• Markets: Stocks did an impression of Rob Gronkowski after scoring a touchdown and spiked yesterday, sending the Nasdaq to another record high as AI optimism continued to fuel the tech sector. Meanwhile, Constellation Energy went nuclear after striking a 20-year deal to supply Google with power.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Unsplash

Two Western companies are releasing open-weight AI models tailored toward businesses and governments that they claim are as powerful as the leading models offered by China—and could eventually rival some of the biggest closed models from US-based tech giants.

Open weight? Is this about boxing? No, actually. Open weight means that, unlike with closed weight models, users can download and customize them with their own proprietary data. They are also cheaper to run than the difficult-to-budget closed models, which could present a new challenge for US-based AI leaders Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.

The new players

US-based Reflection AI, which Nvidia financially backs, is launching its first model, Beam, which it says is adept at coding and agentic tasks. Meanwhile, France-based Mistral is debuting Mistral Large 4, called “Le Chonk” due to its 1 trillion parameters...which is a chonky (industry term) amount of parameters.

Should these new models have the capabilities claimed by their companies, they could be massive disruptors to the status quo:

• Businesses and governments in the West are currently hesitant to use the Chinese open models due to security concerns. Reflection and Mistral could be the answer.
• OpenAI and Anthropic—already facing growing security concerns—may have new competition as they prepare to go public.

Speaking of security: By putting powerful models that anyone can tweak into circulation, it creates the potential for even more cybersecurity issues. But Reflection and Mistral see another side of the coin: Mistral VP of Science Pierre Stock told Axios that more availability of models can help improve defenses and allows researchers to audit the technology.

More to come: Reflection will release full technical details of Beam later this month. Mistral’s Le Chonk, which is currently only being previewed for developers, will have a wider release on Oct. 27 after more testing, per Axios.—DL

      

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World

Tour de headlines

Morning Brew Inc.

🌎 US trade deficit balloons to $105.6 billion, despite tariffs. The deficit—the difference between the value of imports vs. exports—rose to its highest mark in over a year in August as the US continued to bring in goods tied to the AI boom, per data from the Commerce Department. The overall deficit of $105.6 billion was up by 13.7% compared with July, and above analysts’ estimates. That all happened in spite of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” global tariffs, which he enacted in 2025 to try to reduce the deficit and fix what he argued were unfair trade practices by other countries. In addition to the influx of chips needed for AI data centers, the US is importing large amounts of petroleum and gold.

🐭 Disney lawyer says FCC is holding a “guillotine” over its head. In arguments before a federal judge yesterday, Disney attorney Beth Wilkinson asked the court to block the Trump administration’s early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses, likening it to the execution method used on Marie Antoinette. ABC has to “sit with our head on the guillotine and wonder if anything we say is going to make that come down,” Wilkinson said, according to Bloomberg. Disney and ABC are suing the administration on First Amendment grounds, alleging that the FCC’s unusual step to review ABC’s licenses—years before they were scheduled to—is retaliation for Jimmy Kimmel’s criticism of the president. The FCC claims its early review is part of a DEI investigation into Disney.

📡 Nobel Prize in physics awarded for work detecting “ghost particles.” As you read this, trillions of neutrinos, aka ghost particles, are passing through your body. But they have no effect on you, because they have no electric charge and almost no mass, making them extremely difficult to study...until Belgian-born scientist Francis Halzen helped set up and run the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, which can detect neutrinos zipping in from space. For that work, Halzen was awarded the Nobel Prize yesterday. Scientists say that neutrinos can help them understand how galaxies—and the universe itself—developed.—AE

Class conflict

Lou Benoist / Getty Images

Nationwide protests have erupted across France over under-resourced schools, and more students keep arriving at the barricades, joined by educators, parents, and union activists. The government says around 250,000 people participated in yesterday’s demonstrations across more than 40 cities, while union leaders claim the crowd size was at least twice that.

What do they want? The protestors are demanding more teachers and classroom upgrades.

Hundreds of people were injured amid street chaos in recent days, including a 15-year-old who lost his hand after picking up a police grenade. More than 5,000 protesters have been arrested since the protests began last month. The government suspended classes tomorrow and Friday so students can meet with school leaders.

Unrest in cash-strapped times

The growing protests come as France’s government struggles to keep its budget deficit below its goal of 5% of its GDP. The French government proposed a 1.7% education budget increase for next year, which is below inflation.

Zoom out: It’s not the only area of struggle for the French economy. Markets are roiling thanks to ballooning national debt, plus they aren’t thrilled that populists on the left and right are the leading contenders in the upcoming election. France’s 10-year government bond yields—which move in the opposite direction to prices—topped 5% last week, the highest level since 2002. The French stock index dropped 5% in the past month.—SK

      

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NOT FUNNY

Niv Bavarsky

A comedy radio channel on SiriusXM called “Raw Dog Comedy” rebranded earlier this year to Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio, and no one thought much of it at first. But a strategy shift following the change has reportedly pushed hundreds of middle-class and early-career standups out of the rotation, cutting off a vital source of income from royalties.

What happened: The roster of comics getting airtime on the channel has shrunk by 66% since it changed hands, dropping from 812 comics in April to 275 in September, according to estimates from nonprofit Stand Up for Standup:

• The group also says that the channel didn’t decrease overall airtime—it just replaced smaller, working-class comedians with mega-famous ones like Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, and Kevin Hart.
• Comedians like Patton Oswalt and Gianmarco Soresi have called on Maniscalco to change the programming back to support smaller acts.

Maniscalco hasn’t responded to requests for comment. SiriusXM said in a statement that the relaunch “introduced a new creative direction” for the channel.

You can still make money from the radio? For a lot of comics who might not be household names, the SiriusXM channel was a reliable source of monthly income, who already have to navigate new challenges like their material getting lifted to sell OnlyFans subscriptions.—MM

      

Reader Poll

Sam’s stock of the week

Investors shop Shopify as AI ecommerce arrives

Cheng Xin/Getty Images

On Wednesdays, the Brew’s Sam Klebanov highlights a fascinating stock, commodity, or other asset that’s worth your attention.

As people increasingly employ AI agents to shop for them, investors are going on a Shopify spree. Shares of the e-commerce platform are up 9% since last week and 22% in the past month.

Shopify went all-in on agentic shopping last month with a deal that enables Meta’s Muse—an AI agent tool that automates online errands—to complete purchases via its system. Shopify could be immune to investor concerns that AI will make legacy digital infrastructure irrelevant:

• More vendors have been moving their storefronts to Shopify as agentic shopping takes off, the company said recently.
• Piper Sandler analysts project Shopify’s revenue will grow 32% this year.

Meanwhile, Amazon blocked Muse from browsing its site, citing security and data privacy concerns. That could make Shopify-powered sites more attractive for those who want to delegate their underwear purchases to AI.

Even before Muse…e-commerce traffic from AI sources had soared almost fivefold from last spring, with AI-referred shoppers more likely to make a purchase than people who found the store without AI, according to Adobe.—SK

News

What else is brewing

• Wall Street is on track for a record $90 billion in bonuses this year, the New York state comptroller said, thanks in part to market volatility.
• British Airways is building what it says will be the world’s biggest business class cabin, with 106 seats on its fleet of Airbus A380s.
• President Trump suggested that Iran could “take out” Los Angeles or San Diego, drawing condemnations from several California lawmakers. The White House denied that characterization of the president’s comments.
• Uber is acquiring catering company ezCater for $2.3 billion in a bid to compete with DoorDash.
• The Emmys are leaving broadcast TV and are headed to Amazon’s Prime Video, where they’ll stream for free for the next six years as part of a reported $120 million deal.
• Artificial, the movie about Sam Altman and OpenAI, debuted at the New York Film Festival this week to largely positive reviews.

recs

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Play

Word Search: We gotta say…this week’s puzzle is pretty lit. Play the Word Search here.

Nobel trivia

The Nobel Prizes, established by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, are being handed out this week. What was Nobel’s most famous invention?

Answer

Dynamite

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: condemnations, meaning “strong expressions of disapproval.” Thanks to Danielle from Durham, NC, for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.