Hoffman’s position on the boards of both Microsoft and OpenAI while also a partner at Greylock, the investment firm, gave Hoffman a privileged — and illicit — view into the companies’ dealings, the complaint alleges. (Hoffman stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) Greylock invested in Inflection, Musk’s counsel notes, the AI startup that Microsoft acqui-hired earlier this year — and which could reasonably be considered an OpenAI competitor, according to the complaint.
As for Templeton, whom Microsoft briefly appointed as a non-voting board observer at OpenAI, the amended filing alleges that she was in a position to facilitate agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that would violate antitrust rules.
Sales sentiment
Investors are closely watching the performance of Alibaba's main business units, Taobao and Tmall Group, which reported a 1% annual uptick in revenue to 98.99 billion yuan in the September quarter.
The results come at a tricky time for Chinese commerce businesses, given a tepid retail environment in the country. Chinese e-commerce group JD.com also missed revenue expectations on Thursday, according to Reuters.
“The purpose of the prohibition on interlocking directorates is to prevent sharing of competitively sensitive information in violation of antitrust laws and/or providing a forum for the coordination of other anticompetitive activity,” the complaint reads. “Allowing Templeton and Hoffman to serve as members of OpenAI’s …. board undermined this purpose. “
Alongside Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton, California attorney general Rob Bonta is named as a defendant in Musk’s complaint. Bloomberg reported this month that OpenAI is in talks with Bonta’s office over the process to change its corporate structure.
Markets are now watching whether a slew of recent stimulus measures from Beijing, including a five-year 1.4-trillion-yuan package announced last week, will help resuscitate the country's growth and curtail a long-lived real estate market slump.
The impact on the retail space looks promising so far, with sales rising by a better-than-expected 4.8% year-on-year in October, while China's recent Singles' Day shopping holiday — widely seen as a barometer for national consumer sentiment — regained some of its luster.
Per the amended complaint, Zilis, who stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023 after serving as a member for roughly four years, has standing as an “injured employee” under California Corporations Code. Zilis repeatedly raised concerns over OpenAI’s dealmaking internally that fell on deaf ears — concerns substantially similar to Musk’s, according to the complaint.
Zilis has close ties to Musk, having worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 in addition to directing Neuralink research. (Neuralink is Musk’s brain-computer interface venture.) She’s also the mother of three of Musk’s children, Techno Mechanicus and twins Strider and Azure.
Alibaba touted "robust growth" in gross merchandise volume — an industry measure of sales over time that does not equate to the company's revenue — for its Taobao and Tmall Group businesses during the festival, along with a "record number of active buyers."
"Alibaba's outlook remains closely aligned with the trajectory of the Chinese economy and evolving regulatory policies," ING analysts said Thursday, noting that the company's Friday report will shed light on the Chinese economy's growth momentum.
The e-commerce giant's overseas online shopping businesses, such as Lazada and Aliexpress, meanwhile posted a 29% year-on-year hike in sales to 31.67 billion yuan.
The 107-page amended complaint includes the unusual detail that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency in January 2018, before it ultimately decided to transition to a capped-profit structure.
“Heads up, spoke to some of the safety team and there were a lot of concerns about the ICO and possible unintended effects in the future,” Altman wrote in an email to Musk dated January 21, 2018, an exhibit filed with the amended complaint shows. An ICO, or initial coin offering, is an unregulated means by which funds are raised for cryptocurrency businesses. “Going to emphasize the need to keep this confidential, but I think it’s really important we get buy-in and give people the chance to weigh in early.”
Cloud business accelerates
Alibaba's Cloud Intelligence Group reported year-on-year sales growth of 7% to 27.65 billion yuan in the September quarter, compared with a 6% annual hike in the three-month period ending in June. The slight acceleration comes amid ongoing efforts by the company to leverage its cloud infrastructure and reposition itself as a leader in the booming AI space.
"Growth in our Cloud business accelerated from prior quarters, with revenues from public cloud products growing in double digits and AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth. We are more confident in our core businesses than ever and will continue to invest in supporting long-term growth," Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said in a statement Friday.
Musk supposedly shot down the crypto sale idea. “I have considered the ICO approach and will not support it,” he wrote in an email reply to Altman and OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman (now OpenAI’s president) and Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI’s ex-chief scientist), shows an exhibit. “In my opinion, that would simply result in a massive loss of credibility for OpenAI and everyone associated with the ICO.”
Stymied by Beijing's sweeping 2022 crackdown on large internet and tech companies, Alibaba last year overhauled the division's leadership and has been shaping it as a future growth driver, stepping up competition with rivals including Baidu and Huawei domestically, and Microsoft and OpenAI in the U.S.
Alibaba, which rolled out its own ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen last year, this week unveiled its own AI-powered search tool for small businesses in Europe and the Americas, and clinched a key five-year partnership to supply cloud services to Indonesian tech giant GoTo in September.
The thrust of the lawsuit remains the same on the plaintiffs’ side: that OpenAI profited from Musk’s early involvement in the company yet reneged on its nonprofit pledge to make the fruits of its AI research available to all. “No amount of clever drafting nor surfeit of creative dealmaking can obscure what is happening here,” reads the complaint. “OpenAI, Inc., co-founded by Musk as an independent charity committed to safety and transparency … [is] fast becoming a full for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft.”
OpenAI has sought to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, calling it “blusterous” and baseless.
Speaking at the Apsara conference in September, Alibaba's Wu said the company's cloud unit is investing "with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure," noting that the future of AI is "only beginning."
“We also have a higher percentage of posters than most social sites, which follow a 90-9-1 pattern of lurkers-commenters-posters. We haven’t dipped below ~30% posters,” she said in a separate post.
Last month, Bluesky said it raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Darkmode’s Amir Shevat, and Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda. On the product front, the company said it planned to launch subscriptions.
Representatives from Amazon and TikTok did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
TikTok's future viability in the U.S. is uncertain. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If TikTok fails to cut ties with its parent company, app stores and internet hosting services would be prohibited from offering the app.
President-elect Donald Trump could rescue TikTok from a potential U.S. ban. He promised on the campaign trail that he would "save" TikTok, and said in a March interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" that "there's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad" with the app.
In August 2022, Heroku announced that its free plans would be discontinued, citing fraud and abuse as reasons for the change. Some users weren’t pleased, understandably — and made their opinions known on social media.
“Our product, engineering, and security teams are spending an extraordinary amount of effort to manage fraud and abuse of the Heroku free product plans,” Wise said in a blog post at the time. “We will continue to provide low-cost solutions for compute and data resources.”
In his first administration, Trump had tried to implement a TikTok ban. He changed his stance around the time he met with billionaire Jeff Yass. The Republican megadonor's trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owns a 15% stake in ByteDance, while Yass has a 7% stake in the company, NBC and CNBC reported in March.
Competition in the PaaS sector has grown fiercer in recent years, with companies like Porter, Railway, Render, Fly.io, and Clever Cloud vying for a slice of Heroku’s business with compelling capabilities and tooling. Wise made efforts to engage with the developer community, posting a public roadmap of Heroku’s features and soliciting suggestions for improvements.
His departure is certain to have an impact on Heroku’s efforts to claw back market share. Salesforce has yet to announce plans for a replacement.
Relatedly, Heroku is still without a CPO after its previous CPO, Andy Fawcett, moved back to the U.K. to assume the role of VP of developer relations.
Commenting on Britain's macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, "While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year."
The market is "still tight," he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa's — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become "more important" during such times.
A press release in October mentions that subscribers to Function Health, a premium personal health management platform, will be able to share their data with Thrive’s health coach for “hyper-personalized behavior change recommendations” and “real-time guidance tailored to their unique health patterns” if they wish.
According to LinkedIn, Thrive AI Health, which claims to be hiring on its website, has fewer than 10 employees.
"The proposition has become more relevant, and while it's tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to," he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.
A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.
As we noted in July, Thrive AI Health is the latest in a long string of tech industry efforts to create health-focused apps with AI-driven personalization. Many have run up against intractable business, technical, and regulatory hurdles. Altman and Huffington’s involvement lent weight to Thrive. But it’s also sure to increase scrutiny on it.
"We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space," Janardana said. "We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year."
Janardana said consumers can expect a "slick" experience from Zopa's current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.
In the automotive sector, Pony follows Chinese EV startup Zeekr, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in May with $441 million in gross proceeds.
WeRide, another autonomous vehicle startup, debuted on the Nasdaq in October, raising $440.5 million in its IPO and private placement.
Pony will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker “PONY.”
IPO 'not top of mind'
Zopa is one of many fintech companies that has been viewed as a potential IPO candidate. Around two years ago, the firm said that it was planning to go public, but later decided to put those plans on ice, as high interest rates battered technology stocks and the IPO market froze over in 2022.
Janardana said he doesn't envision a public listing as an immediate priority, but noted he sees signs pointing toward a more favorable U.S. IPO market next year.
That should mean that Europe becomes more open to IPOs happening later in 2026, according to Janardana. He didn't disclose where Zopa would end up going public.
"To be honest, it's not the top of mind for me," Janardana told CNBC. "I think we continue to be lucky to have supportive and long-term shareholders who support future growth as well."
Last year, Zopa made two senior hires, appointing Peter Donlon, ex-chief technology officer at online card retailer Moonpig, as its own CTO. The firm also hired Kate Erb, a chartered accountant from KPMG, as its chief operating officer.
The swifties.social domain didn’t see much growth at first, with about 2,000 users joining until August 2024, when X was temporarily banned in Brazil.
“Bluesky got an enormous influx of Brazilian users, including many Swifties,” Newman said. “The tool went viral, jumping to nearly 8,000 handles claimed. Then, after the election, yet another wave of Swifties arrived and the tool went viral again, jumping to 12,800!”
That wave of growth from Brazilian users was when Newman added handles for BTS fans (army.social) and Beyoncé fans (beyhive.social).
X-37B will change its orbit (or perhaps it already has) in order to dispose of service module components, dropping them off to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Besides this novel maneuver, the public knows very little about X-37B. It is an unmanned, remotely controlled spaceplane Boeing developed for the U.S. Department of Defense. More broadly, spaceplanes are hybrids between airplanes and spacecraft that can orbit the planet like satellites but also land back on Earth like passenger planes, per Gizmodo’s Passant Rabie. In essence, this ability makes them reusable.
In the grand scheme of things, users with these fan domains only make up a tiny fraction of Bluesky’s 16 million users (and counting). But fan communities are often what makes a social network run; in the early 2010s, Tumblr boomed in part due to fandoms for TV shows like “Supernatural” and “Doctor Who,” as well as bands like One Direction. Even if a community is small, these cohorts tend to be very active social media users, and Bluesky thus far has prided itself on its ability to maintain highly engaged users.
“We … have a higher percentage of posters than most social sites, which follow a 90-9-1 pattern of lurkers-commenters-posters. We haven’t dipped below ~30% posters,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber wrote in a post on Tuesday.
X-37B was launched into space via SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for its seventh mission (OTV-7) in December 2023. Since then, it has been orbiting Earth in an extremely elliptical path with a perigee (the closest point of an orbit) of 620 miles and an apogee of more than 22,210 miles, per Live Science’s Rory Bathgate—though it has been spotted as close as 185 miles above Earth.
But exactly what it’s doing on that orbit is unclear. “Since December 28, 2023, the United States Space Force, supported by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, has conducted radiation effect experiments and has been testing Space Domain Awareness technologies in a Highly Elliptical Orbit,” is all the agency said of the spaceplane’s overall mission in the recent statement.
Buffett’s firm also shed about $10 billion of its Bank of America holdings in a series of sales starting in mid-July. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said at an event in September that while Buffett has been a “great” investor in the company, Moynihan doesn’t know why Buffett is offloading its holdings in the bank.
Berkshire also offloaded most of its stake in beauty supply retailer Ulta Beauty (ULTA
-0.02%
), which it had just built up in the second quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, Berkshire also added more than 400,000 shares of pool equipment wholesale distributor Pool Corp. (POOL
+1.78%
), valued at about $152 million. Shares of the company rose more than 6% Friday morning before the market opened.
We do know, however, that past missions have served to study the effect of long-duration space exposure, including space radiation, on seeds.
“Space is a vast and unforgiving environment where testing technologies is critical to the success of future endeavors,” Michelle Parker, vice president of Boeing’s Space Mission Systems, said in another statement last month. “There is no other space platform as capable, flexible and maneuverable as the X-37B, and its next demonstration will be another proof point that this test vehicle sets the pace of innovation.”
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a statement that the craft is conducting “national security missions in space.” Some suspect this to include military surveillance. Many are thus wondering what might have prompted the agency to release information about the X-37B’s latest maneuver.
Starship’s monumental fifth launch that redefined space travel
On October 13, SpaceX achieved a historic milestone by launching Starship, the most powerful rocket ever constructed, which soared into the skies for its fifth mission. Minutes post-launch, the event witnessed an engineering marvel as the Super Heavy booster, a colossal structure as high as a 20-story building, executed a controlled descent back to Earth. Engaging three of its 33 Raptor engines for a descent burn, the booster made a dramatic return, condensation trailing in its wake.
“Disclosing this aerobraking maneuver could be the Space Force’s way of showing the world what the spaceplane is capable of,” Vivienne Machi writes for Aviation Week, “with an intended audience of anyone from allies and partners, adversaries, lawmakers, industry, potential recruits, and perhaps even the service itself.”
Machi adds that two other reasons for the revelation could include loosening up some of the agency’s historic and perhaps unnecessary security classification barriers, and/or wanting to prompt China and Russia to also step up communication about space maneuvers.
Mechazilla: The rocket-catching giant
Mechazilla, a 400-foot tall rocket-catching tower equipped with two massive mechanical arms, facilitated the precise landing, colloquially known as “chopsticks.” These arms successfully caught the Super Heavy booster, preventing a ground impact and enabling the booster’s reusability.
This innovative catch mechanism is pivotal for reducing the rocket’s overall mass by eliminating the need for heavy landing legs, thereby increasing payload capacity.
The 6550 ION is available worldwide in E3.S, U.2, and E1.L form factors for limited sampling, but the public release date remains unclear. Meanwhile, pre-orders are open for the D205V, with shipping set to begin in the second quarter of next year in U.2 and E3.L formats.
Phison will demonstrate its new hardware at the SC24 event in Atlanta, which runs from November 17 to November 22. The company will also exhibit the PS7161, the world's first PCIe 6.0 redriver, with shipping expected to begin in Q1 2025.
Mass reduction and increased payload efficiency
The elimination of traditional landing legs from the Super Heavy booster significantly reduces weight, allowing for greater payload capacity, a crucial advantage given Starship’s ambitions for interplanetary missions.
For context, the removed landing legs would have added several tons to the vehicle, similar to the Falcon 9’s landing legs, constituting about 8% of its total mass. Without these, Starship, towering at 397 feet (121 meters), supports a more substantial payload, leveraging its capacity to the fullest.
The Starship system, including its Super Heavy booster, requires over 10 million pounds of fuel, consisting of liquid oxygen and methane, to thrust itself beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
This propellant capacity underscores the sheer power of the 33 next-generation Raptor engines that produce a combined thrust of 17 million pounds at launch, making it the world’s most powerful rocket by a considerable margin.
Solidigm's 122TB D5-P5336 enterprise SSD is also available for sampling, with general availability for U.2 and E1.L form factors starting early next year. However, the drive is limited to a PCIe Gen 4 interface with a 7GB/s read speed (1.005 million IOPs) and 3GB/s write speed while drawing 23W.
Space missions streamlined
Post-catch, the booster was swiftly positioned back onto the launch pad for rapid inspections and refueling, demonstrating SpaceX’s capability for quick turnaround—a critical component of Elon Musk’s vision for space exploration. Musk has publicly stated the ambitious goal of having the rocket booster ready for reflight within an hour of landing. This benchmark could revolutionize the economics of space travel by facilitating more frequent and cost-effective launches.
The Starship utilizes a vented interstage design, enabling hot-stage separation. The upper-stage engines ignite before separation to manage exhaust and prevent damage. This function ensures smooth trajectory continuation for the upper stage while the Super Heavy booster returns to Earth.
The Mechazilla arms and the strategic removal of landing legs are among the many innovations driving SpaceX’s mission forward. Future plans aim to catch and reuse even the upper stages of Starship for cargo and crew missions by as early as 2025.
The Bitcoin price has not been helped by new economic data in the U.S. that earlier this week threw cold water on hopes that the Federal Reserve would end the year by lowering interest rates again.
In fact, the number of investors that think the next Federal Open Markets Committee meeting will end in the regulators keeping interest rates the same jumped up this week, noted BRN analyst Valentin Fournier.
Starship’s role in the next era of space exploration
SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS), designed to strengthen human space missions, will be a base for astronauts on the Moon. The HLS will be initially used by NASA Artemis astronauts aboard the Orion capsule, launched by the Space Launch System (SLS), the only rocket currently more powerful than Starship. Upon reaching lunar orbit, astronauts will transfer to the Starship HLS to descend to the lunar surface.
This mission architecture demonstrates Starship’s critical role in future lunar expeditions and the capability of orbital refueling and long-duration off-world stays. These technologies are essential for sustainable lunar exploration and are prerequisites for the eventual Mars missions that SpaceX plans to undertake.
"Although the figures met investor expectations, it remains a challenging signal for the Federal Reserve. This data complicates the Fed’s plan to cut interest rates for the third time in December," he wrote in a note shared with Decrypt. "CME data shows that investor expectations for rates to remain unchanged have risen to 40%, up from 25% before the release of the inflation reports."
Elon Musk has outlined ambitious plans for these Mars missions. They will start with an uncrewed flight within the next two years, aiming to test Starship’s landing capabilities on the Martian surface. Landing on Mars is a significant challenge due to its thin atmosphere, which provides little drag to slow the descent of landing craft. Success in these initial landings could pave the way for the first crewed flights to Mars, which are projected to launch within four years of the uncrewed tests.
Beyond the immediate goals, SpaceX envisions a rapidly increasing launch cadence for Mars-bound Starships, aiming to establish a self-sustaining settlement on Mars within two decades.
SpaceX has undoubtedly notched several spectacular successes. However, The road ahead remains fraught with the typical blend of hype and uncertainty accompanying Musk’s ambitious projects.
Already the CME FedWatch Tool shows that the portion of investors who expect the FOMC to keep interest rates the same in December has ticked up to 41.3%.
But even with the pullback of institutional funds from Bitcoin ETFs and so-so news from U.S. agencies about inflation, BRN remains confident that BTC could reach $100,000 in the coming months.
"Although a short-term dip is possible, we expect investors to view this as an attractive entry opportunity, injecting new liquidity," Fournier wrote. "The strong catalyst of Trump's election will keep having a very positive impact, especially during Q1 2025, when his first moves as president could generate a very strong momentum for a lasting bull market."
Historically, Musk’s timelines have often veered towards the optimistic, sometimes overshooting the realm of current technological feasibility, as seen with the unfulfilled promise of Tesla’s level 5 autonomy by 2021.
Yet, for all the skepticism, SpaceX’s advancements cannot be ignored. They’ve pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in space travel, even as some deadlines slip and public expectations must occasionally be recalibrated. As development continues, the aerospace community and the world remain eager yet cautious, watching to see which of Musk’s bold visions will materialize.
“By forming a prediction of future wave disturbances and integrating this within the control system, we’re able to expand this range with little to no change to the robot hardware.”
To help the robot perform this function, wave-detecting sensors must be tethered to the seafloor near offshore platforms. These sensors measure the height and direction of incoming waves and relay them to the robot in real-time. The robot can predict the arrival of the waves at its location and take countering action to maintain itself in a stable position.
Development is progressing rapidly, with Drift Zone: Arena players now able to claim rewards directly to Seiwallets and verify achievements on-chain, and the demo of Drift Zone: Origins now live on Sei. This technical integration enables the studio's expansion into one of gaming's most lucrative markets, introducing real rewards to the proven Gacha format that Asian players already love.
Hoffman’s position on the boards of both Microsoft and OpenAI while also a partner at Greylock, the investment firm, gave Hoffman a privileged — and illicit — view into the companies’ dealings, the complaint alleges. (Hoffman stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023.) Greylock invested in Inflection, Musk’s counsel notes, the AI startup that Microsoft acqui-hired earlier this year — and which could reasonably be considered an OpenAI competitor, according to the complaint.
As for Templeton, whom Microsoft briefly appointed as a non-voting board observer at OpenAI, the amended filing alleges that she was in a position to facilitate agreements between Microsoft and OpenAI that would violate antitrust rules.
Sales sentiment
Investors are closely watching the performance of Alibaba's main business units, Taobao and Tmall Group, which reported a 1% annual uptick in revenue to 98.99 billion yuan in the September quarter.
The results come at a tricky time for Chinese commerce businesses, given a tepid retail environment in the country. Chinese e-commerce group JD.com also missed revenue expectations on Thursday, according to Reuters.
“The purpose of the prohibition on interlocking directorates is to prevent sharing of competitively sensitive information in violation of antitrust laws and/or providing a forum for the coordination of other anticompetitive activity,” the complaint reads. “Allowing Templeton and Hoffman to serve as members of OpenAI’s …. board undermined this purpose. “
Alongside Microsoft, Hoffman, and Templeton, California attorney general Rob Bonta is named as a defendant in Musk’s complaint. Bloomberg reported this month that OpenAI is in talks with Bonta’s office over the process to change its corporate structure.
Markets are now watching whether a slew of recent stimulus measures from Beijing, including a five-year 1.4-trillion-yuan package announced last week, will help resuscitate the country's growth and curtail a long-lived real estate market slump.
The impact on the retail space looks promising so far, with sales rising by a better-than-expected 4.8% year-on-year in October, while China's recent Singles' Day shopping holiday — widely seen as a barometer for national consumer sentiment — regained some of its luster.
Per the amended complaint, Zilis, who stepped down from OpenAI’s board in 2023 after serving as a member for roughly four years, has standing as an “injured employee” under California Corporations Code. Zilis repeatedly raised concerns over OpenAI’s dealmaking internally that fell on deaf ears — concerns substantially similar to Musk’s, according to the complaint.
Zilis has close ties to Musk, having worked as a project director at Tesla from 2017 to 2019 in addition to directing Neuralink research. (Neuralink is Musk’s brain-computer interface venture.) She’s also the mother of three of Musk’s children, Techno Mechanicus and twins Strider and Azure.
Alibaba touted "robust growth" in gross merchandise volume — an industry measure of sales over time that does not equate to the company's revenue — for its Taobao and Tmall Group businesses during the festival, along with a "record number of active buyers."
"Alibaba's outlook remains closely aligned with the trajectory of the Chinese economy and evolving regulatory policies," ING analysts said Thursday, noting that the company's Friday report will shed light on the Chinese economy's growth momentum.
The e-commerce giant's overseas online shopping businesses, such as Lazada and Aliexpress, meanwhile posted a 29% year-on-year hike in sales to 31.67 billion yuan.
The 107-page amended complaint includes the unusual detail that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed that OpenAI sell its own cryptocurrency in January 2018, before it ultimately decided to transition to a capped-profit structure.
“Heads up, spoke to some of the safety team and there were a lot of concerns about the ICO and possible unintended effects in the future,” Altman wrote in an email to Musk dated January 21, 2018, an exhibit filed with the amended complaint shows. An ICO, or initial coin offering, is an unregulated means by which funds are raised for cryptocurrency businesses. “Going to emphasize the need to keep this confidential, but I think it’s really important we get buy-in and give people the chance to weigh in early.”
Cloud business accelerates
Alibaba's Cloud Intelligence Group reported year-on-year sales growth of 7% to 27.65 billion yuan in the September quarter, compared with a 6% annual hike in the three-month period ending in June. The slight acceleration comes amid ongoing efforts by the company to leverage its cloud infrastructure and reposition itself as a leader in the booming AI space.
"Growth in our Cloud business accelerated from prior quarters, with revenues from public cloud products growing in double digits and AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth. We are more confident in our core businesses than ever and will continue to invest in supporting long-term growth," Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said in a statement Friday.
Musk supposedly shot down the crypto sale idea. “I have considered the ICO approach and will not support it,” he wrote in an email reply to Altman and OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman (now OpenAI’s president) and Ilya Sutskever (OpenAI’s ex-chief scientist), shows an exhibit. “In my opinion, that would simply result in a massive loss of credibility for OpenAI and everyone associated with the ICO.”
Stymied by Beijing's sweeping 2022 crackdown on large internet and tech companies, Alibaba last year overhauled the division's leadership and has been shaping it as a future growth driver, stepping up competition with rivals including Baidu and Huawei domestically, and Microsoft and OpenAI in the U.S.
Alibaba, which rolled out its own ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwen last year, this week unveiled its own AI-powered search tool for small businesses in Europe and the Americas, and clinched a key five-year partnership to supply cloud services to Indonesian tech giant GoTo in September.
The thrust of the lawsuit remains the same on the plaintiffs’ side: that OpenAI profited from Musk’s early involvement in the company yet reneged on its nonprofit pledge to make the fruits of its AI research available to all. “No amount of clever drafting nor surfeit of creative dealmaking can obscure what is happening here,” reads the complaint. “OpenAI, Inc., co-founded by Musk as an independent charity committed to safety and transparency … [is] fast becoming a full for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft.”
OpenAI has sought to dismiss Musk’s lawsuit, calling it “blusterous” and baseless.
Speaking at the Apsara conference in September, Alibaba's Wu said the company's cloud unit is investing "with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure," noting that the future of AI is "only beginning."
“We also have a higher percentage of posters than most social sites, which follow a 90-9-1 pattern of lurkers-commenters-posters. We haven’t dipped below ~30% posters,” she said in a separate post.
Last month, Bluesky said it raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Darkmode’s Amir Shevat, and Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda. On the product front, the company said it planned to launch subscriptions.
Representatives from Amazon and TikTok did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
TikTok's future viability in the U.S. is uncertain. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If TikTok fails to cut ties with its parent company, app stores and internet hosting services would be prohibited from offering the app.
President-elect Donald Trump could rescue TikTok from a potential U.S. ban. He promised on the campaign trail that he would "save" TikTok, and said in a March interview with CNBC's "Squawk Box" that "there's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad" with the app.
In August 2022, Heroku announced that its free plans would be discontinued, citing fraud and abuse as reasons for the change. Some users weren’t pleased, understandably — and made their opinions known on social media.
“Our product, engineering, and security teams are spending an extraordinary amount of effort to manage fraud and abuse of the Heroku free product plans,” Wise said in a blog post at the time. “We will continue to provide low-cost solutions for compute and data resources.”
In his first administration, Trump had tried to implement a TikTok ban. He changed his stance around the time he met with billionaire Jeff Yass. The Republican megadonor's trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, owns a 15% stake in ByteDance, while Yass has a 7% stake in the company, NBC and CNBC reported in March.
Competition in the PaaS sector has grown fiercer in recent years, with companies like Porter, Railway, Render, Fly.io, and Clever Cloud vying for a slice of Heroku’s business with compelling capabilities and tooling. Wise made efforts to engage with the developer community, posting a public roadmap of Heroku’s features and soliciting suggestions for improvements.
His departure is certain to have an impact on Heroku’s efforts to claw back market share. Salesforce has yet to announce plans for a replacement.
Relatedly, Heroku is still without a CPO after its previous CPO, Andy Fawcett, moved back to the U.K. to assume the role of VP of developer relations.
Commenting on Britain's macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, "While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year."
The market is "still tight," he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa's — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become "more important" during such times.
A press release in October mentions that subscribers to Function Health, a premium personal health management platform, will be able to share their data with Thrive’s health coach for “hyper-personalized behavior change recommendations” and “real-time guidance tailored to their unique health patterns” if they wish.
According to LinkedIn, Thrive AI Health, which claims to be hiring on its website, has fewer than 10 employees.
"The proposition has become more relevant, and while it's tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to," he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.
A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.
As we noted in July, Thrive AI Health is the latest in a long string of tech industry efforts to create health-focused apps with AI-driven personalization. Many have run up against intractable business, technical, and regulatory hurdles. Altman and Huffington’s involvement lent weight to Thrive. But it’s also sure to increase scrutiny on it.
"We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space," Janardana said. "We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year."
Janardana said consumers can expect a "slick" experience from Zopa's current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.
In the automotive sector, Pony follows Chinese EV startup Zeekr, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in May with $441 million in gross proceeds.
WeRide, another autonomous vehicle startup, debuted on the Nasdaq in October, raising $440.5 million in its IPO and private placement.
Pony will list on the Nasdaq under the ticker “PONY.”
IPO 'not top of mind'
Zopa is one of many fintech companies that has been viewed as a potential IPO candidate. Around two years ago, the firm said that it was planning to go public, but later decided to put those plans on ice, as high interest rates battered technology stocks and the IPO market froze over in 2022.
Janardana said he doesn't envision a public listing as an immediate priority, but noted he sees signs pointing toward a more favorable U.S. IPO market next year.
That should mean that Europe becomes more open to IPOs happening later in 2026, according to Janardana. He didn't disclose where Zopa would end up going public.
"To be honest, it's not the top of mind for me," Janardana told CNBC. "I think we continue to be lucky to have supportive and long-term shareholders who support future growth as well."
Last year, Zopa made two senior hires, appointing Peter Donlon, ex-chief technology officer at online card retailer Moonpig, as its own CTO. The firm also hired Kate Erb, a chartered accountant from KPMG, as its chief operating officer.
The swifties.social domain didn’t see much growth at first, with about 2,000 users joining until August 2024, when X was temporarily banned in Brazil.
“Bluesky got an enormous influx of Brazilian users, including many Swifties,” Newman said. “The tool went viral, jumping to nearly 8,000 handles claimed. Then, after the election, yet another wave of Swifties arrived and the tool went viral again, jumping to 12,800!”
That wave of growth from Brazilian users was when Newman added handles for BTS fans (army.social) and Beyoncé fans (beyhive.social).
X-37B will change its orbit (or perhaps it already has) in order to dispose of service module components, dropping them off to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Besides this novel maneuver, the public knows very little about X-37B. It is an unmanned, remotely controlled spaceplane Boeing developed for the U.S. Department of Defense. More broadly, spaceplanes are hybrids between airplanes and spacecraft that can orbit the planet like satellites but also land back on Earth like passenger planes, per Gizmodo’s Passant Rabie. In essence, this ability makes them reusable.
In the grand scheme of things, users with these fan domains only make up a tiny fraction of Bluesky’s 16 million users (and counting). But fan communities are often what makes a social network run; in the early 2010s, Tumblr boomed in part due to fandoms for TV shows like “Supernatural” and “Doctor Who,” as well as bands like One Direction. Even if a community is small, these cohorts tend to be very active social media users, and Bluesky thus far has prided itself on its ability to maintain highly engaged users.
“We … have a higher percentage of posters than most social sites, which follow a 90-9-1 pattern of lurkers-commenters-posters. We haven’t dipped below ~30% posters,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber wrote in a post on Tuesday.
X-37B was launched into space via SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket for its seventh mission (OTV-7) in December 2023. Since then, it has been orbiting Earth in an extremely elliptical path with a perigee (the closest point of an orbit) of 620 miles and an apogee of more than 22,210 miles, per Live Science’s Rory Bathgate—though it has been spotted as close as 185 miles above Earth.
But exactly what it’s doing on that orbit is unclear. “Since December 28, 2023, the United States Space Force, supported by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, has conducted radiation effect experiments and has been testing Space Domain Awareness technologies in a Highly Elliptical Orbit,” is all the agency said of the spaceplane’s overall mission in the recent statement.
Buffett’s firm also shed about $10 billion of its Bank of America holdings in a series of sales starting in mid-July. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said at an event in September that while Buffett has been a “great” investor in the company, Moynihan doesn’t know why Buffett is offloading its holdings in the bank.
Berkshire also offloaded most of its stake in beauty supply retailer Ulta Beauty (ULTA
-0.02%
), which it had just built up in the second quarter of this year.
Meanwhile, Berkshire also added more than 400,000 shares of pool equipment wholesale distributor Pool Corp. (POOL
+1.78%
), valued at about $152 million. Shares of the company rose more than 6% Friday morning before the market opened.
We do know, however, that past missions have served to study the effect of long-duration space exposure, including space radiation, on seeds.
“Space is a vast and unforgiving environment where testing technologies is critical to the success of future endeavors,” Michelle Parker, vice president of Boeing’s Space Mission Systems, said in another statement last month. “There is no other space platform as capable, flexible and maneuverable as the X-37B, and its next demonstration will be another proof point that this test vehicle sets the pace of innovation.”
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a statement that the craft is conducting “national security missions in space.” Some suspect this to include military surveillance. Many are thus wondering what might have prompted the agency to release information about the X-37B’s latest maneuver.
Starship’s monumental fifth launch that redefined space travel
On October 13, SpaceX achieved a historic milestone by launching Starship, the most powerful rocket ever constructed, which soared into the skies for its fifth mission. Minutes post-launch, the event witnessed an engineering marvel as the Super Heavy booster, a colossal structure as high as a 20-story building, executed a controlled descent back to Earth. Engaging three of its 33 Raptor engines for a descent burn, the booster made a dramatic return, condensation trailing in its wake.
“Disclosing this aerobraking maneuver could be the Space Force’s way of showing the world what the spaceplane is capable of,” Vivienne Machi writes for Aviation Week, “with an intended audience of anyone from allies and partners, adversaries, lawmakers, industry, potential recruits, and perhaps even the service itself.”
Machi adds that two other reasons for the revelation could include loosening up some of the agency’s historic and perhaps unnecessary security classification barriers, and/or wanting to prompt China and Russia to also step up communication about space maneuvers.
Mechazilla: The rocket-catching giant
Mechazilla, a 400-foot tall rocket-catching tower equipped with two massive mechanical arms, facilitated the precise landing, colloquially known as “chopsticks.” These arms successfully caught the Super Heavy booster, preventing a ground impact and enabling the booster’s reusability.
This innovative catch mechanism is pivotal for reducing the rocket’s overall mass by eliminating the need for heavy landing legs, thereby increasing payload capacity.
The 6550 ION is available worldwide in E3.S, U.2, and E1.L form factors for limited sampling, but the public release date remains unclear. Meanwhile, pre-orders are open for the D205V, with shipping set to begin in the second quarter of next year in U.2 and E3.L formats.
Phison will demonstrate its new hardware at the SC24 event in Atlanta, which runs from November 17 to November 22. The company will also exhibit the PS7161, the world's first PCIe 6.0 redriver, with shipping expected to begin in Q1 2025.
Mass reduction and increased payload efficiency
The elimination of traditional landing legs from the Super Heavy booster significantly reduces weight, allowing for greater payload capacity, a crucial advantage given Starship’s ambitions for interplanetary missions.
For context, the removed landing legs would have added several tons to the vehicle, similar to the Falcon 9’s landing legs, constituting about 8% of its total mass. Without these, Starship, towering at 397 feet (121 meters), supports a more substantial payload, leveraging its capacity to the fullest.
The Starship system, including its Super Heavy booster, requires over 10 million pounds of fuel, consisting of liquid oxygen and methane, to thrust itself beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
This propellant capacity underscores the sheer power of the 33 next-generation Raptor engines that produce a combined thrust of 17 million pounds at launch, making it the world’s most powerful rocket by a considerable margin.
Solidigm's 122TB D5-P5336 enterprise SSD is also available for sampling, with general availability for U.2 and E1.L form factors starting early next year. However, the drive is limited to a PCIe Gen 4 interface with a 7GB/s read speed (1.005 million IOPs) and 3GB/s write speed while drawing 23W.
Space missions streamlined
Post-catch, the booster was swiftly positioned back onto the launch pad for rapid inspections and refueling, demonstrating SpaceX’s capability for quick turnaround—a critical component of Elon Musk’s vision for space exploration. Musk has publicly stated the ambitious goal of having the rocket booster ready for reflight within an hour of landing. This benchmark could revolutionize the economics of space travel by facilitating more frequent and cost-effective launches.
The Starship utilizes a vented interstage design, enabling hot-stage separation. The upper-stage engines ignite before separation to manage exhaust and prevent damage. This function ensures smooth trajectory continuation for the upper stage while the Super Heavy booster returns to Earth.
The Mechazilla arms and the strategic removal of landing legs are among the many innovations driving SpaceX’s mission forward. Future plans aim to catch and reuse even the upper stages of Starship for cargo and crew missions by as early as 2025.
The Bitcoin price has not been helped by new economic data in the U.S. that earlier this week threw cold water on hopes that the Federal Reserve would end the year by lowering interest rates again.
In fact, the number of investors that think the next Federal Open Markets Committee meeting will end in the regulators keeping interest rates the same jumped up this week, noted BRN analyst Valentin Fournier.
Starship’s role in the next era of space exploration
SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS), designed to strengthen human space missions, will be a base for astronauts on the Moon. The HLS will be initially used by NASA Artemis astronauts aboard the Orion capsule, launched by the Space Launch System (SLS), the only rocket currently more powerful than Starship. Upon reaching lunar orbit, astronauts will transfer to the Starship HLS to descend to the lunar surface.
This mission architecture demonstrates Starship’s critical role in future lunar expeditions and the capability of orbital refueling and long-duration off-world stays. These technologies are essential for sustainable lunar exploration and are prerequisites for the eventual Mars missions that SpaceX plans to undertake.
"Although the figures met investor expectations, it remains a challenging signal for the Federal Reserve. This data complicates the Fed’s plan to cut interest rates for the third time in December," he wrote in a note shared with Decrypt. "CME data shows that investor expectations for rates to remain unchanged have risen to 40%, up from 25% before the release of the inflation reports."
Elon Musk has outlined ambitious plans for these Mars missions. They will start with an uncrewed flight within the next two years, aiming to test Starship’s landing capabilities on the Martian surface. Landing on Mars is a significant challenge due to its thin atmosphere, which provides little drag to slow the descent of landing craft. Success in these initial landings could pave the way for the first crewed flights to Mars, which are projected to launch within four years of the uncrewed tests.
Beyond the immediate goals, SpaceX envisions a rapidly increasing launch cadence for Mars-bound Starships, aiming to establish a self-sustaining settlement on Mars within two decades.
SpaceX has undoubtedly notched several spectacular successes. However, The road ahead remains fraught with the typical blend of hype and uncertainty accompanying Musk’s ambitious projects.
Already the CME FedWatch Tool shows that the portion of investors who expect the FOMC to keep interest rates the same in December has ticked up to 41.3%.
But even with the pullback of institutional funds from Bitcoin ETFs and so-so news from U.S. agencies about inflation, BRN remains confident that BTC could reach $100,000 in the coming months.
"Although a short-term dip is possible, we expect investors to view this as an attractive entry opportunity, injecting new liquidity," Fournier wrote. "The strong catalyst of Trump's election will keep having a very positive impact, especially during Q1 2025, when his first moves as president could generate a very strong momentum for a lasting bull market."
Historically, Musk’s timelines have often veered towards the optimistic, sometimes overshooting the realm of current technological feasibility, as seen with the unfulfilled promise of Tesla’s level 5 autonomy by 2021.
Yet, for all the skepticism, SpaceX’s advancements cannot be ignored. They’ve pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in space travel, even as some deadlines slip and public expectations must occasionally be recalibrated. As development continues, the aerospace community and the world remain eager yet cautious, watching to see which of Musk’s bold visions will materialize.
“By forming a prediction of future wave disturbances and integrating this within the control system, we’re able to expand this range with little to no change to the robot hardware.”
To help the robot perform this function, wave-detecting sensors must be tethered to the seafloor near offshore platforms. These sensors measure the height and direction of incoming waves and relay them to the robot in real-time. The robot can predict the arrival of the waves at its location and take countering action to maintain itself in a stable position.
Development is progressing rapidly, with Drift Zone: Arena players now able to claim rewards directly to Seiwallets and verify achievements on-chain, and the demo of Drift Zone: Origins now live on Sei. This technical integration enables the studio's expansion into one of gaming's most lucrative markets, introducing real rewards to the proven Gacha format that Asian players already love.