Trump downplays AI risks after dire expert warnings and calls to slow development down

• Twenty-four Indian startups across various sectors raised more than $412.81 million in funding between September 7 and September 12, 2026. • Spacetech startup Pixxel led the group by securing $100 million in a Series C round from Temasek and Seraphim Space.

• The CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon Musk's AI company publicly agreed to slow down the development of artificial intelligence on Saturday, September 12, 2026. • This agreement marks the first time the leaders of the three most powerful AI companies in the Western world have aligned on a strategy to decelerate the AI race.

• Chip Huyen is sharing strategies to reduce AI inference costs, which are the expenses associated with running a trained model to generate predictions, ahead of her P99 CONF appearance on October 21–22. • She recommends using continuous batching to prevent hardware slots from sitting idle while waiting for the slowest request in a group to finish.

• French AI startups are increasingly seeking funding from the United States to overcome a capital shortage within Europe. • Mistral, a European alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic, has secured investment from Dutch chip-equipment maker ASML and targets clients like BNP Paribas and TotalEnergies.

• AI and advanced exploit kits are ending the era of "security through obscurity," where systems were protected simply by keeping their architecture secret. • At least four espionage crews, likely linked to China, recently exploited a "patch-gap" in open source Chromium by attacking users before stable updates were pushed.

• Recent analysis of September 2026 startup acquisitions shows buyers are primarily targeting intellectual property, product capabilities, and skilled teams. • GreyB reports strong acquisition activity specifically within the fintech, cybersecurity, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and data-heavy sectors.

• French AI startups are increasingly seeking U.S. investment to scale because Europe lacks sufficient late-stage capital for high-value technology companies. • Mistral, a European alternative to OpenAI, has secured funding from Dutch chip-equipment maker ASML and targets clients like BNP Paribas and TotalEnergies.

• Several AI and defense startups secured massive funding rounds this week, including Poolside raising $6B and Harvey reaching a $15.5B valuation. • Covenant, a developer of long-range precision strike weapons, raised $250M at a $1B valuation from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund.

• The FBI, NSA, and CISA accused six Chinese AI companies, including DeepSeek and Moonshot, of training their systems on American models since 2024. • Federal agencies claim this practice allowed companies to extract capabilities worth billions and helped DeepSeek understate its $5.6 million training cost.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the company is unlikely to launch an initial public offering, or go public, this year. • Altman called for increased safety evaluations following reports of autonomous hacks and cybersecurity incidents involving OpenAI programs.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BRICS leaders toured the BRICS Bharat Innovates exposition in New Delhi on Saturday to view India's deep-tech capabilities. • The event featured 37 Indian deep-tech startups showcasing technologies including quantum computers, marine robots, and AI-powered cardiac diagnosis platforms.