Good morning. The Fortune Annual Most Influential Women's Summit kicked off today in the sunny city of Santa Barbara.
This year's agenda features several heavyweight speakers from the tech industry, including Flex's Revathi Advaithi, Upwork's Hayden Brown, Type Capital's Terri Burns, Logitech's Hanneke Faber, Kalshi's Luana Lopes Lara, Dazzle's Marissa Mayer, Alphabet's Ruth Porat, CapitalG's Laela Sturdy, as well as Cloudflare's Michelle Zatlyn. In addition, there are more executives from companies such as Amazon, DoorDash, Dropbox, and ServiceNow.
The main stage event will begin at 4 p.m. Pacific Time. You can watch the live broadcast here. —— Andrew Nusca
Breaking News
Apple will raise the price of iPhone by $100, which may be enough to deter buyers.
According to a new Nikkei Asia report, Apple has asked some suppliers to cut production of iPhone by 18% and Pro and iPhone by 18% as well. This has once again raised questions among the public about how much consumers are willing to pay extra for high-end smartphones, given the soaring costs of memory chips.
The media report stated that in October, Apple's orders for parts for these two models were at least 15% lower than the initial quantity requested by the company.
According to Nikkei, from late August to October, demand has been weaker than expected, and Apple has also become more cautious about shipment volumes since the beginning of September.
Price may be a factor. The starting price is $1,199 for iPhone and $1,299 for Pro Max; both are $100 more expensive than the iPhone model they replace.
These costs are being passed on to a broader economy. According to Abiel Reinhart, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, since the end of 2024, the consumer price index for software and accessories, as well as the producer price index for storage devices, have both risen by 23%, while the import price index for computers, peripherals, and components has increased by 37%.
Smartphones are also feeling the pressure. IDC predicted in August that global shipments in 2026 would decline by 16.7%, to just over 1 billion units, which is the most severe annual decline on record. IDC also expects that as manufacturers pass on higher costs to consumers, the average selling price of smartphones will rise by 27.6%, to $581.
Apple's release schedule may also be a factor. This fall, the company only launched high-end models: iPhone 18, Pro 18, iPhone 18, Pro Max 18, as well as its first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo which costs $2,000. Apple did not launch the standard version of iPhone 18; it is expected that this model will be unveiled in the spring of 2027 along with the lower-priced iPhone 18e and the second-generation iPhone Air. —— Fernanda Tronco
Blind box
To fire employees for trying to act with their best judgment in a novel and uncertain situation out of good intentions is indicative of a highly unhealthy culture.
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Overview
Claude of Anthropic submitted a false tip to the police regarding an unsolved murder case.
A single Ukrainian drone attack shut down a data center of Yandex, disrupting artificial intelligence, banking, and transportation services.
– Amazon may acquire Decart for $7 billion. This cutting-edge AI laboratory develops world models.
– Marc Benioff, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, and Satya Nadella have adopted the term “super intelligence” used by Trump.
According to PitchBook data, so far this year, the physical AI company has raised $48 billion in financing.
A $165 million data center dispute in Pennsylvania represents the opposition between the two parties in the United States to AI.
Final Strike
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is clearly responding to the concerns of the company's enterprise customers; he recently published a new article about the risks associated with the AI model.
One of the most interesting passages is: “We cannot simply outsource responsibility to intelligent systems that do things for us. The guarantees provided by model providers do not relieve us of our responsibilities. We cannot treat superintelligence as a series of nested black boxes, merely accepting or rejecting its suggestions, answers, and actions. We must build closed systems whose behavior can be observed, whose boundaries can be tested, and whose actions can always be controlled. In other words, we need to separate the provision of intelligence from the power over it.”
