Outlit, a Silicon Valley startup backed by Y Combinator, is pitching AI-powered customer surveillance as the future of business-to-business sales. Founders Josh Earle and Leo Paz argue that companies will soon assign an AI agent to every customer to monitor their activity continuously. The system would collect internal records such as call logs and sales data, along with external signals including social media posts and employer websites, then compile them into detailed customer profiles with sales recommendations and outreach guidance. “Every company will soon assign an AI agent to every customer to watch their every move,” Earle said in a pitch email cited by Futurism. Outlit has not been publicly released and says it currently works mainly with business-to-business software companies rather than monitoring individual consumers.

Earle said the platform’s purpose is to give companies a real-time understanding of customers in order to prevent churn and identify upsell opportunities. He described the output as a one-page, continuously updating dossier containing “all of everything we can find on them at all times,” including relevant and irrelevant signals from product use, customer relationship management systems, LinkedIn, and websites. Salespeople or customer success managers would use a dashboard showing collected information, the company’s reasoning, and recommended actions. Outlit says it can advise clients on “what to say, what to send, materials, and all that stuff.” The company says its website promises that customer data is secure and anonymized and is not used to train its models, though the article does not independently verify those claims.

The startup acknowledges that companies already collect substantial customer data, but argues that AI agents add unprecedented scale, speed, and permanence to collection and consolidation. Earle said Outlit does not actively track personal life events, but conceded that public posts about marriages, births, divorces, illness, or deaths could theoretically be swept into its monitoring. Asked whether monitored people would be informed or given an opt-out, he said no, arguing that “there’s nothing that we’re doing that’s illegal” and that companies already monitor such signals today. He also predicted that continuous monitoring would become standard regardless of public discomfort, saying agents could eventually “maintain and understand human relationships better than humans will.”

Topgolf says it has saved more than $11.3 million in combined infrastructure costs after migrating 12,000 virtual machines from VMware to VergeIO’s VergeOS platform. The company said its VMware costs were set to rise by 400% under Broadcom, prompting it to move workloads supporting its venues, offices, labs, and data centers. Topgolf replaced 650 VxRail hosts with roughly 400 Dell PowerEdge servers in about six months. According to a VergeIO case study, it moved from six-node VxRail clusters with 35 terabytes of storage to three-node VergeOS clusters with 5 terabytes of storage. Topgolf global infrastructure manager Scott Forehand said the company reduced comparative hardware spending by 87% and software costs by 77%, while securing a five-year enterprise license agreement rather than the three-year agreement VMware reportedly offered.

Topgolf had used VMware technologies for decades, including vSphere, ESXi, VxRail, and Horizon. Forehand said Broadcom’s decision to stop selling VMware perpetual licenses and bundle products into fewer, larger, and more expensive packages made future planning difficult. The company chose VergeOS partly for its multi-tenant segmentation, which allows each tenant to function like an independent data center. Forehand said VMware lacked the ability to segregate clusters into tenants, making management at Topgolf’s scale difficult, while VergeOS let the company organize deployments by time zone and build nested labs within a single cluster. Twenty Topgolf venues still run VxRail with VMware Cloud Foundation, and Forehand expects the company to be completely off VMware by the second week of December.

The migration was not frictionless. Topgolf had to replace game panels, rewire columns, replace its server stack, and shift to a new Kubernetes gaming architecture while coordinating other projects to reduce technical debt. It also faced integration challenges with third-party tools such as Rubrik and LogicMonitor. Topgolf moved to VergeIO snapshotting for data protection after losing Rubrik compatibility, then adopted Veeam to fill gaps in threat hunting and ransomware protection. VergeIO chief marketing officer George Crump said integration is the most common friction point after a VMware migration, because customers may need to replace tools they have already paid for and trained staff to use.

VergeIO said it gains about 70 new customers per quarter, with most coming from VMware. Crump said those customers often face license renewals, hardware refreshes, multi-site operations, or multi-tenancy needs. He cautioned that Topgolf’s $11.3 million savings are not typical because the company has unusually large infrastructure needs. Still, he said VMware migrants commonly see meaningful reductions in software licensing, proprietary hardware appliance costs, and separate tools for data protection, replication, and multi-site management. The article does not independently audit Topgolf’s savings figures, and they come primarily from Topgolf and VergeIO, the vendor selling the replacement platform.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the execution of Nidal Hasan will not be streamed, reversing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s earlier announcement that it would be publicly broadcast. Trump said Hasan will still be executed by firing squad as scheduled on December 3 at Fort Hood, Texas, the base where he carried out the 2009 attack. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others; he described the attack as an act of jihad. Trump said the execution may be viewed in person by victims’ families if they choose. The reversal means the punishment remains scheduled, but the disputed livestream plan has been canceled.

Trump wrote that streaming the execution might have served as a deterrent by showing how America deals with terrorists, but said many “well meaning people” would prefer not to watch Hasan die. Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell said Trump and Hegseth discussed the decision before Trump’s announcement and are “completely aligned.” That statement contradicts the Pentagon’s position earlier in the week, when it maintained that the livestream was moving forward. The article does not explain what specifically caused the reversal, though it reports that Trump and advisers had been debating the matter amid concerns that broadcasting the execution could fuel anti-American propaganda or damage the country’s image.

Hasan’s civilian attorney, John Galligan, said the cancellation was no surprise but criticized the administration’s broader handling of the case. He called Hegseth’s original livestream decision “dumb” and said it violated the Army’s own regulation. The article reports that public executions were once common in the United States, but states began restricting or abolishing them in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries; the last widely recognized public execution occurred in Kentucky in 1936. The article does not say whether the Army regulation violation claim has been formally adjudicated or whether any legal challenge to the execution itself remains pending.

Survivors of the Fort Hood shooting welcomed the reversal. Alonzo Lunsford, who was shot seven times, called the decision “a sigh of relief” and said it showed the country could be better than broadcasting an execution. Keara Torkelson, who was shot while preparing to deploy to Iraq, said justice does not need to be broadcast to be real and argued that survivors should not have to relive the attack through a public spectacle. An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that eight in 10 Americans opposed livestreaming the execution. Several lawmakers, including outgoing Republican Senator Thom Tillis, also criticized the original plan, comparing public executions to practices associated with oppressive governments.

A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction continuing to block President Trump’s attempt to bar CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the government to preserve the status quo while the case proceeds. The ruling follows a temporary restraining order Kelly issued last month after the three outlets sued to restore their reporters’ access to the White House complex. The injunction does not finally decide the case, but it prevents the administration from enforcing the ban for the foreseeable future while litigation continues.

The media organizations argue that Trump’s decision violates the First Amendment and due process. Their attorney, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., said the president “blatantly and explicitly violated due process and the First Amendment” and claimed Trump had publicly acknowledged banning the outlets to punish reporting he dislikes. In a September social media post, Trump said media outlets should not be able to “constantly write or report FICTION and LIES” about him, his administration, or the United States. The article reports those allegations and statements but does not include a final judicial finding that Trump acted with retaliatory intent.

The Department of Justice defended the ban by citing specific stories from each outlet that it said violated standards of professionalism and decorum. DOJ lawyer Michael Velchik argued that the stories included “verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues” and sensitive or classified information. He also argued that Trump has broad authority to remove outlets based on national security determinations and that the letters notifying the organizations provided sufficient due process. Velchik said access to the White House is “a privilege, not a right.” The judge has not yet ruled on the merits of those arguments.

Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan was arrested last week and charged with using a device to intercept oral communications after allegedly placing an audio recording device in an OpenAI executive conference room in San Francisco. According to a court complaint, the room regularly hosted meetings involving highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information. Alfozan did not have authority to access the room, which was reserved for executives and their assistants. He had worked at OpenAI as a lead engineer for about a year before being fired this month. The article does not say that Alfozan successfully recorded any meetings or transmitted recordings to anyone.

The alleged scheme unraveled after OpenAI staff found a suspicious audio recording device wrapped in toilet paper and hidden behind a television on September 30. On October 5, a newly installed camera allegedly captured Alfozan entering the room and checking on the device’s location. CNBC reported that Alfozan had booked one-way flights from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia for his wife and another family member before his arrest. An unsealed court filing said he had the means and incentive to flee the United States if he learned about the case before being arrested. He remains in detention pending a hearing next week and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

The complaint says Alfozan extensively consulted AI chatbots about how to install a bug and access its recordings remotely. He is a partner at Raed Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on Middle East investments. Raed added Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, as a venture partner in early 2025. A former CIA official told CNBC that Raed Ventures is “basically a state organ” of the Saudi government and characterized the alleged conduct as state-sponsored espionage. That is the former official’s assessment, not a charge or court finding. Alfozan has not been charged with corporate espionage or theft of trade secrets.

OpenAI said its security program is designed to protect against insider risks, cybercriminals, and nation states, and claimed that its own AI helped reveal the alleged plot. The company did not explain how its AI contributed to the discovery. The case remains at an early stage, and the allegations have not been tested in court.