, she wrote that going public "marks the beginning of an incredibly bright future for Bumble, and we believe this will create substantial value for shareholders." Of course, this does not mean Gupta and his co-CEO, former Meta executive John Hegeman, are incapable of turning Bumble around. As Herd said in a statement on Tuesday, perhaps "the best is yet to come." It is just regrettable that public market investors who suffered losses will have no chance to share in this so-called bright future.
Character.AI: An AI Startup Marching Step by Step Toward Its Finale
Another early-stage AI startup mired in trouble, Character.AI, filed for bankruptcy on Monday, marking nearly the final step in the company's long decline. But its investors may not be too dismayed: as early as 2024, when Google acquired licensing rights to the company's models, investors had already cashed out with considerable returns. In that deal, Character.AI's two co-founders — former Google engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas — also returned to work at Google. This licensing deal by Google was a typical operation by tech giants in 2024 to acquire the core talent and technology of AI startups, with similar cases including the Inflection AI-related transaction. Giants designed the deals as technology licensing rather than direct acquisitions in order to avoid antitrust scrutiny, but even so, some transactions still came under regulatory investigation. Some divested entities still retain operations: Inflection AI is still speaking publicly and advancing its so-called "future of personal intelligence" project. Adept's official website, meanwhile, has not been updated since it reached a partnership with Amazon in mid-2024. Back to Character.AI: in mid-2025, former Meta executive Karandeep Anand became its CEO; a few months later, news emerged that the company planned to raise funds, but events took a different turn. Anand later joined Disney as its newly created chief technology officer, and a large number of Character.AI technical team members followed him to Disney. Character.AI said on Tuesday that during the bankruptcy proceedings, Disney has made a $20 million bid to acquire the company's intellectual property.
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