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AI hyperscale data centers are exposed to a dizzying array of potential threats during construction and operation

The $1 trillion race to build data centers is driving the economy—and creating a huge new opportunity for insurers. The industry is eyeing a once-in-a-generation chance to generate tens of billions of dollars in additional income.

Global premiums for insuring data centers will likely reach $20 billion to $30 billion a year by 2030, reinsurer Swiss Re forecast in a report this month.

That is a supercharged rate of growth: at least double the $10 billion in new premiums the centers could generate this year, according to ratings company S&P Global. To compare to another major market, it is four times the $5-billion-a-year size of global aviation insurance, according to S&P.

“U.S. data centers are likely one of the biggest opportunities for commercial insurers for decades,” said Jérôme Haegeli, group chief economist at Swiss Re.

Individual artificial-intelligence data centers are among the most valuable insured assets in the world—often worth $20 billion upward each, more than bridges, tunnels and skyscrapers.

Tech firms can balk at paying for full coverage, instead opting to essentially carry a significant chunk of the risk on their own balance sheets, according to analysts.

The scale of self-insurance represents an “amazing opportunity” for the insurance industry, said Jim Bichard, chief financial officer at Lloyd’s of London, the insurance marketplace. Insurers and brokers are working on new structures, including outside sources of capital, to fit the specialized insurance requirements for hyperscale data centers.

Even if the bipartisan backlash against the AI boom slows the forecast pace of growth, data centers offer a tantalizing sales prospect for insurers.

Hundreds of billions are already being plowed into the build-out: Whatever investors decide for the future, “the infrastructure already built doesn’t disappear,” Swiss Re’s Haegeli said.

The biggest check on the insurance gold rush: the risks.

Data centers are exposed to a dizzying array of potential threats during their construction and operation, from extreme weather to power cuts, IT failures and even terrorism. The clustering of buildings in areas such as Virginia’s “data center alley” means a single event—such as a tornado—can trigger multiple major claims.

“The risks are very, very significant,” said Bichard of Lloyd’s of London. “The scale is so much bigger than we’ve seen in more traditional markets.”

Tech companies typically choose sites for data centers based on affordable land and easily accessible power, factors that favor disaster-prone states, such as Texas. As the hyperscale build-out gathers pace, the dollar value of assets exposed to potential catastrophe is spiraling.

More than a third, or 40%, of U.S. data-center capacity is located in tornado-prone areas, and over a quarter in areas subject to large hailstorms, according to Swiss Re. Flash floods are another significant—and hard to predict—threat.

Some risks can be largely sidestepped: choosing not to build on an earthquake fault line, for example, or in flood plains. But other threats are much harder to avoid.

“The peril that is most concerning is really tornadoes,” said Karen Clark, chief executive and co-founder of risk-modeling firm Karen Clark & Co.

Developers can’t protect assets from the most severe grade of tornadoes, but rely on the fact that the chances of one hitting any particular location is very low, according to Clark. “You’re betting on the probability,” she added.

Another insurance headache: the resilience of new hyperscale data centers, each of which can house billions of dollars in physical assets, is largely untested. Policies are being underwritten without the usual benefit of a long track record of claims to help set the rate and terms.

That all adds up to high prices. “The premiums become quite large, very quickly, the way they have to date been priced,” according to risk-modeler Clark.

A hyperscale data center can have a total insurable value of $20 billion to $30 billion, according to an S&P report this year.

A few are bigger still: Meta Platforms, for example, forecasts its center in Northeast Louisiana will cost more than $50 billion. A single center can house thousands of servers, along with valuable energy and cooling systems.

Some of the biggest insurance companies are willing to take on a “low single-digit billions” slice of the risk for a given center, S&P said. “No single insurer can absorb the risks alone.”

Some risks, such as technology-related losses, will “likely remain self-insured or only partially insured,” the report added.

Illicit Iranian funds are flowing through U.S.-dollar clearing accounts, creating an enforcement dilemma for Washington

As the Trump administration tightens its economic squeeze on Iran, it faces a surprising weak link in its campaign to cut off the regime from the global financial system: America’s own banks.

Billions of dollars of Iranian funds are flowing through clearing accounts at American banks each year, Western officials and researchers say, despite sanctions that prohibit anyone subject to U.S. law from taking part in almost all financial activity linked to Tehran.

Iran accesses the accounts through foreign partners that maintain relationships with U.S. banks, part of a more than century-old system called correspondent banking that helps tie the global financial system together, while also providing Tehran with plenty of ways to secretly infiltrate it.

The Trump administration has recently moved to put foreign banks that process dollar transactions with Iran via U.S. correspondent accounts on alert. Officials have also been pushing American banks to step up their vigilance on Iran-related transactions.

But detecting them can be difficult, since Iran uses a complicated network of front companies and other means to disguise them.

On Aug. 28, the U.S. Treasury identified the Emirati branch of a state-owned Egyptian bank as one of the foreign institutions it believes are helping Iran access the U.S. banking system, and said it would move to cut it off. Banque Misr’s United Arab Emirates branch accessed U.S. correspondent accounts and routed as much as $1.8 billion for companies that were potentially part of Iranian shadow-banking networks, officials said.

The Treasury said Misr UAE had U.S. dollar accounts with three U.S. banks but didn’t name them. Misr on its website lists JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup as institutions where it has correspondent accounts. Both banks declined to comment on the Treasury action.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said it was communicating with U.S. authorities about the Treasury’s allegations. Misr has said it is engaging with the Treasury and respects “relevant regulatory and legal frameworks.” Its Emirati branches are operating normally, the bank said last weekend.

The latest move was part of the Trump administration’s new “Operation Economic Outcast,” a wide-ranging pressure campaign aimed at squeezing Iran financially to force concessions and end Middle East hostilities. Washington is warning global leaders to sever ties with Iran or face secondary sanctions—the threat of being cut off from the U.S. dollar financial system entirely.

But some financial experts say Washington’s efforts could have limited impact if it doesn’t put more pressure on U.S. lenders to scrutinize their correspondent banking relationships more closely. The Treasury last year said it had identified about $9 billion in Iranian funds that moved through American banks in 2024, a figure that some Iran researchers say could be brought down if U.S. banks were more proactive.

“Shadow banking networks are extremely difficult to detect, but by no means is it impossible to track Iran’s financial flows,” said Elaine Dezenski, a former senior Department of Homeland Security official now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank. “U.S. and correspondent banks are squarely on the hook, and that pressure is only increasing.”

U.S. financial institutions say they work closely with the Treasury to enforce sanctions, including by filing legally mandated reports on any suspicious activity that could be linked to Iran.

U.S. officials typically only move to penalize banks if they discover a significant failure to implement a sanctions-compliance program and police transactions. Increasing the pressure on U.S. banks and even many foreign ones could come with downsides, sanctions experts say, including closing a key avenue of insight into Tehran’s financial dealings.

Still, the Trump administration has encouraged U.S. institutions in private meetings with bank compliance officials to better monitor Iranian money flows.

“Under President Trump, Treasury has made clear that compliance with U.S. sanctions and other legal obligations is not optional, and failure to comply will carry consequences. Financial institutions are on notice,” said Gene Lange, a senior Treasury official who oversees the department’s counterterrorism financing office. The department is now “moving faster and more aggressively than ever to identify, disrupt, and penalize any institution or intermediary that continues to enable business with the Iranian regime.”

The Treasury also has published alerts for global banks laying out red flags that suggest shell companies could be using the U.S.-led financial system for Iran. These signs include an opaque ownership structure of a firm based in the U.A.E. or a company registered in Hong Kong that uses a Chinese bank account and has no online presence.

Complex problem

The root of the issue is the correspondent-banking process itself, in which any dollar-denominated transaction anywhere must ultimately be cleared by an American lender. The system gives Washington the ability to monitor most international dollar transactions and cut off users’ dollars if necessary, crippling their operations.

While Iran increasingly prefers to do business in Chinese yuan or cryptocurrency to avoid that scrutiny, it still must use dollars sometimes to conduct trade, support Middle Eastern allies and buy restricted technology and components for its military.

To do so, U.S. officials and researchers say, Iran has built an elaborate shadow banking network that includes shell companies and currency exchange houses in places such as Hong Kong and Dubai.

An oil tanker unloads imported crude at the Qingdao Port in China, a crucial trade partner for Iran. Costfoto/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Typically, those entities avoid opening direct accounts at U.S. banks, which would likely refuse their business. Instead, they tap partners in China, the U.A.E. or elsewhere that maintain correspondent relationships with American banks, U.S. officials and researchers say.

Those institutions then move the money on behalf of Iran’s front companies, without disclosing their ties to Tehran, while a U.S. bank settles the transfers.

Iranian officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

China has said it opposes “illegal and unreasonable unilateral sanctions” by Washington and will take necessary measures to safeguard its interests. In a press briefing following the launch of Operation Economic Outcast, a Foreign Ministry spokesman added that economic warfare could disrupt the global economy.

Hong Kong’s government has said it vigorously enforces United Nations sanctions but not those imposed unilaterally by individual nations, which it says violate international law.

The U.A.E. Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Sensors and circuit boards

A recent real-world example looks like this: an Iranian engineering firm put in an order with a Chinese supplier to buy 150,000 circuit boards and sensors—electronic components that are used in car manufacturing but are also sought by Iran for weapons and drones—according to an invoice viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The invoice from the supplier contained the details of its Chinese bank account, and noted that the $650,000 payment should be routed via a U.S.-based clearing partner in New York.

The documents viewed by the Journal showed that the Iranian engineering firm agreed to make payment via Bank Tejarat, an Iranian financial institution sanctioned by the U.S. Tejarat didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But an Iranian bank can’t just transfer dollars to a Chinese firm’s account via the U.S. In such a scenario, the payment to the account of the Chinese supplier would likely have to move from a shell company that had access to a foreign bank with a U.S. correspondent banking relationship, researchers say.

It is unclear whether the payment reflected in the invoices viewed by the Journal was ultimately made.

Well-oiled system

Correspondent banking is vital to a well-functioning global financial system because it allows lenders to settle cross-border payments without transporting physical cash. When a foreign company transfers funds, the U.S. clearing bank effectively deletes dollars from the foreign company’s account and adds them to the other party’s.

For U.S. institutions, correspondent services can be very profitable, generating fees or funding through deposits and enabling a bank to provide more services to customers abroad.

The question is whether U.S. banks are doing enough to ensure they aren’t clearing transactions that benefit Tehran.

It is a challenge that has long bedeviled Washington. If it enforces restrictions loosely, more transactions get through. But clamping down risks damaging the dollar’s dominance, as countries look for alternatives such as China’s yuan.

“The more you use the tools, the more you create incentives for alternatives” to the dollar, said Alex Zerden, a former Treasury official who founded financial technology and risk advisory firm Capitol Peak Strategies.

In the case recently announced by the Treasury, U.S. authorities stopped short of imposing secondary sanctions on Banque Misr UAE. Instead, the Treasury said it would restrict Misr’s Emirati branch from accessing U.S. correspondent accounts.

The restrictions don’t go into effect immediately. Misr will have a chance to comment on the Treasury action over 30 days before winding down the U.S. correspondent relationships of its Emirati branch. The Treasury didn’t threaten any actions against U.S. banks.

The choice of a less disruptive approach highlights the dilemma facing Treasury officials.

Cutting off a foreign bank from the U.S. has in the past effectively destroyed the foreign institution being targeted, while punishing U.S. lenders could make them rein in their correspondent banking activity. Both could have knock-on effects, either for the economy where the foreign bank is located, or the broader financial system.

“That’s why they can’t take an all-at-once approach, because it might have ripple effects that are counter to what the U.S. government is trying to accomplish,” said Jason Prince, a partner at the law firm Akin Gump and former Treasury sanctions official.

Ukraine Considers Legalizing Porn Industry to Fund Its War Chest

Lawmakers say taxing the country’s thousands of OnlyFans models could collect $25 million a year

Ukraine is considering legalizing its porn industry to raise tax revenues and help fund its defense needs.

A bill to legalize pornography in Ukraine is awaiting its second reading in Parliament after winning a first vote in July.

Lawmakers estimate that taxing the country’s thousands of OnlyFans models could collect up to $25 million a year.

KYIV, Ukraine—Every few weeks, Svitlana Dvornikova leaves her home near the front line in Ukraine and travels to a rented luxury villa on the Mediterranean coast of France or Spain.

She dons makeup, a wig, high heels and a pseudonym.

Dvornikova isn’t there to escape the war. She travels abroad to stream solo shows to her one million subscribers on the adult online platform OnlyFans. Doing it in Ukraine could land her in jail.

Unlike in most European countries, the production, distribution and possession of pornography in Ukraine is illegal, punishable by up to seven years in prison. Still, Ukraine has been unable to curtail a vast and lucrative porn industry, which officials say operates with the protection of corrupt police.

Ukrainian authorities are now demanding taxes from people who work in the porn industry. But anyone who complies is effectively confirming their involvement in criminal activity.

“These women either don’t pay taxes and face criminal charges for that, or they pay taxes and get charged with violating pornography laws,” said Yaroslav Zhelezniak, an opposition lawmaker who chairs the finance committee in Ukraine’s Parliament. “It’s a tragicomic situation.”

Zhelezniak is now leading a push to legalize porn in Ukraine, arguing that doing so wouldn’t only help against corruption, but would raise up to $25 million a year in tax revenues.

It might be a drop in the ocean for a country fighting a war of survival that says it needs $120 billion a year for its defense needs. But the sum that Zhelezniak predicts would be enough to pay for 30,000 drones.

A bill co-authored by Zhelezniak is awaiting its second reading in Parliament after winning a first vote in July.

Meanwhile, Dvornikova is one of thousands of women who skirt the law by operating abroad or moving out of Ukraine altogether to make porn—many of them boosting the tax revenues of other countries instead.

“This is a victimless crime,” said Lesia Mykhalenko, a tax lawyer who has represented more than 100 OnlyFans models. “It unnecessarily burdens the legal system at a time when we should be focused on defending the country.”

For years, Ukrainian authorities turned a blind eye to the shadowy industry. Many of Ukraine’s largest porn studios made handsome profits in cahoots with corrupt law-enforcement agents. In one recent example, the office of Ukraine’s general prosecutor said in May that police departments in three separate regions had each been receiving over $20,000 a month in bribes.

Things changed after Russia invaded. Two years into the war, Ukraine’s tax authorities received data on thousands of Ukrainians from OnlyFans’ U.K.-based parent company, Fenix International.

The figures showed that 7,900 Ukrainians made in excess of $131 million from OnlyFans during 2023. That meant millions of dollars in taxes were owed.

OnlyFans models across Ukraine began receiving letters from the authorities. Some were making in excess of $20,000 a month. Many, including Dvornikova, filed tax declarations. Unbeknown to them, this meant they could now be charged not only with tax evasion but with illicitly producing porn.

Dvornikova and her husband were getting their daughter ready for school one morning last spring when police arrived to search her home and accused her of breaking the law by producing pornography for profit. They seized a laptop, flash drives and the equivalent of $200,000 in cash, which she said she had set aside for taxes.

“They had a list of webcam models, and knew all their addresses,” Dvornikova said in an interview. She said the officers told her she could give them half of the cash as a bribe and keep the rest. She declined the offer.

Similar searches were conducted across the country. One woman in her early 20s told the Journal that after police searched her apartment and charged her earlier this year, she went into hiding in another part of Ukraine. She said she was summoned to a court hearing by police, but decided not to go because she feared officials wanted to use the meeting to extract a bribe.

Hundreds of OnlyFans models have left to live abroad. One, who now lives in Georgia, said the small Caucasus country has a large community of Ukrainian OnlyFans models who make thousands of dollars each month and frequent swanky night clubs in its capital city, Tbilisi.

Those who have stayed inside Ukraine have resorted to workarounds.

Former waitress Iryna Mosiychuk runs a company called Beezone, which advertises itself as a business consulting firm. “We create opportunities for those who strive for more,” says its website, which is full of motivational slogans and reveals nothing about what Beezone actually does.

Its main office, inside a nondescript two-story building on the outskirts of Lviv in western Ukraine, is actually a collection of webcam studios, used by several dozen models who perform for mostly U.S.-based clients to the soundtrack of booming pop music.

The women monitor a smartphone app to track alerts for Russian airstrikes. Sometimes they have to interrupt livestreams and rush to the bomb shelter.

“Missiles are bad for business,” Mosiychuk laments.

Mosiychuk said her models earn between $2,000 and $7,000 a month. She helps pay their taxes. In return they sign contracts in which they promise not to take their clothes off on camera, although Mosiychuk said she can’t control them all. When police visited Beezone last year, Mosiychuk said they found no evidence to charge her.

Mosiychuk has written to Ukrainian lawmakers and government ministries arguing that the $5,000 she pays in taxes each month could increase twentyfold if she were allowed to expand the business and stop trying to control what her women do behind closed doors.

“I don’t want my country to ask other countries for support and weapons,” she said. “If our industry was able to grow, I think we could help Ukraine manage all this on its own.”

Dvornikova has been making the same case. In June 2025, after the police raid, she submitted a petition that was published on the website of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Describing herself as a “conscientious taxpayer,” she said that instead of branding her a criminal, the government should be thankful for the 40,000,000 hryvnias, about $900,000, she had paid in taxes—a sum she said was worth 100 new pickup trucks for the army, 2,000 drones or “hundreds of Russians killed on the front line.”

Within a week, Dvornikova’s petition had gathered the more than 25,000 signatures needed to trigger a response from Zelensky, who said Parliament would consider the legislation to legalize porn.

Dvornikova’s case hasn’t come to court. She said she was told it has been put on hold while Parliament considers the new law. Her confiscated cash has been returned.

For now, she continues to straddle two worlds, running a household in Ukraine and earning her online living abroad. Her OnlyFans account can’t be viewed in Ukraine, meaning only her closest friends know her alter ego.

Of her online presence, she said: “You know who I am in Ukraine, but you have no idea who I am there.”

Rival cities vie to ‘poach’ international organisations from Geneva

Trump aid cuts prompt European and Gulf capitals to try to lure away UN bodies and non-governmental organisations

A UN funding crisis triggered by Donald Trump’s foreign aid cuts has set off a battle for diplomatic influence, with EU capitals and Gulf states competing to lure international organisations and staff away from Geneva, Swiss officials have warned.

Home to the European headquarters of the UN, dozens of international organisations, hundreds of non-governmental organisations and diplomatic missions, Geneva last year was confronted with its biggest test in decades after the Trump administration froze most US foreign aid, withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) and halted funding for several UN bodies.

At the same time many countries have been decreasing their contributions to the multilateral system and spending more on areas such as national defence.

The resulting budget crises have forced agencies to cut jobs, freeze hiring and look for cheaper locations, making high-cost Geneva an obvious target.

“International Geneva”, as the ecosystem is known, generates about SFr4bn (US$5bn) of annual economic activity — according to foreign ministry estimates — and is home to roughly 450 international organisations and NGOs, as well as about 185 countries represented via permanent missions, according to government figures.

Swiss officials say about 20 countries are trying to use the financial turmoil engulfing the multilateral system to bolster their own ambitions as diplomatic hubs. They identified Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Spain as well as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as among those seeking to attract UN agencies or parts of Geneva’s international ecosystem.

“A lot of European countries have host-state ambitions and they want to use this moment of stress to strengthen their own position,” said one Swiss official with direct knowledge of the situation. “It is blatant poaching.”

“The sharp reduction in financial support in 2025 opened a real opportunity for a lot of challengers, particularly in Europe,” said Beatrice Ferrari, director of International Affairs at the Canton of Geneva.

The WHO has proposed moving some headquarters functions to Lyon, France, as part of its restructuring. Unicef is relocating hundreds of posts to lower-cost cities including Rome, while the International Labour Organization has said it will shift some staff and functions to its existing training centre in Turin.

The Swiss official said: “We’ve seen some member states offer a certain amount of money for every person they can move from Geneva to their city.”

Another Geneva-based politician said governments were increasingly carving out specialist roles rather than trying to replicate the city wholesale. Spain wants Valencia to become a centre for digitalisation and data, France is strengthening Lyon as a hub for international health governance and Paris’s education profile, Germany is building on Bonn’s environmental institutions and Berlin’s international role, while Vienna is seeking to expand its presence as a UN hub.

“They all want different parts of the ecosystem,” the politician said.

Among the Gulf states, Swiss officials see Qatar as the strongest challenger because it has established itself as a diplomatic broker. They pointed to Doha’s growing role in mediation, including over Gaza and in recent diplomacy involving Iran, and said it was combining that political influence with “very attractive financial offers” as it sought to become a bigger humanitarian hub.

Bern has responded with one of its largest host-state support packages in years. The federal government in June approved SFr269mn for International Geneva, citing the financial crisis facing UN agencies and “increasing competition between states” to host international organisations.

The package includes emergency funding for struggling agencies, investment in conference and digital infrastructure, a SFr78mn interest-free loan to renovate buildings used by international organisations, and support for Geneva’s ambitions in areas such as AI and other emerging technologies.

The effort extends beyond the federal government. The Canton of Geneva and the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, which controls Rolex, have created a SFr50mn fund to support International Geneva over five years. The canton has also earmarked SFr10mn for NGOs, while the City of Geneva has committed a further SFr2mn.

Swiss officials insist they are not trying to outspend rival host cities but to protect the concentration of UN agencies, diplomats, NGOs and researchers that has made Geneva one of the world’s leading centres for international co-operation.

They argue the economic benefits of relocation are often overstated. Lower salaries and rents elsewhere can be offset by the cost of recreating conference facilities, administrative support and diplomatic networks, while dispersing organisations risks weakening the collaboration that has made Geneva effective in tackling global problems.

“There is fierce competition because of the US retreat,” said Vincent Subilia, a member of parliament for the canton of Geneva and director-general of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce. “But the federal government, the canton and the city have all stepped up to help fill part of the gap.

“Our high concentration of institutions means Geneva still offers the strongest and most unique international ecosystem.”

Nor is every government pulling back. Swiss officials said countries including China have stepped up their engagement with Geneva’s multilateral institutions, seeing an opportunity to wield greater influence as the US retreats.

Ferrari said six new countries had opened permanent missions in the past two years, including Belize and some Pacific island countries.

“The crisis is not over yet but Geneva remains the biggest centre and closest to decision makers,” she added.

‘Unfinished business’: Travis Kalanick revisits robotaxis with new start-up

Atoms gears up for hiring spree and could link with Uber, the company he was ousted from almost a decade ago

Travis Kalanick is eyeing a return to the ride-hailing market by developing robotaxi technology at his new venture Atoms, reuniting with former members of Uber’s autonomous vehicles team to realise a decade-long ambition.

Armed with Atoms’ recent $1.7bn fundraise, the Uber co-founder is gearing up for a hiring spree, including potential acquisitions, to bring in autonomous engineering talent, according to people familiar with his plans.

Atoms, which Kalanick has billed as a ‘physical AI’ company, has also held preliminary talks with Uber about using its technology for robotaxis on its ride-hailing network, these people said. Uber has invested $100mn in Atoms, they added.

A tie-up would mark Kalanick’s first involvement in ride-hailing at Uber since he left its board in 2019. He was forced out as chief executive following scandals nine years ago.

“A lot of the things that would have happened with Uber over time are things we’re doing now,” Kalanick said this month at an event held by venture firm Andreessen Horowitz in San Francisco.

The FT interviewed multiple current and former Atoms and Uber employees about Kalanick’s return to the fray after nearly a decade on the sidelines. Uber declined to comment.

Atoms said it is “an industrial software company focused [on] industrial applications”. “We have no plans to enter the saturated robotaxi market. Uber is a partner of Atoms and can use our technology for its ridesharing business if it is helpful,” it said.

To accelerate his new project, Kalanick has brought on Waymo co-founder and former Uber self-driving chief Anthony Levandowski to lead Atoms’ autonomous vehicle work, including robotaxi development, the people said.

Levandowski’s theft of trade secrets from Google’s self-driving car unit contributed to Kalanick’s ousting from Uber and cost the company nearly $350mn in legal settlements.

In 2021, Levandowski was spared an 18-month prison sentence when he was pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Atoms acquired Levandowski’s start-up Pronto, an automation company focused on heavy industry and mining, in March.

Kalanick launched Atoms in the same month, rebadging his real estate group, City Storage Systems, which acts as a holding company for various business interests including dark kitchen operation CloudKitchens. Atoms announced a $1.7bn fundraising led by Andreessen Horowitz in July.

The Uber co-founder’s empire spans a food delivery service, a point-of-sale business and Lab37, an operation to automate commercial kitchens.

Atoms has more than 2,000 employees across the span of its various arms, according to public profiles on LinkedIn. The bulk work across the company’s food division but a growing number of employees are focused on autonomous vehicles, people familiar with the matter told the FT.

Kalanick has turned to several former colleagues at Uber, including former finance chief Gautam Gupta, who joined as Atoms’ CFO. Eric Meyhofer, who succeeded Levandowski as Uber’s robotaxi development chief, helms Lab37.

He has hired several dozen former Uber employees and recruited from Amazon’s Zoox, Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo.

The company is taking a similar approach to AV companies such as Wayve and Nuro, which want to build the technology for robotaxis but not the vehicles themselves, said people familiar with the matter.

Kalanick is returning to the limelight having departed Uber in ignominy back in 2017 following allegations of managerial dysfunction. Female workers claimed the company turned a blind eye to sexual harassment and discrimination. Regulatory probes in several markets and Google’s lawsuit over trade secrets theft further damaged his standing and a boardroom clash ensued.

However, Silicon Valley’s culture has shifted in the Trump era, and its veneration of hard-charging founders has grown.

At the Andreessen event, a video of which was later posted online, Kalanick walked young tech entrepreneurs through slides labelled “big deck energy” and spoke about “retardmaxxing” — when founders stop overthinking and take immediate but imperfect actions.

One of Atoms’ largest backers, Andreessen Horowitz, has dismissed the furore surrounding his tenure at Uber.

“My very favourite thing [about Uber’s guiding principles] was meritocracy and toe-stepping,” said Ben Horowitz, the Silicon Valley firm’s co-founder, at the August event. “That was the part that got diluted when Travis went out.”

He added: “It’s certainly the biggest cheque I’ve ever written . . . I was at conviction very fast.”

Close friends maintain Kalanick was the victim of a “media pile-on” that left him incapable of managing Uber’s day-to-day operations.

“There are probably 10 people who have created as much private value in the markets and he is one of them,” said David Erickson, a professor at Columbia Business School. “Certain entrepreneurs are always going to be acceptable to investors.”

Kalanick counts Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund among investors in Atoms, having earlier backed CloudKitchens, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company has also received funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Fifth Wall and veteran tech investor Ron Conway’s SV Angel, while it raised debt from leading banks including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.

Investors told the FT that they had taken care when deciding to back Kalanick, including understanding his current managerial style.

“We’re aware of his background. It’s not a secret,” said one investor. “There’s a range of views about whether it was fair for him to leave the company.”

“There are credible people backing him,” the investor added.

One backer whom investors have turned to for assurance is Uber. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi remains in regular contact with Kalanick, said people familiar with the matter. The two were spotted huddled together on the sidelines of the US-Saudi Arabian business summit held in Riyadh in May 2025.

Khosrowshahi and Kalanick were in talks at the time about a deal involving the US arm of Chinese self-driving car company Pony AI, the people added. Those talks have since fizzled.

Backers caution that Atoms is not exclusively tied to the development of robotaxis, with Kalanick adopting a grander vision for the venture. “He doesn’t want to be boxed in . . . It’s not just all about reclaiming some form of past glory as much as it is fulfilling a longstanding vision,” said one person close to the project.

In an essay unveiling his plans for Atoms, he wrote that the company would seek to leverage industrial AI, including software and robotics, in an attempt to unlock trillions of dollars in potential business by disrupting sectors including construction, mining, food and transportation.

Kalanick is determined to expand beyond the ride-hailing group he co-founded and made an effort to distance himself from the venture during his recent talk. “When you fall in love again, you don’t think about the ex very much,” he said.

However, his recent memorandum was entitled “Unfinished business”.

LVMH sheds boom-time gains as luxury ‘feelgood factor’ fades

Pandemic-era rally that turned LVMH into Europe’s most valuable company has gone into reverse as investors doubt luxury recovery

Luxury bellwether LVMH has given up almost all of its share price gains from a pandemic-era industry boom that made it Europe’s first $500bn company, as geopolitical turmoil quashes “the feelgood factor” on which high-end brands depend.

The market capitalisation of the Paris-listed group behind Dior, Louis Vuitton and Veuve Clicquot has more than halved to €213bn from its 2023 peak.

That decline has put LVMH within touching distance of its valuation in January 2020, shortly before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which catalysed a historic surge in luxury spending. The share price fall has come despite LVMH last year reporting profits from continuing operations of €17.8bn — more than 50 per cent higher than in 2019.

The luxury downturn began around three years ago as inflation squeezed middle-class shoppers, known as “aspirational” luxury consumers. The decline has been exacerbated by US trade disputes and war in the Middle East.

Flavio Cereda, fund manager at GAM, said the problem for LVMH was that the company has become a way for investors to bet on the spending of the aspirational consumer.

“They have a lot of upper-tier customers that are doing well but that’s not the bulk of what they do,” Cereda said. Two other luxury investors also noted that hedge funds use LVMH shares to bet on wider luxury sector sentiment, amplifying swings in both directions.

Succession planning at LVMH has become increasingly important for investors, according to Christopher Rossbach, chief investment officer at LVMH shareholder J Stern & Co.

“The fact that the company has been run by its founder and largest shareholder [Bernard Arnault] has been an advantage [so far],” he said, adding that “share ownership and succession are two of the most important issues for LVMH”.

Arnault, 77, is grooming his five children to one day succeed him. However, in April the family patriarch batted away questions over succession, telling shareholders “we’ll talk about this all again in seven or eight years”.

Bain estimates that 60mn mostly “aspirational” consumers — roughly 15 per cent of the total luxury customer base — have stopped buying over the past three years. Luxury brands themselves arguably did little to retain them by raising prices on many goods by between 50 per cent and 70 per cent compared with 2019 levels, according to Bain.

Cereda said these shoppers would typically buy when there was a “feelgood factor” but middle-class consumers were not in a good place financially. “We’ve been waiting for this to change, [but] so far there have only been false starts,” he said.

The luxury industry has also been held back by sluggish demand in China, which powered the industry’s growth for the past decade. Chinese consumers have become more reticent to spend as property values have tumbled and the stock market has underperformed.

The pain has not been shared equally across the industry. Brands like Hermès and Brunello Cucinelli, which have a more upmarket clientele, have outperformed, while houses that were already in need of a turnaround, such as Gucci-owner Kering and Burberry, have been among the worst performers.

The sector’s standout performer through the downturn has been Swiss jewellery group Richemont. A 28 per cent surge in its shares over the past six months has propelled the market value of the group behind Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels above €100bn. Demand has also been strong at LVMH jewellery brands Tiffany and Bvlgari.

Federico Marchetti, a longtime industry executive, said that steep rises in prices for handbags had resulted in consumers switching their spending to bracelets and necklaces.

“Given the pricing now, I think the customer prefers to buy a piece of jewellery for €10,000 rather than a €7,000 bag,” he said.

While an industry recovery has taken longer than expected, recent evidence from the US and Korea, where luxury spending rebounded after a surge in local stock markets, has reinforced a view that the downturn is cyclical.

“As soon as people feel they have money . . . they spend,” Cereda said.

German start-up Isar Aerospace succeeds in first ever commercial blast-off from Europe

A German start-up has become the first ever commercial entity to launch a rocket into orbit from Europe, marking a leap forward for the continent’s efforts to catch up with the US space market.

Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum launch vehicle successfully carried five small satellites into orbit after blasting off from a launch pad in Norway’s Andøya Space Center.

It was only the second launch attempt by the Munich-based Isar, which was founded in 2018. The first, 18 months ago, lasted just 30 seconds before crashing back to earth. The second launch had been delayed many times by multiple setbacks including poor weather, technical problems and a stray boat near the launch site.

Isar’s chief executive Daniel Metzler said the successful blast-off on Saturday night had made “history”, a breakthrough that would “shape Europe’s strategic, economic and technological future”.

Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Metzler said Isar would be pressing on to tackle the huge backlog in global space launch capacity.

“There’s hardware all over the world that is literally stuck on Earth right now,” he said. “Satellite companies, governments, everybody is on the waiting list of just a few entities. I think that will change now. We’ve got a massive pipeline of tens of billions of euros to deliver on.”

Founded in 2018, Isar is regarded as one of Europe’s most promising start-ups as the continent seeks to foster a rival to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has shaken up the global satellite launch market and sharply lowered prices.

The company achieved a valuation of about €2bn in its last funding round in June, which raised €270mn.

It forms part of a broader European drive to reduce reliance on the US. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increasing distrust towards Washington have prompted European leaders to urgently pursue their own space capabilities, including satellite constellations for reconnaissance and communications purposes.

However, Europe remains far behind the US in terms of its ability to launch satellites into space. European entities made just seven successful launches into orbit in 2025, all of them from French Guiana in South America rather than the continental mainland. That compares with about 180 from the US, the vast majority by SpaceX, and about 90 from China.

Speaking ahead of Saturday’s launch, Metzler had told the FT that the goal was simply to “make as much progress as we can” compared with the first attempt.

It had taken Musk’s SpaceX four attempts to reach orbit successfully, he added.

Metzler said there had been a dramatic shift in demand over the past 12 months, with requests from defence-related customers up from about 15 per cent of the total to about 60 per cent. 

“With [Donald] Trump’s second term, Europe has been learning the hard way that we need to have our own sovereign capabilities,” he said.

Even before the company had successfully launched a satellite into orbit, its future capacity was fully booked until the end of 2028. Isar’s new Munich-based factory aims to eventually produce 40 rockets a year.

Europe’s rocket launch industry has in the past been dominated by Arianespace, jointly owned by Airbus and Safran, which has struggled for relevance in the SpaceX era.

In 2024 Arianespace launched from French Guiana Europe’s first new heavy-lift rocket in almost three decades, the Ariane 6, which has subsequently completed several successful satellite missions. 

The continent has also witnessed the emergence of a clutch of “new space” start-ups seeking to revolutionise the industry with smaller launch vehicles. They include Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg, Spain’s PLD Space and France’s Maiaspace.

Isar’s two-stage Spectrum rocket, which is 28 metres tall, is designed for small to medium satellite launches, with a payload capacity of up to 1,000kg.

The company said it would seek to develop a “slightly larger” vehicle over time to allow it to carry heavier payloads while also driving down costs.

The relocation took place between March and August this year

The Dutch central bank said it moved around 86 metric tons of gold from New York and Ottawa to London as a result of “increasing geopolitical unrest.”

The relocation from North America to the vaults of the Bank of England was part of its crisis preparedness, De Nederlandsche Bank said.

Bullion held by the U.K.’s central bank is “the world’s most easily tradable gold and will therefore be the most readily available for DNB in a crisis situation,” the Dutch central bank said. Gold reserves in New York and Ottawa couldn’t be mobilized as quickly, the bank added.

The bank didn’t specify what it meant by “geopolitical unrest”. However, the move comes after a year in which relations between the U.S. and its European partners have frayed.

President Trump has voiced frustration over the scale of European countries’ defense spending, while the president’s threats to seize Greenland from Denmark caused alarm across the continent. Moreover, the U.S. has ramped up tariffs on Canadian goods, resulting in retaliatory measures. Neither side has finalized a new trade agreement after talks broke down in August.

Though the DNB doesn’t expect to be in a position to trade the gold reserves, the bank needed “to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” said Governor Olaf Sleijpen.

The bank’s reserves are spread across the Dutch town Zeist as well as central banks in the U.K., Canada and the U.S. As a result of the relocation, 32.1% of the bank’s gold reserves are now held in London, up from 18.1% previously.

New York, which had held 31.3% of the bank’s reserves, now holds 18.5%—the same proportion that is held in Ottawa. The total Dutch gold stock amounted to 612.4 tons at the end of 2025, and was worth 72.2 billion euros ($83.67 billion).

The relocation, which took place between March and August this year, was achieved both by physically moving gold bars, and by selling gold in New York to buy an equivalent amount in London, the bank said.

More than 27 tons of gold were physically transferred from the U.S. and Canada to Zeist, the bank said, before a similar quantity of international standard gold was then moved to London from Zeist.