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North America
CNBC Finance

Automakers like Rivian and Ford are ‘democratizing 3D printing’ to reduce costs and increase speed

DETROIT — Automakers including Ford Motor and Rivian Automotive are leaning into a new type of manufacturing line: 3D printing. Manufacturers say it's helping them reduce costs and increase speed. The technology has been around for decades, but it's becoming more commoditized in the automotive industry, with 3D printers used to create everything from vehicle parts and accessories to tools for assembly plants and testing units for research and development labs. "At this point, we don't have a choice but to scale up and begin using it through all factions of Rivian," Jared Beck, head of Rivian's additive manufacturing, told CNBC during a tour of the automaker's expansive 3D-printing operations in suburban Detroit. "We're going to be democratizing 3D printing for the entire company." Also known as additive manufacturing, 3D printing can create three-dimensional objects from digital designs by dispensing material layer by layer, much like a traditional printer does with ink on paper. Instead of ink, the machines use a wide variety of materials such as plastics, composites, ceramics and even metals. Printers can range from hundreds of dollars for hobby-like devices to hundreds of thousands of dollars for specialty equipment, depending on how big the product being produced is and the material it needs. They can produce individual pieces or hundreds of smaller parts in a batch using powders and resins. Rivian said it has spent more than $5 million on 3D-printing machines, with the cost of materials for the operations growing to about $1.7 million annually. Beck said despite the costs, the machines typically pay for themselves within a year. He said the technology helps lower supplier tooling costs, streamline logistics expenses and cut production times for parts from weeks to days, if not hours. "It's well in the millions [for savings], but the main thing is speed for Rivian," Beck said. The all-electric vehicle company's latest expansion of 3D printing includes adding new machines that can build flexible silicone parts as well as installing a bay of machines at its plant in Normal, Illinois, for employees to print parts on demand. "3D prints should be readily available for every engineer so that they can make a part and get it in their hands as soon as possible," Beck said. Rivian has also used the technology for electric-motor models for fluid testing, creating screw guides for tooling and stamping press inserts and some production parts, including trim pieces to fill gaps in some early builds. There's a similar push underway at larger, more-established automakers like Ford and its crosstown rival General Motors, which have used 3D printing for many years, including in their massive assembly plants.

Automakers like Rivian and Ford are ‘democratizing 3D printing’ to reduce costs and increase speed
North America
Yahoo Finance

OpenAI IPO Valuation Target Reportedly Trimmed By $150B After Nasdaq 100 Registers Worst Month Since March 2025 Following Brutal Tech Sell-Off

OpenAI has reportedly cut its target for its latest funding round by $10 billion as the ChatGPT maker faces a tougher market backdrop and growing investor scrutiny of AI spending. According to a report by The Financial Times citing people familiar with the matter, OpenAI is now seeking about $20 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation, down from its earlier target of $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation. OpenAI had been seeking to raise $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation, after pointing to a sharp increase in revenue since July to justify nearly doubling its valuation from $852 billion. But the company has since tempered its ambitions, with the report stating that OpenAI had set Friday as the deadline for investors to commit to the round. The initial close was expected to bring in less than $20 billion after some investors reduced their allocations, according to the report. A consortium of investment groups from the United Arab Emirates, including state-backed technology fund MGX, is expected to be the largest participant. As part of the deal, OpenAI would have an option to lease newly developed computing power in the region, according to the report. Founders Fund, Coatue, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, along with SoftBank, also plan to participate, the report said. OpenAI raised $122 billion in March. The fundraising reset comes after a sharp sell-off in technology stocks and growing concerns about the pace and scale of AI spending. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 fell 3.5% Friday, while the index registered its worst month since March 2025, adding pressure to companies tied to the AI trade. The Nasdaq 100 index closed lower by 6.65% in October, its worst month since March 2025 when it fell 7.69%. The report added that one OpenAI backer said that the fundraising process had begun amid enthusiasm for AI but was caught by a sharp reversal in the market. The company is also facing competition for investor attention from Anthropic, which is preparing for an IPO next month at a valuation of $1.5 trillion or more. The Anthropic IPO could add another complication for OpenAI as investors weigh the two AI companies at the same time. During an interview with CNBC, Yorkville Ives partner Dan Ives described the environment around Anthropic as a “perfect storm moment,” saying the company is “so key to this AI revolution build out.”

OpenAI IPO Valuation Target Reportedly Trimmed By $150B After Nasdaq 100 Registers Worst Month Since March 2025 Following Brutal Tech Sell-Off
North America
Fortune

Our AI agent experience: we scrapped the multiple $60,000 salary marketing jobs and hired one person at a far higher salary

In July, Accenture published guidance for companies alarmed by their AI bills. Avoid blanket usage cuts, it said. Don’t tell employees to use less AI. Route work to the cheapest model that does the job. It also noted that in nearly every deployment it had examined, including its own, fewer than 10% of users and workflows drive the vast majority of the bill. On Oct. 1, according to an internal announcement obtained by 404 Media, Accenture began centrally funding $29 a month per person toward Claude; anything above that had to be charged to a project. Internal messages seen by the publication show employees who had been spending $500 to $1,000 a month, and one who said their access was revoked entirely. Accenture says reporting that it has put a firm limit on its people’s access to AI tools is incorrect. Take the company at its word, but the distinction is real, and the exposure is real: fixed-price contracts are more than 65% of Accenture’s bookings, so token costs land on its own margin. But from where an employee sits, the distinction is thin, and Accenture’s own paper records the pressure. In some of its environments, it wrote, requests to lift individual spending limits arrive by the hundreds each day. Companies everywhere are asking the same question: how many tokens should we give each employee? It is the wrong question, and it is leading managers to decisions they will regret. The right question is what a finished piece of work costs, before AI and after. The answer is usually so lopsided that the argument ends there. Here is an answer. One of our portfolio companies needed a new website. The agency quote was $60,000. Instead, three people from the business team — none of whom had ever built a website — did it in three days, and the result was better than what the agency proposed. It worked properly on Windows and Mac computers, on iPhones and Android handsets, and on Chinese phones running HarmonyOS — none of which the team knew to ask for. The agents also produced high-resolution versions of the company’s logos, made its marketing material consistent for the first time, and found customer testimonials nobody knew existed, along with awards the company did not know it had won. The tokens cost a few hundred dollars. Here is a second. Preparing a board presentation on a company we wanted to acquire, we asked AI only to reformat the slides. It did that. It also fact-checked them, which we had not requested, and found several material errors. Then it reached the slide carrying our offer price and told us the price was too high, suggesting we cut it by 40%. We had not asked for its opinion. We checked the reasoning and lowered the bid. Consider what this does to hiring. We were about to take on several entry-level marketing people at around $60,000 each. We hired one instead and paid considerably more. That one non-technical person does work the whole group could not have done: designing the company’s collateral and building analytics software to measure our customers’ operations against industry peers. Notice what these have in common. It is not that people worked faster. Three people who could not build a website built one. A marketing hire who does not write software is shipping a software product. The change is not productivity but capability: work that used to require a specialist can increasingly be done by whoever understands the business problem. We should be honest about what that means. Those are jobs that will not exist. One of us has a close friend, a graphic designer, laid off with two colleagues when new owners decided AI could do what the graphics department did. But a company that refuses these tools does not save those jobs. It loses them later anyway, along with its own. So why is everyone capping? Because the bills arrived, they were larger than expected, and almost nobody can guess what an afternoon of their own AI use costs. AI is sold by the token. A token is roughly three-quarters of a word, and everything you send the system and everything it sends back is counted and billed. A million tokens — about 750,000 words, or eight or nine novels — costs between $2 and $8. A typical office worker asking 30 questions a day uses about 1.3 million tokens a month, roughly $6 of usage. That is why software companies sell $25 seats and still make money. Your average employee is not the problem and never was.

Our AI agent experience: we scrapped the multiple $60,000 salary marketing jobs and hired one person at a far higher salary
North America
Fortune

From Karl Marx’s vampire to Warren Buffett’s moat, the crumbling gothic castle has been capitalism’s favorite metaphor for 250 years

Markets are ushering in a particularly gothic Halloween as the AI trade exposes a crumbling aristocratic pile of early 21st century capitalism. Wall Street has been describing itself in castle-adjacent terms for years. Jamie Dimon has long talked to JPMorgan shareholders about the bank’s “fortress balance sheet.” His 2015 letter set aside a section to answer the question of what the phrase even meant. By 2021, he’d added a second castle word, warning that “the moats that protect this company are not particularly deep.” The moat came from Warren Buffett. In a 1999 Fortune article with Carol Loomis, he argued that the key to investing is a company’s competitive advantage and how durable it is, and that the businesses worth owning have wide moats around them. The gothic novel’s favorite picture of danger is a castle falling apart, and for about 250 years the two have traded images: the castle and the moat, the vampire, the creature built in a lab. This Halloween season has them rushing to the front of the conversation, with a two-day rout in tech stocks on Thursday and Friday turning on whether the AI giants’ moats will hold, as gothic horror booms on bookshelves and movie screens. Horror took 15.5% of the domestic box office in 2025, according to The Numbers, and U.S. horror book sales rose 7% through the first nine months of 2025, per Circana BookScan, while adult fiction overall grew just 1%. The New York Times asked Friday why every book is gothic now, with publishers putting the label on everything from family sagas to space operas, and several film critics commenting that Nathan Fielder’s smash-hit business-scandal documentaryYou Can See Everything is a twisted, even gothic romance in the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock. The selling started with Alphabet. The stock fell 12.6% Thursday, wiping out roughly half a trillion dollars in market value, after the Google parent’s quarterly report. Revenue from the core search unit fell short, partly because of the popularity of less-profitable “AI mode” searches and the company burning cash faster than expected. Its free cash flow came in at negative $9.1 billion, against the negative $2.23 billion analysts expected, per FactSet. The S&P 500’s worst performer was software giant ServiceNow, which dropped 27% the same day on slowing revenue growth and disappointing guidance. By Friday morning, it was Amazon’s and Intel’s turn, with Intel down roughly 25% before the opening bell. Big Tech lost nearly $900 billion in market value after another sharp rise in AI spending in the third quarter, the Financial Times calculated. Reddit, whose shares fell more than 22% premarket Friday, is pulling up the drawbridge: it’s moving to a logged-in experience as AI eats search. The irony is spooking investors. AI is eating into the businesses that throw off the cash, and the cash is going into AI anyway. The hyperscalers have raised $326 billion in stock and bonds this year to pay for the build-out, more than triple 2025, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data. The question underneath it is the one Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok put to clients the morning Alphabet fell. “With AI disruption potentially around the corner, there is a lot of discussion about moats at the moment,” he wrote in his Daily Spark note Thursday. He built on finance professor Aswath Damodaran, the “dean of valuation,” who compiled a list of sources of competitive advantage, including brand strength, switching costs, network effects, cost advantages and legal protection. Then he boiled it down to an AI moat checklist of three questions: does the company own data its rivals can’t get, is its product part of how customers do their jobs every day, and can it charge more without customers walking away? Judging by that third test, the companies selling AI don’t seem to measure up. OpenAI’s new GPT-6.1 Terra model costs up to half as much per token as the version before it. An index from expense-management firm Ramp, which looked at what companies actually pay Anthropic and OpenAI, shows token prices down roughly 35% since the end of June, in what Axios called a price war. The companies paying for AI aren’t getting much back yet, either. In an Oct. 24 note, Slok sent a tremor through Wall Street terminals with an argument that AI “has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech.” Revenue per worker and profit margins are rising for the Magnificent Seven and flat for the rest of the S&P 500, he noted, and mainstream companies are starting to treat token spending as a cost center that weighs on margins rather than a source of growth.

From Karl Marx’s vampire to Warren Buffett’s moat, the crumbling gothic castle has been capitalism’s favorite metaphor for 250 years
North America
Yahoo Finance

S&P 500, Nasdaq End Third Straight Week Lower As Investors Move Away From Tech, AI — AMZN, INTC, LLY, RBLX In Focus

U.S. stock indices ended lower on Friday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also closing the month lower after investors moved out of the tech and AI play after a host of third-quarter results failed to meet investor expectations and as bloated AI capex plans weighed on tech cash flows. The S&P 500 ended Friday 2% lower, the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.5%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average eased 1.1%. The Russell 2000, which tracks small-cap stocks, dropped 1.7%. The Nasdaq 100 dropped about 6.5% this month, its worst monthly performance since March last year. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits for SPY improved to ‘bullish’ from ‘neutral’, while it remained in ‘bearish’ territory for DIA and QQQ. Intel Corp. (INTC) plunged the most in over forty years after posting disappointing quarterly results and issuing a soft outlook due to weakness in personal computers. Revenue within its client computing and physical AI division dropped 5% year-over-year to $8.1 billion, making it the worst performer in the Nasdaq 100 this month. Core revenue streams across U.S. mega-cap technology firms — encompassing digital advertising, consumer demand, and retail platforms — are showing early signs of decelerating, even as collective artificial intelligence capital expenditures swell toward $750 billion this year. Earlier this week, Alphabet shares posted their worst day on record after missing third-quarter earnings and revenue expectations. “We’re moving out of the hopes and dreams phase of the AI trade and into the ‘show me’ phase,” Joe Tigay at Equity Armor Investments told Bloomberg. “Full order books are great, but investors want to see who can actually deliver.” Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) has arranged up to $80 billion in supplier financing credit line as it prepares for aggressive infrastructure spending to power its artificial intelligence initiatives. Shares of Eli Lilly (LLY) and AbbVie (ABBV) climbed to new record highs on Friday after the pharmaceutical behemoths reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings and raised their full-year 2026 outlooks. A potential merger between Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX) could face its biggest regulatory challenge in China, Bank of America reportedly said on Friday, citing Tesla’s dependence on its Shanghai factory and SpaceX’s ties to the U.S. defense industry. Bank of America guided investors toward mega-cap technology corporate bonds instead of equities as an investment opportunity. Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA, noted that fixed-income instruments issued by the "Magnificent Seven" and other major tech players provide compelling value. Roblox (RBLX) shares plunged about 20% on Friday, putting the stock on track for its worst single-day decline since July, after the gaming platform reported weaker user engagement and issued a disappointing outlook for fourth-quarter bookings.

S&P 500, Nasdaq End Third Straight Week Lower As Investors Move Away From Tech, AI — AMZN, INTC, LLY, RBLX In Focus
North America
Fortune

Ben & Jerry’s CEO: democracy is on the ballot, and business must show up

Ben & Jerry’s is a proud Vermont-based business. We’re a global company, but the U.S. is our home and where we have a long history of campaigning for democracy. We believe that when businesses step up, particularly at moments like this, we can help shift the scales. It’s clear to me, as one of the stewards of this business, that we have a responsibility to help uphold democracy and empower communities to participate in it. It’s the right thing to do, and no business thrives where democracy doesn’t. Any slide toward authoritarianism threatens the economic environment every business depends on. Ben & Jerry’s is built on the model of Linked Prosperity, the belief that the success of a business should not be measured solely by the economic value it creates, but also by the value it creates for the communities it serves. This philosophy is embedded in how we operate because businesses do not exist in a vacuum. They rely on strong, stable communities, and those communities depend on institutions like free and fair elections, which ensure people’s voices are heard and their votes respected. Now, those institutions are under threat, freedom of expression is under attack, and the right to vote is under pressure. Many people feel disconnected from the politics that are supposed to represent them, shut out of decision-making and uncertain if their voices even matter. This work goes back a long way for Ben & Jerry’s. In 2016, our Empower Mint flavor supported voting rights alongside Rev. William Barber II and the North Carolina NAACP; in 2018 we backed Florida’s Amendment 4 campaign to restore voting rights to people with prior felony convictions. More recently, Change Is Brewing and Churn Out the Vote have supported Black voter participation and practical voter information. We have learned a lot along the way from people and organizations who understand these issues better than we do. That has shaped our approach; we’re smart enough to know we don’t know everything, so we work with incredible partners who are working day in and day out on the issues at a grassroots level. The ambition then is to put the reach and resources of Ben & Jerry’s behind their work and bring our fans to it too. I won’t pretend that balancing a social mission with a product and economic mission is easy. Since the beginning there has been debate about what our social mission asks of us and how we put it into practice. Sometimes that tension is uncomfortable, but I have come to believe that there is no progress without tension. The genius of our governance model is that it gives the social mission an equal role. We can balance each part of our three-part mission because it is baked into how we make decisions. That model can sometimes surface and create that tension, but I would rather have that debate than let the mission become something we talk about without really testing ourselves against it. This year, we have worked with our long-term partners at the American Civil Liberties Union to educate voters, help people get ready to vote, and protect their right to do so. Millions have viewed our content and over 175,000 people have taken action with Ben & Jerry’s this election season. Our midterms campaign, supported by our flavor Razz Up!, uses our voice and our ice cream to bring attention to the work of our partners. Following the lead of Black Voters Matter, Community Change and the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium, we have shown up in communities where restrictive voting laws are reinforcing inequality, reaching nearly 10,000 people through Step Razz Up! events in Detroit and Houston and supporting voter engagement events across North Carolina. We have put financial resources behind the work too. Our Scoop Shop initiative, Waffle Lotta Good, raised nearly $100,000 in October for grassroots groups working to protect democracy. Our commitment also stretches beyond this election: our $3 million unrestricted investment in People’s Action Institute will support community organizing well beyond Election Day. In August, on the anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, we took a pointed pun, ‘Fudge Fascism,’ to Washington, D.C. When the stakes are so high, hedged language isn’t going to cut it, and we have always believed that serious issues don’t have to be communicated in ways that feel distant or inaccessible. Razz Up! and our broader pro-democracy work is part of a social mission that has been built into Ben & Jerry’s over decades. We’re able to do this work because of colleagues and partners who challenge us, bring expertise we don’t have, and keep pushing us to live up to the values of this company.

Ben & Jerry’s CEO: democracy is on the ballot, and business must show up
Europe
The Guardian

The staggering $446m Elon Musk has spent on the US midterms – visualized

Elon Musk has poured so much money into US politics this midterms election cycle that his donations could fund half a dozen SpaceX rocket launches or buy thousands of Tesla Cybertrucks. At the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles, Musk could order more than 31.9m cheeseburgers with the money he has spent on the midterms. Musk, the world’s richest person, has funnelled at least $445.77m into Republican-aligned political action committees (Pacs) and groups since last year, according to US Federal Election Commission data as of 29 October. The contributions have made him the Republicans’ most prominent financial backer and the largest single-cycle political donor in modern US history. Musk’s spending is a staggering example of the SpaceX and Tesla CEO’s political influence, as he seeks to help Donald Trump’s administration retain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, though current polls predict Democrats achieving a majority. The contributions are at a scale that is difficult to fathom and dwarf efforts from big name megadonors like George Soros or Michael Bloomberg, setting a new precedent for how the rich and powerful attempt to shape politics. View image in fullscreen Photograph: The GuardianOnly last year, Musk claimed he would step away from making large scale political donations after putting nearly $300m towards Trump’s 2024 presidential election campaign. FEC data since then shows he has not only leaned back into financing campaigns, but that his spending has dramatically ramped up as election day approaches, increasing by about $200m in the final two months of campaigning. Musk’s money has primarily flowed into several Republican-aligned Super Pacs, with his largest contribution of $216m going into his own America Pac. The Pac has targeted 43 House and Senate races across the US, blanketting voters with television commercials, digital ads, text messages and mailers. America Pac made 839 independent expenditures in House races and 623 in Senate races in 17 states across the country. The spending varies greatly depending on the state, however, with campaigns in battlegrounds such as Michigan and Arizona receiving more of the Pac’s support. Musk’s Pac has spent the most in his home state of Texas, where a closely fought Senate contest between Democratic candidate James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton has turned into the most expensive race of the midterms. America Pac has overall poured more than $33m into efforts to elect Paxton, while Musk also made a $168m contribution to the Senate Leadership Fund which supports the Paxton campaign. A large portion of America Pac’s output focuses on attack ads against Democratic candidates such as Talarico, often accusing them of being radical socialists or targeting them over supporting transgender rights. The Pac has spent $28m on anti-Talarico content, including between $300,000 and 350,000 in October on a single Google ad targeting the Texas Senate candidate. “James Talarico supports parents being charged with child abuse if they do not support transitioning their children,” stated the ad, which was shown more than 10m times over an eight day period. Musk has also reposted America Pac’s content to his more than 200m followers on X, the social media platform he owns. One of Musk’s posts in October amplified an America Pac attack ad and claimed: “Talarico wants to trans your kids and destroy the border.” The nearly $446m that Musk has donated this election cycle far exceeds his contributions in the 2024 presidential race, when the tech mogul also held rallies and appeared on stage next to Trump during the campaign. While Musk has been a less visible presence in the midterms, potentially reflecting the US public’s dislike of him, behind the scenes he has greatly upped his financial support for Republicans. Musk’s spending far outpaces all other donors in the elections, including fellow tech and finance moguls like Marc Andreessen, who also started his own Super Pac. Musk has put more money into this election cycle than what every top Silicon Valley donor, including himself, spent on the 2024 presidential election combined.

The staggering $446m Elon Musk has spent on the US midterms – visualized
Asia-Pacific
Channel NewsAsia

Pakistan military 'cautiously optimistic' on Iran-US mediation

Pakistan's chief mediator in its efforts to de-escalate the now eight-month-old Iran war has been to Tehran twice this month, most recently on Monday alongside Saudi and Turkish officials. RAWALPINDI: Pakistan’s military is “cautiously optimistic” about its mediation between Iran and the United States, its spokesman said on Friday (Oct 30) in his first interview since a high-level delegation visited Tehran this week. Army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir - Pakistan's chief mediator in its efforts to de-escalate the now eight-month-old Iran war - has been to Tehran twice this month, most recently on Monday alongside Saudi and Turkish officials. “Why would the Field Marshal be going twice if it is not for some positivity? So yes, of course,” spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said when asked whether the trips were a positive sign. “The word that we would use is always cautiously optimistic,” added Chaudhry, director general of Inter-Services Public Relations. CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less There were still "powerful spoilers and detractors" who believed conflict serves them, he added without naming them. Speaking in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, where Pakistan's armed forces are headquartered, Chaudhry declined to say what was discussed or whether the United States had backed the trip. Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin joined Munir in Tehran on Monday. Their two countries signed a joint defence pact with Pakistan on Aug 7, saying an attack on any signatory will be treated as an attack on all. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement has taken on added significance as the Iran war has redrawn regional alliances and raised fears of a broader Middle East conflict. While the three signatories say the agreement is aimed at collective deterrence and regional security, analysts see its evolution as closely tied to efforts by regional powers to manage the fallout from the Iran-US confrontation. After Monday’s talks, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said regional security should be ensured by regional countries without foreign intervention.

Pakistan military 'cautiously optimistic' on Iran-US mediation
Asia-Pacific
The Straits Times

Binance in talks for Malaysia licence after five-year absence

Regulatory approval would provide Binance a route to formally re-enter a market where it has faced restrictions for more than five years. Binance said it is in discussions with Malaysian regulators for a licensed business in the country, as the cryptocurrency exchange seeks a route back into a market where the authorities have blocked its website and applications. “We have been jointly engaging the Securities Commission Malaysia and Bank Negara Malaysia over the last ten months, on a licenced pathway to offering our products and services into Malaysia,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement to Bloomberg on Oct 31. The world’s largest crypto exchange is in talks on the “viability and structure of licenced business model in Malaysia,” the spokesperson added, declining to give further details on the type of license it was seeking. Regulatory approval would provide Binance a route to formally re-enter a market where it has faced restrictions for more than five years. The Securities Commission ordered Binance in July 2021 to cease operating in Malaysia after the regulator found it was then illegally running a digital asset exchange. The orders included stopping all media and marketing activities, and restricting Malaysian investors from accessing Binance’s Telegram group. While the Securities Commission had removed Binance from its Investor Alert List in 2024, it added the exchange back to the list earlierin October without providing a reason. Binance this week suffered a security breach involving as much as US$6.3 billion (S$8 billion), the largest known crypto hack. It suspended withdrawals and pledged to cover all losses. While the full details of the Binance breach have yet to emerge, the incident comes amid growing concern about the risks posed by hackers in the age of artificial intelligence. Malaysian lawmaker Lim Guan Eng wrote to the Securities Commission in September, asking the regulator to probe if Binance’s peer-to-peer platform was facilitating ringgit transactions through advertisements listed under another currency denomination. His office distributed the letter on Oct 31 “in light of the recent Binance security incident”.

Binance in talks for Malaysia licence after five-year absence