News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
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
Gina Rinehart's estimated A$700m profit from SpaceX IPO wiped out as stock price dips
SpaceX shares declined below their initial public offering price of US$135, closing at US$131.11 during trading on Thursday. The aerospace and technology company experienced significant volatility following its mid-June listing, which was the largest debut in stock market history. The share price reached a peak market valuation exceeding US$2.6 trillion in the first three days of trading but has since fallen to a record low of US$1.72 trillion. Rinehart's company, Hancock Prospecting, purchased over US$1 billion worth of SpaceX shares at the IPO. Based on the stock's peak valuation, the company held an estimated paper gain of approximately US$500 million, which has now been eliminated. The latest decline represents an additional US$30 million paper loss from the peak value. Hancock Prospecting has not disclosed whether it has adjusted its position since the listing or plans to do so. Thousands of Australians participated in the IPO, with CommSec reporting that 28,000 people applied to purchase shares, setting a record for applications to an Australian IPO. The global offering was oversubscribed at three times the available shares. Some Australian institutional investors reported selling their positions early to realize profits, though Rinehart has not indicated similar actions. Market analysts attribute the recent decline to the fading initial enthusiasm surrounding the listing. SpaceX shares have fallen in seven of the last eight trading sessions. The sharpest single-day decline occurred when the company announced plans to issue additional debt through bond offerings. Short sellers betting against SpaceX have reported cumulative profits of US$3.88 billion. Analysts suggest long-term investors view the stock as part of an emerging technology sector that may require a decade or more to deliver returns.
Anthropic, Blackstone bet the next trillion-dollar AI business is implementation, not models
AI models are becoming ever more capable, but exactly what enterprise adoption will look like remains a big question. In a bid to shape that future, labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have spun up separate businesses dedicated to deploying AI engineers to their customers' offices -- a bet that assisting businesses in figuring out how to use their AI models is the next trillion-dollar category. One of those businesses now has a name: Ode with Anthropic is the $1.5-billion, AI implementation company that the AI lab launched in May as part of a joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others. The move follows OpenAI's own take on this, The Deployment Company, underscoring a growing acknowledgement among frontier AI labs that winning enterprise customers requires far more than shipping better models. Ode was originally conceived by Blackstone, which noticed a gap when it had roped in large consulting firms and small AI services boutiques to implement AI across its portfolio companies. One of those boutiques, AI engineering services startup Fractional AI, apparently stood out, and the joint venture acquired the startup shortly after it was announced. (Fractional ended an 11-month partnership with OpenAI when it was acquired.) Fractional has become the foundation of what is now Ode -- a kind of "scaled boutique" AI services firm. And its leaders have ambitious goals. "It's pretty easy to imagine this as a trillion-dollar company someday if we execute well," Chris Taylor, CEO of Ode and co-founder of Fractional, told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. "The key challenge of the business is how do you go t ...
SpaceX cleared to fly Starship again after booster failure in May
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has cleared SpaceX to fly Starship prototypes again, after the company identified the probable cause of the failure of the rocket system's booster stage during a flight in May. SpaceX said over the weekend that the next flight of Starship could happen as soon as this Thursday, July 16. It would be the second-ever launch of the third version, or V3, of Starship. SpaceX also said that this Starship will carry the first third-generation Starlink satellites to space. Previously, Starship had only carried dummy versions of the larger, more powerful internet satellites. This is SpaceX's second test flight of its Starship system, and its first as a public company, testing the market's appetite for the company's "fly, fail, fix" approach to rocket development that often ends in fireballs -- or, as CEO Elon Musk calls the explosions: "rapid unscheduled disassembly." SpaceX completed its IPO and publicly listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on June 12, making it one of the 10 most valuable companies in the world and raising nearly $86 billion, a record. SpaceX's first test launch of the V3 Starship on May 22 was largely successful. The company's Super Heavy booster lifted the 407-foot rocket into space before the upper stage section separated and deployed 20 satellite simulators along with two modified Starlinks that recorded footage of the Starship exterior. The new third-generation booster was supposed to return to Earth and perform a simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico. But its engines didn't properly re-ignite, and it instead plummeted into the water below. The problem happened at that moment of booster separation, according to SpaceX and the FAA. SpaceX said in a post published over the weekend that "slight differences in engine startup on the ship" caused the Booster to turn 90 degrees in the wrong ...
Anthropic starts localizing Claude pricing for India, its biggest market after the US
Anthropic has started localizing Claude's pricing in India, its biggest market outside the U.S., as global AI companies increasingly tailor their offerings to win users in the world's most populous nation. Local pricing has begun to appear for some users in India on Claude's website and mobile apps. However, Anthropic has yet to enable payments via the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India's widely used instant payments network. Users still need to pay by card or through Apple's and Google's app store billing systems. This is unlike OpenAI, which rolled out Indian rupee pricing for ChatGPT in August with UPI support. Claude users in India have long sought rupee-denominated subscriptions, with dollar pricing and currency conversion adding friction to accessing the service. The move is particularly significant, as India accounts for 5.8% of global Claude usage, making it the service's second-largest market after the U.S., according to Anthropic. On Claude's website in India, Anthropic is listing Claude Pro at ₹2,000 (about $21) a month when billed annually, compared with $17 a month in the U.S. Claude Max starts at ₹11,999 (around $125) a month in India, versus $100 in the U.S., while Team plans start at ₹2,399 (around $25) per seat a month, compared with $20 in the U.S. The India prices include local taxes. Moreover, prices on Claude's mobile apps vary slightly from those listed on its website. Claude's India Rupee pricing.Image Credits:Anthropic / TechCrunch The Indian rupee pricing comes amid Anthropic's growing focus on India. The Claude maker opened an office in Bengaluru in February, after announcing the move in October, and in January appointed former Microsoft India managing director Irina Ghose to lead its business in the country. Anthropic has also partnered with Indian IT services giants Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services in recent months as it looks to scale enterprise AI deployments. That expansion faced a setback in June when Anthropic abruptly suspended access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for non-U.S. entities, prompting some Indian developers and startup f ...
