News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Forget SpaceX stock and buy this exciting ASX share
You're reading a free article with opinions that may differ from The Motley Fool's Premium Investing Services. Become a Motley Fool member today to get instant access to our top analyst recommendations, in-depth research, investing resources, and more. Learn More SpaceX has been one of the biggest stories on Wall Street since its June initial public offering (IPO). Its shares surged and then almost halved from their peak, showing how quickly excitement can run ahead of valuation. For investors looking for a high-growth technology opportunity, I think there is a better option on the ASX. Why I would leave SpaceX alone Space Exploration Technologies Corp (NASDAQ: SPCX) listed at US$135 per share before racing as high as US$225.64. That early enthusiasm has since disappeared, with the stock recently reaching a 52-week low of US$113.31. The lower price will tempt investors who believe Starlink, Starship, space launches, and other long-term projects could support enormous growth. I can understand the interest because SpaceX has built capabilities that few companies can match. Even after the decline, I think the stock carries a demanding valuation. Investors are still being asked to pay heavily for growth that may take years to reach its full potential. Space exploration also requires huge amounts of capital, while technical setbacks, launch delays, competition, and regulation can all affect the investment case. I would rather look for a company where the valuation gives me more confidence in the potential return. The ASX share I would buy DroneShield Ltd (ASX: DRO) would be my choice. The company develops counter-drone technology that helps defence forces, governments, and security organisations detect, track, and respond to unwanted drones. Its hardware remains the largest source of revenue, including portable and fixed systems designed for military sites, airports, prisons, critical infrastructure, and other sensitive locations. I think the long-term demand picture is becoming clearer. Drones are becoming cheaper, more capable, and easier to access, while their use across warfare, surveillance, smuggling, and disruption continues expanding. That creates a growing need for technology that can recognise a threat quickly and help customers decide how to respond. DroneShield also has a major opportunity to increase its software revenue. Its systems need regular updates as new drone models, signals, and tactics emerge, giving the company scope to sell software subscriptions, threat libraries, support, and other ongoing improvements. A larger software contribution could deepen customer relationships and gradually make revenue more recurring. Does the valuation look better? DroneShield shares are trading around $2.21. According to CommSec consensus estimates, the company is expected to generate earnings per share of 2.6 cents in FY26, 4.3 cents in FY27, and 7.4 cents in FY28. That puts the shares on price-to-earnings ratios of approximately 85 times FY26 earnings, 51 times FY27 earnings, and 30 times FY28 earnings. The near-term valuation is still high, although it falls quickly if the company delivers the expected earnings growth. I do not think 30 times FY28 estimated earnings looks excessive for a business with a large global opportunity and the potential to grow both hardware and software revenue. DroneShield still needs to win contracts, expand production, manage rapid growth, and compete with much larger defence companies. Government procurement can also make revenue uneven between periods. Those uncertainties are why I would keep the position measured. Foolish takeaway SpaceX may eventually grow into its valuation, but I think investors are still paying a considerable price for that possibility. DroneShield offers exposure to another fast-growing technology market at a valuation I find easier to justify based on current earnings forecasts. The company has established hardware products, a growing software opportunity, and a specialist position in a market receiving increased attention from defence and security customers. At around $2.21, I would forget SpaceX stock and buy DroneShield shares instead.
William R. Timmons IV invests in SpaceX through SCH Invest By Investing.com
South Carolina's 4th congressional district representative, William R. Timmons IV, has made a significant investment in SpaceX. The transaction was carried out through SCH Invest, a known investment vehicle. The investment, which took place on June 15, 2026, was disclosed two days later, on June 17. According to the congressional trade report, the value of the investment falls within the range of $50,001 to $100,000. It's important to note that the exact stock ticker for SpaceX (SPCX) is currently unavailable in the system. The transaction type is listed as 'OT' in the report, which stands for 'Other.' This category is typically used for investments that do not fit into the standard categories of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. The investment was made as a purchase, indicating that Timmons bought into SpaceX, rather than selling off any existing shares. This move signifies his confidence in the growth potential of the space exploration company. The investment was made through SCH Invest, an investment vehicle. The details of the investment vehicle reveal that it was not part of an initial public offering, indicating that the shares were bought from the secondary market. As required by the STOCK Act, all transactions made by members of Congress must be disclosed to ensure transparency. This report confirms that Timmons has complied with this requirement. It's worth noting that this investment does not necessarily indicate any insider knowledge or political maneuvering. Members of Congress, like any other investors, make investments based on their personal financial strategies and beliefs about the market. This investment in SpaceX by William R. Timmons IV is simply a part of his financial portfolio. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.
Anthropic's $1.5 Billion Book Piracy Settlement Gets Final Approval, Even as Training AI on Legally Bought Books Stays Fair Use
Federal judge approves record settlement in AI copyright case A federal judge granted final approval Monday to Anthropic's £1.17 billion ($1.5 billion) settlement with authors over pirated books used to train its Claude AI chatbot, the largest copyright settlement in US history. The approval comes even as a separate 2025 ruling that training on legally acquired books is fair use remains untouched. US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín signed the order in San Francisco, confirming the deal resolves claims tied to more than 482,000 pirated works, with roughly 91 per cent of eligible authors and publishers, over 440,000 books, having already filed claims. The settlement stems from Bartz v Anthropic, filed in 2024 after authors accused the company of downloading hundreds of thousands of pirated books from illegal libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to build its training library. Judge William Alsup, who oversaw the case before retiring, ruled in June 2025 that using books to train AI was fair use, but that acquiring them through piracy was not. That distinction remains legally intact and separate from Monday's payout. Why Buying Books Is Legal -- But Stealing Them Isn't: The AI Copyright Distinction That Matters Alsup's 2025 ruling drew a hard line between purchased books that Anthropic digitised for storage, which counted as fair use, and pirated books downloaded from illegal libraries, which did not. He ruled that Anthropic's digitisation of purchased books for storage counted as fair use, but that downloading pirated books from illegal libraries did not. That fair-use finding on legitimately acquired training data was never part of this settlement and stands as separate precedent even after Monday's approval. Legal commentary around the case has framed the distinction as ending AI's Wild West era of unregulated training-data acquisition, shifting scrutiny from whether AI training itself is lawful to how the underlying data was obtained. What the Settlement Actually Covers Martínez-Olguín confirmed the deal pays roughly £2,340 ($3,000) per work, about four times the usual statutory minimum for copyright infringement, and covers authors including lead plaintiffs Andrea Bartz and Kirk Wallace Johnson. She reduced the attorneys' fee award from the requested £146.3 million ($187.5 million) to roughly £79.2 million ($101.6 million), calling a 12.5 per cent cut too high and settling on a multiplier of 3.75. The court overruled all 54 objections filed by class members and third parties, including requests for source attribution or deletion of Anthropic's models, and explicitly noted the settlement does not release Anthropic from future claims over what Claude actually generates. Reaction From Both Sides Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson called the outcome the largest known copyright recovery in history, adding that his team looks forward to making distributions to the class as promptly as possible. Anthropic deputy general counsel Aparna Sridhar said the company was pleased that more than 91 per cent of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment. Judge Martínez-Olguín herself wrote that the £1.17 billion deal provides substantial benefits to the class in light of the novel claims asserted, noting that success at trial was not assured, and a loss would have left the class with no recourse. The New Legal Battleground: Acquisition, Not Training Legal observers say the case reframes what future AI copyright litigation will actually turn on. The fight over whether AI training itself qualifies as fair use is increasingly settled, leaving acquisition, meaning where training data came from and whether it was paid for, as the live legal question heading into 2026. That question sits at the heart of pending suits including The New York Times v OpenAI and Disney and Universal's case against Midjourney, both of which hinge on how the underlying training material was sourced rather than on the act of training itself. With final judgement entered, the Bartz case is formally closed, though the court will continue monitoring how payments reach the roughly 440,000 authors and publishers who filed claims. Anthropic is also required to delete the pirated files it downloaded, while a small number of authors, roughly 350 who opted out, remain free to pursue independent claims against the company.
Better Buy: SpaceX or Nvidia?
Much of the hype surrounding Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), better known as SpaceX, has died off in the weeks since its initial public offering (IPO). Though it still carries a $1.6 trillion market cap, which is good enough to rank it among the world's 10 largest companies, its stock now trades well below where it IPOed, and some investors may be wondering if it's smart to buy the dip. As a comparison, I'm choosing the stalwart of the AI build-out: Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), a megacap that has strong growth and is actually priced at a reasonable level. If SpaceX can outperform Nvidia in several categories, it will speak to how good an investment it is. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now, when you join Stock Advisor. See the stocks " Let's consider which is the better buy for your portfolio now. Image source: Getty Images. SpaceX's business is broader than Nvidia's Nvidia makes powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) that are mostly getting scooped up for new data centers. While the chipmaker has developed a major product ecosystem around these computing units and is breaking into different computing industries, its focus remains on parallel processors for data centers. On the flip side, SpaceX has a broader business. While its space exploration and payload delivery business are what most investors recognize, its biggest and most profitable unit is its Starlink satellite broadband service. Additionally, SpaceX also owns xAI. This gives it exposure to the AI build-out through xAI, the maker of the Grok large language model (LLM) and the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. So, SpaceX could also be viewed as a social media company. That wide array of segments may make it too broad a business in some ways. But it also offers it the potential to be a bit more stable than Nvidia. Should anything happen that slows down investment in AI infrastructure, Nvidia could be in a world of trouble, while SpaceX would feel less pain. As a result, I'm giving the business category win to SpaceX. Winner: SpaceX Nvidia's growth is hard to keep up with SpaceX hasn't reported any 2026 growth figures yet, so we have to measure it based on last year's growth rates. In 2025, its xAI division grew at a 22% pace, its connectivity division's revenues increased at a 50% rate, and the space division only grew at an 8% clip. Overall, that equated to a 33% growth rate. While that's a strong and growing company, it doesn't hold a candle to Nvidia's growth. NVDA Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts. With Nvidia expected to grow revenue by 82% this year and by 42% for next year, it easily beats out SpaceX as the faster-growing business. Winner: Nvidia SpaceX has a sky-high premium SpaceX is not profitable, so investors need to use the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio to value the stock. During 2025, it generated $18.7 billion in revenue. At today's $1.57 trillion market cap, that equates to a P/S ratio of 84. That's expensive, and honestly, a bit absurd considering SpaceX's growth rates. Comparatively, Nvidia, which is fully profitable and growing faster, is much more reasonably valued. NVDA PE Ratio data by YCharts. Nvidia trades for 31 times trailing earnings and 23 times forward earnings. SpaceX has a long-term goal of bringing its profit margin to 45%. If it could instantly snap its fingers and achieve that, it would be trading now at 186 times earnings. That makes Nvidia about a sixth the price of SpaceX right now, which tells investors just how cheap Nvidia is, or how expensive SpaceX is, or both. Either way, Nvidia gets the win here as well. Winner: Nvidia Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now? Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Space Exploration Technologies wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $369,577!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,301,557!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 908% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 208% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of July 23, 2026. Keithen Drury has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
Better Buy: SpaceX or Nvidia?
Much of the hype surrounding Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), better known as SpaceX, has died off in the weeks since its initial public offering (IPO). Though it still carries a $1.6 trillion market cap, which is good enough to rank it among the world's 10 largest companies, its stock now trades well below where it IPOed, and some investors may be wondering if it's smart to buy the dip. As a comparison, I'm choosing the stalwart of the AI build-out: Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), a megacap that has strong growth and is actually priced at a reasonable level. If SpaceX can outperform Nvidia in several categories, it will speak to how good an investment it is. Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue " Let's consider which is the better buy for your portfolio now. SpaceX's business is broader than Nvidia's Nvidia makes powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) that are mostly getting scooped up for new data centers. While the chipmaker has developed a major product ecosystem around these computing units and is breaking into different computing industries, its focus remains on parallel processors for data centers. On the flip side, SpaceX has a broader business. While its space exploration and payload delivery business are what most investors recognize, its biggest and most profitable unit is its Starlink satellite broadband service. Additionally, SpaceX also owns xAI. This gives it exposure to the AI build-out through xAI, the maker of the Grok large language model (LLM) and the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. So, SpaceX could also be viewed as a social media company. That wide array of segments may make it too broad a business in some ways. But it also offers it the potential to be a bit more stable than Nvidia. Should anything happen that slows down investment in AI infrastructure, Nvidia could be in a world of trouble, while SpaceX would feel less pain. As a result, I'm giving the business category win to SpaceX. Winner: SpaceX Nvidia's growth is hard to keep up with SpaceX hasn't reported any 2026 growth figures yet, so we have to measure it based on last year's growth rates. In 2025, its xAI division grew at a 22% pace, its connectivity division's revenues increased at a 50% rate, and the space division only grew at an 8% clip. Overall, that equated to a 33% growth rate. While that's a strong and growing company, it doesn't hold a candle to Nvidia's growth.
Better Buy: SpaceX or Nvidia?
Much of the hype surrounding Space Exploration Technologies (SPCX +2.56%), better known as SpaceX, has died off in the weeks since its initial public offering (IPO). Though it still carries a $1.6 trillion market cap, which is good enough to rank it among the world's 10 largest companies, its stock now trades well below where it IPOed, and some investors may be wondering if it's smart to buy the dip. As a comparison, I'm choosing the stalwart of the AI build-out: Nvidia (NVDA -1.56%), a megacap that has strong growth and is actually priced at a reasonable level. If SpaceX can outperform Nvidia in several categories, it will speak to how good an investment it is. Let's consider which is the better buy for your portfolio now. SpaceX's business is broader than Nvidia's Nvidia makes powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) that are mostly getting scooped up for new data centers. While the chipmaker has developed a major product ecosystem around these computing units and is breaking into different computing industries, its focus remains on parallel processors for data centers. On the flip side, SpaceX has a broader business. While its space exploration and payload delivery business are what most investors recognize, its biggest and most profitable unit is its Starlink satellite broadband service. Additionally, SpaceX also owns xAI. This gives it exposure to the AI build-out through xAI, the maker of the Grok large language model (LLM) and the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. So, SpaceX could also be viewed as a social media company. That wide array of segments may make it too broad a business in some ways. But it also offers it the potential to be a bit more stable than Nvidia. Should anything happen that slows down investment in AI infrastructure, Nvidia could be in a world of trouble, while SpaceX would feel less pain. As a result, I'm giving the business category win to SpaceX. Winner: SpaceX Nvidia's growth is hard to keep up with SpaceX hasn't reported any 2026 growth figures yet, so we have to measure it based on last year's growth rates. In 2025, its xAI division grew at a 22% pace, its connectivity division's revenues increased at a 50% rate, and the space division only grew at an 8% clip. Overall, that equated to a 33% growth rate. While that's a strong and growing company, it doesn't hold a candle to Nvidia's growth. NVDA Revenue (Quarterly YoY Growth) data by YCharts. With Nvidia expected to grow revenue by 82% this year and by 42% for next year, it easily beats out SpaceX as the faster-growing business. Winner: Nvidia SpaceX has a sky-high premium SpaceX is not profitable, so investors need to use the price-to-sales (P/S) ratio to value the stock. During 2025, it generated $18.7 billion in revenue. At today's $1.57 trillion market cap, that equates to a P/S ratio of 84. That's expensive, and honestly, a bit absurd considering SpaceX's growth rates. Comparatively, Nvidia, which is fully profitable and growing faster, is much more reasonably valued. NVDA PE Ratio data by YCharts. Nvidia trades for 31 times trailing earnings and 23 times forward earnings. SpaceX has a long-term goal of bringing its profit margin to 45%. If it could instantly snap its fingers and achieve that, it would be trading now at 186 times earnings. That makes Nvidia about a sixth the price of SpaceX right now, which tells investors just how cheap Nvidia is, or how expensive SpaceX is, or both. Either way, Nvidia gets the win here as well.
Tesla-SpaceX merger speculation kept alive
AUSTIN: Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk has left the door open to the electric vehicle (EV) maker merging with his other trillion-dollar-plus-valued firm SpaceX, declining to dismiss the possibility and citing growing overlap between the companies. "As you can tell from the many collaborations on so many fronts with SpaceX, there's more and more overlap," Musk said on Tesla's earnings call. "We can't talk about, you know, combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call," he added. "It's got to be done with the appropriate process." Investors and analysts have long speculated about the possibility of combining Musk's EV and space firms, with the discussion intensifying during SpaceX's record US$75bil initial public offering process. After Musk's comments, he called on Tesla General Counsel Brandon Ehrhart, who stuck to boilerplate language calling SpaceX a "great partner" that provides "numerous beneficial transactions". Gene Munster, managing partner at Tesla investor Deepwater Asset Management, said the call left him more convinced the companies were destined to be joined over the next few years. "I would put the odds that these two will combine at 90% today," he said in a video posted on social media. "If you were going to ask me yesterday I would have said it's 80%." Tesla already supplies batteries and manufacturing technologies for some SpaceX projects, while the companies are jointly developing Terafab. Terafab is a semiconductor manufacturing facility designed to produce artificial intelligence (AI) chips. Proponents argued that combining the companies could simplify Musk's corporate empire and create a more integrated company spanning AI, robotics, manufacturing, energy and space infrastructure. JPMorgan analysts said this month that "operational integration between the two entities is already deep". They cited shared engineering talent, AI infrastructure, Terafab and Musk's leadership as factors that "would facilitate an eventual combination". Stifel analysts struck an even more bullish note, writing that "many investors consider it inevitable that Musk will move to combine SpaceX with Tesla - for them the question is not if but when." SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell has also acknowledged potential benefits, telling CNBC in June that folding the companies together "might make Elon's life a little easier" by streamlining management across his businesses. Others, however, caution that any transaction could face formidable hurdles. In the same research note, JPMorgan pointed to the "practical bottleneck" of getting regulatory approvals for both companies. This is particularly in China, where national security concerns over SpaceX's US government ties could pose problems. Analysts also noted that Musk controls a much larger voting stake in SpaceX than in Tesla, complicating governance considerations for Tesla's public shareholders. -- Reuters
Fed may hike rates twice in 2026, 36% chance per Polymarket
Polymarket, a prominent prediction platform, has reported a 36% probability that the U.S. Federal Reserve will implement two rate hikes in 2026. This figure reflects a moderate expectation among market participants for potential monetary tightening over the next couple of years. This comes amidst broader market speculation on the Fed's future policy direction, influenced by the current target range of 3.50%-3.75% and the ongoing debate over whether rates will need to remain elevated. Recent market dynamics have shown a shift toward expectations of a higher-for-longer interest rate environment, which could impact broader economic conditions and financial markets. Key Takeaways * Polymarket's pricing suggests a 36% chance of two Fed rate hikes occurring in 2026, indicating moderate expectations for further tightening. * The current market environment reflects an inclination toward sustained higher rates, as evidenced by a 62% probability of a rate hike by September 2026. * Broader economic indicators, such as inflation metrics and labor market conditions, may influence future Fed policy decisions. What to Watch Market participants will closely monitor upcoming Federal Reserve meetings and statements from key figures such as Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Any significant shifts in inflation rates or labor market conditions could alter rate expectations. Additionally, geopolitical developments or unexpected economic data releases could further influence the probability of future rate hikes, making these areas crucial for observers tracking potential changes in Fed policy stance. Get live prediction-market analysis, powered by Vera. Sign up for Vera.
Bertha Thwarts SpaceX's Do-Over of Starship Flight 13
"A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship's heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won't be possible with today's weather conditions," SpaceX said on X. "Visibility is forecast to be ideal for a Friday attempt." The mission will mark the second Starship flight of 2026. It follows a last-second abort on July 16, when some of its engines failed to ignite. SpaceX has swapped out two of Starship's Raptor engines and conducted additional testing on the ground, Gizmodo reports. In Flight 13, the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage -- together the largest rocket ever flown -- will largely repeat May's Flight 12 profile, aiming for controlled splashdowns in the Gulf of Mexico and the Indian Ocean, rather than attempting SpaceX's signature "chopstick" tower catch, Space.com reports. This outing adds a key twist: deployment of 20 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites on a suborbital path, designed to test higher-capacity broadband hardware and laser links before they intentionally burn up. Six satellites will carry cameras to inspect Starship's heat shield, while new load-sensing tiles will measure stress as the vehicle flies a more demanding ascent profile.
Alphabet Just Revealed Its Big Stake in SpaceX
Get personalized, AI-powered answers built on 27+ years of trusted expertise. SpaceX's list of shareholders includes a who's who of big tech companies. Google parent company Alphabet (GOOG) disclosed that it had a SpaceX (SPCX) stake worth about $94.1 billion as of the end of June, according to its second-quarter earnings report. Based on SpaceX's market cap at the end of the second quarter, or $2.2 trillion, Alphabet's investment represents about 4%. Tesla (TSLA) also disclosed a stake in SpaceX, albeit a more modest one worth $3 billion, per its second-quarter earnings report. Nvidia (NVDA) and Cisco (CSCO), are also likely shareholders given their early investment in xAI, which merged with SpaceX in February. Alphabet disclosed that it had two tranches of SpaceX shares, with $80 billion worth subject to "short-term restrictions on the ability to sell," according to the company. The rest, or some $14.1 billion is restricted for trading through the end of September 2027, filings show. The tech companies' respective stakes in SpaceX are likely a touch lighter given the stock's recent decline. Shares closed Thursday at around $118, almost 13% below its IPO price of $135 -- a boon for some investors who bet that the stock would decline. Early investor status, however, does put the spotlight on the coming wave of lock-up expirations that could free them up to trade their shares. The first of a series of staggered releases is set to occur on August 6, two days after SpaceX reports earnings for the first time as a public company.
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AMD and Cerebras join forces on AI inference
Why it matters: Inference is the part of AI computing that turns a trained model into a response, making it central to the speed and cost of everyday AI services. The big picture: The deal comes shortly after AMD announced Anthropic as a major customer, as demand for AI compute continues to grow. Driving the news: Cerebras plans to deploy AMD Helios systems in its data centers, with the joint offering available through Cerebras Cloud later this year. * AMD chips will handle prompt processing and large context windows, while Cerebras systems will accelerate token generation, which requires substantial memory bandwidth. * Earlier this week, AMD confirmed a deal to supply up to 2 gigawatts of computing power to Anthropic, with the first gigawatt expected to come online in 2027. AMD also agreed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic. What they're saying: AMD CEO Lisa Su said the partnership reflects a broader shift toward using different chips for different stages of an AI workload. * "I think we're going to see more workload disaggregation," Su said during a briefing with reporters. By the numbers: Su said AI could help expand the global computing market to $2 trillion by 2030.
Harry Potter publisher to receive millions in Anthropic copyright settlement
Bloomsbury Publishing has been designated as a beneficiary in a substantial copyright settlement agreement valued at $1.5 billion between artificial intelligence company Anthropic and a large group of authors. The London-based publisher, which represents numerous bestselling authors including JK Rowling, Sarah J Maas, and Susanna Clarke, has 14,087 titles included in the settlement framework. Each title is expected to generate approximately $3,000 in compensation. The total anticipated payout to Bloomsbury and affected authors, following deductions for legal and administrative expenses, is estimated at roughly $19 million. The publisher expects to receive payment in installments, with potential initial distributions beginning in the second half of the current fiscal year. These funds are slated to be distributed between the publisher and the individual authors whose works were involved. The settlement addresses a core conflict that has emerged alongside the expansion of artificial intelligence technology. AI companies including Anthropic have trained their large language models and chatbot systems on extensive datasets drawn from internet sources, incorporating copyrighted material such as novels and news articles without explicit authorization. While technology firms have traditionally defended such practices under the legal principle of fair use, creators and publishing organizations have increasingly challenged this approach, arguing that permission and compensation should be required. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved the settlement, characterizing it as providing "meaningful relief" to the creative community. The legal action originated when author Andrea Bartz and two colleagues initiated proceedings in 2024. Approximately 91 percent of the 482,000 works included in the lawsuit have been claimed by their respective rights holders. The settlement's lead counsel characterized it as "the largest known copyright recovery in history." This agreement represents the first significant resolution among numerous pending copyright litigation cases in the United States involving authors and news organizations. Separately, Bloomsbury has been exploring licensing arrangements with AI developers, having announced an academic licensing partnership the previous year that permits the use of scholarly works for training artificial intelligence systems, with participating authors receiving royalties through an opt-in structure. Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source Article summary produced by Claude AI
Experts say exploiting Anthropic's Fable isn't how Kimi K3 got so good
White House science advisor Michael Kratsios said that Moonshot, the Chinese company behind the Kimi K3, the largest available open-weight LLM, built its model by copying Anthropic's Fable LLM while using chips that aren't cleared for export to China. "Large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable," Kratsios wrote, amid reported discussions about banning Chinese open-weight models that have roiled the AI sector. Moonshot did not respond to questions about its training process, and Kratsios did not share more details about the sources of his allegations. Kratsios' tweet echoed comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that "we are finding watermarks of our U.S. large language models on many of the Chinese models, and that that's unacceptable." It's not clear what those watermarks consist of, and the Treasury Department did not respond to a query. However, experts are skeptical that distillation -- the process of querying an LLM to determine its inner workings and copy its capabilities -- is responsible for the advanced capabilities that Kimi K3 displays. "I don't think you get a model this strong and this quickly on the heels of Fable doing strictly distillation," Braden Hancock, a researcher at the Laude Institute and co-founder of Snorkel AI, told TechCrunch. "There's just not even frankly time, right? Fable's only been publicly available since July 1st. You can't distill that much data, train a model, and release it in two weeks." "I've been of the opinion that distillation has becoming less and less impactful over time as the Chinese models get closer to the frontier and the training regime shifts to [reinforcement learning]," Nathan Lambert, an AI researcher at the Allen Institute for AI, said in a podcast released yesterday. "[I]f it were the case, everyone would be easily able to catch up to a GLM or to a K3 by using its data for distillation. But we have not, or we won't see this, from supervised fine-tuning alone." Performing distillation requires a lab to systematically query its target model in order to generate data that can be used for post-training. Sometimes this explicitly involves asking the model to articulate its chain-of-thought to understand how it solves problems. Other times, the prompts and responses from a model are used to train a new model in a process called supervised fine-tuning, or SFT. It's this fine-tuning process that can result in a model ostensibly created by a third party claiming that it is Claude. Fine tuning is where, in Lambert's view, the "model picks up its manners." But Lambert says that the benefits of SFT are becoming less important as models become more complex. To distill Fable-like capabilities would likely require reinforcement learning techniques. In many cases, that means having an agent of the larger model grade the smaller model's responses, and adjusting based on the grade. The more advanced techniques also require more significant infrastructure. Large reinforcement learning runs can require tens of millions of agents. Using a frontier lab's API to do that "would be insanely expensive and potentially it would probably be a time bottleneck because these models are pretty slow and to be frank might not even give you a performance uplift." It seems likely that previous frontier models might have contributed to Kimi; Anthropic publicly accused Moonshot, DeepSeek and MiniMax of systematically distilling its models earlier this year. Anthropic said it discovered millions of exchanges between its models and users it identified at those companies through IP addresses and other meta data. Those queries were "distinct from normal usage patterns, reflecting deliberate capability extraction rather than legitimate use." Anthropic didn't respond to TechCrunch's queries about Fable distillation. However, distillation is seen as common among AI companies, not just in China. Elon Musk testified earlier this year that his company SpaceXAI distilled OpenAI models to develop Grok, and that the practice was common in the industry. The line between distillation and developing synthetic data sets, for example, can be fairly blurry. "[I]n general, Americans are understating the technical expertise of these Chinese teams," Hancock said. "One of the founders of Moonshot was a CMU PhD student. These are legitimate researchers and engineers doing solid work. ...if American models ground to a halt, I think China's progress would slow, but would still continue. They're not just riding coattails here." It's also hard to disentangle distillation from the second part of Kratsios' comment -- that Moonshot had obtained advanced Nvidia Chips, Grace Blackwell 300s, and also accessed GB300 equipped-servers in Thailand. Those chips are banned from export to China, but a black market exists, according to Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. In May, the founder of Supermicro, a US server builder, was indicted for smuggling advanced chips into China. "I am a proponent of know your customer laws for data centers across the world," Bresnick said. "If you are letting a company conduct huge training runs on your state-of-the-art hardware, there needs to be a reporting mechanism for who that company is and what they're doing." President Joe Biden's Department of Commerce proposed federal know-your-customer rules for data centers in 2024, but no further progress appears to have been made under Donald Trump. Exporters shipping advanced chips abroad, however, are supposed to ensure they are only used for approved purposes.
Anthropic's $1.5 billion book copyright settlement, about $3k per work, approved
There are so many big copyright lawsuits against AI companies winding their way through the courts, it's hard to keep track of them all. In the literary field alone, we're seeing writers band together to build class action suits, and publishers are also going after the same companies. Meta, for instance, is currently fielding two separate lawsuits from authors and publishers, and I love this for Zuckerberg. Then in some instances, the authors and publishers form a united front to jointly sue, which is what happened to Anthropic in 2024. What the creators of the world are trying to do is hold AI companies accountable for "training" their programs on copyrighted material, without consent or compensation. AI companies counter this argument by invoking the fair use claim, a broad legal doctrine that allows for "unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances." Like I said, broad. The case against Anthropic hit a pivotal juncture last year, when the presiding judge ruled that Anthropic was permitted to use the copyrighted works under fair use. At the same time, the judge said that Anthropic had clearly used illegal means of obtaining the works, mainly by piracy, and the lawsuit could proceed on that issue. Instead, Anthropic decided to cut their losses by cutting a $1.5 billion check to settle the whole affair and avoid trial. It's the biggest copyright settlement to date, except when divided by the number of works pirated, the figure comes out to roughly $3,000 per work. On Monday, a federal judge officially signed off on the settlement: Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary approval of the settlement last year, after ruling that Anthropic had illegally downloaded and stored millions of copyright books. Alsup has since retired and Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the settlement on Monday. The payout will deliver $3,000 per work across an estimated 500,000 works, shared among the authors and publishers who hold rights to them. While the settlement is believed to be the largest in the history of U.S. copyright law, many authors and creators still don't view it as a win. That's because of how the legal question was resolved. Alsup sided with Anthropic on the core issue. He ruled that training an AI model on copyrighted text counts as fair use -- a decision widely seen as a turning point for the AI industry. But the ruling didn't excuse how Anthropic obtained the books in the first place. Anthropic had built its training library from two sources: books it purchased and scanned (fine), and books it downloaded from pirate sites like Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror. Alsup found the second method illegal on its own terms and said that piracy question could go to trial; Anthropic agreed to a settlement soon after to avoid a trial and whatever damages a jury might have awarded. While the final approval closes out this case, it doesn't settle the legal question industrywide because Alsup's ruling was a single district court decision, and Anthropic's decision to settle means the case will never reach an appeals court to become binding precedent. Other judges are still free to reach their own conclusions on their own facts, which is exactly what's playing out elsewhere. There is still a string of copyright lawsuits against companies such as Google, Meta, Midjourney, and OpenAI over whether it's legal to train AI models on copyrighted works. Just last week, a group of publishers and authors, including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, author Scott Turow, and S.C.R.I.B.E. filed a class action lawsuit against Google over accusations that the company used their copyrighted works to train its AI platform, Gemini. [From TechCrunch] And yet another reason to despise AI: they can make a record $1.5 BILLION settlement feel like chump change. But wait, it gets more fraught! One of the big winners out of this settlement is British publisher Bloomsbury; they have claimed 14,087 separate works which were pirated, which translates to a whopping $19 million. 10% of that big pay day will cover lawyer fees, and then the rest gets split between Bloomsbury and the authors. Guess what one of Bloomsbury's biggest titles is? The Harry Potter series. If JK Rowling ends up getting a fat check out of this, I swear to Hermes, Apollo, and all the Muses, I will throw a Homeric-caliber epic fit!
Charles Schwab Says Retail Investing Boom Powered by More Than SpaceX IPO Trading Bump
Concerned about an AI bubble? Sign up for The Daily Upside for smart and actionable market news, built for investors. SpaceX got credit for breaking a lot of records in its market debut last month, including completing the largest-ever public offering and minting the first-ever trillionaire CEO. But while the IPO was one of the busiest trading days in Charles Schwab's 55-year history, the investing giant is not letting Elon Musk's rocket company steal all the thunder of its second-quarter earnings beat. On Tuesday, Schwab posted earnings per share of $1.62 for its second quarter, a jump from $1.14 at the same time last year and above the $1.56 Wall Street was expecting. Revenue hit a record $7.1 billion, also above the $6.9 billion analysts estimated. Customers opened 1.4 million new brokerage accounts in the quarter, and daily average trades hit a record 11.9 million. While Schwab CEO Rick Wurster conceded that SpaceX's IPO fueled strong customer activity during the quarter, he said key factors in the firm's profit and sales growth were expansion of its customer base and broadly heightened excitement about investing. "It's a more structural trend of people more interested in investing than they've ever been," Wurster told CNBC. Sign up for The Daily Upside at no cost for premium analysis on all your favorite stocks. READ ALSO: Kalshi Bets Election Fever Will Drive Platform Growth and Google Touts Flashy Plan for Cheaper AI as Capital Spending Reaches $45 Billion Retail Boom Retail investing interest has been surging for years, with the GameStop investing frenzy, soaring prices of stocks like Tesla during the onset of the pandemic and the most recent boom in AI stocks as just a few examples. That's in part due to a market that keeps rising, low barriers to entry (zero commissions are now the norm) and the fact that people are investing younger and staying invested, Wurster said. He also gave insight into how everyday investors are positioned nowadays: * Retail investors are buying the dip, with more buying on down days than up days, Wurster said. They're bullish and wealthier, based on Schwab's data on total client assets, plus they're more interested in tax strategies. * They also gravitate toward the part of the market with the most momentum, Gavin Filmore, CEO of white-label ETF platform Tidal Financial Group, told The Daily Upside. "We've even seen some of the fast-money crowd shift from crypto into AI as those opportunities have evolved." Another Earnings Beat: Interactive Brokers reported earnings of 69 cents per share and net revenue of $1.90 billion for the quarter, also beating analysts' expectations. Like Schwab, it's welcoming newbies: The firm reported 34% year-over-year growth in customer accounts. Robinhood, the Reddit crowd's favorite trading app, is set to report earnings next week. This post first appeared on The Daily Upside. To receive razor sharp analysis and perspective on all things finance, economics, and markets, subscribe to our free The Daily Upside newsletter.
Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5-billion settlement with authors
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion to authors whose pirated books it used to train its AI in the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Oakland granted final approval of the settlement Monday. The record payout was a modest win for copyright holders, setting a precedent as a wave of AI-related lawsuits works its way through courts. Although the judge said Anthropic could use authors' works for training, he backed the payout for acquiring and storing pirated books. More than 500,000 authors and publishers were part of the class-action lawsuit, and they will get paid an estimated $3,000 per eligible work. Their lawyers were awarded $101.6 million in fees. In 2024, a group of authors sued Anthropic, arguing that the company pirated hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books and used them without permission. U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who initially pronounced his judgment in June last year, offered a partial victory for the authors. The court found the use of books to train AI was allowed under fair-use norms, but the manner in which Anthropic acquired them -- downloading millions of books from pirated libraries without permission -- was not. The problem was not that Anthropic had used books to train its model, but rather that it used them without permission or regular payment. "Two years after we filed, the settlement for our class-action lawsuit got final approval," Andrea Bartz, best-selling author and one of the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a post on Instagram. "As I've been saying from the start, this is an important first step toward accountability for Big AI's breathtaking theft." She added: "I'm glad authors and publishers could tell Anthropic the obvious: You can't steal our stuff!" This lawsuit is one of many filed by copyright owners over alleged unauthorized use of their work to train large language models. Some 350 authors in the Anthropic lawsuit opted out of the settlement, with some expressing objections and betting they can recover significantly more through individual litigation. What constitutes "fair use" of copyrighted works for training an AI model remains contentious. While wholesale plagiarism and the copying of large sections of someone's content without permission or acknowledgment of the original source is not allowed, learning from and citing others as well as sharing samples of their work is often considered fair use. What AI does with words it devours is different from just copying and regurgitating the content verbatim, so many people consider it fair use. The technology underlying chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT uses patterns in data by analyzing vast quantities of digital text and video from the internet. Tech companies extract information from books, news articles and Wikipedia pages, which copyright holders said is often done without consent, compensation or control over how it is used. In U.S. copyright law, the benchmark for using a copyrighted work without permission is to examine whether it is transformative, adding significant extra value to the output, rather than merely copying the work. "The use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use," Alsup noted in his earlier judgment. Anthropic also purchased millions of print copies in bulk, stripped the books' bindings and made scanned digital copies that were used to train Claude. This print-to-digital format change was also fair use, the judge ruled. "The fight over whether AI training is fair use is yesterday's war," James Rubinowitz, an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law, said in a statement. The Anthropic judgment ruled that training on lawfully acquired books is "quintessentially transformative." "The live question in 2026 is acquisition: where the books came from, who paid for them, and what the company knew about their provenance when it hit download," he said. The debate will continue in the courts, which are also looking at other copyrighted works such as news articles and movies. The New York Times has a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft for training on copyrighted news pieces, and Disney and Universal have sued image generation company Midjourney for training on allegedly unauthorized content and creating reproductions of famous characters.
White House accuses China's Moonshot of stealing Anthropic AI
A top White House official on Wednesday accused Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI of covertly copying Anthropic's most advanced model to build its Kimi K3. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in a post on X that the United States had information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable for the development of its K3 model. Distillation is a technique in which a smaller AI model is trained to mimic the outputs of a larger, more capable one. The method is widely used across the industry, but US officials say Chinese firms have deployed it at scale to illicitly copy proprietary American systems. Kratsios said Moonshot built a sophisticated internal platform to conduct large-scale distillation against U.S. models, which allowed the company to quickly switch between multiple methods of access to avoid detection. He added that Moonshot had also acquired servers equipped with Nvidia's advanced GB300 chips and had accessed GB300-equipped servers in Thailand, likely to train its AI models -- implying a workaround of US export controls that restrict Chinese access to top-tier American semiconductors. Kratsios did not indicate what consequences the company may face. But on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said foreign companies could be sanctioned for stealing US technology, without offering more details. If we see, especially that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft, Bessent told Fox Business on Tuesday. Bessent specifically referred to the distillation process, saying US authorities were finding watermarks of our US large language models on many of the Chinese models, and that's unacceptable. We're going to be looking at that in the coming days or weeks, he said.
Anthropic joins UK FCA's Supercharged Sandbox AI testing programme
Anthropic is set to work with the second intake of companies in the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Supercharged Sandbox, a programme created to let firms test advanced artificial intelligence in a controlled setting. Under the arrangement, participants will be given access to Claude, as well as Claude Code and Claude Cowork, to support their development activity. The FCA introduced the Supercharged Sandbox in 2025 for firms at the discovery and trial stage of AI adoption, with the aim of allowing them to assess the technology within defined safeguards. The second intake will examine several possible applications for AI. These include tools for safer agent-led payments and commerce, improved detection of fraud and economic crime, stronger governance and accountability around AI, broader access to financial services for vulnerable and underserved customers, and more efficient compliance and business processes. The group will consist of 21 organisations, among them Scottish Widows, Money Advice Trust and TrueLayer. The regulator said demand remained strong, with applications up 51% from the first intake. The Sandbox adds to existing backing from NayaOne and NVIDIA. Separately, the FCA has started the Agentic Academy, a 10-week specialist AI course for selected firms run with the Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE). FCA chief data, intelligence and information officer Jessica Rusu said: "The high level of interest in the Supercharged Sandbox demonstrates the demand for trusted environments where firms can experiment safely and responsibly. With the support of Anthropic, participants will benefit from the technology they need to accelerate innovation. "This is central to our commitment to supporting economic growth - enabling firms to make the most of technological advances while maintaining the UK's position at the forefront of responsible AI adoption and innovation."
Elon Musk reopens SpaceX-Tesla merger talk: "more and more overlap"
No deal announced, but chips, batteries and Starlink already connect them On Tesla's Q2 2026 earnings call, Elon Musk brought the idea of a Tesla-SpaceX merger back into the conversation. He said the two companies have "more and more overlap," and added that any combination would have to go through an "appropriate process." He didn't announce a transaction. Still, the market reaction makes sense. Earlier this year, SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal that valued the combined business at roughly $1.25 trillion, and Deepwater's Gene Munster raised his estimate of the odds of a merger happening in the next few years from 80% to 90%. And the overlap isn't hypothetical. Tesla and SpaceX are already tied together in a few concrete ways. They're working on Terafab, a Texas chip venture with Intel, aimed at Tesla vehicles, SpaceX spacecraft, and Tesla Optimus robots. Tesla supplies batteries to SpaceX. Starlink , meanwhile, is being built into Tesla vehicles. That's why people who follow either company are paying attention. Backers of a deal think a single structure could pull together automotive, energy, robotics, connectivity, manufacturing, and space under one roof. It would also be enormous, and complicated. SpaceX's June 2026 IPO raised $75 billion, valued the company at $1.77 trillion, and then sent it to about $2.1 trillion on its first day of trading. Tesla, for its part, was valued between $1.23 trillion and $1.48 trillion in July 2026. So yes, the latest round of merger talk starts with Musk's comments on the earnings call. But the hard questions are still there: China, governance, competition, and what all of this would mean for employees.
AMD and Anthropic partner on 2GW AI GPU deployment
AMD and Anthropic have unveiled a strategic partnership that combines a massive AI infrastructure deployment with a multi-year engineering collaboration, strengthening AMD's position in the fast-growing AI compute market. The agreement will see Anthropic deploy up to 2GW of AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs in AMD Helios rack-scale systems, with the first gigawatt scheduled to come online in the first half of 2027. AMD also plans to make a strategic equity investment of up to $5 billion in Anthropic. For eeNews Europe readers, the announcement highlights how AI infrastructure is evolving from individual accelerators to full rack-scale platforms that combine processors, networking and software. It also underlines the growing importance of open AI software ecosystems as chip vendors compete for hyperscale AI deployments. Helios deployment targets AI scaling The deployment comes as demand for AI training and inference capacity continues to accelerate. Anthropic is expanding its computing infrastructure to support increasing use of its Claude AI models, with the new deployment representing one of AMD's largest AI infrastructure wins to date. Anthropic will deploy AMD Helios systems built around AMD Instinct MI455X GPUs from the MI450 Series, alongside AMD EPYC "Venice" CPUs, Pensando networking technology and ROCm software. The rack-scale platform supports large-scale AI training and inference workloads and builds on Anthropic's existing use of AMD Instinct MI355X GPUs. The scale of the deployment is significant, positioning AMD as a stronger competitor in the market for hyperscale AI infrastructure, where demand for compute capacity continues to outpace supply. Engineering partnership extends beyond hardware Alongside the hardware deployment, the companies will collaborate on software development. Anthropic's Claude AI assistant will be used to help optimise workloads running on AMD Instinct GPUs and accelerate development of AMD's ROCm software platform. AMD also plans to adopt Claude more broadly across its engineering and product development teams. AMD's planned equity investment of up to $5 billion further reinforces the long-term nature of the partnership. "We are thrilled to deepen our partnership with Anthropic and deploy AMD Helios at gigawatt scale," said Dr. Lisa Su, chair and CEO, AMD. "This collaboration brings together Anthropic's leadership in frontier AI with the full strength of AMD high-performance computing. Together, we will accelerate AI adoption at scale and establish Helios as a major platform for the next generation of AI infrastructure." "Access to compute is central to keeping Claude at the frontier and meeting demand from our customers," said Tom Brown, co-founder and chief compute officer, Anthropic. "By partnering with AMD across the stack, we are securing the capacity we need and optimizing it for training and serving Claude. Running across a diversified range of hardware lets us map the right workloads to the right hardware." The announcement reflects a broader shift in the AI market, where chip suppliers are increasingly competing with integrated hardware and software platforms rather than standalone processors. For AMD, securing a multi-gigawatt deployment and a deeper software partnership with Anthropic marks another step in expanding its presence in the AI infrastructure ecosystem.
