News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Kraken Pro Options Upgrade Brings More Structure To Retail Crypto Hedging
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Kraken is expanding its options trading infrastructure, giving crypto traders another way to manage exposure beyond spot buying and perpetual futures. That matters because crypto risk is still often handled with blunt tools. Traders buy tokens, sell tokens, or use leveraged futures that can become dangerous quickly when volatility spikes. Options offer a different approach. They allow traders to define risk, hedge positions, and express views on volatility without relying only on directional leverage. The product still requires care. Options are not simple, and retail traders can misunderstand them easily. But a more structured options market can help move crypto derivatives away from the most chaotic parts of the leverage cycle. Kraken's update is part of that shift. TL;DR * Kraken Pro is expanding options trading infrastructure for crypto users. * Options can help traders hedge, manage volatility, and structure risk more carefully. * The update is part of a broader move toward more mature crypto derivatives access. Crypto Traders Need More Than Perpetual Futures Perpetual futures have dominated much of crypto derivatives trading because they are simple, liquid, and easy to access. They are also risky. A trader can take a leveraged long or short quickly, but the same structure can lead to forced liquidations when the market moves against crowded positioning. That is one reason crypto often sees violent moves in both directions. Leverage builds up, funding becomes stretched, and then the market flushes. Options do not remove risk, but they offer more ways to shape it. A trader can buy a put to hedge downside. A trader can use calls to gain upside exposure with defined premium risk. More advanced users can build spreads, volatility trades, or strategies around expected ranges. The point is not that every retail user should trade options. The point is that options give the market more tools than simple leveraged direction. That is why Kraken's infrastructure upgrade matters. If options become easier to access inside a regulated or more carefully controlled environment, some traders may move away from the most aggressive offshore products. The Details Will Decide Adoption Options products live or die on design. Contract sizes matter. Expiration formats matter. Strike selection matters. Collateral rules matter. Liquidity matters more than almost anything. If spreads are too wide or markets are too thin, the product may look useful in theory but feel difficult in practice. Kraken's challenge is to make options accessible without making them feel falsely simple. Retail users need clear explanations of premium, expiry, time decay, volatility, and the fact that an option can expire worthless. They also need risk controls that prevent the product from becoming just another way to blow up an account. If Kraken can get that balance right, the exchange can offer traders a more serious hedging tool. If the product is poorly understood, the risks may outweigh the benefits for less experienced users. That is why education and interface design matter almost as much as the product itself. A More Mature Derivatives Market The broader crypto market has been moving toward more sophisticated derivatives for years. Institutional desks already use options to manage exposure, hedge spot positions, and trade volatility. Retail access has been more uneven. Some platforms offer deep derivatives markets, but jurisdiction, regulation, and user protection vary widely. Kraken's move suggests more exchanges want to compete on structured access rather than simply offering the highest leverage. That is healthy if it leads to better risk management. Crypto will always be volatile. A more mature derivatives market will not change that. What it can change is how traders handle volatility. Instead of every move becoming a leveraged long or short, traders can use products that define risk more clearly. The timing also makes sense. As ETFs, institutional products, and regulated crypto infrastructure expand, traders will expect more familiar tools around the assets they hold. Options are part of that financial toolkit. The risk is that retail users treat them as a shortcut. They are not. Options require understanding, and the wrong strategy can lose money quickly. Still, Kraken's expansion points in the right direction for market structure. It gives traders more flexibility, and it pushes crypto derivatives closer to the way mature markets already operate. That does not guarantee immediate adoption, but it does show where the market is heading: less reliance on raw leverage, more focus on structured risk. This article is based on information from Kraken. This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Kraken Institutional Turns To Upshot To Price The Illiquid Side Of Crypto
Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Kraken Institutional is adding valuation tools through a partnership with Upshot, taking aim at one of the hardest problems in digital assets: pricing things that do not trade cleanly. That includes NFTs and other illiquid crypto holdings, where market value is not always obvious. A Bitcoin price is easy to find. Ethereum trades continuously across deep markets. But an NFT portfolio, a thinly traded token, or a niche on-chain asset can be much harder to value with confidence. For institutional clients, that is not a small problem. It affects reporting, collateral, risk management, custody, lending, and portfolio construction. Kraken's move suggests the exchange sees demand for tools that make crypto portfolios easier to manage beyond the major liquid assets. TL;DR * Kraken Institutional has partnered with Upshot to support valuation tools for NFTs and illiquid digital holdings. * The update is aimed at a part of crypto where pricing is often inconsistent or difficult to verify. * Better valuation tools can support reporting, lending, collateral management, and institutional portfolio oversight. The Illiquid Part Of Crypto Needs Better Tools Crypto markets are often described as if everything trades like Bitcoin. That is not true. Large tokens can have deep liquidity, narrow spreads, and continuous pricing. Smaller assets, NFT collections, tokenized claims, and niche on-chain positions can behave very differently. Some trade rarely. Some have wide spreads. Some rely on floor prices that may not reflect real executable value. That creates problems for institutions. A fund cannot simply guess what an illiquid holding is worth. A lender cannot accept collateral without understanding how that collateral may behave under stress. A custodian servicing professional clients needs credible data when clients ask for portfolio reporting. Upshot's valuation approach is designed for that harder-to-price side of the market. Kraken bringing that into its institutional offering gives clients another layer of data around assets that do not fit neatly into normal exchange order books. That does not make valuations perfect. Models can be wrong. Illiquid markets can gap lower. NFTs can lose demand quickly. But a structured model is still more useful than relying only on last sale, floor price, or sentiment. Why This Matters For Collateral The collateral use case is where this becomes more interesting. Crypto borrowing works best when the collateral is easy to price and easy to liquidate. Bitcoin and Ethereum are relatively straightforward. Illiquid assets are not. If a borrower wants to use an NFT portfolio or a less liquid digital asset as collateral, the lender needs to understand what the asset might actually be worth if it has to be sold. That requires more than a headline price. A proper valuation framework can consider comparable sales, rarity, liquidity, market depth, historical volatility, and other data points. It can also help set more conservative loan-to-value ratios or risk limits. For Kraken Institutional, this can make the platform more useful to clients managing complex portfolios. It allows the exchange to offer more than custody and execution. It starts to look like part of a wider institutional workflow. That is the direction many major crypto platforms are moving in. Trading remains central, but serious clients also want risk tools, reporting, credit, and data. A Sign Of Crypto Market Maturity The most important part of this update is not that it will immediately change NFT markets or cause a sudden wave of institutional borrowing. It probably will not. The more important point is that exchanges are building infrastructure for a market that is becoming more complicated. In earlier cycles, crypto platforms could grow by offering more listings, more leverage, and faster access. That is still part of the business, but institutional clients need different things. They need confidence that assets can be priced, monitored, reported, and managed inside a risk framework. Valuation tools are part of that shift. They also show that the NFT market is not being treated only as a speculative retail category. Even after the hype cooled, the underlying issue of unique digital assets remains relevant. Institutions may still hold them, lend against them, custody them, or evaluate tokenized assets with similar valuation problems. Kraken's Upshot partnership sits in that practical layer of crypto infrastructure. It is not a flashy market-moving announcement. It is a piece of the machinery that could make harder-to-price digital assets more usable for professional clients. That is the real signal. Crypto is slowly building the same kind of support systems that exist around other asset classes. Pricing, valuation, collateral, risk, and reporting may not generate the loudest headlines, but they are what institutions need before they can treat a market seriously. This article is based on information from Kraken. This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Polymarket keeps Aug. 31 US-Iran ceasefire odds at 51.5% after 7 nights
predict.info -- Premium Domain For Sale Domain only: USD 200,000. Prediction platform technology priced separately. predict.info Seventh Night of US-Iran Exchanges Keeps Polymarket Ceasefire Ladder Low Near-Term, Near-Coinflip by Aug. 31 Polymarket traders are pricing a 51.5% chance that a US-Iran "effective ceasefire" is in place by the August 31 rung, on $615,750 in matched volume. The latest catalyst is fresh reporting that the two sides have exchanged attacks for a seventh consecutive night, and the ladder pricing shows where traders draw the line between "soon" and "by late August." Key Takeaways * Polymarket's leading rung is "by August 31" at 51.5% Yes (48.5% No). * After news of a seventh straight night of exchanges, the curve still prices low near-term ceasefire odds while keeping a near-coinflip by Aug. 31. * The market is active and resolves by 2026-08-31 23:59 UTC; the past 24h shows -2.0pp with a reversal flagged. A live update report says the US and Iran have exchanged attacks for a seventh consecutive night, extending the current run of hostilities. The item frames the situation as ongoing and unresolved in the near term. Odds Ladder & Liquidity Check: $615,750 Matched as July 18 at 2% Yes vs Aug. 31 at 51.5% Yes (-2.0pp, reversal_detected) This is a price-ladder market: each date is its own Yes/No contract on whether an "effective ceasefire" is achieved by that deadline, not a single bet on which date will happen. The curve is steep at the front end -- July 18 is 2.0% Yes / 98.0% No and July 24 is 14.5% Yes / 85.5% No -- while later rungs move toward a coin flip, with August 14 at 32.5% Yes / 67.5% No and August 31 leading at 51.5% Yes / 48.5% No. Despite $615,750 in volume, the headline rung is flat on the snapshot (51.5% vs 51.5%), and the 24h/7d read is slightly lower at -2.0pp with "reversal_detected: true," suggesting recent two-way repricing rather than a one-direction drift. The historical summary also shows the latest odds (51.5%) sitting below the average of the last five points (55.9), consistent with a modest pullback even as consensus is tagged "stable," which fits a market that agrees on "not imminently" but is split on "by late August." Watch whether pricing compresses between the August 14 (32.5% Yes) and August 31 (51.5% Yes) rungs -- tightening would imply traders are shifting probability mass toward a narrower timeline. Also watch for changes in the 24h change metric and whether the "reversal_detected" flag persists as new information arrives before the 2026-08-31 23:59 UTC resolution deadline. What Traders Watch Next on Polymarket: Related Macro and Crypto Contracts to Hedge Geopolitical Risk Shocks Beyond the ceasefire ladder, traders often scan adjacent Polymarket contracts that reprice the same risk from different angles and timelines. Big-volume sentiment is concentrated in 71.5% on "Will the U.S. invade Iran before 2027?" ($44,192,504) and 89.5% on "Will the Iranian regime fall before 2027?" ($22,319,841), while the near-term shipping channel is heavily skewed with 98.75% on "Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by July 31?" ($17,595,438). Longer-horizon political continuity also has a clear favorite at 77.35% for "Iran leader end of 2026?" ($30,410,638), giving traders multiple ways to hedge or express views as headlines hit. Odds Trend By the Numbers * Platform: Polymarket * Market: US x Iran Effective Ceasefire by...? (2 week pause) * Contract type: Price strike ladder: each rung has separate Yes/No; Yes means the spot price is above that USD strike at settlement. * Resolution window: Aug 31, 2026 (UTC) * Status: Active (open for trading) * Volume: ~$615,750 Top strike rungs +1 more strikes not shown
Cathie Wood's ARK sells AMD stock, buys SpaceX shares By Investing.com
Cathie Wood's ARK ETF published their daily trades for Friday, July 17th, 2026, revealing a significant shift in their investment portfolio. The most notable transaction was the purchase of 147,805 shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SPCX) across several of its ETFs, with a total dollar value of $19,378,713. This marks a continued interest in SpaceX, following substantial investments in the company over the past week. On the selling side, ARK offloaded 23,573 shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD), totaling $11,808,658. This sale was distributed across four of ARK's ETFs, indicating a strategic decision to reduce exposure to AMD. Another major transaction included the purchase of 115,827 shares of CoreWeave Inc (CRWV) for $8,444,946, suggesting ARK's growing confidence in this company. In contrast, ARK sold 79,220 shares of Robinhood Markets Inc (NASDAQ:HOOD) for $8,398,904, continuing a trend of decreasing its position in the stock over recent days. ARK also made a significant investment in Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc (NASDAQ:KTOS), purchasing 115,812 shares valued at $5,438,531. The ETF's interest in defense and technology stocks is evident with these acquisitions. Additionally, ARK purchased 37,077 shares of AeroVironment Inc (NASDAQ:AVAV) for $5,535,225, while selling 144,634 shares of Iridium Communications Inc (NASDAQ:IRDM) for $6,741,390, indicating a shift within the communications and aerospace sectors. Other notable transactions included the sale of 5,781 shares of Deere & Co (NYSE:DE) for $3,462,645 and the purchase of 7,975 shares of Intuitive Surgical Inc (NASDAQ:ISRG) for $3,208,581, reflecting ARK's ongoing adjustments in its industrial and healthcare portfolios. Smaller trades involved the purchase of 32,861 shares of WeRide Inc (WRD) for $202,095 and the sale of 11,1013 shares of 10X Genomics Inc (NASDAQ:TXG) for $4,937,858, showcasing ARK's diverse investment strategy. Overall, today's trades highlight Cathie Wood's ARK ETF's strategic repositioning across various sectors, with a notable emphasis on technology and aerospace investments. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.
Cathie Wood Buys the Dip in Beaten-Down SpaceX Stock. Analysts See 86% Upside Ahead
SpaceX (SPCX) has quickly gone from Wall Street's hottest IPO to one of its biggest debates. After soaring more than 67% above its $135 IPO price shortly after listing in June, the stock has pulled back sharply and recently slipped below that offering price for the first time. There, Cathie Wood saw an opportunity and rushed in to buy the dip. ARK Invest founder bought another $16.7 million worth of SPCX shares as the stock traded below its IPO price, adding to more than $50 million of purchases earlier this month. More News from Barchart Cathie Wood Buys the SpaceX Dip ARK Invest, led by the famously bullish tech investor, purchased approximately $16.6 million to $16.7 million worth of SPCX stock on Wednesday, July 15. Four ARK funds participated in the purchase, including the flagship ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK), ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW), and ARK Space & Defense Innovation ETF (ARKX), buying about 123,000 shares total. The purchase made SpaceX the sixth-largest holding in ARKK. It wasn't an isolated move. Wood has been aggressively accumulating SpaceX shares throughout July. The week ending July 10 alone saw ARK Invest purchase roughly $52.1 million worth of SPCX. On July 13, the firm added another $21.3 million. By July 15, total weekly purchases had surpassed $36 million across multiple funds. It is pretty clear from these massive transactions that Wood has been an aggressive buyer of SpaceX. Why SPCX Stock Has Fallen Below Its IPO Price SPCX stock is down roughly 44% below its post-IPO peak and beneath its IPO price right now. Several factors have weighed on the shares. Investors have become increasingly concerned about the company's aggressive AI spending following its acquisition of xAI, while expectations for continued heavy capital expenditures have pressured sentiment. The market is also looking ahead to an August lockup expiration that could release roughly 20% of outstanding shares for trading, creating potential selling pressure. Despite the recent weakness, Cathie Wood has continued buying throughout the decline rather than trimming her position. Even after the recent selloff, SpaceX remains one of the market's most expensive large-cap growth stocks.
Elon Musk's SpaceX In Talks To Provide Computing Power To Pentagon: Report
Discussions between SpaceX and the Pentagon are ongoing and could still fall apart, WSJ reported. Elon Musk's SpaceX is in talks to provide the US Department of Defense with access to data center capacity worth billions of dollars to run AI models, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Such an agreement would extend the Pentagon's existing relationship with SpaceX, a key partner for rocket launches and satellite-based communications and missile tracking. According to the report, SpaceX employees have discussed plans to compete more directly with neocloud firms such as CoreWeave by selling computing capacity to AI customers at lower prices. Like many large enterprises, the Defense Department is moving to secure additional cloud-computing capacity to support intelligence agencies and military AI applications. Amazon said late last year it would invest up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing capacity for U.S. government customers through its Amazon Web Services cloud business. Discussions between SpaceX and the Pentagon are ongoing and could still fall apart, WSJ reported. SpaceX and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Reuters could not independently verify the report. The space firm has made similar deals in recent months. In June, SpaceX signed a multi-year cloud services agreement with Alphabet's Google, providing access to about 110,000 Nvidia chips and related computing infrastructure. Anthropic said in May it had struck a deal to use the full computing power of SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, gaining 300 megawatts of new capacity. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) How may i help you today Show full article Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world
SPCX Stock Keeps Falling: Gary Black Says SpaceX Still Looks Ridiculously Overvalued -- 'Don't Say I Didn't Warn You'
* Gary Black adds that investors ignored clear warning signs despite extensive scrutiny of SpaceX's business plans and financials. * He claims the IPO was structured to create a supply-demand imbalance that inflated SpaceX's market value and benefited bankers. * Black questions Wall Street's bullish stance, noting that only Morningstar has a 'sell' rating on the stock despite its steep decline. Future Fund Managing Director Gary Black weighed in on SpaceX's recent decline after shares of the newly public company cooled off in a big way from their post-IPO highs. SpaceX stock (SPCX) ended Friday's session 5.43% down at $123.60. This was about 9% below its $135 initial public offering (IPO) price and down around 45% from its all-time intraday high of $225.64. See what 10M+ investors are talking about. Get the Stocktwits Daily Rip for what retail is watching right now, free to your inbox Gary Black On SpaceX's Post-IPO Drop In a post on X, Future Fund Managing Director Gary Black said, "Don't say I didn't warn you," stating that SPCX stock's decline validated his long-standing concerns over its valuation and IPO structure. He added that the stock still trades at "FY'2026 EV/Revs of 45x." Black invoked legendary investor Peter Lynch's long-held skepticism toward IPOs, saying Lynch believed IPO stood for "it's probably overpriced." He stated that SpaceX's "totally unproven plans to build data centres in space" were thoroughly examined before the listing, while its prospectus outlined what he described as a "ridiculous total addressable market" of $28.5 trillion. Black also noted that the company's losses "were disclosed and discussed," adding that there "may not have been an IPO in world history as closely scrutinised as this one." According to Black, investors who still chose to buy despite the risks "deserved what they got." Gary Black Criticizes IPO Structure And Wall Street Support Black said that the decline cannot be viewed in isolation because it "ignores the cynical way" SpaceX, its investment bankers, and advisers structured the IPO "to engineer short-term gain" and create "a $US500 billion fee pool." Black said the $85 billion IPO -- "3x the size of the next largest IPO in history" -- created a "highly imbalanced supply/demand situation," with a free float of less than $100 billion supporting more than $2 trillion in paper market value. Despite the stock's decline, he maintained that SpaceX "still looks ridiculously overvalued at 45x 2026 EV/Revs," while noting that most Wall Street analysts covering the stock have 'Buy' ratings and "only one -- Morningstar... has a sell rating." Black ended his post, saying, "That says it all."
Musk's SpaceX in talks to supply the Pentagon with computing power, WSJ reports
July 17 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's SpaceX is in talks to providethe U.S. Department of Defense with access to data center capacity worth billions of dollars to run AI models, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. Such an agreement would extend the Pentagon's existing relationship with SpaceX, a key partner for rocket launches and satellite-based communications and missile tracking. According to the report, SpaceX employees have discussed plans to compete more directly with neocloud firms such as CoreWeave by selling computing capacityto AI customers at lower prices. Like many large enterprises, the Defense Department is moving to secure additional cloud-computing capacity to support intelligence agencies and military AI applications. Amazon said late last year it would invest up to $50 billion to expand AI and supercomputing capacity for U.S. government customers through its Amazon Web Services cloud business. Discussions between SpaceX and the Pentagon are ongoing and could still fall apart, WSJ reported. SpaceX and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Reuters could not independently verify the report. The space firm has made similar deals in recent months. In June, SpaceX signed a multi-year cloud services agreement with Alphabet's Google, providing access to about 110,000 Nvidia chips and related computing infrastructure. Anthropic said in May it had struck a deal to use the full computing power of SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, gaining 300 megawatts of new capacity. (Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai)
Meta in talks to rent some of its billions in AI infrastructure to Anthropic
New York -- Meta is in talks with Anthropic about leasing computing capacity to the AI startup. It's a move that could put the social media giant in competition with Amazon, Microsoft and Google in a new line of business: cloud computing. The conversation about a potential deal is still early, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN. The talks were first reported by the New York Times, which pegged the deal's worth at as much as US$10 billion over two years, citing three people with knowledge of the discussions. CNN's source said any specific numbers that have been reported are speculative. Meta and Anthropic declined to comment on the talks. Becoming a computing provider could mark a major new revenue opportunity for Meta as it's been investing heavily in data centre infrastructure to support its AI ambitions. The social media giant plans to spend between $125 billion and $145 billion in capital expenditures this year, largely to support that infrastructure buildout, Meta said in its most recent earnings report. That could double what it spent the prior year. Meta said in April that it would lay off 10 per cent of its workforce, about 8,000 people, in part to offset the cost of those investments. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has mentioned the possibility of leasing out some of that infrastructure if his own company's computing needs didn't keep pace with the buildout. "Almost every week there are different companies that come to us from outside asking us ... if we have compute that they could buy from us at some premium to what we've bought it at," Zuckerberg said at Meta's annual shareholder meeting in May. "We haven't done that yet because we think that we have a use for the compute. But obviously if we get to a point where we feel that we have overbuilt, then that is an option that we have." There's no shortage of demand for computing power as companies large and small race to adopt AI and major AI labs work to improve their models. Anthropic already has multibillion dollar compute licensing deals with Google, SpaceX, Microsoft and Amazon. Meanwhile, investors want Meta to show how its investments will benefit its bottom line, especially as it scrambles to keep pace with AI offerings from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Meta shares are down more than eight per cent from this time last year. Meta last month released an upgraded version of its Muse Spark AI model that it said could rival the coding capabilities of models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others. For the first time, Meta said it would offer a paid version of the service, yet another sign it's looking for bigger returns on AI.
Dow Jones Top Company Headlines at 7 PM ET: Walmart Further Shuffles Top Executives | SpaceX ...
Walmart Further Shuffles Top Executives Kieran Shanahan, chief operating officer for Walmart U.S., will leave this week. ---- SpaceX in Talks to Provide Computing Power for Pentagon's AI Push Elon Musk's company would provide billions of dollars' worth of data-center capacity under the arrangement, people familiar with the matter said. ---- Nvidia, Challenged by Apple, Narrowly Retains Wall Street's Crown The iPhone maker briefly became the U.S.'s most valuable publicly traded company on Friday. ---- China's Moonshot AI Releases Model to Challenge Top U.S. Systems The company says its model outperforms some cutting-edge U.S. systems, the latest sign that Chinese labs can rival American counterparts. ---- Taylor Farms Is Recalling Its Mexican-Grown Iceberg Lettuce From U.S. U.S. authorities have linked the lettuce to a parasitic outbreak across more than 30 states. ---- Travelers Scored an Earnings Beat. Were the Downgrades All Wrong? The insurer defied Wall Street's expectations, posting adjusted per-share earnings that were nearly double of what analysts projected. ---- Fifth Third Profit Boosted by Comerica Acquisition The Fifth Third Bank parent posted a profit of $763 million, or 83 cents a share, in the second quarter. ---- Truist Financial Earnings Beat Estimates but Eyes Are on Bank's Next Chapter Truist Financial delivered strong second-quarter earnings Friday, but investors may be more focused on what the leadership transition to incoming CEO Michael Lyons could mean for the bank's strategy. ---- GSK Shares Slide After Drugmaker Drops Chronic Cough Treatment GSK shares fell after the U.K. drugmaker said it would stop working on an experimental treatment for chronic cough after mixed results showed limited efficacy in late-stage clinical studies. ---- Volvo Car Expects Sales to Strengthen on European Growth, U.S. Recovery Volvo Car expects growth in Europe and a recovery in the U.S. to spur significantly stronger sales in the second half of the year, despite continued challenges in China. ---- Meta Plans to Hire Top Amazon Computing Executive as It Weighs Cloud Push Dave Brown, one of the most senior executives at Amazon Web Services, will bring his nearly two decades of experience to the social-media giant. ---- Burberry Reports Sales Growth as It Moves Forward With Turnaround Plan Burberry posted flat sales growth for its first quarter, but noted that it saw growth across divisions for the first time in three years. ---- Verizon to Cut About 3,000 Jobs, Divest Itself of Some Retail Stores The company plans to divest itself of 274 of its retail stores to franchise owners. Most of Verizon's layoffs would come from the retail-store divestiture. ---- Databricks Set to Hit $188 Billion Valuation With New Investment From Coatue The startup's valuation jumps 40% as the AI boom has driven demand for its data-analytics software. ---- Sweden's EQT Expects Strong Fundraising Momentum as It Posts Higher Net Profit The buyout group reported rises in net profit and revenue for the first half aided by higher fee-generating assets. (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 17, 2026 19:15 ET (23:15 GMT) Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
SpaceX postponed a crucial launch - and its stock went on to close below IPO price for a second day
SpaceX's planned 13th Starship V3 rocket launch was scrubbed during its 90-minute window. Shares in SpaceX fell further below their initial-public-offering price Friday after the spacecraft manufacturer aborted an attempt to launch its Starship rocket. The Texas-headquartered company's stock (SPCX) fell more than 5% on Friday, on the heels of a 3% slide on Thursday, bringing its price more than $10 below where it launched on the Nasdaq on June 12. The stock is has lost steam for five days in a row. SpaceX shares ended at $131.11 a share on Thursday, closing below the $135-per-share IPO price for the first time. SpaceX had been set to execute its first launch since the IPO on Thursday, with a Starship take-off scrapped after its launch window opened at 6:45 p.m. Eastern time. CEO Elon Musk then confirmed the mission had been postponed, following an announcement during a livestream of the event that it had been cut short. "Some of the engines didn't start, triggering an automatic launch abort. Now offloading propellant. Next launch attempt hopefully in a few days," Musk wrote in a post on X. Musk later added: "To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed & replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week." The plan for Starship's 13th flight was to address problems seen during its previous flight and to carry and deploy 20 Starlink "Version 3" (V3) satellites. The Federal Aviation Administration gave SpaceX the go-ahead for its launch on Monday after closing an investigation into the company's 12th flight, which following a safe lift-off saw its Super Heavy booster crash into the Gulf of Mexico. The regulatory body ordered SpaceX to carry out an investigation that concluded with four actions, including software and hardware updates, to be completed. Analysts at Bernstein led by Douglas Harned wrote in a note on Friday that they viewed Starlink as "the key enabler" of SpaceX's growth in the future, but that it also represents a point of risk. They expect 3,543 launches of the 400-foot rocket in 2031, with about nine in 10 for the purpose of Musk's proposed orbital data centers. -Nora Redmond This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. (END) Dow Jones Newswires 07-17-26 1855ET Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
SpaceX's post-IPO swoon is typical
After the June 11 market close, Elon Musk took his Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (otherwise known as SpaceX) public. Price: $135 a share. Result: The company raised some $75 billion before expenses. The next day, when the shares could be traded, the shares reached $176.52, then dropped to $160.95. Still, it was good day: The shares were up 19.2%. The following Monday, on June 15, SpaceX (SPCX) jumped 19.6% to $192.50. The following day, the shares rose another 4.8% to $201.80, achieving a market capitalization of $2.64 trillion. But few realized SpaceX's big opening run had ended. The June 16 high was $225.64, and that's been the peak for the stock. So far. SpaceX shares swoon SpaceX has mostly been sliding ever since because many investors (or traders) saw the peak and sold, happy to let others take over the risk with a company long on a huge idea but still developing the guts of the venture. On July 16, the stock finished at $131.11, down 3.1% on the day. And that's just the start. * SpaceX has fallen for five straight days. * It's down nearly 41% from its June 16 high. * And it's down 2% below that June 11 IPO price - and down 41% from the June 16 high. * There are some 180 million shares sold short, according to charting site TradingView.com. Meaning many traders believe the decline has more to run. So they're selling shares, hoping to buy them back at a lower price generating nice profits. SpaceX has big dreams and Elon Musk As a business, SpaceX isn't through. Elon Musk is bright, resourceful, driven, fantastically ambitious and well-connected. He has a vast number of fans, admirers and supporters who believe he's a genius visionary who will achieve his dream of populating the moon and beyond. The mission statement in the company's prospectus clearly articulates the audacious dream that powers Musk and his company: "Our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars." So that means hardware (chips, computers and space ship), software (lots of artificial intelligence) and intense development testing. The first goal - to colonize the moon - may take some years (and billions of dollars of SpaceX equipment. And years (and more money) after that to get to, say, Mars. And it didn't seem to help matters that SpaceX followed up with a controversial $20 billion bond offering to finance artificial intelligence development in its XAI group. AI, as we all know, sucks up billions of dollars of investment capital, with uncertain profitability. All IPOs suffer growing pains In the meantime, stocks are stocks, and initial public offerings are IPOs. Rarely after a company goes public does the share price rise consistently. And SpaceX right now is behaving like a lot of companies that have gone public. As a comparison, Meta Platforms went public (as Facebook) at $38 a share in May 2012. It promptly slumped, reaching a low of $17.55 in September 2012, according to Yahoo Finance data. The stock didn't close above $38 until Aug. 2, 2013. Fast forward to July 16, 2026. Meta, which has never split its stock, closed at $664.54. Which means if you bought 100 Meta shares at the 2012 IPO price and held on, your stake has jumped in value from $3,800 to $66,454. You would have more if you bought Meta in September 2012 when the shares dropped below $18. And still more if you reinvested dividends since they were initiated in 2024. Musk himself knows about market volatility thanks to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he joined in 2004 and soon took over. The company has evolved into a global brand that faces intense competition, especially from China. In late 2024, Tesla jumped nearly 190%, peaking at $479.86. It then fell 55% over the next five months. The shares recovered those losses by December 2025. IPOs, in fact, have a tough history. Small IPOs generally are no longer public within five years, according to a 2016 study published in the Harvard Business Law Review. A large IPO (which SpaceX unquestionably is) can weather a lot, but the first few years may be a struggle. An April 2026 study by ASB Growth Ventures showed that nearly 70% of newly listed companies underperform their benchmark indices within three years of listing. More SpaceX Big dreams require big patience So the performance of SpaceX's shares may be more volatile, but, given Musk's global celebrity, understandable. If Musk and his team can get their prime product, the Starship reusable rocket, to work safely and efficiently, the very patient investor may get rewarded. These include the biggest investment and money managers, many of whom put up seed capital for SpaceX 10-to-15 years ago. Already, many have reaped huge gains from the IPO, according to a June 12 Inc. magazine report. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested $600 million in SpaceX. The stake may be worth $20 billion. Baron Capital's $2-billion stake may be worth up to $12 billion. (If the firm has elected not to sell any of its holdings.) So far, one is not hearing sounds of panic. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 9:03 AM.
SpaceX's post-IPO swoon is typical
After the June 11 market close, Elon Musk took his Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (otherwise known as SpaceX) public. Price: $135 a share. Result: The company raised some $75 billion before expenses. The next day, when the shares could be traded, the shares reached $176.52, then dropped to $160.95. Still, it was good day: The shares were up 19.2%. The following Monday, on June 15, SpaceX (SPCX) jumped 19.6% to $192.50. The following day, the shares rose another 4.8% to $201.80, achieving a market capitalization of $2.64 trillion. But few realized SpaceX's big opening run had ended. The June 16 high was $225.64, and that's been the peak for the stock. So far. SpaceX shares swoon SpaceX has mostly been sliding ever since because many investors (or traders) saw the peak and sold, happy to let others take over the risk with a company long on a huge idea but still developing the guts of the venture. On July 16, the stock finished at $131.11, down 3.1% on the day. And that's just the start. * SpaceX has fallen for five straight days. * It's down nearly 41% from its June 16 high. * And it's down 2% below that June 11 IPO price - and down 41% from the June 16 high. * There are some 180 million shares sold short, according to charting site TradingView.com. Meaning many traders believe the decline has more to run. So they're selling shares, hoping to buy them back at a lower price generating nice profits. SpaceX has big dreams and Elon Musk As a business, SpaceX isn't through. Elon Musk is bright, resourceful, driven, fantastically ambitious and well-connected. He has a vast number of fans, admirers and supporters who believe he's a genius visionary who will achieve his dream of populating the moon and beyond. The mission statement in the company's prospectus clearly articulates the audacious dream that powers Musk and his company: "Our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars." So that means hardware (chips, computers and space ship), software (lots of artificial intelligence) and intense development testing. The first goal - to colonize the moon - may take some years (and billions of dollars of SpaceX equipment. And years (and more money) after that to get to, say, Mars. And it didn't seem to help matters that SpaceX followed up with a controversial $20 billion bond offering to finance artificial intelligence development in its XAI group. AI, as we all know, sucks up billions of dollars of investment capital, with uncertain profitability. All IPOs suffer growing pains In the meantime, stocks are stocks, and initial public offerings are IPOs. Rarely after a company goes public does the share price rise consistently. And SpaceX right now is behaving like a lot of companies that have gone public. As a comparison, Meta Platforms went public (as Facebook) at $38 a share in May 2012. It promptly slumped, reaching a low of $17.55 in September 2012, according to Yahoo Finance data. The stock didn't close above $38 until Aug. 2, 2013. Fast forward to July 16, 2026. Meta, which has never split its stock, closed at $664.54. Which means if you bought 100 Meta shares at the 2012 IPO price and held on, your stake has jumped in value from $3,800 to $66,454. You would have more if you bought Meta in September 2012 when the shares dropped below $18. And still more if you reinvested dividends since they were initiated in 2024. Musk himself knows about market volatility thanks to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he joined in 2004 and soon took over. The company has evolved into a global brand that faces intense competition, especially from China. In late 2024, Tesla jumped nearly 190%, peaking at $479.86. It then fell 55% over the next five months. The shares recovered those losses by December 2025. IPOs, in fact, have a tough history. Small IPOs generally are no longer public within five years, according to a 2016 study published in the Harvard Business Law Review. A large IPO (which SpaceX unquestionably is) can weather a lot, but the first few years may be a struggle. An April 2026 study by ASB Growth Ventures showed that nearly 70% of newly listed companies underperform their benchmark indices within three years of listing. More SpaceX Big dreams require big patience So the performance of SpaceX's shares may be more volatile, but, given Musk's global celebrity, understandable. If Musk and his team can get their prime product, the Starship reusable rocket, to work safely and efficiently, the very patient investor may get rewarded. These include the biggest investment and money managers, many of whom put up seed capital for SpaceX 10-to-15 years ago. Already, many have reaped huge gains from the IPO, according to a June 12 Inc. magazine report. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested $600 million in SpaceX. The stake may be worth $20 billion. Baron Capital's $2-billion stake may be worth up to $12 billion. (If the firm has elected not to sell any of its holdings.) So far, one is not hearing sounds of panic. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 9:03 AM.
SpaceX's post-IPO swoon is typical
After the June 11 market close, Elon Musk took his Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (otherwise known as SpaceX) public. Price: $135 a share. Result: The company raised some $75 billion before expenses. The next day, when the shares could be traded, the shares reached $176.52, then dropped to $160.95. Still, it was good day: The shares were up 19.2%. The following Monday, on June 15, SpaceX (SPCX) jumped 19.6% to $192.50. The following day, the shares rose another 4.8% to $201.80, achieving a market capitalization of $2.64 trillion. But few realized SpaceX's big opening run had ended. The June 16 high was $225.64, and that's been the peak for the stock. So far. SpaceX shares swoon SpaceX has mostly been sliding ever since because many investors (or traders) saw the peak and sold, happy to let others take over the risk with a company long on a huge idea but still developing the guts of the venture. On July 16, the stock finished at $131.11, down 3.1% on the day. And that's just the start. * SpaceX has fallen for five straight days. * It's down nearly 41% from its June 16 high. * And it's down 2% below that June 11 IPO price - and down 41% from the June 16 high. * There are some 180 million shares sold short, according to charting site TradingView.com. Meaning many traders believe the decline has more to run. So they're selling shares, hoping to buy them back at a lower price generating nice profits. SpaceX has big dreams and Elon Musk As a business, SpaceX isn't through. Elon Musk is bright, resourceful, driven, fantastically ambitious and well-connected. He has a vast number of fans, admirers and supporters who believe he's a genius visionary who will achieve his dream of populating the moon and beyond. The mission statement in the company's prospectus clearly articulates the audacious dream that powers Musk and his company: "Our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars." So that means hardware (chips, computers and space ship), software (lots of artificial intelligence) and intense development testing. The first goal - to colonize the moon - may take some years (and billions of dollars of SpaceX equipment. And years (and more money) after that to get to, say, Mars. And it didn't seem to help matters that SpaceX followed up with a controversial $20 billion bond offering to finance artificial intelligence development in its XAI group. AI, as we all know, sucks up billions of dollars of investment capital, with uncertain profitability. All IPOs suffer growing pains In the meantime, stocks are stocks, and initial public offerings are IPOs. Rarely after a company goes public does the share price rise consistently. And SpaceX right now is behaving like a lot of companies that have gone public. As a comparison, Meta Platforms went public (as Facebook) at $38 a share in May 2012. It promptly slumped, reaching a low of $17.55 in September 2012, according to Yahoo Finance data. The stock didn't close above $38 until Aug. 2, 2013. Fast forward to July 16, 2026. Meta, which has never split its stock, closed at $664.54. Which means if you bought 100 Meta shares at the 2012 IPO price and held on, your stake has jumped in value from $3,800 to $66,454. You would have more if you bought Meta in September 2012 when the shares dropped below $18. And still more if you reinvested dividends since they were initiated in 2024. Musk himself knows about market volatility thanks to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he joined in 2004 and soon took over. The company has evolved into a global brand that faces intense competition, especially from China. In late 2024, Tesla jumped nearly 190%, peaking at $479.86. It then fell 55% over the next five months. The shares recovered those losses by December 2025. IPOs, in fact, have a tough history. Small IPOs generally are no longer public within five years, according to a 2016 study published in the Harvard Business Law Review. A large IPO (which SpaceX unquestionably is) can weather a lot, but the first few years may be a struggle. An April 2026 study by ASB Growth Ventures showed that nearly 70% of newly listed companies underperform their benchmark indices within three years of listing. More SpaceX Big dreams require big patience So the performance of SpaceX's shares may be more volatile, but, given Musk's global celebrity, understandable. If Musk and his team can get their prime product, the Starship reusable rocket, to work safely and efficiently, the very patient investor may get rewarded. These include the biggest investment and money managers, many of whom put up seed capital for SpaceX 10-to-15 years ago. Already, many have reaped huge gains from the IPO, according to a June 12 Inc. magazine report. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested $600 million in SpaceX. The stake may be worth $20 billion. Baron Capital's $2-billion stake may be worth up to $12 billion. (If the firm has elected not to sell any of its holdings.) So far, one is not hearing sounds of panic. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 8:03 AM.
SpaceX's post-IPO swoon is typical
After the June 11 market close, Elon Musk took his Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (otherwise known as SpaceX) public. Price: $135 a share. Result: The company raised some $75 billion before expenses. The next day, when the shares could be traded, the shares reached $176.52, then dropped to $160.95. Still, it was good day: The shares were up 19.2%. The following Monday, on June 15, SpaceX (SPCX) jumped 19.6% to $192.50. The following day, the shares rose another 4.8% to $201.80, achieving a market capitalization of $2.64 trillion. But few realized SpaceX's big opening run had ended. The June 16 high was $225.64, and that's been the peak for the stock. So far. SpaceX shares swoon SpaceX has mostly been sliding ever since because many investors (or traders) saw the peak and sold, happy to let others take over the risk with a company long on a huge idea but still developing the guts of the venture. On July 16, the stock finished at $131.11, down 3.1% on the day. And that's just the start. * SpaceX has fallen for five straight days. * It's down nearly 41% from its June 16 high. * And it's down 2% below that June 11 IPO price - and down 41% from the June 16 high. * There are some 180 million shares sold short, according to charting site TradingView.com. Meaning many traders believe the decline has more to run. So they're selling shares, hoping to buy them back at a lower price generating nice profits. SpaceX has big dreams and Elon Musk As a business, SpaceX isn't through. Elon Musk is bright, resourceful, driven, fantastically ambitious and well-connected. He has a vast number of fans, admirers and supporters who believe he's a genius visionary who will achieve his dream of populating the moon and beyond. The mission statement in the company's prospectus clearly articulates the audacious dream that powers Musk and his company: "Our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars." So that means hardware (chips, computers and space ship), software (lots of artificial intelligence) and intense development testing. The first goal - to colonize the moon - may take some years (and billions of dollars of SpaceX equipment. And years (and more money) after that to get to, say, Mars. And it didn't seem to help matters that SpaceX followed up with a controversial $20 billion bond offering to finance artificial intelligence development in its XAI group. AI, as we all know, sucks up billions of dollars of investment capital, with uncertain profitability. All IPOs suffer growing pains In the meantime, stocks are stocks, and initial public offerings are IPOs. Rarely after a company goes public does the share price rise consistently. And SpaceX right now is behaving like a lot of companies that have gone public. As a comparison, Meta Platforms went public (as Facebook) at $38 a share in May 2012. It promptly slumped, reaching a low of $17.55 in September 2012, according to Yahoo Finance data. The stock didn't close above $38 until Aug. 2, 2013. Fast forward to July 16, 2026. Meta, which has never split its stock, closed at $664.54. Which means if you bought 100 Meta shares at the 2012 IPO price and held on, your stake has jumped in value from $3,800 to $66,454. You would have more if you bought Meta in September 2012 when the shares dropped below $18. And still more if you reinvested dividends since they were initiated in 2024. Musk himself knows about market volatility thanks to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he joined in 2004 and soon took over. The company has evolved into a global brand that faces intense competition, especially from China. In late 2024, Tesla jumped nearly 190%, peaking at $479.86. It then fell 55% over the next five months. The shares recovered those losses by December 2025. IPOs, in fact, have a tough history. Small IPOs generally are no longer public within five years, according to a 2016 study published in the Harvard Business Law Review. A large IPO (which SpaceX unquestionably is) can weather a lot, but the first few years may be a struggle. An April 2026 study by ASB Growth Ventures showed that nearly 70% of newly listed companies underperform their benchmark indices within three years of listing. More SpaceX Big dreams require big patience So the performance of SpaceX's shares may be more volatile, but, given Musk's global celebrity, understandable. If Musk and his team can get their prime product, the Starship reusable rocket, to work safely and efficiently, the very patient investor may get rewarded. These include the biggest investment and money managers, many of whom put up seed capital for SpaceX 10-to-15 years ago. Already, many have reaped huge gains from the IPO, according to a June 12 Inc. magazine report. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested $600 million in SpaceX. The stake may be worth $20 billion. Baron Capital's $2-billion stake may be worth up to $12 billion. (If the firm has elected not to sell any of its holdings.) So far, one is not hearing sounds of panic. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published July 17, 2026 at 8:03 AM.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sharply criticises Claude Fable, claiming Anthropic exerts editorial control over the model
Satya Nadella has criticised Anthropic's Claude Fable, noting that the AI rejects too many requests and is overly restrictive. These criticisms come as Microsoft is heavily investing in more cost-effective AI models and questioning the industry's reliance on a handful of companies leading the field of cutting-edge AI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is unimpressed with Anthropic's latest AI model, Claude Fable. He views the model as too restrictive and prone to rejecting too many user requests, raising questions about whether such strict safety measures make sense for an AI designed to help people create and work. According to a famous publication, Nadella made these remarks on Wednesday during an internal meeting with engineers working on Microsoft's Copilot AI software. Discussing Anthropic's new model, Nadella suggested that Claude Fable's frequent refusals limited its utility. "If you use Fable and it just rejects things out of hand, you ask yourself: when was the last time you had a creation tool that was so editorially controlled? It makes no sense," Nadella stated, according to a meeting transcript cited by the outlet. Anthropic introduced Claude Fable as one of its most capable AI models but also incorporated stricter safety measures than in previous versions. According to the company's support documentation, Fable can automatically redirect users to an older Claude model if it detects requests related to sensitive topics -- such as offensive cybersecurity, biology, chemistry, AI model distillation, or certain cutting-edge AI development tasks. Anthropic maintains that these safeguards aim to reduce misuse while ensuring compliance with government regulations. However, these restrictions have drawn criticism from some users. Several posts on X have noted that Claude Fable would redirect even seemingly harmless prompts -- including in-depth questions about cancer research and other technical topics -- to an older model. Anthropic has also acknowledged that it is working to reduce false positives, aiming to avoid unnecessary rejections without compromising robust safety measures. "Implementing these safeguards presents a complex technical challenge: users may experience more false positives as we refine classifiers to address new threats. We are working to reduce them as quickly as possible," the company previously stated. Nadella's remarks come as Microsoft seeks to cut AI costs by investing more in its own models and offering customers a wider range of AI systems. Rather than relying on a handful of expensive, cutting-edge models, the company has been expanding Azure AI Foundry, which provides access to thousands of AI models from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft's own internal portfolio. Additionally, Microsoft has been developing smaller, more efficient models that companies can customise using their own data. The company has also taken a cautious approach regarding Anthropic's latest model. Earlier this year, Microsoft reportedly restricted internal employee use of Claude Fable due to concerns over the model's data retention policy, which allows Anthropic to store user prompts for a limited period for safety monitoring purposes. During the meeting, Nadella reaffirmed this strategy, arguing that companies should not rely on a small number of AI providers. "It cannot be the case that there are only two companies in the world with 'token capital' and everyone else has to rent it. It makes no economic sense," he stated, referring to the computing resources required to run advanced AI models.
Anthropic Alleges China-Linked Operators Used 28.8 Million Queries to Extract AI Knowledge - NaturalNews.com
According to the report, the extraction campaign represents the largest such operation the company has ever recorded. The operators did not break into the system's internal architecture; instead, they signed up for accounts and submitted queries aimed at the model's most valuable skills, including writing software and reasoning through complex tasks step by step. No system alarms were triggered because from the model's perspective, the queries were routine. [1] The Distillation Process and Its Implications Distillation involves training a smaller model on the outputs of a larger one. The practice is legitimate when performed by the owner of the larger model, but Anthropic described the Alibaba-linked campaign as unauthorized extraction at industrial scale. [1] The operators used fake accounts to approximate years of American research by learning from the model's outputs, compressing billions of dollars of private investment into millions of automated queries. [1] Some observers have noted that distillation is only one method among many that Chinese researchers have employed to advance their AI capabilities. In December 2024, researchers from Fudan University and the Shanghai AI Laboratory successfully replicated OpenAI's advanced o1 reasoning model, a milestone that demonstrated a systematic approach to catching up with frontier AI systems. [4] The trend toward smaller, customized models, as noted in industry forecasts, could further diminish the effectiveness of hardware-centric restrictions. [7] Policy Responses in Washington The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a memo in April warning of "industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems" by foreign entities, mostly based in China, and committed the administration to better information sharing and defensive coordination with industry, according to the RealClearDefense report. [1] The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced a bill to track extraction attempts and authorize sanctions against the companies behind them. [1] Senators Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) proposed an amendment to this year's defense bill directing the Commerce Department to penalize Chinese firms caught engaging in such extraction. [1] Some U.S. and Canadian AI companies, including Anthropic, have previously participated in discreet discussions with Chinese AI experts on international policy, suggesting a complex relationship between competition and collaboration. [5] Separately, President Donald Trump is expected to discuss AI guardrails with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to Beijing, according to U.S. officials. [2] Limitations of Current Hardware-Centric Strategy Chip export controls were designed to prevent China from building advanced AI models but do not prevent the copying of a model's behavior through queries, according to the RealClearDefense analysis of Anthropic's disclosure. [1] The extraction campaign demonstrates a gap in the current approach: hardware restrictions can slow development but do not protect proprietary models already deployed for public use. Industry commentators have pointed out that the current strategy focuses on foundries while leaving the storefront open. As trends in AI development shift toward smaller, specialized models trained on specific data, the reliance on cutting-edge hardware may decrease, further undermining chip-centric controls. [7] Some critics have characterized Anthropic's allegations as a public relations offensive aimed at masking China's own AI advancements, suggesting that the U.S. response should prioritize building better systems rather than erecting barriers. [3] Proposed Measures for Detection and Deterrence Lawmakers have discussed allowing AI companies to share threat signals with each other and with the government, similar to how banks share intelligence on fraud, to improve detection of such campaigns, according to the RealClearDefense report. [1] Proponents of the Hagerty-Kim amendment have argued that consequences for systematic abuse of AI services should be comparable to penalties for smuggling chips, extending deterrence to the storefront rather than just the foundry. [1] The challenge of detecting unauthorized distillation is compounded by the fact that from the model's perspective, the queries appear routine. The use of crowdsourced and automated methods for training AI systems, as described in some business literature, illustrates how easily large-scale querying can be weaponized by competitors. [8] Companies like Anthropic may also face internal pressures that complicate their response, including tensions with military clients and allegations of censorship in their models. [6] Conclusion The disclosure of 28.8 million queries placed a concrete number on a threat that had previously been theoretical. According to the RealClearDefense report, the episode scrambles the usual playbook for protecting U.S. technology because the attacker walked through the front door. [1] Washington has spent years debating how to keep advanced AI out of China's hands, but the harder question may be how to keep China's AI companies from quietly learning everything they can from the models placed online for the world to use. Some independent analysis suggests that the real vulnerability lies in the centralized architecture of frontier AI services. Decentralized and user-controlled models, such as those offered by platforms like BrightAnswers.ai, may be less attractive targets because they are not gateways to proprietary knowledge. While no solution is perfect, the incident highlights the need for a broader approach that includes not only hardware restrictions but also better detection, industry collaboration, and consideration of alternative deployment models that limit the surface area for large-scale extraction.
Tesla, SpaceX and Meta Forecasts - Geopolitical Risks Trigger Pre-Market Tech Selling
The Tesla daily chart shows price sliding toward the $383 support region after a year of sideways action. Source: TradingView. Tesla looks like it's going to gap to the downside at the open on Friday as we continue to see risk appetite a little bit threatened by the conflict in the Middle East. And of course, we are approaching earnings season, so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Tesla has earnings next Wednesday and now finds itself threatening the $383 region, an area that's been important multiple times in the past. It'll be interesting to see if there's any type of pushback here from the buyers. All things being equal, the market has been somewhat sideways for the better part of a year as we are just trying to figure out where to go next.
Chinese startup Moonshot closes in on Anthropic with world's largest open-weight AI model, Kimi K3
Chinese AI startup Moonshot on Friday unveiled Kimi K3, a 2.8 trillion-parameter model that it said is the world's largest open-weight artificial intelligence system and delivers performance approaching U.S. giant Anthropic's frontier Fable model. The launch, which comes a month after Anthropic's Fable and Mythos models were abruptly withdrawn by the U.S. government due to security concerns, underscores how quickly China's open AI ecosystem is narrowing the gap with the most advanced U.S. systems. Companies including Moonshot, Z.ai and MiniMax are releasing increasingly powerful models at sharply lower cost, challenging long-held assumptions in the West that Chinese developers trail their American peers by months. Moonshot said Kimi K3 is the first open-weight model to approach the 3 trillion-parameter mark and is designed for advanced reasoning, long-horizon coding and knowledge work. The model features a 1 million-token context window, allowing it to process and retain substantially more information than earlier generations in a single prompt. Open-weight models allow users to download, run and customize the underlying systems, unlike proprietary, closed-source models. Alphabet shares sink on report Gemini launch delayed as tech falls short of internal goals Kimi K3 "performed competitively with Fable 5 (with fallback) and substantially outperformed Anthropic's Opus 4.8, GPT 5.6 Sol, and GPT 5.5" in terms of GPU kernel optimization, the company said. The term refers to techniques that maximize AI hardware utilization and minimize latency. The model has also posted strong results in third-party evaluations. Arena.ai ranked Kimi K3 first in a benchmark assessing web interface-building capabilities, while Vals AI placed it second overall behind Fable 5 and ahead of GPT-5.6 Sol. Artificial Analysis said the model delivered performance comparable to OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8, particularly on tests measuring complex, multi-step tasks. The Moonshot news drove shares of domestic AI competitors Zhipu and Minimax down sharply in Hong Kong; just before market close, they were down 27.7 per cent and 16.5 per cent, respectively. Faster release cycles Chinese AI firms are accelerating their model release cycles as the global AI race intensifies. The shift follows the debut of Z.ai's GLM-5.2, which stunned industry observers by scoring near top U.S. closed-source models on benchmark tests, undermining a consensus among Western analysts that Chinese AI models were at least six months behind. Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, said Chinese models were gaining traction because they could be deployed far more cheaply than leading U.S. systems. "They can be run at a fraction of the cost that OpenAI charges its clients," he said, but cautioned that Kimi K3's scale didn't "doesn't necessarily mean you have the best performance by default." Kimi K3's size also means few users are likely to host it themselves despite its open-weight release. Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said in a LinkedIn post that running a 2.8 trillion-parameter model locally would require hundreds of thousands of dollars of computing equipment. Meta to alert parents if teens discuss self-harm with AI chatbots Trillion-parameter systems Parameters are the internal variables a model learns during training and are often used as a rough measure of scale, though not necessarily capability. Before Kimi K3's release, Meituan's LongCat-2.0 and DeepSeek's V4-Pro led China's AI industry with 1.6 trillion total parameters, while several other domestic rivals have passed the trillion-parameter threshold. But a direct comparison with U.S. frontier models is difficult because companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI do not disclose the parameter counts of systems including Fable, Mythos or GPT-5.5. Moonshot said Kimi K3 incorporates two significant architectural upgrades that improve computing efficiency and enable it to complete long-horizon coding tasks with minimal human supervision. Backed by giants like Alibaba and Tencent, Moonshot has been heavily expanding its capabilities and capital to remain at the forefront of the AI sector. Bloomberg reported last month that the startup was seeking US$2-billion in fresh funding at a valuation of about US$30-billion ahead of a potential Hong Kong listing.
There is an untold story behind SpaceX's post-IPO swoon
After the June 11 market close, Elon Musk took his Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (otherwise known as SpaceX) public. Price: $135 a share. Result: The company raised some $75 billion before expenses. The next day, when the shares could be traded, the shares reached $176.52, then dropped to $160.95. Still, it was good day: The shares were up 19.2%. The following Monday, on June 15, SpaceX (SPCX) jumped 19.6% to $192.50. The following day, the shares rose another 4.8% to $201.80, achieving a market capitalization of $2.64 trillion. But few realized SpaceX's big opening run had ended. The June 16 high was $225.64, and that's been the peak for the stock. So far. SpaceX shares swoon SpaceX has mostly been sliding ever since because many investors (or traders) saw the peak and sold, happy to let others take over the risk with a company long on a huge idea but still developing the guts of the venture. On July 16, the stock finished at $131.11, down 3.1% on the day. And that's just the start. * SpaceX has fallen for five straight days. * It's down nearly 41% from its June 16 high. * And it's down 2% below that June 11 IPO price -- and down 41% from the June 16 high. * There are some 180 million shares sold short, according to charting site TradingView.com. Meaning many traders believe the decline has more to run. So they're selling shares, hoping to buy them back at a lower price generating nice profits. SpaceX has big dreams and Elon Musk As a business, SpaceX isn't through. Elon Musk is bright, resourceful, driven, fantastically ambitious and well-connected. He has a vast number of fans, admirers and supporters who believe he's a genius visionary who will achieve his dream of populating the moon and beyond. The mission statement in the company's prospectus clearly articulates the audacious dream that powers Musk and his company: "Our mission is to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars." So that means hardware (chips, computers and space ship), software (lots of artificial intelligence) and intense development testing. The first goal -- to colonize the moon -- may take some years (and billions of dollars of SpaceX equipment. And years (and more money) after that to get to, say, Mars. And it didn't seem to help matters that SpaceX followed up with a controversial $20 billion bond offering to finance artificial intelligence development in its XAI group. AI, as we all know, sucks up billions of dollars of investment capital, with uncertain profitability. All IPOs suffer growing pains In the meantime, stocks are stocks, and initial public offerings are IPOs. Rarely after a company goes public does the share price rise consistently. And SpaceX right now is behaving like a lot of companies that have gone public. As a comparison, Meta Platforms went public (as Facebook) at $38 a share in May 2012. It promptly slumped, reaching a low of $17.55 in September 2012, according to Yahoo Finance data. The stock didn't close above $38 until Aug. 2, 2013. Fast forward to July 16, 2026. Meta, which has never split its stock, closed at $664.54. Which means if you bought 100 Meta shares at the 2012 IPO price and held on, your stake has jumped in value from $3,800 to $66,454. You would have more if you bought Meta in September 2012 when the shares dropped below $18. And still more if you reinvested dividends since they were initiated in 2024. Musk himself knows about market volatility thanks to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he joined in 2004 and soon took over. The company has evolved into a global brand that faces intense competition, especially from China. In late 2024, Tesla jumped nearly 190%, peaking at $479.86. It then fell 55% over the next five months. The shares recovered those losses by December 2025. IPOs, in fact, have a tough history. Small IPOs generally are no longer public within five years, according to a 2016 study published in the Harvard Business Law Review. A large IPO (which SpaceX unquestionably is) can weather a lot, but the first few years may be a struggle. An April 2026 study by ASB Growth Ventures showed that nearly 70% of newly listed companies underperform their benchmark indices within three years of listing. More SpaceX Big dreams require big patience So the performance of SpaceX's shares may be more volatile, but, given Musk's global celebrity, understandable. If Musk and his team can get their prime product, the Starship reusable rocket, to work safely and efficiently, the very patient investor may get rewarded. These include the biggest investment and money managers, many of whom put up seed capital for SpaceX 10-to-15 years ago. Already, many have reaped huge gains from the IPO, according to a June 12 Inc. magazine report. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invested $600 million in SpaceX. The stake may be worth $20 billion. Baron Capital's $2-billion stake may be worth up to $12 billion. (If the firm has elected not to sell any of its holdings.) So far, one is not hearing sounds of panic.
