Afternoon Brief · October 22nd 2026

Afternoon Brief, October 22nd 2026

AI stocks fell sharply at Thursday's close. Homeland Security's revised AI policy lets its chief AI officer waive internal prohibitions. A judge pressed Anthropic and music publishers on market harm. Enact raised money to give robots force and touch sensing.

4 min read·Editorial by Vera Lindqvist

VLVera Lindqvist
Capability & Systems

AI stocks sink despite continued earnings growth

Nvidia fell 4.4%, CoreWeave 10.1% and Lam Research 11.8% Thursday, AP reports. The Nasdaq lost 2.6%. Lam's quarterly profit and revenue exceeded expectations, but its next-quarter profit forecast disappointed. The selloff shows that growing sales alone no longer satisfy investors pricing the cost of the AI buildout.

Thursday's losses in AI-linked stocks

October 22nd closing moves reported by AP. Values show the magnitude of each decline.

Homeland Security gives its AI chief authority to waive internal prohibitions

The Department of Homeland Security's revised AI directive lets its chief AI officer waive any requirement in the directive, including prohibited uses. FedScoop reported the change Wednesday; the policy took effect in September. The text requires coordination with relevant officials, consideration of the circumstances and documentation of technical and operational reasons. Waivers must remain consistent with law, regulation and government-wide policy.

That distinction matters for oversight. The department retains prohibitions on improper surveillance and on using AI outputs as the sole basis for specified enforcement actions, but its internal restrictions can now be waived through the same governance system that administers them. The directive does not authorize officials to waive the law. No particular waiver is established by the report. SourcesA B

Anthropic's music-lyrics hearing ends without a fair-use ruling

Judge Eumi Lee questioned Anthropic and music publishers Wednesday about whether training Claude on song lyrics qualifies as , Reuters reports. She issued no ruling at the San Jose hearing. The publishers argued that generated lyrics could compete with songwriters; Anthropic argued that the publishers had not identified specific market harm.

The hearing puts the evidence of substitution under pressure: a system's ability to generate lyrics and proof that those lyrics damage an existing market are separate questions. Neither side's argument establishes the answer. Buyers of AI writing tools still lack a decision in this case resolving the legality of the disputed training use. SourcesB

Enact raises $30 million for robots that learn through force and touch

Zurich startup Enact Intelligence emerged from stealth Thursday with $30 million in financing, Tech.eu reports. Backers include Yann LeCun and Mistral chief Arthur Mensch. The company targets dexterity through force and touch; its chief executive says the robots sense those forces through their own motors.

The investment backs a hardware-and-learning approach to a persistent manipulation problem: seeing an object does not tell a robot how firmly to grip it. The funding establishes investor support. It does not establish reliable handling on a production line, and the reviewed sources provide no independent performance test. SourcesA B

Sources

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