Semafor✓

Four years on from the launch of ChatGPT, AI’s impact on the world — outside of software development — has been incremental, not exponential. And Microsoft is less about making competitors "dance" than it is about getting down to the nitty-gritty of making AI work predictably and reliably. At @Microsoft's CISO summit, @ReedAlbergotti sat down with @satyanadella, who has gone back to being the CEO of a company that is building a sturdy dance floor. “We, as an industry, have to wake up to this,” Nadella said. “It’s not about the shiny object and FOMO.” They also discuss the “superintelligence” rebrand, whether alignment is still possible, and if the 59-year-old Microsoft CEO has started thinking about succession.

RT @eschor: If you’re wondering how Mississippi entered the Senate map discussion, you’ve simply gotta read @burgessev, who was onto this race in MARCH.

What the GOP activist who confronted El-Sayed really got wrong, according to David Weigel. Read his full view:

(1/2) David writes: If Abdul El-Sayed wins Michigan’s Senate race next month, the Saturday clip of him admonishing a GOP activist about freedom of religion will achieve legendary status in his party.

(2/2) If El-Sayed wins, I’d expect Republicans to study that clip, too. That’s because the lesson conservatives can take isn’t that the topic of El-Sayed’s religion is too hot to touch. Teepell struggled to follow up because he couldn’t handle the moment. Read more:

🟡 NEW: Mecca draws Indonesian sovereign wealth fund investment

Opening up real estate ownership in Mecca and Medina to foreign investors could help deliver a boost to investment into Saudi Arabia, after Indonesia’s sovereign fund Danantara completed a 2 billion riyal ($533 million) deal to purchase a hotel and development plots. Read more from @MattMartin128:

Netflix grapples with slowing revenue growth

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has navigated steep odds before, including the “streaming correction.” But the question facing the company now is acute: whether a builder culture that prizes homegrown content, and which Wall Street loved, is serving it anymore. Read more from @rogoswami:

American Moment is filling the Trump administration with the new right, and looking to play the long game.

Read the full story from @semaforben:

🟡 NEW: A big Mattel shareholder is preparing to mount a proxy fight at the toymaker and push the company toward a sale.

Southeastern Asset Management has been considering whether to nominate new directors at Mattel as part of a proxy fight, the people said. Read more from @rogoswami:

🟡 NEW: Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota leads in his Senate race by more than 20 points, according to a new poll shared first with Semafor, a sign that any blue wave in November will have its limits.

Rounds is trouncing independent candidate Brian Bengs 57% to 36% in the deep-red state, according to a new poll conducted in mid-October by Quantus Insights. Read more from @burgessev:

🟡 NEW: Tech firms are monitoring city council meetings to track which communities will resist them the least

Startup Hamlet has parsed tens of thousands of city council meetings by scraping local governments’ video recordings, tagging comments as friendly or hostile to a potential project. CEO Sunil Rajaraman told Semafor that a large fund that finances data centers and a data-center developer are among its paying customers. Read more from @jdcapelouto:

🟡 NEW: Meta plans nonvoting shares, eyeing more stock sales to fund its AI dreams

The plan, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday when Meta reports quarterly earnings, will allow the company to issue new stock — for acquisitions, to lure top AI talent, and to pay for chips — without diluting Mark Zuckerberg’s control. Read more from @lizrhoffman:

Meta’s Republican policy chief, Joel Kaplan, announced his departure just ahead of the US midterms where a projected blue wave could rain down scrutiny on big tech companies.

RT @rogoswami: News @semafor: Southeastern is preparing to mount proxy fight at Mattel, sources say. Separately, Ariel has expressed a desire for change at Mattel in private convos, sources say. Pressure mounts on CEO Roger Lynch. $MAT