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🔍Scoops Spotlight

🔍Scoops Spotlight

Breaking down the latest news impacting your life, business, and money.

Scoops Team
October 30, 2026

Hey friends - happy almost Halloween. It’s mischief night. Tomorrow, my wife and I are turning our cute little baby into a cyclops and our dog into a sheep. Little nod to the Odyssey. You have a good costume? Would love to hear!

Welcome back to the weekly Scoops Spotlight, where we’ll serve up a little summary of the most important business and money news of the week with the company scoops that got the most community reactions.

🌎 The Big Picture

Here's what you need to know this week:

The economy is doing well, even though everything is crazy expensive.
AI is fueling a startup funding boom, but the opportunities are shifting fast.
Millions of American workers are basically handing free money back to their employers every year by missing one deadline.

▶️ Americans and businesses kept the economy humming this summer.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the economy grew at a 3.4% annual pace from July to September, the fastest in a year and a big step up from the 2.2% pace we saw in spring. That's a measure of everything the country produces, adjusted for higher prices.

Companies led the charge by pouring money into AI infrastructure. Equipment spending jumped 20.9% at an annual rate, the fastest since 2020 and the biggest economic boost in six years. Shoppers showed up too, spending 3.8% more, mostly on health care, restaurants, and hotel stays. Though not everyone felt it equally. Higher-income households, riding high on AI-fueled stock gains, did most of that spending.

Meanwhile, a lot of workers saw their paychecks fall behind as prices climbed 3.6% over the past year, well above the 2% annual inflation policymakers consider normal. To keep up, families dipped into savings and set aside just 4.1% of their income, the lowest rate in nearly four years.

The bottom line: Businesses and wealthier households are carrying the economy right now. AI is behind most of the stock market's gains. And stubborn inflation is still squeezing everyday budgets.

▶️ AI is fueling a startup funding boom, but the opportunities are shifting fast.

Investors are writing bigger checks to fewer startups, and AI is at the center of it all. J.P. Morgan reported that startups landed seed rounds of $100 million or more at a pace matching the all-time high through Q3 of 2026, meaning mega early-stage checks have become a recurring pattern. Seed money is the first cash a startup raises to test an idea, with more coming once it gets traction with customers. AI founders are typically pulling in $5 million to $15 million at seed stage, while founders outside AI usually see less than $5 million. Investors also heavily favor experienced tech vets over first-timers, and founders in California and New York scoop up roughly 60% of all US seed funding.

Venture capitalists cast a wide net early, then double down on the ones that prove they can make money. And they're cashing out sooner too. Seed-stage companies made up about one in four sales of venture-backed businesses through Q3 this year, up from 16% in 2020, and investors are eyeing new US stock listings that are approaching their 2021 record.

For tech workers, it's a mixed bag. AI startups pulled in nearly $15 billion in seed funding, even as Challenger, Gray & Christmas found AI cited in more than a fifth of all announced job cuts this year. The landscape is shifting, and whether you're working, investing, or building something, being in AI right now is where the opportunities are.

▶️ Millions of American workers are basically handing free money back to their employers every year by missing one deadline.

A flexible spending account, or FSA, lets you set aside part of your paycheck before taxes to cover medical costs like doctor visits and prescriptions. Whatever you don't use by your plan's deadline typically goes straight back to your employer. Industry estimates put that number at around $4 billion a year. Every year.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute found about 4 in 10 FSA holders forfeited money in 2024, losing $404 on average. The good news, though, is that it was the smallest loss since 2019 when adjusted for inflation. Younger workers drop the ball the most: two-thirds of those under 25 forfeited funds, compared with 36% of people 65 and older.

If you've got a health spending account, check your balance and use it before the deadline. Don't leave that money on the table.

How are you feeling about the economy?

👍 | 👎

🏭 The Companies Everyone’s Talking About

Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine is making breakthroughs.

Moderna is preparing to seek US approval for its personalized cancer vaccine. Paired with Merck’s drug Keytruda, the shot cut the risk of melanoma returning or death by 42% compared with Keytruda alone. The vaccine is made for each patient from mutations in their own tumor, training the immune system to hunt down specific cancer cells. After two years, 82% of patients on the combination were still cancer-free, compared with 70% on Keytruda alone.

Moderna is still tracking whether the vaccine helps patients live longer. CEO Stéphane Bancel expects a 2027 launch, and Moderna is already testing the vaccine against kidney, bladder, and lung cancers.

Microsoft is offering buyouts to 60,000 workers to free up funding for its massive AI expansion.

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to free up funding for its AI buildout. It will affect roughly 27% of its workforce, or about 60,000 employees. Eligible workers span Xbox, Windows, Copilot, and corporate functions like finance and HR, while marketing, sales, and data center teams are excluded.

The tech giant plans to invest more than $50 billion in data centers and AI equipment this quarter alone as part of a $175 billion investment for the year. Microsoft frames the move partially as a talent filter, saying it wants its remaining workforce focused on its hardest challenges.

Anthropic filed to go public, showing for the first time how fast its AI business grows and spends.

Anthropic is preparing to go public, and its filing gives the first full look at an AI company growing at breakneck speed while taking on enormous bills. Existing customers spent nine times more, bringing Anthropic's revenue to $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, about 14 times what it made a year earlier.

By growing sales faster than costs, Anthropic cut its loss from day-to-day operations to just $693 million from $2.14 billion. It also committed over $600 billion across a decade to rent chips and data centers, and owes $6.2 billion within a year, mostly to Amazon.

Meta is betting its ad money on artificial intelligence, and it’s spending faster than it earns.

Meta sold more ads at higher prices but earned less as it agreed to a major legal settlement and kept pouring money into data centers. Ads bring in nearly all of Meta’s revenue, and sales grew 26% from a year earlier. Even so, it made 37% less from its operations, mostly because it set aside $9.89 billion towards settling lawsuits over teen mental health and social media.

Meta is racing to build its artificial intelligence business, spending so much on data centers that it used more cash than it brought in. To help pay for it, Meta plans to create a new kind of stock with no voting rights, so it can raise money without weakening CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s control. Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have signed up for Muse, its new personal assistant.

Tesla is racing to build robots and driverless taxis while trimming this year’s spending plans.

Tesla earned far less as it poured money into artificial intelligence and robots. It made $787 million in the third quarter, down 43% from a year earlier. The electric carmaker kept companywide sales roughly flat at about $28 billion, even after US tax credits that lowered prices for buyers last year ended. Its growing services business, which includes fast-charging stations, repairs, insurance, and used cars, helped.

The company began building its Optimus robots in Fremont, California, even as it trimmed this year’s factory and equipment spending plan to about $20 billion from more than $25 billion. Looking ahead, CEO Elon Musk said customers are ordering more cars than Tesla can build and that it is headed for significant growth after years of fairly flat results.

❔ The Big Question of the Week

Has your company started integrating AI yet?

Scoops app users: We have taken the beta app offline for a short period for some major updates. Can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been working on! Reach out if you have any questions.

We’re going to switch up the content in this spotlight for a bit to make sure you all have the info you need to master your week.

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