September 29, 2026

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Well, hello. We, a newsletter that is not actually affiliated in any way with selling coffee, would like to wish you a very happy National Coffee Day. And since we’re not in the coffee biz, we have no problem sharing these deals to help you get what we hope is your second-favorite morning brew today.

—Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman, Abby Rubenstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Nvidia’s answer for rogue AI
SpaceX’s Starship launch
The work tool your coworkers are probably paying for themselves

Markets

Nasdaq

26,820.38

-0.92%

S&P

7,683.69

-0.77%

Dow

51,481.51

-0.67%

10-Year

5.240%

+6.0 bps

Bitcoin

$83,413.9

-1.49%

MongoDB

$334.68

-18.46%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 5:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks took inspiration from the season and were in fall mode yesterday, dipping as Treasury bond yields and oil prices continued to rise.
Stock spotlight: Database provider MongoDB plummeted when investors learned that Meta had lured its CEO to come run its enterprise platform.

SHELL GAME

Has Nvidia solved the rogue AI hacking problem?

An illustration of a rogue humanoid robot running into a hand held up in the

Niv Bavarsky

Nvidia has decided the only thing that can stop bad AI is good AI. In the wake of rogue AI models breaking into systems more easily than Angelina Jolie in Hackers, the chipmaker announced a new AI security system called OpenShell to act as a safeguard against your AI breaking any rules.

The system’s unveiling comes two weeks after tech leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for developers to slow things down and asked for more government regulation. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang disagreed and told CNN: “If they believe their company is out of control, then get the company under control.”

And here’s how, says Nvidia

OpenShell has two layers—that’s five fewer layers than a Taco Bell burrito—and is an open-source software system that any company can adopt, according to Nvidia. The semiconductor giant said OpenShell would have prevented OpenAI’s attack on the AI platform Hugging Face (which Nvidia bought for $13 billion earlier this month).

Here’s how the software works:

The first layer runs AI agents in a “sandbox,” the virtual space where they can be tested. Testers can define what the agent can access (e.g., networks, files).
The extra layer is a program called Sentry that can “quarantine a suspicious agent in milliseconds,” according to Nvidia’s vice president of enterprise AI, Justin Boitano.

Keeping it 100: Nvidia said more than 100 organizations are already using the platform, including Microsoft, Perplexity, and JPMorgan Chase.

But AI safety concerns remain. The chorus of industry insiders asking for more oversight into self-improving AI got a little louder yesterday. Leaders and researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft implored policymakers to safeguard the rapidly advancing technology in a paper signed by 20+ people. Meanwhile, OpenAI said yesterday that it would not release its GPT-6.1 Astra model due to security concerns. Tech leaders, including the CEOs of Nvidia, Anthropic, and Meta are expected to meet with President Trump today.

Shelling out money: Nvidia also announced yesterday that it’s buying back another $150 billion of its stock, bringing the total amount it’s authorized to buy back to $235 billion. It’s the biggest corporate repurchase ever, according to the company. The previous record was held by Apple, which conducted a $110 billion buyback in 2024.—DL

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World

Tour de headlines

Donald Trump answers questions from reporters during an announcement in the Oval Office at the White House on September 28, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump announced plans that a new $15 billion steel plant will be built in eastern Iowa

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

🏗️ Trump announces $15 billion steel plant. Minnesota-based Mesabi Metallics plans to invest $15 billion to build the largest steel plant in US history in Iowa, the president said from the Oval Office yesterday. The iron ore will come from a recently opened mine in Minnesota, and the company told CNBC that the project would include “100% American steel: mined, melted, and poured in Minnesota and Iowa.” The announcement comes after President Trump imposed 50% tariffs on steel imports, which critics have blamed for driving up prices but the US steel industry has praised.

🚘 Trump admin scraps fuel-economy standards meant to boost EVs. The Transportation Department issued a final rule yesterday rolling back tough Biden-era fuel-economy standards for vehicles that run on gasoline. The move to nix the rules, which were aimed at getting automakers to focus on more environmentally friendly, fuel-efficient vehicles, comes as the war in Iran has sent gas prices soaring. The new regulations require cars to get 34.5 miles a gallon by the 2031 model year, down from the 50.4 miles under the old standard. The administration says the change will make new cars cheaper by making them less expensive to produce, but critics, including environmental groups, say these savings won’t be enough to offset high fuel costs. Car companies had pushed for the change, arguing that the old standard would force them to make EVs that the public doesn’t want.

✈️ Software glitch delays Boeing 737 Max 10 certification. Like fans of The Witcher, Boeing is going to have to wait a little longer than expected. The FAA said yesterday it was delaying its certification of the already years-delayed Max 10 planes to assess whether a new software issue could pose a safety threat while landing. The agency said “safety dictates the certification timeline,” and Boeing commented, “We continue to follow the lead of the FAA as we work through the certification process.” The delay is another setback for Boeing after previous safety concerns about its 737 Max planes.—AR

BLAST OFF

SpaceX’s Starship makes its debut in orbit

SpaceX Starship launching from launchpad with cloud of smoke and flame and palm trees in foreground

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Like a middle schooler at the gas station, Starship just hit orbit for the first time. A couple of years before it could be used as a NASA lunar lander, SpaceX’s biggest rocket reached this milestone yesterday, surpassing the suborbital levels of its previous 13 flights.

Mission report:

Starship launched from Texas and splashed down in flames north of Hawaii three hours later.
It was meant to orbit for 10 hours, but the flight was cut short for safety reasons. (CEO Elon Musk recently said that SpaceX is being careful to avoid the craft breaking apart over land, which would “diminish” his company’s popularity.)
Still, Starship successfully deployed the 26 Starlink satellites it was carrying, marking the first time the 407-foot craft delivered Musk’s revenue-generating internet providers to space for operation.

Zoom out: SpaceX has invested $15+ billion into Starship, which the company is relying on to achieve its ambitious goal of 1 million satellites in orbit (it currently has 11,000). The megarocket is also set to take part in a NASA docking exercise next summer that precedes the space agency’s Artemis IV, a moon mission that will either tap Starship or Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin for its astronaut-carrying lunar lander, no earlier than 2028.—ML

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(I PUT MY HEADPHONES ON)

After a decade of Bluetooth, Bose brings back wires

Bose

You may never be able to fully recapture the magic of staring out the bus window listening to a grainy YouTube-to-MP3 version of Relient K, but you can try. Amid a Gen Z retro tech renaissance, Bose announced its first pair of wired headphones in 11 years yesterday.

The Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds will be available for $99 on October 15, but preorders are live. Because traditional aux ports have been eradicated everywhere but tiny airplane TVs, the Bose headphones have a USB-C plug. The headphones must be plugged into a device to use since they have no batteries (that also means nothing to charge).

The reviews are in:

Testers have celebrated the more durable cord and good audio quality, but found the noise canceling to be slightly less impressive than other Bose devices.
Reviewers are lauding the pair as one of the best wired headphones on the market…which the new headphones probably should be considering they cost much more than the sub-$30 price tag such products typically sport.

What’s with the comeback? People have been clocking the wired revival since as far back as 2019, driven primarily by Gen Z and Gen A nostalgia for the pared-down tech of yore. But the trend has popped off in recent years and wired headphone sales went into 2026 up for the first time in five years.—MM

Reader Poll

Do you prefer your headphones wired or wireless?

Wired, I like to be connected.
Wireless, I need the freedom.
I am indifferent. Let’s talk earbuds or over-ear instead.

Matty’s work-life balance

Your coworkers may be funding their own AI usage

closeup of hands typing on a keyboard and holding a credit card at a desk

Getty Images

On Tuesdays, the Brew’s Matty Merritt brings you the news you need to make life a little easier during your 9–5, 5–9, or OOO.

If your colleague is turning their screen away from judgmental eyes, they probably aren’t talking about you—they may just want to use their unapproved chatbot. A Deloitte UK survey found that about a third of workers using Generative AI in Britain are doing so without their employer knowing, and one in six are paying out of their own pocket to use AI tools.

The survey, which Deloitte claims is the “largest study of workplace GenAI use conducted in a single country,” asked 25,000 workers across 22 different industries how they were engaging with generative AI in the workplace.
Roughly 63% of respondents said they are using AI on a regular basis.
The study estimates UK workers are spending roughly £1 billion (~$1.33 billion) a year of their own money on the tech.

But they aren’t doing anything special. Most workplace AI usage is concentrated on pretty mundane tasks. Of the workers deploying it, 31% said they use it to generate summaries of information, 43% for AI-enabled search, and 43% for drafting emails.—MM

Ticker trivia

Can you guess the company from its stock ticker?

$LUV
$PLNT
$BROS
$TAP
$M

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Southwest Airlines
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Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: lauding, meaning “praising.” Thanks to Jeff from Minneapolis for a suggestion we can’t say enough good things about. Submit another Word of the Day here.

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Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Dave Lozo, Molly Liebergall, Matty Merritt, and Neal Freyman

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