Techmeme Roundup: Apple HomeView Hub, Yandex Data Center Strikes, Amazon Decart Talks

Anchorage Digital Acquires Payments Startup Routable

Anchorage Digital has bought B2B payments automation startup Routable for an undisclosed sum. The company's CEO called it Anchorage's largest acquisition by team size and revenue.

Apple Previews HomeView Smart Home Hub

Apple is preparing a smart home push centered on a new display hub called HomeView, alongside a refreshed Apple TV and HomePod mini, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The countertop HomeView with a speaker base will come in space gray, silver, starlight and pink, while a wall-mounted version will be offered in space gray and silver. The new HomePod mini will come in midnight, green, white, blue and pink.

HomeView will be powered by a standard A18 chip, while the new Apple TV gets a standard A19, up from the A15, and the HomePod mini moves to the S10 from the S5. Apple is positioning HomeView as a voice-first product: it supports touch, but the company chose the name over "HomePad" because "Pad" would suggest an iPad-like experience. The hub will not have an App Store, running a limited set of Apple apps with Siri and connected accessories at the center.

Apple expects HomeView to ship around mid-November, while the new Apple TV and HomePod mini are on track to arrive October 30 with preorders opening this week. The updated Apple TV is also being tested with built-in microphones for hands-free Siri and a refreshed remote with a speaker for Find My. Separately, Gurman reports the upcoming OLED iPad mini will be considerably more expensive than today's $599 model, with his guess closer to $799, along with an A20 Pro chip, a relocated FaceTime camera and a revamped speaker system.

Drone Strikes Shut Down Third Yandex Data Center

A Ukrainian drone strike targeted a major Yandex data center in the Russian city of Vladimir early Sunday morning, taking the facility fully offline. Yandex said the strike shut down a third data center, disrupting more than 80 services including Yandex Cloud and YandexGPT, with users reporting banking and taxi app outages.

The Vladimir facility reportedly had a capacity of 50 MW and was designed for 2,880 IT racks. Cloudflare data showed Yandex network traffic collapsed after the strike, with Russian bot traffic from Yandex's network dropping to almost zero. The Sasovo site hit earlier houses two of the three supercomputers used to develop Yandex's AI models.

Amazon in Talks to Buy Decart for Around $7 Billion

Amazon is in talks to buy AI startup Decart in a deal that could value it at around $7 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco company's software makes it easier for developers to switch between different AI chips. Anthropic had decided against acquiring Decart for about $6 billion in September.

In related AI news, Silicon Valley leaders have been embracing the "super intelligence" rebrand promoted by President Trump, with Marc Benioff announcing AIForce would become "SIForce" and Satya Nadella and Nvidia's Jensen Huang also adopting the term. Nvidia separately committed $1 billion to advance US science over the next five years, while hospital AI startup Vitalize raised a $31 million Series A led by Oak HC/FT.

Sources: Techmeme