News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
SpaceX's IPO is set to be the biggest ever and could make Elon Musk a trillionaire
By ALEX VEIGA and BERNARD CONDON, AP Business Writers NEW YORK (AP) -- SpaceX says it plans to raise up to $75 billion when it goes public this month, setting the stage for the largest-ever stock market debut and putting Elon Musk on course to becoming the world's first trillionaire. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said Wednesday it will sell 555.6 million shares at $135 a piece in an initial public offering. The estimated proceeds would easily top the $26 billion raised by oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019. The offering would also give SpaceX a market value of $1.77 trillion. Only six companies in the S&P 500 are currently worth more, with Nvidia tops at $5.2 trillion. Besides the size of the offering and the expected proceeds, SpaceX's amended prospectus updates details about how much control of the company Musk will have. As SpaceX's CEO, chief technical officer and chairman, Musk's voting power will come primarily through his ownership of 5.22 billion Class B shares, which give the holder 10 votes for every share held. According to the filing, Musk would have 82.4% of the voting power in the company. Forbes currently values Musk's net worth at $826 billion and his stake in SpaceX at $542 billion. The estimated value of his SpaceX holdings was based on an overall value for the company of $1.25 trillion. Based on those numbers, a $1.77 trillion valuation for SpaceX would boost Musk's net worth by $223 billion, making him a trillionaire. However, much of Musk's worth is in stock that he has yet to cash in. Even as it makes a bid for a blockbuster market debut, SpaceX is currently losing billions of dollars a year. The filing shows that the company lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too. Fantastical plans Time will tell how SpaceX fares on the market. Musk's plans for the company are as fantastical as the money he hopes raise in the sale. Colorful, even frightening in parts, the IPO document strikes a contrast with the typically dry, technical prose in IPO documents, detailing plans to use proceeds from the sale to help put men on the moon again and perhaps even Mars. In one section, it talks of a need to build "a permanent human colony" on the red planet with "at least one million inhabitants" as existential threats loom that could consign man to "the same fate as the dinosaurs." Musk has almost equally ambitious plans for his other publicly traded company, Tesla. His goal is to transform the maker of electric vehicles into a producer of robotaxis and humanoid robots. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a research note that he expects Tesla and SpaceX to merge next year. AI plays a key role Key to the success of both companies -- and any merged entity -- is artificial intelligence. In its IPO filing, SpaceX says it sees potential revenue from AI of up to $26.5 trillion. But that depends on another lofty Musk ambition -- putting data centers in space, which is not technologically possible at the moment. Transforming his space company into a primarily AI-focused company will be a challenge for Musk, who started xAI in 2023 with 11 other co-founders who have all since left. Some were recruited away by rivals. Its main AI product, the chatbot Grok, is "less impressive than anything that we see from any other major player in the space, whether that's OpenAI, or Anthropic, or (Google's) Gemini," said IDC analyst Arnal Dayaratna. Dayaratna said that doesn't mean SpaceX doesn't have potential as a major AI player, thanks in part to its computing partnership with Anthropic and Musk's recent deal that gave SpaceX the rights to buy AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion later this year. Folding in Cursor's capabilities would give SpaceX access to the coveted business customers now using Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT. SpaceX plans to use the net proceeds from the IPO to fund the expansion of infrastructure for its AI and rocket businesses, and to beef up the constellation of satellites that power Starlink Mobile, among other investments. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "SPCX" and could begin trading as soon as the end of next week. And SpaceX isn't the only colossal market debut investors are now bracing for. Earlier this week, Anthropic submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to officially start its own IPO clock. OpenAI has not yet reported filing the initial SEC paperwork, but an IPO from the ChatGPT maker is widely expected. "This listing represents the first major test for public markets after years of muted IPO activity with SpaceX paving the way for AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI to follow soon after," Ives wrote. Associated Press Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed.
SpaceX's IPO is set to be the biggest ever and could make Elon Musk a trillionaire
By ALEX VEIGA and BERNARD CONDON, AP Business Writers NEW YORK (AP) -- SpaceX says it plans to raise up to $75 billion when it goes public this month, setting the stage for the largest-ever stock market debut and putting Elon Musk on course to becoming the world's first trillionaire. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said Wednesday it will sell 555.6 million shares at $135 a piece in an initial public offering. The estimated proceeds would easily top the $26 billion raised by oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019. The offering would also give SpaceX a market value of $1.77 trillion. Only six companies in the S&P 500 are currently worth more, with Nvidia tops at $5.2 trillion. Besides the size of the offering and the expected proceeds, SpaceX's amended prospectus updates details about how much control of the company Musk will have. As SpaceX's CEO, chief technical officer and chairman, Musk's voting power will come primarily through his ownership of 5.22 billion Class B shares, which give the holder 10 votes for every share held. According to the filing, Musk would have 82.4% of the voting power in the company. Forbes currently values Musk's net worth at $826 billion and his stake in SpaceX at $542 billion. The estimated value of his SpaceX holdings was based on an overall value for the company of $1.25 trillion. Based on those numbers, a $1.77 trillion valuation for SpaceX would boost Musk's net worth by $223 billion, making him a trillionaire. However, much of Musk's worth is in stock that he has yet to cash in. Even as it makes a bid for a blockbuster market debut, SpaceX is currently losing billions of dollars a year. The filing shows that the company lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too. Fantastical plans Time will tell how SpaceX fares on the market. Musk's plans for the company are as fantastical as the money he hopes raise in the sale. Colorful, even frightening in parts, the IPO document strikes a contrast with the typically dry, technical prose in IPO documents, detailing plans to use proceeds from the sale to help put men on the moon again and perhaps even Mars. In one section, it talks of a need to build "a permanent human colony" on the red planet with "at least one million inhabitants" as existential threats loom that could consign man to "the same fate as the dinosaurs." Musk has almost equally ambitious plans for his other publicly traded company, Tesla. His goal is to transform the maker of electric vehicles into a producer of robotaxis and humanoid robots. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a research note that he expects Tesla and SpaceX to merge next year. AI plays a key role Key to the success of both companies -- and any merged entity -- is artificial intelligence. In its IPO filing, SpaceX says it sees potential revenue from AI of up to $26.5 trillion. But that depends on another lofty Musk ambition -- putting data centers in space, which is not technologically possible at the moment. Transforming his space company into a primarily AI-focused company will be a challenge for Musk, who started xAI in 2023 with 11 other co-founders who have all since left. Some were recruited away by rivals. Its main AI product, the chatbot Grok, is "less impressive than anything that we see from any other major player in the space, whether that's OpenAI, or Anthropic, or (Google's) Gemini," said IDC analyst Arnal Dayaratna. Dayaratna said that doesn't mean SpaceX doesn't have potential as a major AI player, thanks in part to its computing partnership with Anthropic and Musk's recent deal that gave SpaceX the rights to buy AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion later this year. Folding in Cursor's capabilities would give SpaceX access to the coveted business customers now using Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT. SpaceX plans to use the net proceeds from the IPO to fund the expansion of infrastructure for its AI and rocket businesses, and to beef up the constellation of satellites that power Starlink Mobile, among other investments. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "SPCX" and could begin trading as soon as the end of next week. And SpaceX isn't the only colossal market debut investors are now bracing for. Earlier this week, Anthropic submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to officially start its own IPO clock. OpenAI has not yet reported filing the initial SEC paperwork, but an IPO from the ChatGPT maker is widely expected. "This listing represents the first major test for public markets after years of muted IPO activity with SpaceX paving the way for AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI to follow soon after," Ives wrote. Associated Press Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed.
SpaceX's IPO is set to be the biggest ever and could make Elon Musk a trillionaire
By ALEX VEIGA and BERNARD CONDON, AP Business Writers NEW YORK (AP) -- SpaceX says it plans to raise up to $75 billion when it goes public this month, setting the stage for the largest-ever stock market debut and putting Elon Musk on course to becoming the world's first trillionaire. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said Wednesday it will sell 555.6 million shares at $135 a piece in an initial public offering. The estimated proceeds would easily top the $26 billion raised by oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019. The offering would also give SpaceX a market value of $1.77 trillion. Only six companies in the S&P 500 are currently worth more, with Nvidia tops at $5.2 trillion. Besides the size of the offering and the expected proceeds, SpaceX's amended prospectus updates details about how much control of the company Musk will have. As SpaceX's CEO, chief technical officer and chairman, Musk's voting power will come primarily through his ownership of 5.22 billion Class B shares, which give the holder 10 votes for every share held. According to the filing, Musk would have 82.4% of the voting power in the company. Forbes currently values Musk's net worth at $826 billion and his stake in SpaceX at $542 billion. The estimated value of his SpaceX holdings was based on an overall value for the company of $1.25 trillion. Based on those numbers, a $1.77 trillion valuation for SpaceX would boost Musk's net worth by $223 billion, making him a trillionaire. However, much of Musk's worth is in stock that he has yet to cash in. Even as it makes a bid for a blockbuster market debut, SpaceX is currently losing billions of dollars a year. The filing shows that the company lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too. Fantastical plans Time will tell how SpaceX fares on the market. Musk's plans for the company are as fantastical as the money he hopes raise in the sale. Colorful, even frightening in parts, the IPO document strikes a contrast with the typically dry, technical prose in IPO documents, detailing plans to use proceeds from the sale to help put men on the moon again and perhaps even Mars. In one section, it talks of a need to build "a permanent human colony" on the red planet with "at least one million inhabitants" as existential threats loom that could consign man to "the same fate as the dinosaurs." Musk has almost equally ambitious plans for his other publicly traded company, Tesla. His goal is to transform the maker of electric vehicles into a producer of robotaxis and humanoid robots. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a research note that he expects Tesla and SpaceX to merge next year. AI plays a key role Key to the success of both companies -- and any merged entity -- is artificial intelligence. In its IPO filing, SpaceX says it sees potential revenue from AI of up to $26.5 trillion. But that depends on another lofty Musk ambition -- putting data centers in space, which is not technologically possible at the moment. Transforming his space company into a primarily AI-focused company will be a challenge for Musk, who started xAI in 2023 with 11 other co-founders who have all since left. Some were recruited away by rivals. Its main AI product, the chatbot Grok, is "less impressive than anything that we see from any other major player in the space, whether that's OpenAI, or Anthropic, or (Google's) Gemini," said IDC analyst Arnal Dayaratna. Dayaratna said that doesn't mean SpaceX doesn't have potential as a major AI player, thanks in part to its computing partnership with Anthropic and Musk's recent deal that gave SpaceX the rights to buy AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion later this year. Folding in Cursor's capabilities would give SpaceX access to the coveted business customers now using Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT. SpaceX plans to use the net proceeds from the IPO to fund the expansion of infrastructure for its AI and rocket businesses, and to beef up the constellation of satellites that power Starlink Mobile, among other investments. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "SPCX" and could begin trading as soon as the end of next week. And SpaceX isn't the only colossal market debut investors are now bracing for. Earlier this week, Anthropic submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to officially start its own IPO clock. OpenAI has not yet reported filing the initial SEC paperwork, but an IPO from the ChatGPT maker is widely expected. "This listing represents the first major test for public markets after years of muted IPO activity with SpaceX paving the way for AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI to follow soon after," Ives wrote. Associated Press Technology Writer Matt O'Brien contributed.
SpaceX's IPO is set to be the biggest ever and could make Elon Musk a trillionaire
NEW YORK -- SpaceX says it plans to raise up to $75 billion when it goes public this month, setting the stage for the largest-ever stock market debut and putting Elon Musk on course to becoming the world's first trillionaire. The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said Wednesday it will sell 555.6 million shares at $135 a piece in an initial public offering. The estimated proceeds would easily top the $26 billion raised by oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019. The offering would also give SpaceX a market value of $1.77 trillion. Only six companies in the S&P 500 are currently worth more, with Nvidia tops at $5.2 trillion. Besides the size of the offering and the expected proceeds, SpaceX's amended prospectus updates details about how much control of the company Musk will have. As SpaceX's CEO, chief technical officer and chairman, Musk's voting power will come primarily through his ownership of 5.22 billion Class B shares, which give the holder 10 votes for every share held. According to the filing, Musk would have 82.4% of the voting power in the company. Forbes currently values Musk's net worth at $826 billion and his stake in SpaceX at $542 billion. The estimated value of his SpaceX holdings was based on an overall value for the company of $1.25 trillion. Based on those numbers, a $1.77 trillion valuation for SpaceX would boost Musk's net worth by $223 billion, making him a trillionaire. However, much of Musk's worth is in stock that he has yet to cash in. Even as it makes a bid for a blockbuster market debut, SpaceX is currently losing billions of dollars a year. The filing shows that the company lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too. Fantastical plans Time will tell how SpaceX fares on the market. Musk's plans for the company are as fantastical as the money he hopes raise in the sale. Colorful, even frightening in parts, the IPO document strikes a contrast with the typically dry, technical prose in IPO documents, detailing plans to use proceeds from the sale to help put men on the moon again and perhaps even Mars. In one section, it talks of a need to build "a permanent human colony" on the red planet with "at least one million inhabitants" as existential threats loom that could consign man to "the same fate as the dinosaurs." Musk has almost equally ambitious plans for his other publicly traded company, Tesla. His goal is to transform the maker of electric vehicles into a producer of robotaxis and humanoid robots. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a research note that he expects Tesla and SpaceX to merge next year. AI plays a key role Key to the success of both companies -- and any merged entity -- is artificial intelligence. In its IPO filing, SpaceX says it sees potential revenue from AI of up to $26.5 trillion. But that depends on another lofty Musk ambition -- putting data centers in space, which is not technologically possible at the moment. Transforming his space company into a primarily AI-focused company will be a challenge for Musk, who started xAI in 2023 with 11 other co-founders who have all since left. Some were recruited away by rivals. Its main AI product, the chatbot Grok, is "less impressive than anything that we see from any other major player in the space, whether that's OpenAI, or Anthropic, or (Google's) Gemini," said IDC analyst Arnal Dayaratna. Dayaratna said that doesn't mean SpaceX doesn't have potential as a major AI player, thanks in part to its computing partnership with Anthropic and Musk's recent deal that gave SpaceX the rights to buy AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion later this year. Folding in Cursor's capabilities would give SpaceX access to the coveted business customers now using Anthropic's Claude or OpenAI's ChatGPT. SpaceX plans to use the net proceeds from the IPO to fund the expansion of infrastructure for its AI and rocket businesses, and to beef up the constellation of satellites that power Starlink Mobile, among other investments. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol "SPCX" and could begin trading as soon as the end of next week. And SpaceX isn't the only colossal market debut investors are now bracing for. Earlier this week, Anthropic submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to officially start its own IPO clock. OpenAI has not yet reported filing the initial SEC paperwork, but an IPO from the ChatGPT maker is widely expected. "This listing represents the first major test for public markets after years of muted IPO activity with SpaceX paving the way for AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI to follow soon after," Ives wrote.
Necessary costs for Russia to compete with ChatGPT, Anthropic may exceed $100 billion
MOSCOW, June 3. /TASS/. The minimum necessary investment to create and maintain a competitive world-class large language model in Russia would exceed $10 billion, Senior Vice President of AFK Sistema, Evgeny Chereshnev, told TASS ahead of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). According to him, the total volume of necessary investment in artificial intelligence and related infrastructure when creating such a model could reach $100 billion. According to Chereshnev's calculations, training a modern typical model with 1.7-2 trillion parameters costs developers about $100 million per cycle. If the complexity of models increases to 100 trillion parameters in the near future, the price would reach $10 billion per cycle. "Models have 2-4 major updates per year, meaning the same number of cycles, and this is a permanent process," Chereshnev emphasized. In addition to costs, the electricity consumption for one training cycle of a hypothetical 100 trillion parameter model will increase. According to AFK Sistema's estimates, it would be comparable to the annual consumption of Estonia or Slovenia. Chereshnev called international cooperation a solution to the funding problem. "Russia must unite with other countries in a similar situation of potential dependence on AI technologies from the US and China, on the terms of a fair consortium -- what is available to one is available to all. This strategy has a chance of success, but requires colossal focus, will, professionalism, and an understanding of the real scale of funding," he told TASS.
Piers Morgan Decries Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker's UK Visa Ban: 'A Colossal Embarrassment'
"By this standard, half of the guests on the show would be banned from Britain," the conservative news host says Piers Morgan criticized the British government for banning controversial internet personalities Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker from entering the United Kingdom over their anti-Israel sentiments. "There is a huge difference between criticizing the actions of a nationstate and its government and the hate-filled diatribes of Kanye West or Valentina Gomez," he said on Monday's episode of "Piers Morgan Uncensored." "But my country is losing the ability to see that difference. It won't be long before that's something, which threatens all of us." Uygur and his nephew Piker were banned from traveling to the U.K. just days ahead of their scheduled appearance at SXSW London, stating that British authorities cited their public criticisms of Israel. Uygur, co-founder of The Young Turks and a resolute critic of Israel, has been a regular guest on Morgan's program. The British conservative news host even posited that some of Uygur's comments made on the show may have led to him being banned from entering the county. "You may not agree with any of Cenk's positions, but anyone with even the faintest grasp on popular discourse will know they are mainstream opinions, which are freely debated almost every single day," Morgan said. "By this standard, half of the guests on the show would be banned from Britain." Uygur had previously appeared on Morgan's show and said he intended to "greatly offend Israel" and was not sure if he would be arrested for his views. Morgan further defended his repeat guest saying that his rhetoric is not that of "an extremist or a dangerous purveyor of threatening hate speech." "He's mainstream enough to appear along leading Democrats like Ro Khanna and AOC but apparently he's too hot for we Brits to handle," Morgan said. Uygur appeared on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" Monday claiming that the British government claimed he criticized Israel "in the wrong ways." "Over 60% of Americans are critical of Israel, will we all be banned from the U.K.?" he asked. "Can they put out a list of things you're not allowed to say about Israel?" He also pointed at the irony that the British government banned him for entering the country for saying that their government was "controlled by Israel." "Didn't you just prove it?" he said. His nephew, and left-wing political commentator, Piker criticized SXSW for not coming to his defense after being banned from entering the country. Piker said on a Twitch stream Monday that the festival removed his speaker page from the website. "SXSW was a minor part of my trip to the U.K.," Piker wrote on X Monday. "They totally didn't defend me or Cenk at all, they're actual f-king losers and I will never work with them for the rest of my life. If you bought a ticket expecting to see me you should demand a refund." Both SXSW London and the U.K.'s Parliament as the Home Department have issued statements following Uygur and Piker's posts. The Home Office explained that the decision was based "on the grounds that their presence in the U.K. may not be conducive to the public good," adding, "decisions to refuse or cancel an ETA on these grounds are based solely on an assessment of the potential risk an individual may pose to U.K. society." You can watch the full segment in the video above.
How Anthropic suddenly became worth almost $1 Trillion
A jaw-dropping $965 billion valuation now puts Anthropic ahead of OpenAI -- and signals a seismic shift in who controls the future of artificial intelligence. Anthropic has announced a new funding milestone that places it firmly at the top of the generative artificial intelligence race, raising $65 billion in a Series H round that values the San Francisco-based company at $965 billion -- surpassing its most formidable rival, OpenAI, which was last valued at $852 billion in March. Anthropic's Valuation More Than Doubles in Months The numbers are staggering by any measure. Just three months ago, in February, Anthropic was valued at $380 billion. That the company has more than doubled that figure -- reaching nearly a trillion dollars -- in such a compressed window underscores how ferociously investors are chasing stakes in frontier AI companies. The latest round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with Coatue and ICONIQ serving as co-leads. Embedded within that $65 billion are $15 billion in previously committed investments from major cloud hyperscalers, including a $5 billion contribution from Amazon. That investment is part of Amazon's broader pledge to pour up to $25 billion into Anthropic, a bet that comes alongside the startup's commitment to spend more than $100 billion over the next decade on Amazon Web Services infrastructure -- a figure that speaks to the colossal, almost incomprehensible costs now underpinning the AI industry. Claude Demand Is Outpacing Supply The financing comes at a moment of genuine strain for the company. Demand for Claude, Anthropic's flagship AI assistant, has outrun the company's ability to deliver it. In recent months, Anthropic has been forced to implement usage limits during peak hours -- a rare and telling admission from a company otherwise projecting confidence. To smooth out the congestion, the company began offering users more computing power during off-peak windows, an incentive structure that speaks to just how tight its capacity constraints have become. Revenue figures suggest demand is no illusion. Anthropic reported that its annualized run-rate revenue crossed $4.7 billion earlier in May, a figure that reflects accelerating adoption among enterprise customers globally. That trajectory makes the company's near-trillion-dollar valuation more than speculative sentiment -- it reflects a business that is, by AI-industry standards, genuinely scaling. Strategic Hardware Partners Join the Round Notably, Anthropic's infrastructure partners -- Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix -- also participated in the funding round. Their involvement signals that the company's ambitions extend well beyond software. Building frontier AI models demands enormous volumes of specialized memory chips, and having the manufacturers of those components as investors creates a supply-chain alignment that few competitors can match. An IPO on the Horizon for Anthropic For all the private-market momentum, attention is increasingly turning toward what comes next. According to people familiar with the company's thinking, Anthropic is laying groundwork for an eventual public listing -- a move that investors and bankers say could come as soon as this year. OpenAI is reportedly on a parallel path, raising the prospect of two landmark AI IPOs arriving in close succession, each testing how public markets value the promise of artificial general intelligence against the reality of enormous ongoing costs. The rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI has never been sharper. Both companies continue burning through massive amounts of capital as they race to train and deploy increasingly powerful AI models while competing for the same enterprise customers, cloud partnerships, and elite research talent. Anthropic's latest valuation does not settle the battle -- it raises the stakes. After years of being viewed as the insurgent challenger, Anthropic now carries the bigger valuation, signaling a major turning point in the AI race and intensifying an already fierce competition between two of the industry's most influential players.
Young star lights up the Milky Way with colossal jets
Today's Image of the Day from the European Space Agency features an incredible phenomenon that was captured on the far outskirts of the Milky Way. A young, massive star has announced its arrival with a dramatic display. It has fired off twin jets of gas so powerful they stretch across eight light-years - about twice the distance from our Sun to the Alpha Centauri system. These streams are confined to narrow beams by the star's magnetic fields and launched along its spin axis. The jets of a young star The James Webb Space Telescope captured the event in remarkable infrared detail, showing the jets carving their way through interstellar gas and dust. The stellar outburst belongs to a rare class of cosmic displays known as Herbig-Haro objects. They form when material falling onto a newborn star is shot back out into space at incredible speeds. The star at the heart of this spectacle lies in a cluster about 15,000 light-years away. The star has a mass that is already ten times greater than the Sun's. The outflow is hurtling through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, leaving behind a trail that astronomers can now study as a record of the star's growth. An unexpected discovery The discovery took astronomers by surprise, including Yu Cheng of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). "We didn't really know there was a massive star with this kind of super-jet out there before the observation. Such a spectacular outflow of molecular hydrogen from a massive star is rare in other regions of our galaxy," said Cheng. More than 300 Herbig-Haro objects are known, but most of them come from stars much smaller than this one. Webb's sharp images reveal not just the scale but also the delicate structure of this jet, including knots, shocks, and filaments where the stream slams into surrounding material. "I was really surprised at the order, symmetry, and size of the jet when we first looked at it," said Jonathan Tan of the University of Virginia. The perfect alignment of the opposite streams suggests the process fueling this star's growth has been steady for more than 100,000 years. Mystery of massive star formation The new observation has reopened one of the longest-running debates in astronomy: how do massive stars form? For decades, scientists have been split between two main ideas. One theory suggests that stars this large form through a steady process called core accretion, where gas builds up in a stable disk and launches outflows in predictable directions. The other theory, known as competitive accretion, involves a chaotic tug-of-war in which streams of gas fall in from all sides, twisting the orientation of the jets. The Webb data now tilt the balance toward the first explanation. The opposing jets are nearly 180 degrees apart, showing that the central disk has remained steady throughout the star's lifetime. "What we've seen here, because we've got the whole history - a tapestry of the story - is that the opposite sides of the jets are nearly 180 degrees apart from each other," said Tan. "That tells us that this central disc is held steady and validates a prediction of the core accretion theory." Conditions of the early universe The star's home lies in a cluster called Sharpless 2-284, a relatively pristine region on the galaxy's periphery. Because it is far from the Milky Way's busy center, its stars formed in an environment low in heavy elements. Astronomers call this property metallicity, and it mirrors the conditions of the early universe, before multiple generations of stars had enriched space with the products of nuclear fusion. "Webb's exquisite data have also shown us that relatively more stars seem to form at lower masses in Sh2-284 than in closer, more metal-rich clusters," said Morten Andersen of the European Southern Observatory. "This cluster is an excellent region to help us understand star formation throughout the Universe." Image Credit: ESA -- - Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates. Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.
Artificial egg helps Colossal hatch its de-extinction plans
Prefer us on Google Learn More Colossal Biosciences, the company that produced a trio of modern-day dire wolves, now has its own answer to the question: What comes first, the chicken or the egg? The Dallas-headquartered biotech firm has developed an artificial egg that has been used to hatch healthy chickens, the company announced Tuesday, May 19. In development for about two years, the "first-of-its-kind incubation platform" has been used to raise more than 30 chickens, which live at Colossal's avian facility in Texas. The achievement is an important milestone in the company's goal of bringing back New Zealand's South Island Giant Moa, which went extinct about 600 years ago. The moa's egg is about 80 times the size of a chicken egg, so it's not feasible to use a surrogate host for birthing new moa chicks, Colossal CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm told USA TODAY. Thus, the need for an artificial egg. Lamm compared it to the company's creation of the Colossal Woolly Mouse, which was genetically engineered to have characteristics that could eventually be used in creating a next-generation woolly mammoth. People are also reading... Arizona's landscapes become star of new TV show filming here Japanese company invests in mine near Mount Lemmon Tucson DACA recipient detained after agents 'aggressively' enter home, family says Hotel on the rise at Tucson's Uptown project Bill seeks to end 'vulture practices' in kids sports: What it means Ownership of $12.8M Arizona lottery ticket disputed Growth in Arizona's big cities -- like Tucson -- mostly stalled Opponents place lien on state land bought by Hudbay Minerals south of Tucson U of A expects smaller incoming class than last year's -- which saw a big drop Groups seek $2 billion for Colorado River water conservation 'Neither snow nor rain' stops the mail. But USPS has a bigger problem Arizona softball falls to Duke 8-6; Wildcats, Blue Devils will play again for regional title U of A student groups ask audience to boo commencement speaker Drivers are fast and Tucson's furious Looking for plans? Tucson has nearly 40 weekend events "It's really, really important, because we've told the world that eventually we want exogenous development," the ability to create offspring "completely outside of the womb ... not just for extinct species, but so that we could productionize endangered species," said Lamb, who was recently named to the board of directors for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. What does the artificial egg look like? The oval artificial egg looks a bit like a tea infuser, with an open lid to observe embryonic development. The 3D-printed rigid shell, made up of a grid of hexagon shapes, has a silicone-based membrane replicating the interior of a real egg. "Our permeable membrane allows oxygen to diffuse into the system through the membrane at ambient temperatures," said Colossal chief science officer Beth Shapiro in a new explanatory video posted on YouTube. The artificial egg fits within a standardized incubator. Colossal scientists tested the artificial egg on embryos harvested from freshly laid chicken eggs. They are monitored over about 21 days and occasionally given some needed nutrients. Once hatched, the chicks are cared for and, when they are big enough, allowed to join the other chickens on the company's avian facility. Eventually, Colossal's artificial eggs will be used to grow genetically engineered embryos into hatchlings. At the end of a new YouTube video posted by Colossal, you can watch a time-lapse segment showing the development of an embryo to a chick, viewed through the opening at the top of the artificial egg. Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts "We've created a novel shell-less culture system that is fully scalable and biologically accurate," said Colossal chief biology officer Andrew Pask in a news release. "The genome is the blueprint, but without a place to build, it's meaningless. The artificial egg gives us that platform: controlled, scalable, and completely independent of a surrogate. It's species-agnostic, size-scalable, and unlocks entirely new pathways - from rescuing endangered birds with low hatch success to enabling de-extinction where no surrogate exists." The artificial egg will make it easier for researchers to study not only avian developmental biology -- because Colossal researchers cracked the egg, so to speak -- but also potentially outside the womb development of other creatures. "If we, as scientists, now have the ability to complete embryo development under normal atmospheric conditions in artificial eggs, this represents a significant engineering and biological advance with strong implications for endangered species rescue, developmental biology, and genome engineering," said Prof. Tomas Marques Bonet, an evolutionary and conservation biologist from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, who is an advisor to Colossal, told USA TODAY in an email exchange. What are Colossal's plans? The chickens hatched from the artificial eggs are living out their lives on Colossal's avian facility. "We're responsible for everything about their lives. We want them to both be healthy physically, but also mentally," said Colossal's head of animal husbandry, Steve Metzler, in the new video. Colossal gets most of its attention for its "de-extinction" plans of bringing back extinct species such as the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the Australian thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). However, research advances in those projects can help the preservation of other animals such as elephants, the white rhino, the red wolf, bison and others, the company says. Still, Colossal has its detractors. The animals the company is creating as part of its de-extinction program won't have the same social structure their ancestors did, they say. "It could be very cruel to those animals," Jeanne Loring, a biologist from the Scripps Institute in California, told NPR. Beyond that, tinkering with science could have unknown repercussions, she said. "It could be catastrophic," Loring says. "There's too many variables that we don't understand. There are too many things that could happen." In the future, Colossal could have countless eggs, or eventually artificial wombs, growing hatchlings meant to re-establish an extinct species or strengthen an endangered one. "The ability to incubate avian embryos outside a biological shell -- at any size and in standard commercial incubators -- is a capability conservation programs simply don't have today. We're building it for the moa, but it's designed to support critically endangered species broadly," said Colossal's chief animal officer Matt James in a statement. "The artificial egg allows us to rescue compromised embryos, build genetic rescue platforms, and utilize donor and biobanked material in ways that weren't previously possible. It reflects deep collaboration across biology, engineering, and software - and opens entirely new pathways to help address the biodiversity crisis," said James, who also heads The Colossal Foundation, the company's charitable arm. Does Colossal's artificial egg finally answer the question of which came first? Well, it depends on your point of view. A chicken did lay the eggs, which were transferred to artificial eggs to grow. But in the future, could a genetically-engineered embryo shift the answer toward the egg? Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community. The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
SpaceX, OpenAI...: How Does an IPO Actually Work?
An IPO (Initial Public Offering) is the moment a private company goes public. Note that "public" has a specific meaning here: we are not talking about state-owned enterprises, but rather a company whose capital is opened to external investors. Prior to this, the company is owned by a closed circle: it's founders, employee shareholders, or venture capital funds, for instance. Afterwards, the shareholder base diversifies, even if the company retains controlling shareholders or is a majority owner. In any event, it marks the beginning of a more or less liquid market where ownership titles - shares - can be traded, with supply and demand interacting to establish a price. A Heavy and Well-Oiled Machine But before that, the company must get into battle mode for the IPO. It is a long, time-consuming and costly process. To keep things simple today, we will skip the internal restructuring required for listing, which is by no means a small feat. On the financial side, in the months leading up to the operation, the company selects one or more major investment banks, known as underwriters, tasked with organizing and placing the offering. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup are reportedly tipped to lead the SpaceX IPO. Their job involves analyzing the company from top to bottom, drafting the prospectus, and, crucially, gauging institutional investors to find the right offering price. This is known as the roadshow. Executives of the company-to-be-listed spend several weeks conducting back-to-back presentations in hotel ballrooms or bank boardrooms in New York, London, Paris and Singapore. They sell their "story" to fund managers who will then decide whether or not to place an order. Following this informal round, the banks build what is called the order book: who wants how many shares, and at what price. From this book, the IPO price emerges. Let's look at four key things to understand about these operations. The Money Does Not Always Go into the Company's Coffers The first misconception to clear up is that an IPO is not necessarily a fundraising event. A distinction must be made between primary shares (new) and secondary shares (existing). When a company issues new shares during its IPO, it is indeed raising capital; the money enters its coffers and can be used for investment, debt reduction or expansion. However, when existing shareholders sell their shares as part of the deal, the money does not go to the company: it goes into their pockets. That said, both mechanisms often coexist in the same IPO. The operation thus allows the company to raise funds for financing while enabling existing shareholders to monetize all or part of their holdings. In this case, the company's free float - the portion of capital freely tradable on the exchange - will consist of both the new shares and those sold by previous shareholders. The First Winners Are Often Already on Board This leads to another central question: who truly benefits from an IPO? The honest answer is: primarily those who were there before. The funds that financed SpaceX or OpenAI in their early days, having accepted high risk for years. Management generally provided the vision and the long hours. The IPO is their exit strategy, whether in full or part. Founders and employee shareholders see their stock options become liquid. Banks pocket commissions that can amount to colossal sums. And where does the individual investor fit in? Usually at the end of the chain. In major US IPOs, shares are first allocated to institutional investors who participated in the book-building process. Retail investors, most of whom buy on the secondary market as soon as trading opens, at a price determined by real-time supply and demand, which can be far removed from the IPO price - in either direction. While mechanisms exist to enable individuals to subscribe like institutions, they are typically limited to certain brokers and subject to discretionary allocation. For a European retail investor using a standard broker, the most frequent scenario remains: no access to the US IPO at the offering price, with purchase only possible after the first trade. What Does a "1,000 Billion Dollar IPO" Mean? Another common confusion is the blurring of lines between the amount of capital raised and the market capitalization. On the day of its debut, a company is valued by the market at the IPO price multiplied by the total number of shares outstanding. If OpenAI goes public at a valuation of 1,000 billion dollars, it means the market estimates the entire company is worth that sum, not that 1,000 billion dollars are changing hands. It is a collective and instantaneous valuation that can be raised or reduced, even within the first minutes of trading. OpenAI could also use the occasion to issue new shares and bring in fresh cash, relying on the appetite of new investors. Suppose management hopes to raise $50bn. In this case, you might also hear of a "50 billion dollar deal." This refers to the capital raise, not the overall valuation of the company. Both figures often circulate in parallel in the press, sometimes without much distinction. Hence the importance of knowing which one you are looking at. Is an IPO a Good Deal? The history of major tech IPOs teaches a certain humility. Facebook had a sluggish start before becoming one of the most profitable stocks of the decade. Uber and Lyft went public with great fanfare only to spend several years trading below their offering price. However, the AI fever has created a hyper-speculative environment for companies closely or distantly related to this ecosystem. Cerebras, which listed on the Nasdaq in mid-May, saw its share price jump from an IPO price of $185 to $367 during the first session due to a surge in demand. A few days later, it was trading at $290, meaning those who subscribed at $185 gained 57% in a few days, while those who bought at the peak are facing a 21% loss. CoreWeave, whose IPO dates back to March 2025, followed a similar trajectory (IPO price $40, peak at $187, around $101 as of May 20). In Europe, it must be admitted that the IPO track record is somewhat mixed, for reasons we will not detail here but which relate notably to the structure of corporate financing cycles. The largest recent operation, Verisure, failed to ignite, with a share price languishing well below its 2025 IPO level. Conversely, hyper-speculation in semiconductors is also present, as evidenced by the Silex IPO, where the share price tripled in a few days in May 2026. A New Dimension: SpaceX and OpenAI SpaceX and OpenAI are set to take US IPOs to a whole new level. The valuations of these companies will be incredibly high. There is talk of over 1,000 billion dollars for OpenAI - equivalent to the annual GDP of Switzerland. For SpaceX, it is even more staggering. Rumors suggest a valuation of 1,800 to 2,000 billion dollars for a capital raise of $80bn. Until now, the Saudi giant Saudi Aramco dominated the rankings with a valuation of 1,700 billion dollars in 2019, but a capital raise "limited" to $25.6bn. Unlike the Saudi firm, a star of the oil industry, the two Americans operate in a sector where prospects go "to infinity and beyond," at least on paper. And even if they are currently loss-making, they will generate unprecedented excitement. The spectacle is guaranteed and will likely spill over into the rest of the market. This is perhaps the moment to remember that a great story is not an investment thesis - bearing in mind that, these days, the market often prefers a good story over Excel spreadsheet ratios.
Colossal Hatches Chicks, Cracks the Egg Problem for Giant Bird De‑Extinction
Colossal Biosciences has re-engineered the egg. The company's shell-less artificial egg system is shown alongside a developing embryo and one of the chicks successfully hatched from the 3D-printed incubation device. Colossal says the platform could support future conservation efforts and the de-extinction of giant birds such as the South Island Giant Moa. [Image: Colossal Biosciences] The eggs Colossal Biosciences ultimately hopes to hatch may one day be the size of basketballs. That challenge is driving one of the company's most unusual engineering projects yet: building a shell-less egg. The Dallas-based de-extinction startup announced it has successfully hatched live chicks using a 3D-printed shell system designed to support full avian embryo development outside a natural eggshell -- a technology Colossal says could eventually enable the return of giant extinct birds such as the South Island Giant Moa. After decades of failed attempts by researchers to culture bird embryos outside their natural shells, Colossal says its new artificial egg system avoids one of the biggest historical problems: the need for pure-oxygen environments that could damage DNA and complicate long-term development. Instead, the company said its shell-less platform uses a bioengineered silicone-based membrane that mimics the gas exchange of a natural eggshell under normal atmospheric conditions. The 3D-printed lattice shell is designed to regulate oxygen, humidity, and temperature while remaining compatible with standard commercial incubators. The engineering challenge becomes more complicated as eggs scale up in size. During a recent lab tour, Colossal researchers said South Island Giant Moa eggs were estimated to be about eight times the volume of an emu egg -- well beyond the capacity of any living avian surrogate. "We're working with our exogenous development group to develop an artificial egg that will be able to accommodate Moa," one Colossal scientist said during the tour. "Every new scalable system for de-extinction is ultimately a biology problem wrapped in an engineering problem," Ben Lamm, Colossal's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. "The artificial egg is a perfect example." Lamm said restoring species such as the South Island Giant Moa requires more than reconstructing ancient genomes and editing primordial germ cells, or PGCs. "It requires building an entirely new incubation system where no surrogate exists and scales in ways that ordinary biology simply doesn't," he said. Lamm called the artificial shell system "a major milestone" for Colossal and "a foundational technology" for the company's de-extinction efforts. "This is what multidisciplinary science makes possible -- bringing together biology, materials science, and engineering to solve one of nature's most elegant systems," he said. The 3D-printed lattice shell was designed for eventual transition to injection molding for low-cost, high-volume production. The shell size can be adjusted, with additional versions already under development that exceed the dimensions of any available surrogate species, Colossal said. Researchers first attempted shell-less avian culture in the 1980s, but earlier systems required large volumes of pure oxygen, which Colossal said caused DNA damage and affected long-term animal health. Those systems also were incompatible with standard commercial incubators and difficult to scale for conservation or industrial use. "We've created a novel shell-less culture system that is fully scalable and biologically accurate," said Andrew Pask, Colossal's chief biology officer. "It's a new system designed for long-term, healthy avian embryo development." The result, the company said, is a system compatible with standard commercial incubators, manufacturable at scale, and adaptable to eggs of different sizes. Pask said the platform is designed to operate independently of surrogate species while scaling across different egg sizes. "The artificial egg gives us that platform: controlled, scalable, and completely independent of a surrogate," he said. "It's species-agnostic, size-scalable, and unlocks entirely new pathways -- from rescuing endangered birds with low hatch success to enabling de-extinction where no surrogate exists." "We designed it with one priority," Pask added: "Producing healthy animals that can thrive, not just hatch." Beyond conservation and de-extinction, Colossal said the platform could also have applications in biotechnology research involving genome-edited birds. The company said the system's transparent, modular design allows continuous access to developing embryos during incubation, which could support gene-editing workflows used in areas such as therapeutic protein production and other forms of avian biotech research. "Any field that needs precise, scalable access to developing avian embryos now has a tool that didn't exist before," Lamm said. Track Dallas-Fort Worth's business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.
Colossal tomb tied to Alexander the Great revealed by officials
Greek officials have unveiled the interior of a massive ancient tomb possibly linked to Alexander the Great as archaeologists continue excavation and restoration work. Greece's Ministry of Culture announced the news in a statement on May 11. The excavation centers around the Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis, the ruins of an ancient Macedonian city in northern Greece, about 60 miles northeast of Thessaloniki. Greek officials said restoration work at the Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis has uncovered the site's full enclosure for the first time, revealing the massive scale of the ancient Macedonian monument. The enclosure, built in the fourth century B.C., measures roughly 1,630 feet in circumference. It surrounds a burial mound spanning more than 20 acres, as Cover Media reported. Pictures released by the ministry show marble-lined passageways, elaborate architecture and fine sculptural details that suggest the structure was built for a member of the Macedonian elite. Officials removed older metal supports to make the monument's interior fully visible, and future plans include installing the tomb's monumental double-leaf Macedonian marble door and restoring parts of the sphinx sculptures that once guarded the entrance. "The Kasta Tomb is a unique and magnificent Macedonian monument, which, through the completion of the work of restoring its geometry, but also revealing the entire enclosure, now clearly highlights its historical importance and its value," Lina Mendoni, Greek minister of culture, said in a translated statement. Amphipolis is "associated with major figures of the Kingdom of Macedon, such as the three generals of Alexander the Great, Nearchus, Hephaestion and Laomedon, who resided in the city," according to the Ministry of Culture's website. "After Alexander's death, the city's garrison remained loyal to his mother Olympias and only agreed to surrender the city to Cassander, one of Alexander's successors, on her orders," the website notes. "Cassander imprisoned Alexander's wife Roxana and his son Alexander IV in Amphipolis and ordered their murder." Alexander the Great, who lived from 356 B.C. to 323 B.C., is known for establishing the vast Macedonian Empire across parts of Europe, Asia and Africa as a young man. He defeated the Persian Empire -- then the dominant superpower of the ancient world -- before dying at age 32 under mysterious circumstances, despite never losing a battle. Researchers believed Kasta Tomb was "built for someone very close to Alexander the Great," such as his mother, one of his wives or one of his friends, National Geographic reported in 2014. The latest excavation isn't the only recent archaeological project tied to the legendary Macedonian ruler. Earlier in 2026, Fox News Digital spoke with an archaeologist who helped locate a long-lost city founded by Alexander the Great after centuries of obscurity. The city, called Alexandria on the Tigris, is located near the Persian Gulf in southern Iraq. It was founded in the fourth century B.C.
