Business

A fascinating book review. “Muskism, in reading its subject as more a symptom than a person, doesn’t offer any kind of psychological interpretation of Musk’s worldview, but many of his pronouncements and preoccupations reveal an ontological confusion of the categories of human and machine.”

The hedge fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner, who had no previous hedge fund experience, “rapidly sold a large portion of its public equity holdings” as losses mounted. The fund employed only eight people, of whom four were investment professionals. Aschenbrenner named the fund after some essays he wrote.

Building the data centers needed to support the AI boom requires lots of skilled human tradespeople working 10-hour days, seven days a week, and earning healthy overtime wages. Bidding wars have broken out in markets with heavy data center construction, allowing workers to jump ship for bonuses and even higher pay in a modern-day gold rush, with companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft paying to help train new recruits.

Samsung Electronic’s memory chip business is killing it, hitting $49.64 billion for the quarter and driving over 99 percent of its operating profit. But the price gouging created by the AI hype caused its smartphone and home-appliance businesses to post modest operating losses due to the higher cost of chips and other components.

In addition to Reuters, WSJ, CNN, Fox News, and USA Today, Meta now has an AI content partnership to “…draw upon Newsmax’s significant current reporting as well as archived content across its platforms to support AI queries across Meta’s apps and devices.”

Elon Musk’s X Corp and the World Federation of Advertisers are ending their long-running legal fight. In 2024, Musk accused the industry group of illegally boycotting X through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, which set standards to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content. GARM has since been disbanded. A judge dismissed Musk’s lawsuit in March.

Poor SK Hynix. Despite the memory-chip maker posting record net profit of about $64.64 billion, the stock fell by as much as 18 percent (down 9 percent at market close) when its revenue haul (also a record) failed to meet the lofty expectations set by the AI hype cycle. The results won’t help investors worried that the AI bubble’s about to pop.

After reports of Nvidia in talks for deals worth more than $750 billion — with OpenAI, among others — insurance on Nvidia’s debt got more expensive. “There’s a fear of financial alchemy driven by opaqueness, off-balance-sheet transactions and intercompany relationships, which could result in credit rating downgrades,” Sal Naro, chief investment officer of Coherence Credit Strategies, told Bloomberg. Nvidia is at the center of many transactions that tie the AI ecosystem together.

Chipmaker Changxin Technology Group is now the most valuable China-listed company after IPO’ing this morning, rising nearly 500 percent on speculation that RAMageddon will drive demand for its memory chips in a market dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. Tim Cook’s said to have asked for an exception to use CXMT’s chips in Apple products sold in China to keep costs down.

That 28-day pause could go a lot longer, now that US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved a deal saying that Paramount Skydance won’t close its transaction until June 1st, 2027, or at least until after legal claims of two lawsuits (one filed by a group of state AGs, and the other by the WGA) are resolved.

Shortly after confirming it was looking at closing plants and cutting up to 100,000 jobs, the world’s 2nd largest auto company posted miserable financials and a desperate outlook as it lays the ground work for a radical overhaul of its business under threat from Chinese upstarts.

Patreon CEO Jack Conte was clear in yesterday’s layoff announcement that AI doesn’t replace humans, but that might be cold comfort to the humans whose jobs were lost as AI impacts “how we operate and organize.”

US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a decision Thursday extending her temporary restraining order to a total of 28 days, report The Wrap and Variety. The mega media merger is paused for now due to lawsuits by a group of state AGs and the Writers’ Guild of America, as the judge plans to “hear the two motions for preliminary injunction on the same schedule” and has scheduled a hearing for August 3rd.

With previous import taxes struck down by the courts or set to expire, the Trump administration announced a new set of tariffs ranging from 10 to 12.5 percent on 60 trading partners, including the EU. This time around, the administration is accusing dozens of countries of failing to enforce bans on forced labor as a justification.

The partially government-owned chipmaker’s Q2 2026 revenue increased 25 percent from last year, with data center and AI revenue up 59 percent. CEO Lip-Bu Tan:

A typical account on the prediction market platform also tended to primarily bet on a single topic, according to research from Pew. Sports are huge categories for both Polymarket and its competitor, Kalshi.

While Paramount’s $110 billion WBD merger is suddenly on hold in the US, in Europe, the European Commission is ready to allow it after Paramount agreed to concessions including giving up its stake in United International Pictures within 13 months of the deal closing.

This is a story about how AI destroyed a long-running site of film data. It’s not just that search no longer refers traffic or that the site itself, The Numbers, is getting scraped. It’s also that there’s no way to defend 30-year-old webpages against malicious actors attempting to get the data early so they could win their Polymarket bets.

Reddit has discussed shutting off Google’s access to data used to train its Gemini AI models. Or maybe it’s just a renegotiation bluff now that its $60 million-a-year deal is coming to an end. According to The Wall Street Journal:

A state court has granted a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, ruling its sports-related “event contracts” likely violate state online gambling bans. The judge rejected Kalshi’s defense that federal CFTC regulation shields it from state enforcement. Kalshi will likely have to geoblock Washington residents, marking yet another legal setback for prediction markets.

Nilay called it back in 2024, and now the Gray Lady is on board with recognizing the demise of the open web. It takes a look at how Google went from being a gateway to the internet to becoming the internet for many users who never leave the cozy confines of its AI summaries.

The Samsung Galaxy Card is issued on Visa by Barclays US Consumer Bank, with applications opening on July 22nd. Samsung says the card is available as both virtual and physical, metal cards, and that users can earn “a host of cash rewards and other benefits.” It’s essentially an Apple Card — launched seven years ago — but for people loyal to Samsung products.

The country’s gambling regulator ordered local internet service ​providers to block access to the Polymarket website on Friday, citing noncompliance concerns with rules for gambling and gaming services. The regulator also said that some bets on the platform “appeared to be rigged.”

SPCX sunk another three percent in extended trading after last night’s aborted Starship launch, falling further beneath its IPO price of $135. The record-setting IPO made Elon Musk the world’s first (paper) trillionaire. Today he’s worth $838.1 billion. Concerning.

The thirteenth, and first post-IPO, flight test of SpaceX’s massive Starship vehicle was supposed to occur Thursday night, but when the countdown hit zero just before 7PM ET, “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” writes Elon Musk.

The $14.8 billion acquisition offer for the German food-delivery giant, would give Uber ownership over services like Glovo and Foodora to expand its reach into 99 markets. In an effort to avoid antitrust scrutiny, it’s selling off operations to an investment firm in 14 markets where Uber Eats and Delivery Hero overlap.

The $53 billion offer was submitted earlier this month, but Stripe and private equity firm Advent have yet to receive a response. They “are seeking to advance discussions in the coming weeks,” according to sources speaking to Reuters.

The WGAE and WGAW are jointly filing a lawsuit alleging the merger violates antitrust law, following a similar lawsuit filed by a dozen state attorneys general. The WGA says it has “opposed the merger since day one,” adding: