Austin Democrats Talarico, Hinojosa Win Texas’ Top Races; Oracle Prices $20 Billion Raise

Two Austin state lawmakers who campaigned on reining in data centers won Texas’ U.S. Senate and governor races, while Oracle and CrowdStrike made big moves.

Democrats James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa won Texas’ two highest-profile races Tuesday. Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton for U.S. Senate, and Hinojosa unseated Gov. Greg Abbott. Both are Austin state legislators, and both pledged tougher rules for the data centers spreading across Central Texas. In business news, Austin-based Oracle Corp. priced a $20 billion package of new stock and bonds Monday night. Early Tuesday, CrowdStrike, also headquartered in Austin, said it agreed to acquire AI observability startup Fiddler AI and rolled out a feature that lets security teams shut down rogue AI agents. Austin-based life insurance technology company Ethos posted triple-digit revenue growth, and Tesla added Fort Worth to its driverless robotaxi network. The local tech community is also mourning entrepreneur Adam Robinson, who died with his family in a jet crash after the plane left Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Sunday.

Talarico, Hinojosa win as Democrats break statewide drought

Talarico, a state representative from the Austin area, beat Paxton, the state’s attorney general, in a Senate race that drew $573.2 million in ad spending, according to AdImpact data cited by CBS Austin. That makes it the most expensive non-presidential race in U.S. history. Elon Musk spent more than $200 million backing Paxton, the Texas Tribune reported. Talarico is the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas since 1994 and the first to win a U.S. Senate seat since 1988.

Hinojosa, an Austin state representative and former Austin school board president, defeated Abbott, who was seeking a record fourth term. She is the first Democrat elected Texas governor in more than three decades and is expected to take office in January, CBS Texas reported.

The results could reshape Texas tech policy. Hinojosa has called for a moratorium on new data centers until lawmakers set more protections for residents. Talarico has proposed repealing the state’s sales tax exemption for data centers, making large power users pay for their own grid connections, and giving local communities the power to approve or reject projects, according to the Texas Tribune. In early returns, Democrats also led the races for lieutenant governor, attorney general and railroad commissioner, while Republicans led for comptroller, land commissioner and agriculture commissioner. Those races had not been called in the latest results reviewed.

Oracle prices $20 billion in common stock and senior notes

Oracle said late Monday that it priced two offerings expected to raise about $20 billion. The company is selling 86,206,897 shares of common stock at $116 each, for net proceeds of about $9.9 billion after underwriting discounts and expenses. It is also selling $10 billion in senior notes across five tranches. Those notes carry interest rates from 7% to 8.65% and mature between 2029 and 2046, according to the company’s announcement and a pricing term sheet filed with the SEC.

Both deals are expected to close Wednesday, Nov. 4, and neither depends on the other closing. Oracle said it will use the money for general corporate purposes, including capital spending, debt repayment, investments, acquisitions, dividends, or share buybacks. BofA Securities is the global coordinator on the notes.

The raise comes days after Oracle told investors it is targeting more than $225 billion in revenue by fiscal 2030, a goal tied to its fast-growing cloud and AI infrastructure business. Interest rates of 7% or more on the new notes show what investors are charging to help finance that buildout. Oracle moved its headquarters to Austin in 2020 and runs a large campus on Lady Bird Lake.

CrowdStrike to acquire Fiddler AI, launches AI ‘kill switch’

CrowdStrike announced Tuesday that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Fiddler AI, a company that monitors and explains how AI agents behave. The company did not disclose a price. It said the deal will be paid mostly in cash, with a stock portion subject to vesting, and is expected to close in CrowdStrike’s fourth fiscal quarter of 2027. CEO George Kurtz called Fiddler “the flight recorder for every agent,” according to the announcement. Fiddler’s technology will be sold as Falcon Observe.

The cybersecurity company made several announcements tied to its Fal.Con Europe conference in Barcelona, Spain. It introduced an AI Kill Switch in its Falcon Guardian product. An authorized administrator can use it to stop an AI agent that goes off course, block it from relaunching and cut its network access, and every action is logged. CrowdStrike said the feature is available now, though stopping agents at the endpoint is still in development.

CrowdStrike also said EY is building its AI and cyber resilience business on the Falcon platform across more than 20 EY member firms. EY will also train its cybersecurity staff on the platform over the next year. Taken together, the moves show the Austin company betting that securing autonomous AI agents will be a major new market.

Ethos revenue jumps 151% in third quarter

Ethos, which sells life insurance online, reported third-quarter revenue of $235.2 million, up 151% from a year earlier. Revenue through its direct channel rose 112%, and revenue through third-party channels more than tripled. The company earned $4.7 million, or 7 cents a share, and reported adjusted EBITDA of $34.9 million.

Ethos expects fourth-quarter revenue of $220 million to $224 million and full-year 2026 revenue of $838 million to $842 million, about 117% growth at the midpoint. The company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker LIFE in January. It started in San Francisco and now lists Austin as its headquarters.

Tesla takes driverless robotaxis to Fort Worth

Austin-based Tesla began offering driverless robotaxi rides in Fort Worth at 6 a.m. Monday, with no safety monitor in the vehicle, according to Not a Tesla App. The Model Y service covers about 143 square miles centered on downtown Fort Worth. It is Tesla’s first new robotaxi city in about three months and its seventh market without a monitor, joining Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando and Tampa.

Austin remains the company’s largest driverless zone at about 272 square miles. Tesla recently extended Austin’s robotaxi hours to 2 a.m. The company has named Las Vegas, Phoenix, Jacksonville and San Antonio as upcoming markets.

Tech community mourns Austin entrepreneur Adam Robinson, family killed in Florida jet crash

Founders, colleagues and former teammates are remembering Austin tech entrepreneur Adam Robinson as a generous mentor and an outspoken champion of bootstrapped startups after he, his wife and their two young children died in a private jet crash in Florida.

Robinson, 45, his wife, Helen Sharp, 40, and their children, Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, were among nine people killed Sunday when a Learjet 60 flying from Austin to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas crashed in a residential area of Palm Beach County near Greenacres, Florida. The family’s nanny, Anita Maria Cetina, and family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr also died, along with the jet’s two pilots.

“Helen and Adam were the love affair that will last forever,” the victims’ families said in a joint statement Monday. The families called the couple devoted parents and said Emma and Charlie were the light of their lives. They described Cetina as truly part of the family.

Robinson founded and led Austin-based Retention.com and RB2B, marketing technology companies that help businesses identify website visitors. He was also CEO of MoltSets, a business contact data startup he founded in June.

In a joint statement, Retention.com, RB2B and MoltSets called Robinson “a bold, outspoken leader who lived life to the fullest.” The companies said he was a friend and mentor who cared deeply about the people around him, and that their immediate focus is supporting employees and the couple’s family.

On the day of the crash, Robinson posted on LinkedIn that RB2B had crossed a milestone he had chased publicly for months. “RB2B is $10m ARR with 1 FTE,” he wrote, referring to $10 million in annual recurring revenue with one full-time employee. In the same post, he promoted a live debate scheduled for Tuesday with his friend, entrepreneur Jesse Ouellette, over whether to merge RB2B and MoltSets.

‘He gave far more than he took’

Tributes poured onto LinkedIn and X on Monday and Tuesday, many from founders who knew Robinson mainly through his candid posts to more than 160,000 LinkedIn followers.

Ouellette wrote on LinkedIn that Robinson was one of the first founders to help him when he was building his own company and became a friend who shared his views on how to build software businesses. Robinson could disagree with you about almost anything, Ouellette wrote, “and somehow you’d walk away liking him even more.” He credited Robinson with showing him that a founder doesn’t have to raise money, build a huge team or chase an exit to win.

Steve Hutt, host of the Ecommerce Fastlane podcast, who interviewed Robinson twice, called the deaths an unimaginable loss. “Every time we talked, he gave far more than he took,” Hutt wrote on LinkedIn, adding that Robinson freely shared what he knew with anyone who asked.

Kevin McGrew, founder of B2B consultancy Strategos Growth, told Adweek that Robinson built his companies in public and that many founders learned by watching. McGrew said he didn’t agree with everything Robinson said but “found his voice fresh and authentic in a world of AI voices on LinkedIn.”

Ilai Szpiezak, a founder who said he had only exchanged messages with Robinson, wrote on X: “He was such an inspiration, not just to bootstrapped founders like me.”

Rice University’s men’s basketball program shared a statement from former head coach Willis Wilson, who coached Robinson in the early 2000s.

“He was such an uplifting guy who was loved by his teammates and coaches,” Wilson said, adding that the Rice basketball community was in shock.

From Wall Street to bootstrapped software

A Houston native, Robinson attended Memorial High School and graduated from Rice in 2003 with degrees in economics, Spanish and managerial studies. He earned varsity basketball letters in 2000 and 2001.

He worked as a credit trader at Lehman Brothers and Barclays Capital before moving into technology. He co-founded the email marketing company Robly with his brother, Anthony Robinson, and founded Retention.com in January 2020. According to his LinkedIn profile, he grew Retention.com to $20 million in annual recurring revenue within 3 1/2 years without outside funding.

Robinson became one of the most visible advocates of bootstrapping in B2B software, regularly urging founders to stay lean, stay profitable, and skip venture capital.

Sharp founded the public relations firm Influential PR in 2019 and later opened Helen Sharp Ceramics, a pottery studio in Aspen, Colorado. In September, she announced on social media that the family was making Aspen its permanent home after a trial period.

Investigation underway

The jet left Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on Sunday morning and crashed at about 11:51 a.m. Central Time, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

NTSB board member Tom Chapman said the crew reported light ice and moderate turbulence at 35,000 feet and received approval to climb to 37,000 feet. Less than 30 seconds later, the crew reported descending and declared an emergency. Early indications suggest the plane may have begun breaking apart before impact, investigators said.

Aurora Aviation operated the aircraft, doing business as Upper Jets. About 400 people were evacuated from the surrounding neighborhood, and one man on the ground was injured.

The NTSB has not determined a cause.

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Only in Austin

After a historic Election Day, it’s worth remembering that Austin owes its capital status to elections. In March 1850, Texas voters chose Austin as the state capital for 20 years, beating Tehuacana, Palestine, Huntsville and Washington-on-the-Brazos by about 2-to-1. Then, in an election held Nov. 5-8, 1872, voters made the choice permanent. Austin received 63,377 votes, compared with 35,143 for Houston and 12,776 for Waco, and about 100 write-in votes went to other towns, including Bryan, according to historian Mike Cox.

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