Khosla Ventures vs SoftBank Group

Ollie, Privacy-Focused AI Assistant, Shuts Down

Ollie, a startup offering a privacy-focused AI assistant, announced it will shut down on November 6. Co-founder and CEO Bill Lennon delivered the news via a post on X, citing intense competition in the AI assistant market and difficulty standing out. Ollie had raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures and achieved SOC 2 compliance. The app helped families with scheduling, meal planning, and bill payments. Despite pride in the team and product, the company could not keep up with rivals like Muse and Instinct. Customers will receive instructions to export data and obtain refunds.

• Ollie will shut down on November 6, announced on October 30.
• Ollie raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures.
• Ollie achieved SOC 2 privacy compliance.

Sabi Raises $50M Seed for Brain-Reading AI Cap

Sabi, a Silicon Valley startup, has raised a $50 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures to develop a baseball cap that reads brain signals via EEG to convert thoughts into text and AI commands. The cap uses non-contact dry EEG sensors that measure brain activity through hair, eliminating the need for gel or surgery. The company has designed a custom EEG chip and is training a Brain Foundation Model on over 100,000 hours of EEG data. The product aims to enable faster human-AI interaction, with a prototype planned for CES in January. However, a Meta study shows high error rates in EEG-based brain-to-text decoding (67% character error), highlighting technical challenges. Sabi has not yet released independent accuracy data.

• Sabi raised $50 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Accel, Initialized Capital, DST Global, Collaborative Fund, Ascend, and Kevin Weil.
• Sabi is building a baseball cap that uses dry, non-contact EEG sensors to capture brain signals through hair and convert thoughts into text or AI commands.
• Sabi has designed its own EEG chip and is training a Brain Foundation Model on over 100,000 hours of EEG recordings.

OpenAI Fires Safety Researchers; GPT-6.1 Ultrafast Launch

This AINews newsletter covers several significant developments: OpenAI has fired three safety researchers linked to a METR audit, citing mishandling of confidential information. OpenAI also launched GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast, a faster and cheaper model, and introduced an intelligent UI for ChatGPT. Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 and cut Sonnet 5.5 cache-read prices. Additionally, Arena raised $200M, and there are reports about OpenAI's revenue figures. The newsletter also includes various model launches, benchmarks, and safety research updates.

• OpenAI fired three safety researchers: Tomek Korbak, Mikita Balesni, and Jasmine Wang.
• OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast at $12/$60 per million input/output tokens.
• Anthropic released Claude Haiku 5.5 with a 1M context window and 128K max output.

SoftBank Plans $50B Malaysia Tech Investment

SoftBank Group is reportedly planning to invest $50 billion in Malaysia's technology sector, including artificial intelligence and data centers. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim stated that SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son identified locations in Kuching, Sarawak, and peninsular Malaysia for the investments. The announcement follows a video conference between the two. SoftBank recently signed a framework agreement with Grab Holdings and Petroleum Sarawak Berhad to explore AI and digital infrastructure development in Sarawak. Malaysia aims to become an "AI nation" by 2030, having already attracted significant data center investments from Google, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft. The country recorded $94 billion in data center-related investments from 2021 to the first half of 2026.

• SoftBank plans to invest $50 billion in Malaysia's technology sector, including AI and data centers.
• Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim said Son identified locations in Kuching, Sarawak, and peninsular Malaysia.
• SoftBank signed a framework agreement with Grab Holdings and Petroleum Sarawak Berhad to explore AI and digital infrastructure development in Sarawak.

SoftBank Group Press Releases: OpenAI Additional Investment and DigitalBridge Acquisition Completed

New press releases include: OpenAIへの追加出資（サードトランシェ）の実行に関するお知らせ (2026-10-01) and DigitalBridgeの買収完了に関するお知らせ (2026-09-30).

Oracle Japan shares surge 7% after record Q1

Oracle Corp Japan's shares surged over 7% on Friday after the company reported record fiscal first-quarter sales and profits, driven by strong growth in its cloud business. Net sales for the June-August quarter rose 13% year-on-year to ¥74.86 billion ($472 million), while operating profit jumped 22.7% and net profit climbed 23.2%. Cloud revenue grew 31.7% to ¥25.14 billion, increasing its share of total sales to 33.6%. The rally in Tokyo contrasted with a more than 3% drop in Oracle's U.S. shares, which followed a 'force majeure' notice tied to its New Mexico data center project. Oracle has committed over $8 billion to cloud and AI infrastructure in Japan over a decade, and SoftBank has launched sovereign cloud and generative AI services using Oracle technology.

• Oracle Japan shares surged more than 7% after record fiscal first-quarter results.
• Net sales rose 13% year-over-year to ¥74.86 billion ($472 million).
• Operating profit jumped 22.7% to ¥25.92 billion, net profit climbed 23.2% to ¥18.25 billion.