Ten stories moved AI this week. Congress asked Nvidia's chief executive to explain a friendship. Wall Street asked whether the chip boom still pays. A payment network caught AI shoppers buying the wrong thing almost half the time.
Congress Presses Huang Over a Customer
Three House chairmen want answers. Brian Mast, John Moolenaar and Rick Crawford wrote to Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang on Nov. 41. They want him to brief their committees on his ties to Alice Huang, a senior Megaspeed executive U.S. intelligence suspects of working for Beijing. The letter gives Huang until Nov. 11 to accept a Nov. 18 session or name another date.
John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China, signed the letter along with Mast and Crawford. "Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC's access to sensitive U.S. technology and information," Moolenaar and his co-signers wrote1.
Megaspeed is Nvidia's biggest Southeast Asian chip buyer, a Singapore firm that imported $4.6 billion of Nvidia chips since 20234. The New York Times reported Oct. 29 that intelligence agencies tracked Alice Huang for about a year. Officials suspected she sought access to Nvidia's China strategy through its chief executive2.
Nvidia pushed back hard. Spokesman John Rizzo told CNBC on Nov. 5: "Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year"3. Rizzo had already said Megaspeed's diversion allegations "were thoroughly investigated and debunked last year"2.
Nvidia's Selloff Erases $440 Billion
Nvidia shares closed down 9.3 percent on Nov. 5, their steepest one-day fall since January 20255. The drop wiped out roughly $440 billion in market value in a single session. Broadcom fell 10.4 percent the same day, and chip names across the Nasdaq slid together6.
Election results drove most of the selling. Democrats won control of Congress on Nov. 3, and traders priced in tighter rules on data centers and AI spending6. Fool.com called it plainly: "the move reflected skepticism about demand and policy uncertainty rather than company-specific news".
Nvidia Loses $440 Billion as Broadcom Falls Even Faster
Share price change on Nov. 5, 2026, the day chip stocks sold off after the midterms
Each column is one chip maker's move on Nov. 5; both fell, and Broadcom's drop ran deeper than Nvidia's even though Nvidia lost more money in dollar terms.
Sources: IndiaInfoline [5]; The Motley Fool [6]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Nvidia | −9.3% |
| Broadcom | −10.4% |
Visa's Shopping Agents Still Buy Wrong
Visa put 22 AI models from 12 labs through 15 shopping tasks. The agents failed 42.8 percent of the runs7. Only 34.2 percent of models passed all three attempts at the same task, a sign the pattern runs deeper than a single bad attempt.
Google's and Meta's shopping agents tied for the top score at 82 percent. A Claude agent ranked third at 76 percent, and an OpenAI agent placed sixth at 64 percent7. The weakest model Visa tested passed just 28.9 percent of its attempts.
In more than half the failed runs, 54 percent, the agent still completed a purchase that missed what the shopper asked for.
"AI agents have the potential to power the next era of commerce, but trust is key to making it work," said Rubail Birwadker, Visa's global head of growth7. He went further on where the technology stands today: "We're not there yet from a trust or technology perspective. But we'll soon get into a world where consumers can trust and delegate".
Google and Meta's Shopping Agents Score 82%, OpenAI's Just 64%
Pass rate on Visa's Agentic Commerce Benchmark, 15 shopping tasks, 22 models from 12 labs
Each bar is one lab's shopping agent; its length is the share of tasks it completed correctly, with every model given three attempts per task. Higher is better.
Source: The Next Web [7]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Google's agent | 82% |
| Meta's agent | 82% |
| A Claude agent | 76% |
| An OpenAI agent | 64% |
| The weakest model tested | 28.9% |
Meta Buys the App That Herds Coding Agents
Conductor builds software that runs several AI coding agents at once. Meta bought the startup on Nov. 48. Its tools already work across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and OpenCode, letting one engineer hand pieces of a project to many agents.
Charlie Holtz, Conductor's co-founder, broke the news to his own followers. "We have some big, crazy plans for the next interface. If you liked Conductor, you're gonna love what's coming," he wrote9. He named the Meta Superintelligence Labs leaders he will join: "We're super excited to work with @natfriedman and @alexandr_wang at MSL to build it".
Charlie Holtz@charlieholtzI am very excited to share that Conductor is joining Meta!
We have some big, crazy plans for the next interface. If you liked Conductor, you’re gonna love what’s coming.
We’re super excited to work with @natfriedman and @alexandr_wang at MSL to build it. They’ve been on an… pic.twitter.com/pjzJkTEp1v
Terms stayed undisclosed. Conductor's own cloud service closes Nov. 20, and its CEO says customers get something new from Meta by early next year8.
OpenAI Hires Uber's Trust Chief
Jill Hazelbaker leaves Uber for OpenAI, starting as chief corporate affairs officer in December10. She spent years at Uber as president, and will now run communications for OpenAI. President Greg Brockman gets a filled seat that sat open for ten months, since Hazelbaker reports directly to him.
Hazelbaker framed the move as a calling more than a career change. "The stakes are enormous, the possibilities are extraordinary, and the work of building public trust has never been more consequential," she said of joining OpenAI10.
Five9 Pays $325 Million for Level AI
The contact-center software maker agreed Nov. 5 to buy Level AI in an all-cash deal worth $325 million11. Level AI builds AI tools that watch customer-service calls and chats, then turn the conversation into coaching notes for human agents. Its revenue runs near $20 million a year, growing 50 percent.
Five9 chief executive Amit Mathradas cast the deal as a bet on people working beside machines. "Our vision for the future of CX is one where AI and human agents work as a coordinated system, each making the other better," he said11. The deal should close before the year ends.
Microsoft Declines a Bigger Texas Deal
Nscale offered Microsoft the right to more than double its data center lease in Barstow, Texas. The option would have added roughly 500 more megawatts of Nvidia-powered capacity12. Microsoft turned it down months before Nscale filed for its roughly $35 billion IPO, Bloomberg reported Nov. 5.
Nscale's existing 230-megawatt deal with Microsoft stands, and its total order backlog still runs $103 billion12. The British firm says other large customers already want the Texas space Microsoft walked past.
Apple Lets Any App Talk Through Siri
Siri can now take instructions meant for other apps. Apple's iOS 27.3 update, released Nov. 3, lets outside developers build "app skills" that teach Siri how to run multi-step tasks inside their own software13. Speaking an app's name used to be required; Siri now infers it instead.
The feature moves past the narrow Shortcuts system Apple ran for years. Developer documentation says Siri can "find custom content from one app, transfer it to a specified app, and perform an action"13, all from one plain request.
Thinking Machines Nears $40 Billion
Accel is closing in on a $5 billion round for Thinking Machines Lab at a $40 billion valuation14. Mira Murati's lab last raised money at a $10 billion mark, so the new round would mark a fourfold jump in a year. Nvidia is reportedly weighing a stake of its own.
The money arrives after a steady run of exits from the founding team Murati assembled. Co-founder Andrew Tulloch left for Meta in October 2025 on a package worth up to $1.5 billion15. He jumped again to Anthropic less than a year later.
Co-founders Barret Zoph and Luke Metz returned to OpenAI in January, taking colleague Sam Schoenholz with them16. Reports this week put the founding-team departures near a third of the original group14.
Shield AI Buys the Radar That Spots Drones
The defense-autonomy company agreed Nov. 5 to buy radar maker Echodyne for $5.3 billion. It will also raise $2.5 billion of new funding, lifting its own valuation to $28.8 billion17. Pairing Shield's autonomy software with Echodyne's radar hardware marks a first for both companies.
Echodyne chief executive Eben Frankenberg named the event that changed his market. "The Ukraine war made it obvious to everyone that drones had changed the face of warfare, but the Iran war made it obvious that everything's at risk," he told Defense News18. Shield plans to sell the combined system beyond the Pentagon, guarding stadiums and events from drones too.
What to watch
Watch Nov. 11, the deadline Congress set for Huang to answer the Megaspeed letter. Nov. 17 matters too, the day his earnings call runs straight into the briefing date he still has to confirm. Thinking Machines Lab's round deserves a second watch. A close at $40 billion would show investors still pay a premium for a lab that keeps losing the people who built it.
Sources
- "Chairmen Mast, Moolenaar, and Crawford Request Jensen Huang Brief Congress on Link to Chinese Intelligence Asset," U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Nov. 5, 2026, https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairmen-mast-moolenaar-and-crawford-request-jensen-huang-brief-congress-on-link-to-chinese-intelligence-asset
- Julie Bort, "US investigated Chinese spy plot aimed at Nvidia CEO," TechCrunch, Oct. 29, 2026, https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/u-s-investigated-chinese-spy-plot-aimed-at-nvidia-ceo/
- "Nvidia's Huang is asked to brief Congress on reported Chinese spy relationship," CNBC, Nov. 5, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/05/nvidia-jensen-huang-china-spy-congress.html
- "Who is Megaspeed? Singapore-Based Company Under 2 Years Old Becomes Top Nvidia Chip Buyer in ASEAN," Thairath, Dec. 23, 2025, https://en.thairath.co.th/money/tech_innovation/tech_companies/2903761
- "Nvidia loses $440 billion as Nasdaq falls 5.52% after US midterm elections," IndiaInfoline, Nov. 5, 2026, https://www.indiainfoline.com/news/international/nvidia-loses-440-billion-as-nasdaq-falls-5-52-after-us-midterm-elections
- "Stock Market Today, Nov. 5: Nvidia Slides on AI Chip Selloff as Election Uncertainty Weighs," The Motley Fool, Nov. 5, 2026, https://www.fool.com/coverage/stock-market-today/2026/11/05/stock-market-today-nov-5-nvidia-slides-on-ai-chip-selloff-as-election-uncertainty-weighs/
- "Visa tested 22 AI models as shoppers, and they failed 42.8% of the time," The Next Web, Nov. 5, 2026, https://thenextweb.com/news/visa-ai-shopping-benchmark-agentic-commerce-ai-models-fail
- "Meta acquires AI coding startup Conductor," TechCrunch, Nov. 4, 2026, https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/meta-acquires-ai-coding-startup-conductor/
- Charlie Holtz, "Post on X," X, Nov. 4, 2026, https://x.com/charlieholtz/status/2118045232218743264
- "Jill Hazelbaker jumps to OpenAI as chief corporate affairs officer," Axios, Nov. 3, 2026, https://www.axios.com/2026/11/03/jill-hazelbaker-openai-uber
- "Five9 to Acquire Level AI, Advancing AI-Powered CX Platform," Five9, Nov. 5, 2026, https://investors.five9.com/news-releases/news-release-details/five9-acquire-level-ai-advancing-ai-powered-cx-platform
- "Texas Data Center Project Stalls as Microsoft Declines to Extend Nscale Deal," Bloomberg, Nov. 5, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-05/microsoft-declined-to-expand-texas-data-center-offer-with-nscale-before-ipo
- Benjamin Mayo, "Developers can now create advanced 'app skills' for Siri AI," 9to5Mac, Nov. 3, 2026, https://9to5mac.com/2026/11/03/developers-can-now-create-advanced-app-skills-for-siri-ai/
- "Thinking Machines Lab Nears $5B Accel-led Round At $40B Valuation," Dataconomy, Nov. 6, 2026, https://dataconomy.com/2026/11/06/thinking-machines-lab-nears-5b-accel-led-round-at-40b/
- "Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Andrew Tulloch heads to Meta," TechCrunch, Oct. 11, 2025, https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/11/thinking-machines-lab-co-founder-andrew-tulloch-heads-to-meta/
- "Mira Murati's startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is losing two of its co-founders to OpenAI," TechCrunch, Jan. 14, 2026, https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/mira-muratis-startup-thinking-machines-lab-is-losing-two-of-its-co-founders-to-openai
- "Shield to acquire Echodyne in a transaction valued at $5.3 billion and raise $2.5 billion at a $28.8 billion valuation," PR Newswire, Nov. 5, 2026, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shield-to-acquire-echodyne-in-a-transaction-valued-at-5-3-billion-and-raise-2-5-billion-at-a-28-8-billion-valuation-302930012.html
- "Shield AI to acquire radar maker Echodyne to bust drones," Military Times, Nov. 5, 2026, https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2026/11/05/shield-ai-to-acquire-radar-maker-echodyne-to-bust-drones/
