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1.	Spotify Founder Ek Steps Aside as CEO By Martin Peers Source: The Information

Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek is kicking himself upstairs, shifting to the role of executive chairman, the music streaming firm announced on Tuesday. Ek will be succeeded by Spotify’s co-presidents Gustav Soderstrom and Alex Norstrom, who will become co-CEOs.

Spotify said Ek’s role “will more closely reflect a European Chairman setup, where he will determine capital allocation, map the long term future of Spotify and continue to provide support and guidance to its senior team.”

Spotify has shown strong cash flow growth, while its stock is up 63% so far this year, reflecting price increases and Spotify’s introduction of new tiers of service including added features such as audiobooks.

2.	Meta Plans to Acquire Chip Startup Rivos By Kalley Huang Source: The Information

Meta Platforms plans to acquire the chip startup Rivos, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in July said his company would spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” on expanding its computing capacity to enable its ambitions in artificial intelligence.

Rivos has been designing a graphics processing unit that could be released as early as next year, The Information previously reported. Meta has also been working on its own chip for AI, called Meta Training and Inference Accelerator. Bloomberg earlier reported on Meta’s plans to acquire Rivos.

“Our custom silicon work is progressing quickly and this will further accelerate our efforts,” a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement.

3.	CoreWeave Expands GPU Deal With Meta By Anissa Gardizy Source: The Information

CoreWeave signed a new cloud deal with Meta Platforms, in which it will provide as much as $14.2 billion worth of compute capacity to the firm through 2031. CoreWeave disclosed the deal on Tuesday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The new deal extends the companies’ existing relationship and comes as Meta has signed other cloud deals to quickly expand its access to Nvidia graphics processing units. Meta signed a $10 billion compute deal with Google cloud and is in talks with Oracle about a $20 billion deal.

The Information first reported that Meta was a major CoreWeave customer. Meta is still investing heavily in its own data centers—it recently raised nearly $30 billion for a data center in Louisiana. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said recently that Meta plans to spend around $600 billion on servers through 2028.

4.	Amazon Unveils Revamped Device Lineup to Help Boost Alexa Usage By Ann Gehan Source: The Information

Amazon unveiled a range of updated smart home and consumer devices at a launch event in New York on Tuesday, as the e-commerce giant tries to boost adoption of its revamped Alexa voice assistant, known as Alexa+.

The latest versions of Amazon’s Ring home cameras, Fire TVs, Kindle tablets and Echo speakers all will more closely incorporate Alexa+, which is meant to be a more conversational and capable version of the voice assistant. Amazon first unveiled Alexa+ earlier this year. But Amazon for years has struggled to actually make money from Alexa, since it has historically priced Alexa devices at roughly break-even, and Alexa+ is free for Prime members.

Amazon’s devices head Panos Panay said on stage during the event that early access Alexa+ users are using the voice assistant more than twice as much as before and that Alexa+ usage for tasks like shopping and streaming music has increased.

5.	Stripe Plans to Apply for Federal Charter in Stablecoin Push By Yueqi Yang Source: The Information

Stripe is planning to apply for a charter with a federal banking regulator to meet the requirements of new U.S. stablecoin legislation, which will allow it to keep issuing stablecoins for clients when the law takes effect.

The company is preparing to apply for a national trust charter with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, said Zach Abrams, co-founder and CEO of Bridge, the stablecoin infrastructure firm that was acquired by Stripe in a $1.1 billion deal this year. Stripe is also planning to apply for a trust license with the New York State Department of Financial Services, he said.

Stripe announced a new service today to help clients launch their own stablecoins “in days.” So far, crypto wallet providers Phantom and Metamask, as well as Native Markets for Hyperliquid, are using Stripe’s services to issue stablecoins.

The move could introduce more competition to Circle and Tether, the dominant stablecoin issuers whose tokens are currently used by many of Stripe’s clients. It will also add to a rapidly increasing number of stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies that are typically pegged to the dollar. Stripe will allow its clients to receive all the interest revenue generated from their own stablecoins, minus a fee that starts at 0.5% of assets.

Stripe aims to make its stablecoin issuance service “as big as possible,” said Neetika Bansal, Stripe’s business lead for connect, money management and crypto. She said Stripe had no specific plans yet to issue its own stablecoin.