Intel seeks FCC waiver for foreign fab robots, Google Cloud outage disrupts UK services, Nvidia, Google, Reddit - Big Tech Report

Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries, launches its initial public offering on Wednesday, targeting a valuation of more than $108 billion in what would be India's largest-ever IPO. The $3.2 billion share sale has drawn heavy institutional demand, with bids from Singapore's GIC, BlackRock and Fidelity reportedly totalling nearly 30 times the quota reserved for anchor investors.

The listing lands amid a public dispute between Ambani and Elon Musk, who has accused the Indian billionaire of using monopolistic influence to keep Starlink out of the Indian market — a claim Reliance denies, saying it has never feared competition. The IPO also arrives as rising oil prices tied to the Middle East conflict weigh on global trading sentiment, adding a further test of international investor appetite for the offering.

Intel has asked the Federal Communications Commission for a waiver covering the automated guided vehicles (AGVs) it uses to move silicon wafers and other materials around its chip fabs, after such robots were added to the agency's Covered List banning foreign-made devices. Intel says no domestic alternative exists for these machines today, and that switching suppliers would take years and threaten its U.S. manufacturing operations. The company's filing, reported by Bloomberg, asks for a conditional waiver "out of an abundance of caution to ensure the ongoing operation of these specific AGV units," citing uncertainty over whether routine software and firmware updates would breach compliance.

The AGV market is dominated by Japanese suppliers Murata Machinery and Daifuku, with smaller South Korean and Taiwanese firms also competing; none has yet sought the conditional approval route that would let them keep selling in the U.S. in exchange for building local manufacturing, as Netgear has done for its routers. Intel is currently the only chipmaker flagging the issue, but TSMC, Samsung and Elon Musk's Terafab are all expanding U.S. fab capacity and could face the same constraint. Intel shares were up 2.43% at $92.03 in regular trading.

A Google Cloud outage in western Europe knocked out or degraded a wide range of UK services on 20 October, including the Revolut banking app, Lloyds Bank, Halifax, HSBC and Bank of Scotland, budgeting app Emma, property site Rightmove, and the video platform HM Courts and Tribunals Service uses for remote hearings. Google said the disruption began at 23:08 PDT on 19 October and traced it to a power event in its europe-west2-b zone, which it said had been mitigated, with partial restoration of infrastructure services expected within 30 minutes and remaining services to follow. On Downdetector, 61% of Revolut users reporting problems cited the app itself, with 22% reporting issues transferring funds.

Lloyds said its app remained online with customers able to log in, though some faced issues with other online services; Halifax said it was working to fix access problems without giving a timeframe. Emma told users the outage was "a technical outage, not a security issue." Google shares closed up 1.05% at $344.18.

Alef Aeronautics released a video showing its flying car hovering above a Tesla Cybertruck and Roadster, timed to coincide with Tesla's own flying Roadster demonstration on 15 October. The footage shows Alef's vehicle lifting straight up before soaring above the parked cars. Alef said it uses distributed electric propulsion for vertical takeoff, contrasting it with Tesla's planned use of thrusters on the Roadster.

Alef's flying-car project dates to 2015, developed by a small team working to bring a vertical-takeoff passenger vehicle to market. Tesla shares rose 3.76% to $368.06 in the regular session.

The US State Department said on Monday it is imposing sanctions under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act on five Chinese entities suspected of stealing trade secrets from American companies. The targets include Shanghai Zhisuan Technology, founded by former Google software engineer Ding Linwei, venture capital firm MiraclePlus and three related entities.

Ding was convicted in January on seven counts of trade secret theft. A federal judge later acquitted him of seven additional charges of economic espionage, finding insufficient evidence he knew or intended his conduct to benefit the Chinese government, though the theft convictions stand. Google shares were up 1.05% at $344.18 in regular trading.

Broadcom shares rose 1.78% to $334.59, part of a broader firming across semiconductor names after a sharp pullback triggered by a hotter-than-expected inflation reading that had revived worries about interest rates staying elevated for longer. Chip stocks, among the hardest hit in that selloff, led the rebound, with Broadcom's custom AI silicon business drawing renewed attention as part of the recovery.

Broadcom designs bespoke AI accelerators co-developed with hyperscale cloud customers rather than selling standardised chips, a model that has made it a central player in AI infrastructure build-outs. The company also holds a leading position in networking silicon that connects data centre clusters, a segment gaining share as accelerator clusters grow larger and more interconnected, and has built a sizeable infrastructure software business spanning virtualization, security and enterprise tooling through a series of acquisitions, giving it a recurring-revenue base alongside its more cyclical chip operations.

Amazon has cut off Meta's Muse AI assistant from completing purchases on its site, while JPMorgan Chase is blocking outside AI agents from using banking credentials to move customers' money. Amazon moved by the evening of 20 September, after asking Meta to exclude its store; the retailer said Muse did not identify itself, had not been authorised to participate, and raised privacy and security concerns over how it handled customer credentials. Meta says Muse accesses stored credentials without exposing passwords or payment details to the assistant itself. JPMorgan, which confirmed its policy to CNBC on 13 October, still allows read-only access for tasks like checking a balance but blocks agents from using credential logins to send money or pay bills. CFO Jeremy Barnum linked the move to credential sharing and screen-scraping risks on the bank's recent earnings call, and separately framed external agents as a new front in competition for yield-seeking deposits alongside JPMorgan's own Smart Cash pilot. Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster said his firm is blocking unauthorised agents, including Muse, from moving client funds over concerns about accountability.

Other companies are drawing narrower lines: Walmart says Muse checkout failures are unintentional fraud-safeguard side effects rather than deliberate blocks, Zillow allows consumer agents but has anti-scraping defenses that can snag them, and eBay restricts scraping and unauthorized actions rather than banning third-party shopping agents outright. Shopify has taken the opposite approach, rolling out a Shop MCP connection that lets compatible agents search its catalog, build carts and complete checkout with saved payment details, subject to shopper confirmation. Sierra and Meta are meanwhile developing a draft standard, Poppy, published 9 October, to identify agents and govern their access with customer and business permission. Amazon shares were up 4.98% at $262.45 in the regular session as of 19 October.