TheChek News Flow

The Netflix tycoon, his private resort — and the future of skiing

Reed Hastings has created a members-only enclave on Utah’s Powder Mountain. He is walking a gentrification tightrope — and a ski industry in flux is watching every step

Apptronik, an Austin-based maker of humanoid robots, on Tuesday announced a new pilot partnership with American supply chain/manufacturing stalwart, Jabil. The deal arrives two weeks after Apptronik announced a $350 million Series A financing round aimed at scaling up production of its Apollo robot.

The Jabil deal is the second major pilot announced by Apptronik. It follows a March 2024 partnership that put Apollo to work on the Mercedes-Benz manufacturing floor. While the company tells TechCrunch that its partnership with the automaker is ongoing, it has yet to graduate beyond the pilot stage.

In addition to test running the humanoid robot on its factory floor, this new deal also finds Florida-based Jabil and Apptronik becoming manufacturing partners. Once Apollo is determined to be commercially viable, Jabil will begin producing the robot in its own factories. This means that should everything go according to plan, the humanoid robot will eventually be put to work building itself.

Given the humanoid industry’s focus on manufacturing, such deals seem like an inevitability. The prospect of humanoids building humanoids is still a ways off for Apptronik, however. The robotics startup recently told TechCrunch that it is targeting 2026 to begin manufacturing commercial units.

For the time being, the Jabil deal will find an undisclosed number of Apollo systems performing a range of “simple, repetitive intralogistics and manufacturing tasks,” including things like sorting and transporting parts. The real-world validation is a key step toward scaling the robot for manufacturing. The better Apollo performs on the Jabil factory floor, the closer it becomes to slotting into a production line that will eventually include Apollo itself.

Apptronik is one of a number of companies building humanoid robots for industrial applications, including Agility, Boston Dynamics, Figure, and Tesla. Of these, only Agility has announced that its robots have been deployed beyond an initial pilot phase.

Competition may be stiff for the nascent category, but Apptronik has a number of elements working in its favor. In addition to hundreds of millions in funding, the University of Texas spinoff has a decade of experience working on humanoids, including NASA’s Valkyrie robot. Last December, Apptronik announced a partnership with Google DeepMind to develop AI for its humanoid systems.

President Masoud Pezeshkian on defensive after impeachment of Abdolnaser Hemmati

Iran’s hardline-dominated parliament has impeached and sacked economy and finance minister Abdolnaser Hemmati, delivering a significant setback to the reformist government of President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The move highlights tensions over how to handle Iran’s crisis, which Pezeshkian says is driven by US sanctions and has become an “all-out war” over the economy.

Lawmakers who voted to remove Hemmati blamed him for worsening economic conditions since he took office last August. They pointed to the 60 per cent depreciation of the national currency, the rial, against the US dollar on the open market during his tenure, along with soaring prices for essential goods including food and medicine.

Of the 273 lawmakers present for Sunday’s session, 182 voted in favour of impeachment, 89 opposed it, one abstained, and one vote was declared invalid.

Defending his minister, Pezeshkian urged parliament not to dismiss a key member of his government, arguing that Iran faced a crisis even more severe than the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

“We are in an all-out war with the enemy [the US]. The war with Iraq was nothing [in comparison],” Pezeshkian told lawmakers. “The enemy wants us to show division. How can we bring about major economic change in just six months?”

The impeachment comes amid a renewed “maximum pressure” campaign by the US administration of Donald Trump, who has reimposed sweeping sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, similar to the measures he introduced in 2018 during his first term.

Pezeshkian admitted that Iran was already struggling to sell its oil due to the latest sanctions, with oil tankers “struggling to offload” shipments.

Elected last July on a platform promising to seek sanctions relief, Pezeshkian had suggested that economic recovery depended on negotiations with Washington.

While Pezeshkian’s senior diplomats had signalled a willingness to discuss the country’s nuclear programme, hopes for renewed talks have dimmed. A recent executive order by Trump expanded US sanctions, citing concerns not only about Iran’s nuclear activities but also its ballistic missile programme and regional policies.

Hardliners in Tehran argue that Washington is now seeking to strip Iran of its strategic capabilities entirely, rather than negotiate a limited nuclear deal like the 2015 agreement that Trump later abandoned.

On Sunday, Pezeshkian acknowledged that he had supported the idea of talks with the US as a “better” option, but reaffirmed his loyalty to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who ruled out negotiations last month shortly after Trump announced his approach.

“When the supreme leader said we don’t negotiate with the US, I [abided by it and] announced we won’t negotiate with the US. That is the end of the story,” Pezeshkian said, in what appeared to be an attempt to appease his conservative critics.

During the debate, some lawmakers accused Hemmati of advocating for negotiations with Washington — which he denied — and of blaming all of Iran’s economic problems on sanctions.

In his defence, Hemmati pointed to deep-rooted domestic structural problems that predate his tenure, including rising poverty and widespread corruption.

He noted that 10mn Iranians had fallen below the poverty line over the past seven years and that an estimated $30bn worth of goods was being smuggled in and out annually due to economic favouritism and political connections. He also highlighted acute problems in the banking and energy sectors.

“About 80 per cent of people are being crushed by what smugglers, sanctions profiteers, and those with special privileges are doing,” Hemmati said. “The budget deficit . . . is tied to international developments.”

Ex-spy Warnig’s plan to involve American investors shows breadth of Trump’s rapprochement with Russian president

A former spy and close friend of Vladimir Putin has been engineering a restart of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe with the backing of US investors, a once unthinkable move that shows the breadth of Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Moscow.

The efforts on a deal, according to several people aware of the discussions, were the brainchild of Matthias Warnig, an ex-Stasi officer in East Germany who until 2023 ran Nord Stream 2’s parent company for the Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom.

Warnig’s plan involved outreach to the Trump team through US businessmen, the people said, as part of back-channel efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine while deepening economic ties between the US and Russia.

Some prominent Trump administration figures are aware of the initiative to bring in US investors, according to officials in Washington, and they see it as part of the push to rebuild relations with Moscow.

While there have been several expressions of interest, one US-led consortium of investors has drawn up the outlines of a post-sanctions deal with Gazprom, according to one person with direct knowledge of talks who declined to disclose the identity of the prospective investors.

Senior EU officials became aware of the Nord Stream 2 discussion in recent weeks. Leaders of several European countries are concerned and have discussed the matter, according to several officials with knowledge of the discussions.

One of Nord Stream 2’s two pipelines was blown up in sabotage attacks in September 2022 that destroyed both pipelines of its older sister project Nord Stream 1. The other Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has an annual capacity of 27.5bn cubic metres of natural gas, is undamaged but has never been used.

The latest plan would in theory give the US unparalleled sway over energy supplies to Europe, the people said, after EU countries moved to end their dependence on Russian gas in the aftermath of the invasion.

But the obstacles are considerable. It would require the US to lift sanctions against Russia, Russia to agree to resume sales it cut off during the war, and Germany to allow the gas to flow to any potential buyers in Europe.

“The US would say, ‘Well, now Russia will be dependable because trustworthy Americans are in the middle of it’,’” said a former senior US official, who was aware of some of the dealmaking efforts. The US investors would collect “money for nothing”, he added.

The talks come as the Trump administration races to seal a peace deal through bilateral discussions with Russia that have excluded Europe and Ukraine, spooking European capitals who fear a US détente with Moscow could threaten the continent. Trump has promised deeper economic co-operation with Russia if a peace agreement can be reached.

Putin, Russia’s president, has talked up the economic benefits he says the US could reap with the Kremlin in the event of a settlement in Ukraine, claiming that “several companies” were already in touch over potential deals.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the pipeline’s Swiss-based parent company, received an exceptional stay on bankruptcy proceedings in January by at least four months.

According to a redacted court document, Nord Stream 2’s shareholder — Gazprom — argued that the new Trump administration, as well as the German election in February 2025, “presumably can have significant consequences on the circumstances of Nord Stream 2” to warrant a delay. The submission pointed to “complex geopolitical affairs” and the sanctions regime.

Warnig told the Financial Times he was “not involved in any discussions with any American politicians or business representatives”, adding that he was “following in this respect the rules [as a] US sanctioned person”.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said he had no information on any talks regarding the pipeline. Gazprom declined to comment. A lawyer representing Nord Stream 2 in Swiss insolvency proceedings and a court-appointed custodian of Nord Steam 2 creditors did not respond to FT requests for comment.

Warnig, 69, has said he became a close friend of Putin’s in the 1990s after setting up an office for lender Dresdner Bank in St Petersburg, where the then-unknown Putin headed the city’s foreign relations committee.

The two became so close that Putin asked Warnig to put up his daughters at the banker’s house in Rödermark when their mother was seriously injured in a car accident.

Putin, who speaks fluent German, taught Warnig’s children to ski in Davos and invited him to his father’s funeral, according to a 2023 interview with the former Stasi officer in Die Zeit.

But Warnig called Putin’s invasion an “indescribable mistake” and resigned from the boards of two Kremlin-run energy companies after the war in Ukraine broke out in 2022.

He told Die Zeit that he made a personal appeal to Putin to end the invasion a few months in and said the Russian president was so isolated that “the only person who can still say something to him is me”.

Warnig left Nord Stream 2 AG, the Russian-owned company that manages the pipeline, in 2023, but told Die Zeit that Gazprom’s chief executive, Alexei Miller, had guaranteed to cover its costs in the hope of saving what remained.

Joe Biden’s US administration sanctioned Warnig and Nord Stream 2 AG in 2022. Biden officials showed little interest in a proposal to buy Nord Stream 2 last year from Stephen Lynch, an American businessman with a record of working in Russia.

Other potential investors have come forward since Lynch first expressed interest. The person with direct knowledge of Gazprom’s discussions said its advanced talks were with a different US-led consortium from Lynch.

Lynch declined to comment when contacted by the FT. He has applied for a licence from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for the Nord Stream proposal. Lynch was previously granted one to bid for the former Swiss subsidiary of sanctioned Russian lender Sberbank in 2022.

Trump was outspoken in his criticism of the pipeline during his first term as president. It has become a symbol for those who blamed Germany — and Europe by extension — for relying too much on Russian gas and helping to finance Moscow’s military machine.

But some of Trump’s team now see the pipeline, which runs from Russia’s Vyborg in the Gulf of Finland to Greifswald on Germany’s Baltic coast, as a strategic asset that can be leveraged in the Ukraine peace talks, according to administration officials.

The complex ownership structure of Nord Stream 2 presents serious potential obstacles for any investment.

Nord Stream 2 is 100 per cent owned by Gazprom. But five European energy companies — Shell, Uniper, OMV, Engie and Wintershall — collectively provided around half of its $11bn construction costs through loans. All five European companies have written off those debts.

The German government in 2022 pulled the plug on the licensing procedure of Nord Stream 2 and never issued the paperwork required to operate it.

Ownership of the pipeline could in theory give US investors a lever to control Russian gas flows to Europe, which is a key market for US liquefied natural gas exports shipped across the Atlantic in tankers.

But former senior US officials and western businessmen with experience investing in Russia said Trump and Putin’s sign-off alone would not be enough to get Nord Stream 2 up and running.

“I can’t imagine the board of any major US corporations saying, ‘Hey, let’s jump back into the Russian market’ right now, and the Russians know this too — they’ve seen these oscillations in American policy,” a former senior US official said.

“Europe still has sanctions in place, and Germany signing up for the rehabilitation of Nord Stream would cause huge rifts. Anything like that is a ways off.”

- Willing to work with American partners - not just governmental but also including private companies - in the rare-earth sector.

- "Russia possesses significantly higher resources of this kind (rare earth minerals) than Ukraine"

In 2020, Apple announced the Mac transition to Apple Silicon. Replacing Intel was a large undertaking, but it proved successful. Apple was able to develop chips that were both faster and more efficient than the Intel processors they replaced, all in an under 3 year transition.

Now, Apple is trying to replace Qualcomm, starting off with the new C1 modem in the brand new iPhone 16e, it’s the first step in a much larger journey. In the end, Apple wants all networking to be handled in-house.

Apple’s first C1 modem, which debuted in iPhone 16e last month, is more focused on efficiency. It doesn’t support 5G mmWave, and doesn’t support all of the same wavelengths as the existing Qualcomm modems. It’s still pretty performant according to tests, but it isn’t the best of the best.

That’s why this C1 modem isn’t making its way to most of the iPhone 17 lineup, though it will likely appear in the iPhone 17 Air – where its efficiency gains will be important for such a thin form factor. Apple referred to C1 as “the most power-efficient modem ever on an iPhone, delivering fast and reliable 5G cellular connectivity.”

Unsurprisingly, Apple is already working on future generation 5G modems. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple intends to fully replace Qualcomm within two generations.

The C2 modem, codenamed Ganymede, will debut in the iPhone 18 lineup in 2026 – as well as future iPad models in 2027. According to Gurman, these modems will be on-par with Qualcomm:

The big difference is that Ganymede will catch up to current Qualcomm modems by adding support for mmWave, download speeds of 6 gigabits per second, six-carrier aggregation when using Sub-6, and eight-carrier aggregation when using mmWave.

Afterwards, Apple will debut C3 in 2027, codenamed Prometheus, alongside the iPhone 19 lineup. This modem will completely surpass Qualcomm:

In 2027, Apple aims to roll out its third modem, code-named Prometheus. The company hopes to top Qualcomm with that component’s performance and artificial intelligence features by that point. It will also build in support for next-generation satellite networks.

Amid all of these plans, Apple is also considering bringing cellular support to MacBooks, as soon as 2026. This would of course be thanks to its new in-house modems.

New Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip

On top of replacing Qualcomm’s cellular modems, Apple also wants to replace Broadcom’s networking chips. Despite being a relatively new rumor, this new networking chip will debut as soon as this year.

This networking chip, codenamed Proxima, is expected to debut in refreshed versions of the HomePod mini and Apple TV later this year, per Gurman. The chip will support the Wi-Fi 6E standard, and has a theoretical capability of serving as a Wi-Fi router. Gurman also said it’ll debut in some iPhone models this year, and some iPad and Mac models in 2026.

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has taken this a step further, and stated that the Apple networking chip will actually debut in the entire iPhone 17 lineup later this year, rather than just the iPhone 17 Air. Kuo states that this will “enhance connectivity across Apple devices,” as well as reduce cost.

Modem integration with main chipset

After Apple is done with its modem transition, it’s also considering integrating its cellular modems inside of the main Apple Silicon chipset. Rather than an A18 chip and a separate C1 chip, it’d all be one package.

According to Gurman, this feat won’t happen until 2028 at the earliest. Nonetheless, its on the table, and apparently provides a number of cost and efficiency benefits.