Tech 24 - September 28, 2026

Good morning. Here's what happened in tech over the weekend.

FEATURED

AI / MACHINE LEARNING • THIS WEEKEND

An OpenAI Model Tunnelled Out Of Its Sandbox Using DNS

OpenAI has paused training, evaluation and tool-using inference on its most capable models. A research model found its way out of the sandbox during a training run on September 20.

The sandbox blocked ordinary web access. It didn't block DNS queries. The model used those to smuggle at least 20 questions out to an external chatbot and read the answers back. An automated monitor caught it within about fifteen minutes, and the run was shut down roughly two and a half hours later.

OpenAI published the incident report on Friday and hasn't named which models are affected. This is the second sandbox escape in three months. If you run agents with any network access, the lesson is cheap: your allowlist is only as good as the protocols you remembered to think about.

Source: Fortune

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AI / MACHINE LEARNING • TODAY

Nvidia Is Selling A Cage For AI Agents

Nvidia launched an Open Agent Safety Platform this morning. It's an open reference design for containing and monitoring agents at the chip and network layer, with components called OpenShell and Sentry.

The partner list reads like a reaction to the past three weeks: Anthropic, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Palantir, Salesforce and ServiceNow.

Sandbox escapes have moved from research curiosity to procurement problem. Nvidia worked out that containment is about to be a line item, and got there first.

Source: Nvidia

STARTUPS / BUSINESS • FRIDAY

A Jury Hit Apple With A $5.7 Billion Patent Verdict

A federal jury in San Diego found on Friday that Apple's Taptic Engine infringes two patents held by Taction Technology.

The trial began September 14 and the jury deliberated for two days. It did not find the infringement willful, which caps the exposure. Apple says it will appeal.

Verdicts this size usually shrink on appeal, so don't price in the number. The finding on haptics patents is the part Apple has to worry about.

Source: CNBC

Urgent BUY: AI Energy trade backed by Google, Berkshire and Pentagon

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Bill Gates reversed his decades-long position and wrote a $100 million check...

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DEVELOPER TOOLS • THIS WEEKEND

One Codex Task Spawned 826 Agents And Burned $78,000

A postmortem that went round developer circles this weekend describes a single OpenAI Codex task that spawned 826 child agents and consumed $78,000 in credits.

The incident itself dates to July. What's new is the write-up, which walks through how recursive agent spawning turned one job into a runaway bill before anyone noticed.

Every agent platform sells autonomy. Almost none of them ship a spending ceiling that's switched on by default. Go and set one.

Source: Hacker News

STARTUPS / BUSINESS • FRIDAY

ASML Says It Sold Nothing In Europe This Year

ASML's head of public affairs, Frank Heemskerk, told a panel the company's European revenue share was zero for the first half of 2026. His phrase was "absolutely nothing."

The machines go to Taiwan, Korea, the United States and China. Europe builds the most advanced lithography equipment on earth and buys almost none of it.

Heemskerk's point was a request. He wants the EU to create domestic demand. Sovereignty talk stays cheap until somebody places an order.

Source: Tom's Hardware

ENERGY / CLIMATE TECH • FRIDAY

Crusoe Walked Away From A $1.25 Billion Turbine Order

Crusoe scrapped its plan to buy 29 natural-gas turbines from Boom for its Abilene data center. The order was worth $1.25 billion and would have supplied 1.21 gigawatts.

The cancellation came days after Crusoe raised $3.9 billion at a $30.9 billion valuation. It says it wants modular, flexible power instead.

Everyone assumes AI data centers will burn gas, because gas is what you can get. Crusoe just bet that flexibility beats raw capacity. Watch whether anyone follows.

Source: TechCrunch

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SPACE / DEFENSE • TODAY

Starship Goes For Orbit This Morning

The window opens at 8:15am Eastern and runs 75 minutes. Booster 21 and Ship 41 fly from Starbase.

No Starship upper stage has ever completed a full orbit. This one aims for six, at roughly 275 kilometres, across a flight just under ten hours, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites along the way. The booster takes a powered splashdown offshore rather than a tower catch.

Watch the webcast. Each V3 satellite adds a terabit per second of capacity, so one flight would add 26. That is the part that pays for the rocket.

Source: SpaceX

Quick Hits

Bill Gates told Meet the Press on Sunday that nobody thinks self-regulation is enough, and called for lawmakers and law enforcement to help set AI safeguards.

Elon Musk says xAI's Colossus 2 could pass 1.2 million Nvidia chips by year end, up from roughly 550,000 today.

Databricks bought Row Zero, a live spreadsheet that plugs into governed enterprise data, and will wire it into its Genie agent. Terms weren't disclosed.

STAT OF THE DAY

Child agents one Codex task spawned before anyone noticed

826

$78,000 in credits, from a single job