News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Watch a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch for record-breaking 36th time early on July 9
The upcoming launch will be the 80th Falcon 9 mission of the year, with about 80% of the rocket's 2026 flights dedicated to expanding the Starlink satellite network, which currently consists of over 10,700 active satellites. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch for a record-breaking 36th time early Thursday morning (July 9), and you can watch the action live. The Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Thursday at 5:25 a.m. EDT (0925 GMT), carrying 29 of the company's Starlink broadband satellites to low Earth orbit (LEO). You can watch it live via SpaceX beginning about 10 minutes before launch. This particular booster, known as 1067, has already completed 35 orbital missions, more than any other SpaceX rocket in history. The overall record is held by NASA's space shuttle Discovery, which flew to orbit and back 39 times. Thursday's flight will extend Booster 1067's company record. If all goes to plan, the rocket will come back to Earth about 8.5 minutes after liftoff, landing on the SpaceX drone ship "A Shortfall of Gravitas" stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. The Falcon 9's upper stage, meanwhile, will haul the 29 Starlink satellites to LEO, deploying them there 63.5 minutes after launch. Previous Booster 1067 missions CRS-22 | Crew-3 | Turksat 5B | Crew-4 | CRS-25 | Eutelsat HOTBIRD 13G | O3B mPOWER | PSN SATRIA | Telkomsat Marah Putih 2 | Galileo L13 | Koreasat-6A | 24 Starlink missions Thursday's launch will be the 80th Falcon 9 mission of the year already. About 80% of the rocket's 2026 flights have been devoted to building out Starlink, by far the largest satellite network ever assembled. The megaconstellation currently consists of more than 10,700 active satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. And, as the upcoming launch shows, that number is growing all the time.
'Historic step' as SpaceX launches first ever nuclear-powered commercial satellite
The first ever commercial satellite carrying a nuclear-powered payload has launched to space aboard a SpaceX rocket. The Transporter-17 rideshare mission lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, marking a historic first for commercial space flight. The BOHR (Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability) satellite, built by Miami-based City Labs, aims to prove the feasibility for commercial operators of using nuclear power for missions where traditional power systems like solar and battery fall short. This includes deep space missions, as well as activities in permanently shadowed regions like the dark side of the Moon. "This is a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space," said City Labs CEO Peter Cabauy. "BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables persistent, always-on payload operations that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life." The BOHR cubesat works by converting the beta particles emitted from the radioactive decay of tritium into electricity. If successful, it could introduce a new era of commercial space flight using the same technology that has previously been the domain of state-funded scientific and military applications. Previous nuclear-powered missions have included Nasa's Voyager 1 and 2 probes that have harnessed the energy source to operate and transmit data from interstellar space since launching in 1977. Nasa's Mars Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers also use a nuclear power system in order to operate during dust storms or seasonal light changes that would prevent solar panels from working properly. SpaceX's Transporter-17 mission was carrying 80 other payloads into low Earth orbit "Rideshare missions like today's significantly increase access to space for small satellite operators around the world, and we're excited to be able to offer these launch opportunities for SpaceX customers," SpaceX said during its webcast for the launch.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 24 Starlink satellites from California
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. SpaceX grew its Starlink network by 24 more satellites on Wednesday evening (July 1) with a launch from California. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the two dozen new relay spacecraft (Group 17-46) lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:58 p.m. EDT (0258 GMT on July 2 or 7:58 p.m. PDT local time). About an hour later, SpaceX confirmed the satellites were successfully deployed in low Earth orbit. Previous Booster B1100 launches NROL-105 | 5 Starlink missions The Falcon 9's first stage (Booster 1100) completed its seventh flight to space and back, landing on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" positioned in the Pacific Ocean. SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation now totals more than 10,700 active satellites, according to tracker Jonathan McDowell. The service supports connectively around the globe, as well as in-flight and direct-to-cell services. Wednesday's launch was SpaceX's 79th Falcon 9 liftoff of the year.
SpaceX fires up all 6 of Starship's engines ahead of 13th test flight (video)
The Starship rocket, designed for seamless landing and reuse, is SpaceX's super-heavy lift rocket that will have the capability to deliver heavier payloads to orbit than any other rocket in history, with plans for expanding the Starlink satellite-internet network and landing NASA astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Less than a week after its last test, SpaceX's latest Starship spacecraft went back to the stand for engine checkouts ahead of a coming test flight. The upper stage for SpaceX's giant Starship rocket, referred to simply as "Ship" -- Ship 40, in this case -- underwent a static-fire test of all six of its Raptor engines at the company's Massey site in Starbase, Texas. Ship 40 is in line for the 13th test flight of a fully stacked Starship, which is expected within the next month or so. SpaceX posted a video of the engine test to its X account on Thursday (July 2), showing several angles of the ignition sequence and all six engines (Ship is equipped with three sea-level and three vacuum-optimized Raptors) firing to simulate flight-like conditions on the vehicle. Ship 40 conducted its first-ever static fire last week, lighting a single Raptor for about 15 seconds. This more recent test involved all six Raptors and lasted a full minute, according to SpaceX. Ship 40 will take part in the second "Version 3" (V3) Starship launch; SpaceX debuted the updated rocket prototype during a test flight on May 22. That mission went smoothly, for the most part, but it wasn't a complete success; the rocket's Super Heavy booster failed to maneuver its way to a soft ocean splashdown as planned. So the upcoming Flight 13 will likely mirror much of the flight path and mission objectives as Flight 12, including relighting one of Ship's Raptor engines in space. Starship is SpaceX's super-heavy lift rocket, designed for seamless landing and reuse. The more capable V3 stands 408 feet (124.4 meters) tall -- about 5 feet (1.5 m) taller than V2 -- and is the biggest, most powerful rocket ever to fly. Once development is complete and the vehicle is fully operational, SpaceX has big plans for the rocket, including the expansion of its Starlink satellite-internet network in low Earth orbit and landing NASA astronauts on the moon as a part of the Artemis program. The spacecraft will also be capable of delivering heavier payloads to orbit than any other rocket in history. The success of this most recent engine test puts SpaceX one step closer to Starship Flight 13. Next steps ahead of that launch will include rolling the mission's Super Heavy booster to the pad at Starbase for engine tests of its own. Super Heavy sports 33 Raptor engines at its business end, which produce nearly 20 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. Should Super Heavy's static fire tests go smoothly, Flight 13 could happen as early as August.
Analysis-A new, inexpensive Chinese AI model is catching up with Anthropic, OpenAI on their home turf
By Laurie Chen and Aditya Soni 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, 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)
U.S. government lifts export ban on Anthropic models
June 30 (UPI) -- The Trump administration has lifted export restrictions on artificia lintelligence company Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, the company said Tuesday evening. "We've received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5," Anthropic said in a statement, CNN reported. "We'll begin restoring access tomorrow, and will share an update soon." The statement came not long after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on social media about Anthropic, saying "we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the U.S. government and strengthen America's leadership in AI." Anthropic disabled customer access to Fable, a consumer version of its Mythos AI model with more safeguards, and Mythos itself several weeks ago after the export ban June 12. The ban required the company to suspend all use by foreign nationals inside or outside the United States, including Anthropic employees. In a statement then, Anthropic said its understanding was that "the government it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking,' Fable 5." "We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities," the company said. "These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass." The government loosened some of the restrictions on Mythos on Friday, Politico reported. Anthropic and the U.S. government have had a rocky relationship. Anthropic leaders' concerns about military and intelligence usage of its products caused issues with the Department of Defense. President Donald Trump called it a "radical left, woke company" and ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products, while Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, called the company a supply chain risk to national security. Anthropic has sued the Trump administration to reverse the blacklisting, and that lawsuit is ongoing.
Anthropic says US lifts export ban on its advanced AI tools
The US government has lifted export controls on Anthropic's most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools, just weeks after ordering it to restrict access to them over national security concerns, the company has said. Anthropic said in a social media post that it will begin restoring access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 on Wednesday after being notified that the US Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on the two models. They are the firm's most advanced AI tools, which were abruptly suspended on 12 June over concerns that they could be used by hackers to exploit weaknesses in computer systems. The BBC has contacted the Department of Commerce for comment. Mythos and Fable are two of Anthropic's AI models built on its Claude platform - a rival to the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Fable 5 is a version of the AI model for the cosumer market, capable of deep reasoning and can perform complex tasks independently. Mythos 5 is a version of the platform designed for businesses and cybersecurity experts. It is said to be able to identify vulnerabilities in computer code and exploit them. The firm previously said that US authorities had not pinpointed specific concerns about its technology even as it ordered both platforms to be suspended around the world. "Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or 'jailbreaking' Fable 5," the company said at the time, referring to a process of slipping past software safety restrictions to unblock features. "However, we disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people."
Anthropic alleges Chinese AI firm is stealing its technology
On June 10, U.S. President Donald Trump said that America is "leading China by a lot, and whoever leads that is really going to lead the world by a large extent." Trump was talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and was apparently setting the terms for the AI race. But the competition might be closer than he believes. Leading AI giant Anthropic claims its Claude Mythos model is too powerful for the public to access. In a newly revealed letter to U.S. senators, Anthropic claims Chinese tech company Alibaba is illicitly extracting Claude's technology to build it own, better AI, according to Reuters. Global's Nathaniel Dove reports.