News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
SpaceX's Starship Rockets Grounded Pending Investigation After Test Flight
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- SpaceX Starship launches are on hold pending an investigation into last week's test flight. The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that the hourlong spaceflight resulted in a mishap based on the performance of the mega rocket's first-stage booster. Minutes after Starship blasted off from Texas on Friday, the booster separated as normal but engines conked out as it made its way back to Earth. Instead of a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, the booster came in hard. There were no reports of injury or property damage, according to the FAA, which will oversee the company's investigation. The spacecraft continued around the world, releasing 20 mock satellites before ending the mission as planned with a fiery splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The 407-foot (124-meter) rocket is SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's biggest and most powerful Starship yet, designed to carry crews to Mars. NASA is looking for it to land astronauts on the moon as soon as 2028 and help build a lunar base.
Perplexity AI Says 'You Can't Copyright Facts' in Defense Against CNN Copyright Suit
More than 100 copyright lawsuits have been filed against AI companies as of early 2026. The television network CNN is taking aim at the artificial intelligence search engine Perplexity in a lawsuit over copyright infringement. As reported by the network's Brian Stetler, the suit, filed Thursday in a New York District Court, accuses the AI company of copying and distributing CNN's content, including over 17,000 of CNN's stories, videos, images and other published works. Though this is CNN's first legal case against an AI company, the network joins other publishers who have sued the San Francisco-based startup, including the New York Times and News Corp. According to the suit, CNN attempted to strike a licensing deal with Perplexity, but those talks didn't result in an agreement. CNN previously made a content licensing deal with Meta last year, where the tech giant compensates the media company for using its reporting and content to respond to queries on Meta AI. AI products regularly scrape news publications and websites to answer user questions with real-time data, accelerating the collapse in traffic and revenue to original sources. In response to the lawsuit, Jesse Dwyer, Perplexity's chief communications officer, told Stetler and other media outlets in a statement: "You can't copyright facts." The US government's Copyright Office states: "Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed." CNN said in its own statement that a company valued at tens of billions of dollars shouldn't "steal from entities that create the original content Perplexity exploits" and that "commercial operators can and must pay to make use of it." A Perplexity representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. AI copyright suits Perplexity is one of several companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, that have been battling news publishers and media giants over copyright claims. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) More than 100 such lawsuits have been filed. But different conclusions have been reached as to whether training AI models on copyrighted data counts as fair use, said Michael Goodyear, an associate professor at New York Law School. Considerations include how the training occurs, what AI outputs contain and whether there's any competitive harm to copyright holders. "No appellate courts have yet weighed in on the viability of these copyright infringement claims against AI companies," Goodyear said. In the CNN case, he said that Perplexity is correct that facts aren't protected by copyright, but the way CNN presents facts could be. "Even short news articles would typically qualify for copyright protection under the low bar of required originality," Goodyear said. "The question becomes whether the thousands of cases of infringement CNN describes are copying whole paragraphs verbatim, or whether they are paraphrasing or merely copying unprotectable facts." AI licensing deals As plunging website traffic has drained billions in publisher revenue and triggered widespread media layoffs, AI firms are aggravating the crisis. According to a new report from the think tank Open Markets Institute, over the past six months, the rate of AI crawlers bypassing paywalls and blocks has nearly quadrupled, spiking from 3.3% to 12.9%. That's partly why a number of publishers signed AI content licensing deals with tech companies to monetize content used to train AI systems. One way out for Perplexity may be to renegotiate a licensing deal with CNN. Even if Perplexity has valid legal arguments, a licensing agreement could shift from unauthorized scraping toward a formalized content partnership. However, the Open Markets Institute report says that when it comes to AI content licensing, news and content creators are trapped in a double bind. The same tech giants whose AI tools are starving websites of human traffic are now the ones gatekeeping the licensing deals meant to replace that lost ad revenue.
AI giant Anthropic reaches near-trillion dollar valuation | New Straits Times
SAN FRANCISCO: Artificial intelligence company Anthropic said Thursday it had raised US$65 billion in a new funding round that values the Claude maker at US$965 billion, more than its archrival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. The latest fundraising round confirms Anthropic's place as one of the most significant players in AI, with the startup led by Dario Amodei having drawn fans for its coding powers and state-of-the-art models. Anthropic's rise came by doubling down on delivering generative AI to enterprise clients rather than general users, the path initially chosen by rival OpenAI. Founded by former OpenAI employees, including chief executive officer Amodei, Anthropic has a special focus on AI safety even as it rushes out new products to remain in the AI race. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," said Krishna Rao, Anthropic's chief financial officer. What To Read Next Anthropic's near-trillion-dollar valuation puts it ahead of OpenAI, which was valued at US$852 billion in March. Both companies could go public as early as this year. Ahead of them, SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk and which absorbed his AI company, xAI, in February, could see shares begin trading as early as June 12, targeting a valuation of approximately US$1.75 trillion in what would be the largest IPO in history. Anthropic's round was led by major Silicon Valley venture capitalists Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. It also included US$15 billion in previously committed investments from cloud giants, including US$5 billion from Amazon. Semiconductor firms Micron, Samsung and SK hynix -- whose products are crucial to the technology -- also participated as strategic infrastructure partners. The company said Claude is now the first frontier AI model available across all three of the world's largest cloud platforms -- Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. The funding comes as Anthropic navigates a high-profile legal dispute with the Pentagon, having sued the United States Department of Defense after it designated the company a supply chain risk -- a move Anthropic called unconstitutional retaliation for its refusal to grant the military unfettered access to its AI models. Mythos is Anthropic's powerful, next-generation AI model with unprecedented cybersecurity capabilities. This has led Anthropic to restrict its access to security partners rather than releasing it to the public.
Anthropic nears $1 trillion valuation, Dario Amodei's AI company surpasses Sam Altman's OpenAI - CNBC TV18
Anthropic PBC raises $65 billion dollars, valuing the Dario Amodei led AI firm at 965 billion, surpassing OpenAI, with major backing from Google, Amazon, Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix Anthropic PBC, the Dario Amodei-led AI behemoth, has raised $65 billion in a funding round. This valuation of the artificial intelligence company now sits near a trillion dollars, at $965 billion, including the new investment, eclipsing rival OpenAI's value for the first time. According to a Bloomberg Report, each of the primary investors contributed more than $2 billion. Sequoia chose not to respond. A request for a response from the other three companies was not answered. The report claimed that Alphabet Inc.'s Google donated several billion dollars to the round as part of an earlier pledge to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic over time. Anthropic stated in a blog post that Amazon.com Inc. contributed $5 billion to the transaction as part of an earlier commitment. Google declined to comment. The transaction surpassed Anthropic's initial $30 billion target thanks to contributions from Micron Technology Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., and SK Hynix Inc. that were not revealed. Also Read: Crude oil prices drop as 'truce' between US-Iran extends; Brent set for biggest monthly loss since 2020 Strong investor demand for the Claude manufacturer is demonstrated by the huge round that came together in a short few weeks. After receiving many incoming approaches in late April, Anthropic was considering whether to pursue new financing at a valuation of over $900 billion. As demand for its AI software soars, Anthropic anticipates reporting $10.9 billion in revenue for the second quarter, more than double from the previous three-month period. The corporation has informed investors that by the end of next month, its annualised run rate revenue would exceed $50 billion. In July of last year, Anthropic's run rate -- a measure that forecasts full-year revenue based on sales from a shorter period -- was $4 billion. In a funding round that concluded in March, OpenAI was most recently valued at $852 billion. In the upcoming days or weeks, the business is anticipated to discreetly submit draft documents for public release.
Value of Anthropic surges to US$965bn after private funding push
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has announced it raised US$65 billion (NZ$109 billion) in private funding that will push its valuation to US$965 billion (NZ$1621 billion). The whopping number makes the five-year-old maker of the Claude chatbot one of the world's most valuable startups as it careens toward a likely Wall Street debut. The announcement vaults Anthropic ahead of its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, both in market value and in reported revenue. Anthropic said it's now making annualised revenue of US$47 billion from selling its technology to people and organisations using Claude to write code and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf. Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk's rocket and AI company SpaceX, are all expected to become publicly traded. All three are also still losing more money than they make, fueling concerns of an AI bubble. San Francisco-based Anthropic said the new round of funding was led by investment firms Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital and Sequoia Capital. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," said a written statement from Anthropic's chief financial officer, Krishna Rao. Anthropic also on Thursday launched its newest AI model, called Claude Opus 4.8, boasting that it is even better at coding and other professional work than previous models. Anthropic's meteoric rise and Claude's growing popularity have left OpenAI playing catch-up despite its early lead in making ChatGPT a household name that sparked a commercial AI boom. OpenAI last reported in March it was heading toward a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion fundraising round. SpaceX was valued at $800 billion last year, but its value grew to $1.25 trillion after the space exploration company merged with Musk's xAI in February. Musk recently announced plans for one of the biggest stock sales ever and will be able to pitch the offering to investors as soon as next week. OpenAI also cleared a major hurdle toward its initial public offering ambitions after a federal court last week dismissed a lawsuit from Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and early donor, after a weeks-long jury trial over whether the company had betrayed its original nonprofit mission. Musk has said he plans to appeal. Despite its newfound success, Anthropic has also faced obstacles this year -- particularly a bruising legal fight with President Donald Trump's administration over how AI tools like Claude can be used in warfare. Trump in February ordered all US agencies to stop using Claude and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the company a supply chain risk after an unusually public clash between the Pentagon and CEO Dario Amodei. Anthropic sued in a dispute that is still working its way through two federal courts. At the same time, Anthropic has been in talks with the White House over the cybersecurity capabilities and risks of its most powerful model, Mythos, which is not yet widely available to the public. Anthropic also had an influential role at the Vatican ahead of Pope Leo XIV 's call Monday for robust regulation of AI and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit. The sweeping manifesto called Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), Leo's first encyclical, repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of so few people in the private sector as a danger.
Elon Musk sends startling message on SpaceX, Tesla merger
Two of the most valuable companies on the planet share one chief executive, overlapping workforces, and billions of dollars in cross-company transactions. Wall Street cannot stop asking whether Elon Musk will fold SpaceX and Tesla into a single entity. That speculation surged after reports confirmed Musk had discussed combining the two companies with close colleagues in recent weeks. SpaceX is preparing to kick off its Wall Street roadshow within days ahead of what could be the largest IPO in market history. A combined SpaceX and Tesla would create a conglomerate spanning rockets, satellites, electric vehicles, AI infrastructure, and energy storage valued at roughly $3.35 trillion to $3.6 trillion based on SpaceX's IPO target range and Tesla's current market capitalization. The deal is far from certain, but the threads connecting these companies have grown too thick for investors to dismiss. Musk has discussed folding SpaceX and Tesla together Musk raised the idea of merging SpaceX and Tesla in conversations with colleagues, and Tesla employees say the prospect has been openly discussed internally, CNBC reported. SpaceX is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq in roughly two weeks following its S-1 filing. SpaceX carries a private valuation of roughly $1.25 trillion following its February merger with Musk's AI venture, xAI, a deal that also folded the social media platform X under the same corporate roof, though its May 20 S-1 filing now targets an IPO valuation of $1.75 trillion to $2 trillion. Tesla's market capitalization sits at approximately $1.6 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. Legal experts cited in the report indicated that a combination would face limited antitrust risk but significant shareholder complexity around structure. Musk holds 85% voting control at SpaceX, meaning board resistance to any deal would be negligible, the company's prospectus disclosed. The harder questions involve determining the parent company, structuring a stock swap, and protecting minority shareholders on both sides of the transaction. Those unresolved details keep this from being a done deal, despite the clear strategic logic driving the conversation forward. SpaceX and Tesla share billions in cross-company spending The financial ties between the two companies have deepened over the past two years, creating transactions that would simplify under a single corporate structure. SpaceX purchased $697 million worth of Tesla Megapack energy storage systems in 2024 and 2025 to power xAI data centers, according to the SpaceX prospectus. SpaceX also spent $131 million on Tesla Cybertrucks in 2025, and Tesla invested $2 billion in xAI in January 2026 before those shares converted into SpaceX holdings following the February merger, the prospectus showed. A shared vice president of materials engineering serves both companies simultaneously, reflecting deep structural overlap. Both companies are directing enormous capital toward AI infrastructure at a pace that outstrips most public market competitors in the technology sector. SpaceX allocated more than 75% of its $10.1 billion in first-quarter capital expenditure toward AI, CNBC reported, while Tesla flagged total capex exceeding $25 billion this year. In March 2026, Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI announced Terafab, a joint chip manufacturing facility originally pegged at $25 billion. SpaceX disclosed in a May 6, 2026, Grimes County hearing notice that the first phase alone will cost $55 billion, with full buildout potentially reaching $119 billion. That facility represents the clearest physical evidence that these companies are converging toward one structure. Mario Tama/Getty Images Wedbush's Dan Ives sees 80% to 90% chance of a merger by 2027 Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, places the probability of a merger at 80% to 90% with a target completion in the first half of 2027. He has called Tesla and Nvidia 'the best physical AI plays' and frames a combined SpaceX-Tesla entity as an extension of that thesis. "I think that's the step process that they'll go through, and then ultimately a merger with Tesla," Ives told the Schwab Network in April, while maintaining his $600 price target for Tesla. He argued that autonomous robotics alone could add between $1 trillion and $2 trillion to the market capitalization. My contrarian belief is I don't think SpaceX will IPO... I think that it will reverse merge into Tesla, and I think Elon will use it as a moment to consolidate control and power of his two seminal assets into one cap table Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, has described the combined entity as a potential 'Berkshire Hathaway of AI' offering investors a clear AI bet, though he has also raised conflict-of-interest concerns and argued the deal would resemble an acquisition more than a merger. "It looks more like SpaceX will be bailing out Tesla by buying them over, calling it a merger," Gerber wrote on the social platform X in April, arguing the deal would function more like an acquisition. That split captures the uncertainty around the potential combination of Musk's two flagship companies. Prediction markets and Musk's pay structure frame the stakes for investors While Ives places merger odds above 80%, prediction markets tell a far more cautious story about the timeline for any deal to come together. Kalshi traders placed only 33% odds on a merger before May 2027, with probabilities swinging sharply in recent sessions, CNBC reported. Polymarket participants assigned a probability between 17% and 26% that a formal merger announcement would be made before the end of 2026, according to TradingKey. That gap between analyst confidence and market pricing reflects genuine uncertainty about whether Musk will follow through on a combination. Musk's compensation adds another dimension to the speculation, because his SpaceX pay is tied to the company reaching a $7.5 trillion market cap alongside a Mars colonization milestone, CNBC reported. A merger that would boost the combined entity's valuation would accelerate his progress toward that target and other milestones in Tesla's board-approved pay plan. Analysts cited above, including Ives and Gerber, point to the structure of any stock swap and the potential for dilution of retail ownership stakes as the central unresolved concerns for Tesla shareholders. Institutions managing large pension and mutual funds have publicly stated that they would use their voting power against any merger plan that harms retail shareholders, according to TradingKey. The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc. This story was originally published May 28, 2026 at 10:03 AM.
Anthropic bests OpenAI in valuation race, hitting $965B with Series H - PitchBook
The two competitors have been duking it out over the past few months, seesawing in the race to become the most valuable AI company. Anthropic has officially become the world's most valuable startup after announcing it raised a $65 billion Series H at a $965 billion post-money valuation, surpassing chief rival OpenAI, which is currently valued at $852 billion. The new funding ups the ante as the two large language model makers race to go public first. They are reportedly planning IPOs that could rival SpaceX's listing later this month, which could value the company at as much as $2 trillion. Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia all led the round, which comes just three months after the company's $30 billion Series G. Other investors in the round include Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, Iconiq, XN, AMP PBC, Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, DE Shaw Ventures, DST Global, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Insight Partners, Jane Street, Lightspeed, MGX, NTTVC, NX1 Capital, Situational Awareness LP, T. Rowe Price Associates, T. Rowe Price Investment Management and Temasek. The round also includes $15 billion previously committed by Amazon and other hyperscalers. Despite raising less cash than OpenAI, Anthropic now claims to be ahead in revenue -- an area the two have squabbled over. The Claude-maker disclosed Thursday that its annualized revenue crossed $47 billion in May, up from $14 billion in February. The Information recently reported that OpenAI's is around $30 billion. Anthropic has also prioritized building out its computing capacity, which was recently questioned by OpenAI in a leaked investor memo. Amazon is committing up to 5 gigawatts of AWS compute capacity, while Google and Broadcom have agreed to supply 5 gigawatts of TPU chips. Anthropic has signed an agreement to access GPU capacity from SpaceX's Colossus data centers.
Anthropic vaults to a $965 billion valuation with new funding as Claude demand surges
By MATT O'BRIEN, AP Technology Writer Artificial intelligence company Anthropic said Thursday it raised $65 billion in private funding that will push its valuation to $965 billion, a whopping number that makes the five-year-old maker of the Claude chatbot one of the world's most valuable startups as it careens toward a likely Wall Street debut. The announcement vaults Anthropic ahead of its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, both in market value and in reported revenue. Anthropic said it's now making annualized revenue of $47 billion from selling its technology to people and organizations using Claude to write code and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf. Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk's rocket and AI company SpaceX, are all expected to become publicly traded. All three are also still losing more money than they make, fueling concerns of an AI bubble. San Francisco-based Anthropic said the new round of funding was led by investment firms Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital and Sequoia Capital. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," said a written statement from Anthropic's chief financial officer, Krishna Rao. Anthropic also on Thursday launched its newest AI model, called Claude Opus 4.8, boasting that it is even better at coding and other professional work than previous models. Anthropic's meteoric rise and Claude's growing popularity have left OpenAI playing catch-up despite its early lead in making ChatGPT a household name that sparked a commercial AI boom. OpenAI last reported in March it was heading toward a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion fundraising round. SpaceX was valued at $800 billion last year, but its value grew to $1.25 trillion after the space exploration company merged with Musk's xAI in February. Musk recently announced plans for one of the biggest stock sales ever and will be able to pitch the offering to investors as soon as next week. OpenAI also cleared a major hurdle toward its initial public offering ambitions after a federal court last week dismissed a lawsuit from Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and early donor, after a weeks-long jury trial over whether the company had betrayed its original nonprofit mission. Musk has said he plans to appeal. Despite its newfound success, Anthropic has also faced obstacles this year -- particularly a bruising legal fight with President Donald Trump's administration over how AI tools like Claude can be used in warfare. Trump in February ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Claude and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the company a supply chain risk after an unusually public clash between the Pentagon and CEO Dario Amodei. Anthropic sued in a dispute that is still working its way through two federal courts. At the same time, Anthropic has been in talks with the White House over the cybersecurity capabilities and risks of its most powerful model, Mythos, which is not yet widely available to the public. Anthropic also had an influential role at the Vatican ahead of Pope Leo XIV 's call Monday for robust regulation of AI and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit. The sweeping manifesto called "Magnifica Humanitas" (Magnificent Humanity), Leo's first encyclical, repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of so few people in the private sector as a danger.
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.
Google employee charged with using confidential search data to make $1.2 million on Polymarket
NEW YORK -- U.S. prosecutors slapped insider trading charges against a Google employee this week, alleging the software engineer used confidential company information to pocket more than $1.2 million from prediction market platform Polymarket with bets on search trends. In a complaint unsealed in New York, authorities identified the employee as 36-year-old Michele Spagnuolo -- an Italian citizen residing in Switzerland who has worked for Google since 2014. Under the online name "AlphaRaccoon," they alleged, Spagnuolo used the company's 2025 "Year in Search" data before it was published to enter Polymarket wagers about the most trending Googled people of last year. This week's charges "reinforce a decades-old message: corporate insiders cannot use confidential business information to turn a profit in our markets," Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Wednesday. "Insider trading compromises the integrity of our markets, and the American people want this greed-driven conduct investigated and prosecuted." Spagnuolo allegedly made new Polymarket trades as Google's internal search data evolved, from October into December of last year. For example, per the complaint, Spagnuolo initially wagered that Kendrick Lamar -- who headlined the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show -- would top search trends for people last year. But after internal Google data showed that alt-pop singer D4vd was later leading the influx of searches, he placed new bets. D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, was charged last month with murdering 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez. Using the prediction market's "yes" or "no" wagers, Spagnuolo also made a series of Polymarket trades about other individuals who would or wouldn't rank in Google's 2025 search trends, the complaint said. And after the data was published on Dec. 4, the AlphaRaccoon account soon pocketed sizeable profits. An FBI investigation later traced its cryptocurrency payments. An attorney for Spagnuolo was not immediately identified. California-based Google confirmed to The Associated Press it had placed its employee on leave. "The employee accessed our marketing material using a tool available to all employees, but using such confidential information to place bets is a serious breach of our policies," a Google spokesperson said in a statement -- adding the company was working with law enforcement and "will take the appropriate action." Polymarket reiterated it too worked closely with authorities. A spokesperson also touted that the company "is the only prediction platform to date whose cooperation has led to insider trading charges in the United States" -- and maintained blockchain trading, which Polymarket uses, is "transparent, traceable, and bad actors leave footprints." Spagnuolo isn't first person to face insider trading charges spanning from Polymarket trades. Last month, the government also charged a special forces soldier who made over $400,000 from Polymarket trades betting on the downfall of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The solider allegedly used classified information ahead of January's U.S. military operation, which he was a part of. Such scandals have put the spotlight on a murky (and growing) world of speculative, 24/7 transactions now filling the internet. Prediction markets sell event contracts -- so they're also categorized and regulated differently from traditional forms of gambling. That's raised concerns about consumer protections, and legal battles over government oversight. President Donald Trump's administration has already thrown its support behind company operators -- and sued several states over their regulation efforts. Meanwhile, the industry is scrambling to assure the public with new guardrails. Polymarket recently rewrote its rules to clearly state users cannot trade on contracts where they might possess confidential information, or could influence the outcome of an event. Spagnuolo is being charged with violating the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act, wire fraud and money laundering. He could face years of prison time.
Anthropic vaults to a $965 billion valuation with new funding as Claude demand surges
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic said Thursday it raised $65 billion in private funding that will push its valuation to $965 billion, a whopping number that makes the five-year-old maker of the Claude chatbot one of the world's most valuable startups as it careens toward a likely Wall Street debut. The announcement vaults Anthropic ahead of its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, both in market value and in reported revenue. Anthropic said it's now making annualized revenue of $47 billion from selling its technology to people and organizations using Claude to write code and do other work and personal tasks on their behalf. Anthropic was formed in 2021 by ex-OpenAI leaders and now both AI firms, along with Elon Musk's rocket and AI company SpaceX, are all expected to become publicly traded. All three are also still losing more money than they make, fueling concerns of an AI bubble. San Francisco-based Anthropic said the new round of funding was led by investment firms Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greenoaks Capital and Sequoia Capital. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," said a written statement from Anthropic's chief financial officer, Krishna Rao. Anthropic also on Thursday launched its newest AI model, called Claude Opus 4.8, boasting that it is even better at coding and other professional work than previous models. Anthropic's meteoric rise and Claude's growing popularity have left OpenAI playing catch-up despite its early lead in making ChatGPT a household name that sparked a commercial AI boom. OpenAI last reported in March it was heading toward a $852 billion valuation after a $122 billion fundraising round. SpaceX was valued at $800 billion last year, but its value grew to $1.25 trillion after the space exploration company merged with Musk's xAI in February. Musk recently announced plans for one of the biggest stock sales ever and will be able to pitch the offering to investors as soon as next week. OpenAI also cleared a major hurdle toward its initial public offering ambitions after a federal court last week dismissed a lawsuit from Musk, an OpenAI co-founder and early donor, after a weeks-long jury trial over whether the company had betrayed its original nonprofit mission. Musk has said he plans to appeal. Despite its newfound success, Anthropic has also faced obstacles this year -- particularly a bruising legal fight with President Donald Trump's administration over how AI tools like Claude can be used in warfare. Trump in February ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Claude and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared the company a supply chain risk after an unusually public clash between the Pentagon and CEO Dario Amodei. Anthropic sued in a dispute that is still working its way through two federal courts. At the same time, Anthropic has been in talks with the White House over the cybersecurity capabilities and risks of its most powerful model, Mythos, which is not yet widely available to the public. Anthropic also had an influential role at the Vatican ahead of Pope Leo XIV 's call Monday for robust regulation of AI and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit. The sweeping manifesto called "Magnifica Humanitas" (Magnificent Humanity), Leo's first encyclical, repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of so few people in the private sector as a danger.
CNN Slaps Perplexity AI With New Copyright Lawsuit | Law.com
Brooklyn Federal Judge Rejects Hobbs Act Robbery as Predicate for 'Career Criminal' Enhanced Sentence U.S. District Court Judge Eric Vitaliano of the Eastern District of New York ruled that Hobbs Act robbery does not qualify as a "violent felony" under the Armed Career Criminal Act, finding the offense too broad under the categorical approach because it can be committed against property. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has not yet weighed in on this issue.
STARTRADER Launches SPCXUSD, Offering Exposure to SpaceX Ahead of Expected IPO - Australian Business Announcements
The new instrument brings 24/7 trading access to one of the most anticipated listings in market history. DUBAI, UAE, May 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- STARTRADER has added SPCXUSD (Space Exploration Technologies) to its product lineup, giving traders direct exposure to SpaceX, widely regarded as the leading force in aerospace and space infrastructure. The instrument will be available on MT5 from 28 May 2026, with STARTRADER App trading going live on 1 June 2026. SpaceX has drawn significant market attention as speculation around a potential IPO continues to build. Current projections place the company's valuation between USD 1.75 trillion and USD 2 trillion, which would make it one of the most valuable private-to-public listings transitions ever recorded. The successful Starship V3 test flight on 22 May has has only added to the momentum, reinforcing confidence in the company's long-term role in next-generation connectivity and the broader space economy. For traders, the timing matters. SPCXUSD offers a way to build exposure to the space infrastructure theme before a formal listing. Instrument Details * Symbol: SPCXUSD * Description: Space Exploration Technologies * Leverage: 20x * Trading Hours: Monday to Sunday, 00:00-24:00 About STARTRADER STARTRADER is a global multi-asset broker empowering retail and institutional partners to access global markets through a range of platforms, including MetaTrader, STAR-APP, and STAR-COPY. Regulated across five jurisdictions (CMA, ASIC, FSCA, FSA, and FSC), STARTRADER combines strong governance with a client-first approach, serving both retail clients and partners with a commitment to transparency, reliability, and long-term growth.
Anthropic Overtakes OpenAI As World's Most Valuable AI Startup
Anthropic has leapfrogged OpenAI to become the world's most valuable AI startup after raising US$65 billion in a fresh funding round that values the Claude maker at US$965 billion. The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staff, has rapidly transformed from a smaller challenger into one of the dominant players in generative AI, driven largely by enterprise demand for its coding tools. The latest round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital, with strategic backing also coming from chip and memory giants Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix. Anthropic said the new partners would help expand the computing capacity needed to support demand for Claude Code and its broader AI services. Anthropic said its annualised revenue run rate has now crossed US$47 billion, up sharply from last year, as businesses increasingly adopt AI tools capable of generating and editing software code from natural language prompts. The company also unveiled Claude Opus 4.8, its latest flagship model, which it claims delivers major improvements in coding and mathematics. The release further intensifies competition with OpenAI, which has been pushing its own coding product, Codex. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," Anthropic chief financial officer Krishna Rao (pictured) said. The valuation places Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, which was valued at between US$730 billion and US$852 billion in recent funding reports. It also comes as the world's largest private AI and technology companies prepare for a potential wave of public listings, with OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk-linked ventures all reportedly weighing IPO plans. Anthropic's rise has not been without controversy. The company has clashed with the Pentagon over military AI use and has positioned itself as a more safety-focused AI developer, with chief executive Dario Amodei repeatedly calling for stronger regulation. The valuation follows Anthropic's reported US$200 billion Google Cloud infrastructure deal earlier this month.
Anthropic reaches near-trillion dollar valuation, topping OpenAI
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic said Thursday it had raised $65 billion in a new funding round that values the Claude maker at $965 billion, more than its archrival OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. The latest fundraising round confirms Anthropic's place as one of the most significant players in AI, with the startup led by Dario Amodei having drawn fans for its coding powers and state-of-the-art models. Anthropic's rise came by doubling down on delivering generative AI to enterprise clients rather than general users, the path initially chosen by OpenAI.
Live coverage: SpaceX to launch 29 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral
SpaceX is preparing for its penultimate planned launch of May, which will see its Falcon 9 rocket fly from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Friday morning. The Starlink 10-53 mission will add another 29 broadband internet satellites to the company's low Earth orbit megaconstellation. The network consists of more than 10,000 spacecraft. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 is scheduled for 8:03 a.m. EDT (1203 UTC). The rocket will fly on a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving the pad. Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff. The 45th Weather Squadron forecast an 80 percent chance for favorable weather during the launch window. Meteorologists are tracking the possibility for interference from cumulus and anvil clouds. "The subtropical ridge axis will move south of the Spaceport by Friday, leading to an influx of tropical moisture," launch weather officers wrote. "Westerly-to-southwesterly low-level winds will bring prime conditions for afternoon showers and thunderstorms along the east coast of Florida for several days, some of which could develop in the morning hours. "For both the primary and backup launch windows, isolated showers and thunderstorms could develop towards the end of the windows, with possibly lingering anvil clouds towards the beginning of the windows." SpaceX will launch the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1085. This will be its 16th flight following the launches of missions, like NASA's Crew-9, Fram2, and Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1. Nearly 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1085 will target a landing on the drone ship, 'A Shortfall of Gravitas.' If successful, this will be the 152nd touchdown on this vessel and the 616th booster landing for SpaceX to date.
Anthropic overtakes OpenAI in valuation battle, becomes world's most valuable AI startup
Anthropic has overtaken rival OpenAI to become the world's most valuable artificial intelligence startup after a $65 billion funding round that values the company at $965 billion, marking one of the most dramatic shifts yet in the global AI investment race. The San Francisco-based firm, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers including Dario Amodei, said the latest Series H round underscores surging demand for its Claude chatbot and enterprise AI tools, as global companies race to integrate generative AI into core operations. The valuation places Anthropic ahead of OpenAI, intensifying competition between the two dominant players in the generative AI sector and signalling a new phase in the so-called trillion-dollar AI race. Record funding fuels compute-driven expansion The $65 billion raise was led by investors including Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks Capital and Sequoia Capital, alongside participation from Coatue and ICONIQ. Strategic infrastructure partners such as Amazon, Samsung, Micron Technology and SK Hynix also joined the round. Of the total, $15 billion came from previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon, underscoring the deepening tie between AI model developers and global cloud infrastructure providers. Anthropic said the capital will be deployed to expand computing capacity, advance AI safety research and scale its Claude product suite amid what it described as "historic demand" for its services. Revenue momentum and enterprise adoption surge Alongside the funding announcement, Anthropic disclosed that its annualised revenue run rate has crossed $47 billion, driven largely by strong enterprise adoption of its AI coding tools, particularly Claude Code. The company has faced capacity constraints in recent months, including usage limits during peak demand, reflecting the strain on compute infrastructure as adoption accelerates across industries. AI rivalry enters new phase The latest valuation milestone further escalates the rivalry between Anthropic and OpenAI, both of which are reportedly preparing for eventual public listings as they seek to finance massive computing requirements needed to train next-generation models. While OpenAI's ChatGPT triggered the global generative AI boom in 2022, Anthropic's rapid rise over a shorter timeframe highlights how quickly capital and enterprise adoption have shifted toward competing platforms in the AI ecosystem. The participation of major chipmakers and cloud partners reflects a broader structural shift in the AI industry, where access to semiconductors and compute power is becoming as critical as model innovation itself. As demand for large language models grows, both companies are increasingly reliant on long-term infrastructure partnerships to secure the computing capacity required to sustain training and deployment at scale. IPO ambitions on the horizon Industry observers say both Anthropic and OpenAI are positioning themselves for potential public market debuts, which could rank among the largest IPOs in technology history. The timing remains uncertain, but investor pressure is mounting as valuations approach unprecedented levels.
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Musk says the cheapest place to put AI is space. SpaceX's IPO filing isn't so sure.
On Dwarkesh Patel's podcast in February, Elon Musk said that within 30 to 36 months space would be "by far the cheapest" place to run AI. Pressed on whether that was really true, he doubled down. "It's not even close," he said. Patel opened the podcast as a skeptic. Only 10 to 15% of a data center's total cost of ownership is energy, he noted, and that is the part space is supposed to save. The processors are the rest, and in orbit they are harder to service and quicker to write off. "What's the reason to put them in space?" he asked. Musk's answer was power. Electricity output outside China is roughly flat while chip output climbs. He argued the only way to keep scaling is solar in orbit, where panels run about five times harder with no batteries, clouds, or night. People who intent on scaling data centers on earth, Musk said, are about to get "a hard lesson in hardware." In May, SpaceX filed an S-1 describing the same orbital data centers as resting on "unproven technologies, or technologies that do not exist," initiatives that "may not achieve commercial viability." The filing adds that the timeline for putting 100 gigawatts of compute in orbit "may be difficult or impossible to determine." On the order of 10,000 Starship launches Building AI data centers in space at scale will require copious rockets. Reaching 100 gigawatts in orbit is "on the order of 10,000 Starship launches," Patel said, referring to the two-stage, reusable SpaceX rockets. That works out to about one rocket every hour for a year. "Yes," Musk replied. The cadence is "a lower rate compared to airlines." Incidentally, airlines' operating expenses run close to $1 trillion annually. SpaceX's recent Starship test flights are estimated to cost on the order of $100 million each. Musk's standing target is $10 million a launch, and in the ultra-high-cadence case the orbital plan depends on, he has floated $1 to $2 million. SpaceX's annual launch bill would land somewhere between roughly $20 billion at the aspirational floor and about $1 trillion at today's cost, before a single GPU, solar array, or radiator. Morningstar reached a similar wall, estimating the targets require about 6,667 Starship flights a year, some 530 times current global launch mass, which it called "well beyond any near-term planning horizon." For what it's worth, Musk has a habit of making bold proclamations that don't always align with his projections. He promised the Grok 5 LLM with characteristic superlatives in late 2025. As of May, the model has not been launched, but pundits have speculated that it is in development currently and nearing potential release. A mixed track record of delivering on technological goals Tesla's robotaxi rollout follows a similar arc. Musk launched the service in Austin in June 2025 and said it would reach half the U.S. population by year's end. It closed 2025 confined to part of Austin, and by May 2026 it operated in three Texas cities. Still, Musk helped build Colossus, the xAI training cluster in Memphis, a likely record-setting project. The data center scaled from nothing to 100,000 GPUs in 122 days against a 24-month estimate, and doubled to 200,000 in 92 more. By May 2026 the cluster was SpaceX's to rent, and Anthropic, the rival Musk had branded "evil" months earlier, agreed to take its entire output, roughly 300 megawatts, at about $1.25 billion a month per the S-1. On the question of servicing GPUs in space Assuming SpaceX has enough chips to launch data centers at scale into space, there is the question of how to service them. Musk told Patel he does not think servicing is an issue, since modern GPUs are reliable once they clear early failures. To catch those defects before launch, SpaceX "intend[s] to conduct intensive pre-deployment testing to reduce the rate of chip failure in space." SpaceX does "not anticipate servicing or repairing processors in space." That leaves cooling, which the engineers closest to the problem single out as the hardest part. The S-1 treats radiative cooling as a cost advantage with "no operating costs compared to liquid or air cooling," while conceding that heat must be shed "through radiation rather than convection and conduction," which is why its compute satellites would need "substantially larger radiators" than Starlink flies today. Dylan Taylor, whose Voyager Technologies is building its own orbital compute, was noted on CNBC: thata two-year timeline is aggressive. That is because the thermal problem is unsolved. In orbit there is "no medium to transmit hot to cold," so every watt leaves by radiation through a panel aimed away from the sun. The ISS sheds heat in the tens of kilowatts. An AI cluster has to shed megawatts. Each of these problems, the chips, the servicing, the heat, sits in the prospectus as a risk SpaceX has yet to retire. For all the confidence on the podcast, the harshest verdict on the whole venture comes from SpaceX's own lawyers. As the S-1 notes on page 42: "Our initiatives to develop orbital AI compute at scale, establish a lunar economy, develop human augmentation systems, and transport humans and cargo to the Moon and Mars are in early stages of conception, design and development and have not yet been proven at commercial scale, or at all, and may ultimately be unsuccessful."
Anthropic unveils new flagship AI model with focus on honesty and lower AI costs
Just 41 days after launching its previous AI model, AI startup Anthropic is back with another upgrade, and this time, the company says the biggest improvement is not just intelligence, but honesty. The company has unveiled Claude Opus 4.8, the latest version of its flagship AI model. The model delivers the expected improvements in coding, reasoning, and general knowledge. But Anthropic says the real change addresses something many AI users have been complaining about: AI models making claims that they can't support. According to Anthropic, early testers found that Opus 4.8 is more willing to admit uncertainty and less likely to make unsupported claims. "Early testers report that Opus 4.8 is more likely to flag uncertainties about its work and less likely to make unsupported claims," Anthropic wrote in the release announcement. Anthropic described Opus 4.8 as a "modest but tangible improvement" over Opus 4.7, but the company claims it performs better in agentic tasks. Early testers reportedly found the model sharper in judgement and more reliable during such tasks. Anthropic also wants to reduce AI costs With Opus 4.8, Anthropic is also trying to tackle another growing problem in the AI world: cost. Opus 4.8's fast mode is said to be three times cheaper than previous Anthropic model versions. That matters because companies are increasingly worried about the enormous cost of running advanced AI systems. In recent days, firms including Microsoft and Uber have raised concerns about soaring AI spending. Along with this, Anthropic has also introduced a new feature called Effort Control. The feature allows users to decide how much "thinking power" the AI should use before answering a question. If users choose a high-effort setting, Claude will spend more time reasoning deeply before responding. If they pick a lower setting, the AI will answer faster while consuming fewer resources and rate limits. In practical terms, it works a bit like switching between "quick reply mode" and "deep thinking mode." Dynamic Workflows aims to handle bigger AI tasks Another major addition is Dynamic Workflows, currently available in research preview. The feature is designed for extremely large and complicated tasks that cannot realistically be handled by a single AI agent. Anthropic says Dynamic Workflows allows larger AI models like Opus to coordinate hundreds of parallel AI subagents at once. It can be useful for tasks such as checking thousands of lines of code, hunting software bugs across an entire service, or testing a migration touching hundreds of files before release. Mythos-class capabilities in the coming weeks Back in April, the company had alarmed cybersecurity experts after revealing that Mythos was dramatically better at discovering vulnerabilities than previous models. Anthropic now says it has made rapid progress on safeguards and expects to bring Mythos-class capabilities to customers in the coming weeks.
Anthropic Becomes World's Most Valuable AI Startup at $965 Billion | PYMNTS.com
The round includes previously committed investments of $15 billion from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon, according to the release. It was reported in April that a valuation of more than $900 billion would push Anthropic past rival OpenAI to become the most valuable artificial intelligence startup in the world. Anthropic's new valuation is up from the $380 billion valuation it achieved in a February Series G funding round in which it raised $30 billion, and the $183 billion valuation it secured in a September Series F round in which it raised $13 billion. The company said in its Thursday press release that it will use the new funding to advance its safety and interpretability research, expand compute, and scale products and partnerships. Anthropic also said that since the February Series G, it has seen growing adoption of its Claude model among global enterprise customers. The company added that earlier this month, its run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion. "This funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens," Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao said in the release. The latest funding round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital. It was reported May 20 that Anthropic is on track to post its first operating profit in the second quarter, less than a year after the company gave investors financial guidance that suggested it did not expect to turn a full-year profit until at least 2028. Anthropic announced in another Thursday press release that it launched Claude Opus 4.8 and that compared to this its predecessor, Opus 4.7, this new version delivers improvements across benchmarks and is a more effective collaborator. The benchmarks on which Opus 4.8 surpasses the previous model include coding, agentic skills, reasoning and practical knowledge work tasks, according to the release. "Early testers have found Claude Opus 4.8 to be more reliable and sharper in its judgment when it's performing agentic tasks," Anthropic said in the release. It was reported May 20 that demand for Anthropic's coding tools has been the company's primary growth driver.
