News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
SpaceX IPO earns millions for US Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) - U.S. Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler multiplied the value of her investment in Elon Musk's SpaceX after she was nominated for the job, earning millions of dollars from the company's record initial public offering, a Reuters review of her financial disclosures showed. Loeffler invested between $1 million and $5 million as of January 3, 2025, in xAI, Musk's AI and social media firm that has since merged with SpaceX (SPCX.O), opens new tab, according to a required financial disclosure submitted before she became SBA's administrator. Later in 2025, Loeffler invested again in SpaceX and xAI between $1 million and $5 million, according to a separate financial disclosure covering her investments for all of 2025 that she signed on May 14, 2026. Reuters obtained the form from the SBA on June 12. Loeffler's second investment has not been previously reported. Two independent government ethics attorneys agreed with Reuters' assessment of Loeffler's disclosure. Cabinet members use ranges to declare the value of their assets on their required financial disclosure forms, and they do not disclose the dates of their investments before taking office. SpaceX is a military contractor for the U.S. government. Federal law, opens new tab prohibits cabinet members from participating in decisions involving a company in which they have a financial interest. Public records do not show a financial relationship between SBA and xAI or SpaceX. xAI was not included on the public list of AI tools, opens new tab used by SBA employees in 2025. Loeffler and her team did not respond to multiple requests for comment about her SpaceX investment. VALUE OF SPACEX INVESTMENT SOARS Loeffler's bet on SpaceX paid off. The company priced the biggest-ever U.S. IPO on June 12, valuing the space, satellite and AI provider at $1.77 trillion. Her first investment in xAI would have been worth between $7 million and $2.6 billion on the day of the IPO, depending on the exact amount she invested and the date she made it, said Franco Granda, analyst at data provider PitchBook. The second investment would have been worth between $2.2 million and $25.4 million that day, he said. The earlier the investment, the more it would have been worth at the IPO, he said. xAI's valuation increased by more than 7,000% between its first investment round and January 5, 2025. SpaceX's valuation more than doubled in 2025. At least 10 Trump administration officials listed investments in SpaceX or xAI on their 2025 financial disclosure forms. None of those officials works for the Defense Department. Billionaire Musk, a former Trump adviser, is the founder and CEO of SpaceX. Loeffler initially invested in xAI via a private placement, according to her disclosure form. Private placements are typically open to select individuals and institutions with significant financial resources. Loeffler is a wealthy businesswoman. She was the founding chief executive at Bakkt, a bitcoin trading platform, and spent 16 years working at Intercontinental Exchange, the firm that owns the New York Stock Exchange, according to her LinkedIn profile. She is married to Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher. Loeffler briefly represented Georgia in the Senate. The SBA helps entrepreneurs start and build their small businesses, according to the agency website. It connects business owners with lenders and funding to help them recover from natural disasters, among other responsibilities. The Senate confirmed Loeffler as SBA administrator on February 19, 2025. Reporting by Courtney Rozen Editing by Chris Sanders and Rod Nickel Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Courtney Rozen Thomson Reuters Courtney Rozen reports on the world's largest technology companies from Washington, D.C., focusing on the relationship between the tech industry and the U.S. government. She reported on DOGE and the federal workforce during the first year of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term. Prior to joining Reuters, she was a White House correspondent at Bloomberg Government. She graduated from American University with a master's degree in journalism.
JPMorgan CEO Dimon says Anthropic's Mythos AI risks are a 'real issue'
July 15 (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), opens new tab CEO Jamie Dimon said on Wednesday that risks posed by Anthropic's Mythos AI model are a "real issue" that the U.S. government is on top of, underscoring concerns about the powerful model that have caused Washington to intervene. Dimon, speaking at Senator Dave McCormick's Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, added that access to advanced AI capabilities must be controlled, saying "you're giving ballistic missiles to individuals with Mythos." U.S.-based Anthropic released Mythos in April to a select group that included JPMorgan. The model has attracted interest from banks because it is considered among the most advanced AI systems for identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities, helping firms uncover and fix weaknesses more quickly. However, in June, the U.S. government ordered Anthropic to restrict access to its top AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, to foreign nationals over national security concerns, forcing the company to cut off worldwide access. The government later removed restrictions on the models after Anthropic implemented new safeguards. Governments and tech companies are grappling with AI safety concerns, including the misuse of systems capable of identifying software vulnerabilities. Washington has stepped up oversight of new model releases amid fears that advanced AI could be exploited by military intelligence in China, Russia or other countries of concern. Anthropic could not be immediately reached for comment on Dimon's remarks outside regular business hours. Reporting by Mihika Sharma in Bengaluru and Mrinmay Dey in Mexico; Editing by Rashmi Aich Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
SpaceX's slide risks turning blockbuster IPO into confidence test
NEW YORK, July 15 (Reuters) - SpaceX's (SPCX.O), opens new tab slip close to its initial public offering price risks turning a marquee stock-market debut into a confidence test, potentially unsettling retail investors and complicating decisions for other companies weighing high-profile listings. Elon Musk's company, spanning rockets to AI, debuted on June 12 and soared in the ensuing days, at one point valuing the company at well above $2 trillion. Since then, trading has been rocky. The stock has slipped below its $150 opening price, but remained above the $135 offer price, with concerns about lofty tech stock valuations continuing to weigh on global indexes. SpaceX shares are at risk of falling below that level. They ended on Tuesday down 2.2% at $136.08, their lowest closing level since the IPO, a week after they started trading as part of the Nasdaq 100 index <.NDX, opens new tab>. The stock dipped as low as $135.52. A break below the IPO price would be a psychological blow for SpaceX shares, said Matthew Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak. "It raises the narrative that the stock is up on fluff, on speculation, on froth, and not on real fundamentals," Maley said. Investors who bought into the excitement around SpaceX's listing, "hoping to 'make a killing' will be disappointed," said Greg Halter, director of research at Carnegie Investment Counsel. He said weakness in SpaceX would put it more in line with 30 years of heavily hyped IPOs, where average and median returns over the first month are often negative. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. PRICE DISCOVERY NOT PANIC? A drop below the IPO price would not be unusual for a newly listed company. Shares of Cerebras Systems, which went public in May, have dropped below the IPO price, and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, fell similarly after its debut. Investors often fixate on IPO prices and early trading, said Ryan Lee, senior vice president of product and strategy at financial services firm Direxion. "The reality is, (SpaceX) is still undergoing some of this price discovery process," Lee said. A fall for SpaceX below $135 would reflect "normal, albeit painful" market mechanics, especially as investors, venture capitalists and employees sell shares after lockups expire, said Gabriel Shahin, CEO at Falcon Wealth Planning. "A near-term dip below the $135 threshold would not fundamentally alter our current positioning or cause us to panic-sell," he said. CAUTION OR GREEN LIGHT FOR NEXT IPOS Some investors think SpaceX's stock performance could influence the market for future public listings. OpenAI and Anthropic are eyeing the public markets. Neither company responded to a request for comment. Carnegie's Halter said companies and investment banks considering large IPOs this year are watching SpaceX closely. "No one wants an IPO to flop or have the initial price be ratcheted down," Halter said. He suspects some IPOs would be pulled rather than priced at lower valuations. But Direxion's Lee said SpaceX's capital raise could encourage some companies with large funding needs to move faster. "If I'm OpenAI or if I'm Anthropic and I'm in this true arms race to build the frontier AI model and I need capital, I'm going to try to beat the other one out the door," Lee said. RISKING RETAIL TRADERS' SKEPTICISM A drop below the IPO price could hit retail investors, who received about 20% of the allocation, hard. "Many novice investors have approached SpaceX with a 'meme stock' mentality, buying in with capital they cannot afford to lose," Shahin said, warning that losses could fuel perceptions that markets favor insiders. "The market needs to understand that post-IPO volatility is normal." SpaceX's first earnings report will be a major test for the stock. Underwriters typically support stocks in the first 30 days and may do more for SpaceX given the deal's size, the public attention and the fact other high-profile offerings are imminent, said Maria Llerena, director of financial research at Domini Impact Investments. "Loss-making companies without a clear path to profitability are typically volatile and can fall below their IPO price," said Llerena. Reporting by Laura Matthews in New York; Additional reporting by Lewis Krauskopf in New York; editing by Megan Davies and Rod Nickel Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Pollution from Musk's unpermitted xAI power project hits hardest in Black communities
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has installed 59 natural gas turbines for its Colossus 2 data center project in Tennessee without securing federal clean air permits, according to communications between regulators and xAI representatives. Potential emissions from the turbines are far beyond the threshold that would require a federal permit, and would be released near predominantly Black communities already estimated to be suffering disproportionately high rates of lung disease, according to a Reuters analysis based on government data and information in the correspondence with regulators. The findings, which have not been previously reported, reflect how exploding electricity demand from AI data centers is driving companies to build off-grid power plants at a pace outstripping environmental oversight, with potentially big risks to public health. The number of unpermitted turbines identified by Reuters is about double what xAI has publicly acknowledged. The company previously said it was running 27 unpermitted turbines for Colossus 2 as of January and has argued the permits are not required. At least 57 of the 59 turbines are located in Mississippi, just over the state line from Tennessee where the data center is located. The xAI turbines are among scores of off-grid power plants for data centers proposed or under construction around the country. Local authorities often fast-track approvals in just weeks or months, without the years of environmental studies and public hearings typically required for such power generation projects that connect to the grid, Reuters has reported. Item 1 of 7 The entrance to xAI's gas turbine facility in Southaven, Mississippi, U.S., May 30, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Wurm [1/7]The entrance to xAI's gas turbine facility in Southaven, Mississippi, U.S., May 30, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Wurm Mississippi regulators in March issued a permit for permanent turbines for Colossus 2, allowing construction of 41 gas-fired turbines. The approval came three weeks after the state's only public hearing on the project. The xAI cluster of temporary turbines in Mississippi is already among the biggest off-grid data center power projects, according to Ben King, an analyst with think tank Rhodium Group, who reviewed the Reuters analysis. "This looks to be an unprecedented level of behind-the-meter gas being installed in one place," he said, referring to off-grid natural gas plants serving just one customer. The communications reviewed by Reuters show xAI, now owned by trillionaire Musk's SpaceX, has installed 57 off-grid turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, just across the state line from its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, a facility supporting the Grok chatbot and other AI systems. The records show the company has also installed two other unpermitted turbines for the project on a different site. Reuters could not determine the location. The communications, obtained through a Reuters public records request, included emails between Trinity Consultants, representing xAI and subsidiary MZX Tech, and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). xAI did not respond to Reuters' request for comment. xAI's turbines are part of a widening environmental justice battle over whether the AI boom is adding disproportionate pollution burdens to communities of color. Civil rights groups including the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center sued xAI in April to halt their operations, arguing the turbines produce emissions subject to the federal Clean Air Act and shouldn't be operated without permits. They contend the turbines are polluting homes, schools and churches in historically Black communities. "The scale of it is astonishing," said Patrick Anderson, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. "This is an absolutely huge Clean Air Act violation that threatens public health." Securing a Clean Air Act permit would have exposed xAI's project to extensive review and public comment, potentially taking years. Mississippi environmental regulators and xAI have argued in court filings that the turbines are exempt because they are "mobile" and intended to operate onsite for less than a year. "MDEQ has determined that portable/temporary turbines do not require an air permit," the agency said in a statement to Reuters. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in January 2026 that even temporary turbines exceeding emissions thresholds must obtain permits. The agency, however, told Reuters it's considering changes allowing "regulatory flexibilities" for portable units while continuing to protect public health. xAI, the MDEQ and the EPA did not answer questions from Reuters about pollution impacts on communities of color from power generation to serve data centers. The U.S. Justice Department weighed in on the lawsuit in a June 15 filing, saying that restricting the turbines could threaten national security interests because xAI's systems support U.S. military operations, including operations involving Iran. The outcome of the lawsuit filed by civil rights groups could help define how environmental laws apply to the fast-growing AI sector, where companies are scrambling to bring power supplies online to support energy-intensive computing. "This sets up scenarios where the government can create sacrifice zones and tell communities they have to breathe illegal air pollution," said Mary Rock, a senior attorney for Earthjustice which is representing the NAACP and SELC. The dispute echoes the findings of a 2022 study by researchers from UCLA and Columbia University and published in the Nature Energy journal that found that previously redlined communities - where banks historically discriminated against Black mortgage applicants - now face disproportionately high exposure to pollutants from fossil fuel facilities. "Air pollution from these and other sources contributes to systemic racial disparities in chronic disease and ultimately shorter lives," Lara Cushing, a UCLA public health professor who co-authored the study, told Reuters. BIG EMISSIONS The emails reviewed by Reuters included the manufacturer emissions profiles for 32 of the 59 turbines, including 30 at the Southaven site. A Reuters analysis based on that information found that those 30 turbines alone could emit nearly 2,500 short tons of nitrogen oxide, 4,000 short tons of carbon monoxide and 22 short tons of formaldehyde annually, assuming they operate continuously at 80% of capacity. According to the EPA, gas turbines are typically operated at loads of 80% or more to achieve efficiency. Nitrogen oxides contribute to smog and respiratory inflammation, according to the American Lung Association. Carbon monoxide deprives the body of oxygen, and formaldehyde is a carcinogen. The xAI site's potential emissions far exceed a Clean Air Act threshold that requires permitting for facilities capable of more than 100 short tons annually of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide. "This is a massive amount of turbines and an unfathomable amount of air pollution," Southaven resident Shannon Samsa said in an interview. "It's not a hypothetical," she said, "that air pollution is bad for you." The nitrogen oxide emissions calculated by Reuters for about half the plant's turbines would put the facility "up there with some of the heaviest polluting natural gas power plants across the entire country," said Nicholas Mailloux, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies air quality and health benefits of the clean-energy transition. He said the facility would be on par with the top 25 U.S. gas plants for nitrogen oxide emissions, citing EPA data for actual emissions. THE PEOPLE AFFECTED In the Colonial Hills neighborhood of Southaven, the turbines serving Colossus 2 can be heard around the clock, often firing off noisy bursts that residents compare to jet engines. Ervin Laws, a Colonial Hills resident in his 20s, said the noise wakes him up at night. "I can't do anything about it, because he's got more money than me," he said, referring to Musk. The turbines were installed in communities already estimated to be facing relatively high respiratory disease burdens, according to a Reuters analysis of CDC data. In 27 of 28 census tracts within five miles of the site - spanning both Mississippi and Tennessee - the estimated asthma rates were higher than their respective countywide figures. In 24 tracts, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease rates were also higher. Five miles is a distance commonly used in environmental health research to capture populations likely to be exposed to air pollution from a stationary source. A separate Reuters analysis of Census Bureau data found that the residents living near the facility are disproportionately Black. Because the five-mile radius crosses state lines, Reuters compared each side against its own county baseline. Within five miles of the facility in DeSoto county, Mississippi - where the turbines are located - about 46% of residents are Black, compared with 33% countywide, according to census data. Across the state line in Tennessee, where residents have no say in Mississippi's permitting process, about 94% of residents within five miles of the facility are Black, compared to 52% in surrounding Shelby County. Jayajit Chakraborty, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said the Reuters analysis was consistent with research that shows communities of color face higher exposure to fossil fuel pollution. Shelby County and portions of DeSoto County have also previously failed to meet federal ozone standards and remain subject to EPA-approved plans to ensure they do not slip back into violation, according to regulatory documents. Nitrogen oxide is a key precursor to ozone formation, which the EPA says can harm respiratory health. "Given this community struggles with high asthma rates, additional NOx exposure at such high rates could exacerbate public health issues in a community that is already seeing more than its fair share of exposure to toxic air pollution," said Victoria Nelson, an independent environmental engineer, formerly at EPA. Sarah Gladney, 72, has watched the rapid expansion of xAI's Memphis-area presence from her home in the historically Black neighborhood of Boxtown, a few miles from where the company built its Colossus 1 data center in 2024. "Once they got their foot in the door in Memphis, I feel like it's going to be a continuous movement of xAI into these other communities," she said. "It's all about the money, and it's not about the health or wellness of the people that live in or near these communities." Reporting by Disha Raychaudhuri and Valerie Volcovici; photos by Kevin Wurm; editing by David Gaffen, Kat Stafford, Ben Lesser and Richard Valdmanis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * World Disha Raychaudhuri Thomson Reuters Disha is a data journalist based in Washington, D.C., covering global inequality, race and social justice issues. She joined Reuters in 2020 as a data journalist on the legal news team where she covered a wide range of topics including bankruptcy, opioid settlements and the legislative push to restrict transgender healthcare in the US. Prior to joining Reuters she was a data reporter at The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. Contact: [email protected] Valerie Volcovici Thomson Reuters Valerie Volcovici covers U.S. climate and energy policy from Washington, DC. She is focused on climate and environmental regulations at federal agencies and in Congress and how the energy transition is transforming the United States. Other areas of coverage include her award-winning reporting plastic pollution and the ins and outs of global climate diplomacy and United Nations climate negotiations.
Insight: Pollution from Musk's unpermitted xAI power project hits hardest in Black communities
July 14 (Reuters) - Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has installed 59 natural gas turbines for its Colossus 2 data center project in Tennessee without securing federal clean air permits, according to communications between regulators and xAI representatives. Potential emissions from the turbines are far beyond the threshold that would require a federal permit, and would be released near predominantly Black communities already estimated to be suffering disproportionately high rates of lung disease, according to a Reuters analysis based on government data and information in the correspondence with regulators. The findings, which have not been previously reported, reflect how exploding electricity demand from AI data centers is driving companies to build off-grid power plants at a pace outstripping environmental oversight, with potentially big risks to public health. The number of unpermitted turbines identified by Reuters is about double what xAI has publicly acknowledged. The company previously said it was running 27 unpermitted turbines for Colossus 2 as of January and has argued the permits are not required. At least 57 of the 59 turbines are located in Mississippi, just over the state line from Tennessee where the data center is located. The xAI turbines are among scores of off-grid power plants for data centers proposed or under construction around the country. Local authorities often fast-track approvals in just weeks or months, without the years of environmental studies and public hearings typically required for such power generation projects that connect to the grid, Reuters has reported. Mississippi regulators in March issued a permit for permanent turbines for Colossus 2, allowing construction of 41 gas-fired turbines. The approval came three weeks after the state's only public hearing on the project. The xAI cluster of temporary turbines in Mississippi is already among the biggest off-grid data center power projects, according to Ben King, an analyst with think tank Rhodium Group, who reviewed the Reuters analysis. "This looks to be an unprecedented level of behind-the-meter gas being installed in one place," he said, referring to off-grid natural gas plants serving just one customer. The communications reviewed by Reuters show xAI, now owned by trillionaire Musk's SpaceX (SPCX.O), opens new tab, has installed 57 off-grid turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, just across the state line from its Colossus 2 data center in Memphis, a facility supporting the Grok chatbot and other AI systems. The records show the company has also installed two other unpermitted turbines for the project on a different site. Reuters could not determine the location. The communications, obtained through a Reuters public records request, included emails between Trinity Consultants, representing xAI and subsidiary MZX Tech, and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ). xAI did not respond to Reuters' request for comment. xAI's turbines are part of a widening environmental justice battle over whether the AI boom is adding disproportionate pollution burdens to communities of color. Civil rights groups including the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center sued xAI in April to halt their operations, arguing the turbines produce emissions subject to the federal Clean Air Act and shouldn't be operated without permits. They contend the turbines are polluting homes, schools and churches in historically Black communities. "The scale of it is astonishing," said Patrick Anderson, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. "This is an absolutely huge Clean Air Act violation that threatens public health." Securing a Clean Air Act permit would have exposed xAI's project to extensive review and public comment, potentially taking years. Mississippi environmental regulators and xAI have argued in court filings that the turbines are exempt because they are "mobile" and intended to operate onsite for less than a year. "MDEQ has determined that portable/temporary turbines do not require an air permit," the agency said in a statement to Reuters. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in January 2026 that even temporary turbines exceeding emissions thresholds must obtain permits. The agency, however, told Reuters it's considering changes allowing "regulatory flexibilities" for portable units while continuing to protect public health. xAI, the MDEQ and the EPA did not answer questions from Reuters about pollution impacts on communities of color from power generation to serve data centers. The U.S. Justice Department weighed in on the lawsuit in a June 15 filing, saying that restricting the turbines could threaten national security interests because xAI's systems support U.S. military operations, including operations involving Iran. The outcome of the lawsuit filed by civil rights groups could help define how environmental laws apply to the fast-growing AI sector, where companies are scrambling to bring power supplies online to support energy-intensive computing. "This sets up scenarios where the government can create sacrifice zones and tell communities they have to breathe illegal air pollution," said Mary Rock, a senior attorney for Earthjustice which is representing the NAACP and SELC. The dispute echoes the findings of a 2022 study, opens new tab by researchers from UCLA and Columbia University and published in the Nature Energy journal that found that previously redlined communities - where banks historically discriminated against Black mortgage applicants - now face disproportionately high exposure to pollutants from fossil fuel facilities. "Air pollution from these and other sources contributes to systemic racial disparities in chronic disease and ultimately shorter lives," Lara Cushing, a UCLA public health professor who co-authored the study, told Reuters. BIG EMISSIONS The emails reviewed by Reuters included the manufacturer emissions profiles for 32 of the 59 turbines, including 30 at the Southaven site. A Reuters analysis based on that information found that those 30 turbines alone could emit nearly 2,500 short tons of nitrogen oxide, 4,000 short tons of carbon monoxide and 22 short tons of formaldehyde annually, assuming they operate continuously at 80% of capacity. According to the EPA, gas turbines are typically operated at loads of 80% or more to achieve efficiency. Nitrogen oxides contribute to smog and respiratory inflammation, according to the American Lung Association. Carbon monoxide deprives the body of oxygen, and formaldehyde is a carcinogen. The xAI site's potential emissions far exceed a Clean Air Act threshold that requires permitting for facilities capable of more than 100 short tons annually of pollutants such as nitrogen oxide. "This is a massive amount of turbines and an unfathomable amount of air pollution," Southaven resident Shannon Samsa said in an interview. "It's not a hypothetical," she said, "that air pollution is bad for you." The nitrogen oxide emissions calculated by Reuters for about half the plant's turbines would put the facility "up there with some of the heaviest polluting natural gas power plants across the entire country," said Nicholas Mailloux, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies air quality and health benefits of the clean-energy transition. He said the facility would be on par with the top 25 U.S. gas plants for nitrogen oxide emissions, citing EPA data, opens new tab for actual emissions. THE PEOPLE AFFECTED In the Colonial Hills neighborhood of Southaven, the turbines serving Colossus 2 can be heard around the clock, often firing off noisy bursts that residents compare to jet engines. Ervin Laws, a Colonial Hills resident in his 20s, said the noise wakes him up at night. "I can't do anything about it, because he's got more money than me," he said, referring to Musk. The turbines were installed in communities already estimated to be facing relatively high respiratory disease burdens, according to a Reuters analysis of CDC data. In 27 of 28 census tracts within five miles of the site - spanning both Mississippi and Tennessee - the estimated asthma rates were higher than their respective countywide figures. In 24 tracts, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease rates were also higher. Five miles is a distance commonly used in environmental health research to capture populations likely to be exposed to air pollution from a stationary source. A separate Reuters analysis of Census Bureau data found that the residents living near the facility are disproportionately Black. Because the five-mile radius crosses state lines, Reuters compared each side against its own county baseline. Within five miles of the facility in DeSoto county, Mississippi - where the turbines are located - about 46% of residents are Black, compared with 33% countywide, according to census data. Across the state line in Tennessee, where residents have no say in Mississippi's permitting process, about 94% of residents within five miles of the facility are Black, compared to 52% in surrounding Shelby County. Jayajit Chakraborty, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said the Reuters analysis was consistent with research that shows communities of color face higher exposure to fossil fuel pollution. Shelby County and portions of DeSoto County have also previously failed to meet federal ozone standards and remain subject to EPA-approved plans to ensure they do not slip back into violation, according to regulatory documents. Nitrogen oxide is a key precursor to ozone formation, which the EPA says can harm respiratory health. "Given this community struggles with high asthma rates, additional NOx exposure at such high rates could exacerbate public health issues in a community that is already seeing more than its fair share of exposure to toxic air pollution," said Victoria Nelson, an independent environmental engineer, formerly at EPA. Sarah Gladney, 72, has watched the rapid expansion of xAI's Memphis-area presence from her home in the historically Black neighborhood of Boxtown, a few miles from where the company built its Colossus 1 data center in 2024. "Once they got their foot in the door in Memphis, I feel like it's going to be a continuous movement of xAI into these other communities," she said. "It's all about the money, and it's not about the health or wellness of the people that live in or near these communities." Reporting by Disha Raychaudhuri and Valerie Volcovici; photos by Kevin Wurm; editing by David Gaffen, Kat Stafford, Ben Lesser and Richard Valdmanis Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Environment * Environmental Justice * Gas * Climate Change * Fuel Oil Disha Raychaudhuri Thomson Reuters Disha is a data journalist based in Washington, D.C., covering global inequality, race and social justice issues. She joined Reuters in 2020 as a data journalist on the legal news team where she covered a wide range of topics including bankruptcy, opioid settlements and the legislative push to restrict transgender healthcare in the US. Prior to joining Reuters she was a data reporter at The Star-Ledger in New Jersey. Contact: [email protected] Valerie Volcovici Thomson Reuters Valerie Volcovici covers U.S. climate and energy policy from Washington, DC. She is focused on climate and environmental regulations at federal agencies and in Congress and how the energy transition is transforming the United States. Other areas of coverage include her award-winning reporting plastic pollution and the ins and outs of global climate diplomacy and United Nations climate negotiations.
Wall Street warms to SpaceX ahead of Nasdaq 100 inclusion
July 7 (Reuters) - SpaceX's (SPCX.O), opens new tab addition to the Nasdaq 100 on Tuesday is expected to unleash billions in passive buying, as brokerages kick off coverage of the $2 trillion-plus rocket and satellite company with broadly bullish views. The company joins the index just 15 days after its stock market debut on June 12 - among the fastest inclusions ever - thanks to the Nasdaq's revised rules for newly listed companies looking to enter widely tracked benchmarks. Its debut in the tech-heavy index is set to create another source of demand for its shares as index funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to the Nasdaq 100 (.NDX), opens new tab will need to buy shares to match the benchmark's new composition. Active managers who track the index closely may also adjust their positions. Many retail investors prefer investing in funds to diversify their holdings. Over $587 billion is benchmarked in funds tracking the Nasdaq 100, including Invesco's QQQ (QQQ.O), opens new tab and QQQM (QQQM.O), opens new tab, which will now have to make room for SpaceX. J.P. Morgan estimated last month that SpaceX's addition to the index could draw $4.3 billion in passive inflows. QUIET PERIOD ENDS Investors are awaiting a wave of reports from Wall Street brokerages making their first attempt to value SpaceX as a publicly traded company, applying traditional valuation metrics to a business that's largely been assessed by investors' belief in Musk's long-term bets. The industry-mandated quiet period ends for analysts at banks that underwrote the blockbuster IPO - led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan. Both Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs started coverage on the stock on Tuesday with their top ratings, with Morgan Stanley dubbing the company "AI's final frontier." "We see the company as well-positioned to scale its differentiated advantages across space, connectivity, and AI," Goldman analysts said, betting each market has the potential to become a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity over a five-year-plus horizon. Brokerages RBC, Bernstein, and Stifel also initiated coverage with their top ratings, betting on the success of Starship, SpaceX's next-generation rocket that is designed to be fully reusable. "The Starship is the flywheel that powers SpaceX's ambitions," RBC analysts said. Earlier this month, Oppenheimer became the first to initiate coverage with an "outperform" rating. INVESTORS BET ON AI CAPABILITIES Investors are betting SpaceX can evolve into a hyperscale AI infrastructure provider in the near term, using cash generated to fund the development of Grok as it takes on OpenAI's GPT models and Anthropic's Claude. They also see significant room for Starlink to expand its dominance in satellite communications, while much of the company's longer-term ambitions depend on the successful development of its next-generation Starship rocket. However, not everyone is bullish on SpaceX. Morningstar analysts pegged the company's valuation at about $780 billion, citing uncertainty around its AI business, including xAI and social media platform X. With a market capitalization of $2.1 trillion, SpaceX is the sixth-largest U.S. company, and CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. FTSE Russell added the stock to its U.S. indexes last month, with funds such as iShares Russell 1000 ETF (IWB.P), opens new tab already giving investors a piece of the biggest IPO in U.S. history. However, S&P Global (SPGI.N), opens new tab declined to create a similar fast-track process for the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab in June, and it is expected to take at least a year before SpaceX joins the world's most widely tracked index. SpaceX shares have gained more than 6% since their debut in their short ride marked by post-IPO volatility. Reporting by Purvi Agarwal, Rashika Singh and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * U.S. Markets Rashika Singh Thomson Reuters Rashika reports on brokerages and financial markets, alongside technology and corporate developments for Reuters, with a focus on U.S. and global companies. Her coverage spans analyst actions, earnings-driven stock moves, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, aerospace and defense, and high‑growth technology stocks, often through breaking news and market‑moving "hot stock" coverage. Her reporting primarily appears in the Technology, Business, and Markets sections of the Reuters website and wire service, examining how brokerage research, corporate strategy and earnings influence investor sentiment and global competition. She regularly contributes to Reuters' spot and breaking‑news coverage, rather than a named column or standalone newsletter.
AI Weekly: Anthropic controls lifted, Meta in the clouds
AI Weekly: Anthropic controls lifted, Meta in the clouds From Anthropic's new AI models finally getting clearance from U.S. officials to Meta's big cloud move, Francis Maguire rounds up the big stories from the AI revolution.
A new, inexpensive Chinese AI model is catching up with Anthropic, OpenAI on their home turf
BEIJING/BENGALURU, July 2 (Reuters) - Since DeepSeek shocked markets early last year with its cheap but powerful AI model, global consumers have been faced with a choice: Chinese offerings with lower prices and less capability or OpenAI or Anthropic, which have poured billions into development. A model called GLM-5.2, launched last month by Beijing-based startup Z.ai, may finally be closing that gap in terms of Western interest. GLM-5.2 has Silicon Valley buzzing with its coding and agent capabilities, or the ability to execute complex tasks with minimal prompting, that almost rival leading U.S. offerings at a fraction of the cost, in what some experts are calling a "mini DeepSeek moment." It has quickly climbed the usage charts on third-party AI developer platforms like OpenRouter, where it now ranks above Anthropic's models, while executives from cloud data platform Snowflake's CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy to venture capitalist Marc Andreessen have lauded its abilities. "We now have a Chinese open-weight model that is as good as the currently available models from OpenAI and Anthropic," said David Sacks, U.S. President Donald Trump's former AI czar, last week before Washington lifted curbs on Anthropic's Fable and Mythos models on Tuesday. Those capabilities have put Z.ai's GLM-5.2 model at the heart of a growing debate about whether China is finally catching up to the U.S. in the AI race, as technology executives warn that Washington's unpredictable regulation of the industry risks hampering its lead in the frontier technology. "It is just a tick below Opus 4.8 (from Anthropic) and right up there with GPT 5.5 (from OpenAI)," Sacks said of GLM-5.2 on the All-In podcast, adding that "we cannot afford to do things that slow our companies down." The Anthropic curbs and the delayed public rollout of OpenAI's latest GPT-5.6 model have fueled global demand for the Chinese model, some experts said. "The international developer community is increasingly aware that relying solely on proprietary, U.S.-based API models carries significant risk," said Brian Tse, founder and CEO of Concordia AI, a Beijing-based consultancy focused on AI safety. GLM-5.2's positive global reception also suggests increased interest in cheaper open-source development because businesses are getting stung by the rising and often unpredictable costs of using AI to complete tasks, as closed-source agentic AI tools consume more tokens, the units used to measure AI usage. Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, declined to comment. Anthropic and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. GLM-5.2 currently holds fifth place on Artificial Analysis' large language model (LLM) intelligence leaderboard, which ranks performance across a range of benchmarks designed to measure overall capability, including reasoning and coding skills. And it is in the second spot on Code Arena's front-end coding rankings, measuring how well models generate websites and front-end applications, while operating at roughly a sixth of the cost of closed U.S. frontier models like Claude and the GPT series. Z.ai has not disclosed how much it spent to develop GLM-5.2. In a reply to Elon Musk on X last month, Z.ai founder Tang Jie said that the Chinese startup could produce a model on par with Anthropic's Fable before the first quarter of next year. "The shift GLM-5.2 brings is that the open-source model has become a plug-and-play, out-of-the-box product," said Tiezhen Wang, former APAC lead at Hugging Face, a startup that serves as a hub for developers tinkering with open-source models. "You just deploy the model and without doing any complex fine-tuning systems, it is in a highly usable, ready-to-use state. This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for open-source adoption." CONVINCING AMERICAN BUSINESSES One major hurdle to GLM-5.2's large-scale adoption remains data security concerns that have limited use of Chinese models by U.S. enterprises, particularly in regulated industries like banking and cybersecurity. The migration and upgrading of enterprise AI systems typically takes several months, Wang said. "I have seen some discussion among European companies about whether it could be used in enterprise settings," said Wei Sun, principal AI analyst at Counterpoint Research. "In the EU and U.S., some clients, partners and regulated industries may simply be unwilling to accept Chinese models in their AI stack, regardless of technical performance or price." A report earlier this year by non-profit RAND, opens new tab, based on website traffic data across 135 countries, found that Chinese LLMs' global market share jumped to 13% from 3% in the two months after DeepSeek launched its R1 model in January last year. The release sparked a global tech selloff because it contrasted DeepSeek's low cost with massive AI infrastructure spending elsewhere. China's LLM usage gains were most pronounced in developing countries and those with close political and economic ties to Beijing. Some experts said concerns about the safety of Chinese AI models were overblown, arguing that running them on U.S. cloud providers or on a company's own servers ensured data security. While major corporations are slow to migrate, tech startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises are moving much faster. "Developers tend to care less about where a model comes from than whether it works, how much it costs and whether they can deploy or access it reliably," said Poe Zhao, China tech analyst and founder of the Hello China Tech newsletter. "The likely pattern is partial routing, not overnight replacement of OpenAI or Anthropic. So yes, it is a mini DeepSeek moment but in a narrower, developer-centric sense." Reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Eduardo Baptista and Thomas Derpinghaus Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Laurie Chen Thomson Reuters Laurie Chen is a China Correspondent at Reuters in Beijing, whose coverage focuses on the nexus of frontier technology, strategic emerging industries and geopolitics. She has reported on China for almost a decade, having previously covered China's government, defence, security and foreign policy. She has broken multiple global scoops on U.S.-China relations and the trade war 2.0, elite Chinese politics and diplomacy. She is particularly interested in Chinese frontier AI, tech and industrial policy, semiconductor supply chains, robotics, aerospace and grand strategy.
