ISS Urges Investors to Reject CoreWeave’s $9 Billion Acquisition of Core Scientific

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Proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has advised investors to vote against the proposed $9 billion all-stock merger between artificial intelligence infrastructure company CoreWeave (CRWV.O) and data computing firm Core Scientific (CORZ.O). The shareholder vote is scheduled for October 30.

In its recommendation, ISS said that Core Scientific has shown strong independent performance and can continue to grow without being acquired. The firm noted that the company’s current trajectory suggests it could thrive as a standalone entity.

CoreWeave, which provides cloud infrastructure tailored for AI workloads, first proposed the acquisition in July, offering an implied value of $20.40 per share. However, investor Two Seas Capital quickly announced its opposition to the deal, citing concerns about the sale process, valuation, and the fixed exchange ratio, which leaves Core Scientific shareholders exposed to fluctuations in CoreWeave’s stock price.

Since the announcement, CoreWeave’s shares have declined, reducing the total deal value. Meanwhile, Core Scientific’s stock rose more than 5% in post-market trading on Monday, closing at $18.81, as investors appeared to favor keeping the company independent rather than moving forward with the merger.

Florida Attorney General Targets Roblox With Criminal Subpoenas Over Child Safety Concerns

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Florida’s Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that his office has issued criminal subpoenas to Roblox Corp, accusing the gaming platform of becoming a “breeding ground for predators” that endangers children. In a statement shared on X, Uthmeier condemned the company, saying Roblox “enabled our kids to be abused” while profiting from them.

The subpoenas aim to uncover evidence about alleged criminal activities on the platform, including communications between suspected predators and victims. Roblox, which has over 70 million daily users — most of them minors — has been under growing scrutiny over child safety.

Concerns about the platform intensified after a Hindenburg Research report last year accused Roblox of failing to protect its young audience. In response, Roblox increased investments in user protection, implementing tighter messaging restrictions for children under 13, AI-based monitoring, and strict content moderation.

In a statement to Reuters, Roblox emphasized that it prohibits image and video sharing in chat, blocks personal information exchange, and is working on age estimation systems for users. “While no system is perfect, our teams and automated tools continuously monitor communications,” the company said.

The controversy extends beyond U.S. borders: Iraq banned Roblox this week, claiming its chat features expose children to exploitation and cyber-extortion. Meanwhile, Roblox faces multiple U.S. lawsuits — including in Louisiana and San Francisco — alleging the company fails to prevent sexual predators from targeting minors.

Amazon Cloud Outage Disrupts Global Online Services, Gradual Recovery Underway

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Amazon’s cloud computing giant, Amazon Web Services (AWS), faced a major outage on Monday that disrupted numerous online platforms — from banking and social media services to business applications worldwide. Although the system is slowly recovering, the incident underscored how dependent the modern digital ecosystem is on AWS’s infrastructure.

According to Amazon, the disruption was triggered by a Domain Name System (DNS) failure that prevented applications from locating the correct address for DynamoDB — a key database service used to store user data and other critical information. The DNS essentially functions as the internet’s phone book, converting domain names into numerical IP addresses. Without it, apps could not reach the required servers.

The root of the issue was traced to AWS’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) network in the US-EAST-1 region, located in northern Virginia — one of the company’s most frequently used and default data centers. This region has been the source of several previous incidents, including a 2023 capacity issue that affected AWS Lambda services and a 2021 congestion event that paralyzed popular tools like Ring, Chime, and iRobot devices.

Despite the recent disruption, AWS continues to dominate the cloud market, reporting a revenue of $30.9 billion in the second quarter of this year — an 18% increase compared to the previous year. The event, however, has reignited discussions about the fragility of centralized cloud infrastructures and the global ripple effects of regional failures.