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Cette maison située Villa Montmorency, une enclave pour riches située dans le 16e arrondissement de Paris, Dominique Desseigne l’avait spécialement choisie et fait aménager avec lit médicalisé et accessibilité pour les besoins de son épouse, Diane, atrocement blessée dans un accident d’avion en 1995. C’est là qu’elle a passé les dernières années de sa vie en fauteuil roulant, entrecoupées de dizaines de séjours à l’hôpital. Là, aussi, que ses deux enfants, Alexandre et Joy, ont grandi. C’est sous ce même toit, enfin, que l’aîné, âgé de 36 ans, a décidé d’éjecter brutalement son père de son poste de PDG du groupe Barrière, qu’il occupait depuis plus de vingt ans. Un groupe ? Un empire, plutôt : 32 casinos, 19 hôtels de luxe, quelque 150 restaurants et près de 7 000 employés.

Que s’est-il noué de si douloureux dans cette spacieuse demeure pour que la relation entre le père et son fils vire soudainement au cauchemar ? Le petit monde des affaires a été saisi d’effroi en apprenant, en avril, la brutale mise à l’écart de M. Desseigne, 78 ans, de toutes ses fonctions exécutives. Quand son fils Alexandre a fait savoir qu’il avait officiellement rayé le patronyme de son père de son état civil pour se faire rebaptiser Barrière, du nom de sa mère défunte, les mêmes observateurs ont compris qu’il n’était pas question là d’une banale histoire de succession. Changer de nom, comment mieux signifier, en effet, sa détestation d’un géniteur ?

Personne, dans l’entourage de la famille, n’avait mesuré qu’une telle haine s’était tapie dans les salons douillets de la Villa Montmorency. Certes, on ne voyait pas beaucoup le père et son fils ensemble. Quand il ne travaille pas, le premier, crinière au vent, aime arpenter les festivals de cinéma, bronzer dans les contrées chaudes et jouer au tennis ; son fils, cheveux coupés à ras, sourcils toujours froncés, fuit les mondanités et ne semble se plaire que dans les pays froids.

Même à Deauville (Calvados), le fief historique de la fortune de la famille, qui y possède trois palaces, un casino et plusieurs restaurants, ils ne font que se croiser. Le père passe régulièrement ses week-ends d’hiver au Normandy, sur le front de mer, où il peaufine son revers au tennis quand le fils s’installe une poignée de jours, l’été, à l’Hôtel du Golf, dans les terres, le temps du tournoi de polo et de la remise du Trophée Diane-Barrière.

Malgré tout, de l’extérieur, l’entente pouvait paraître bonne. Les deux hommes ne travaillaient-ils pas ensemble au sein du groupe depuis 2014 ? Le fils n’avait-il pas pris régulièrement du galon depuis, jusqu’à devenir directeur de la stratégie et du développement ? Et, surtout, Alexandre n’a-t-il pas habité avec son père dans la fameuse maison de la Villa Montmorency jusqu’à l’âge de 35 ans ? Plutôt rare à cet âge quand on a les moyens de vivre où l’on veut. Il ne devait pas s’y sentir trop mal. C’est, en tout cas, ce qu’a voulu croire Dominique Desseigne, que ses amis décrivent comme « le roi du déni ». Malgré son âge et une légère maladie de Parkinson qu’il soigne et ne dissimule plus, il porte encore beau, mais c’est un homme profondément attristé et en état de sidération que ses proches ne cessent, depuis, de réconforter.

Longtemps, le père a sous-estimé son aîné, un jeune homme réputé timide et renfermé, quand lui a toujours affiché un charisme et un entregent prisés dans le secteur des loisirs et du luxe. En avril 2015, dans un entretien au Parisien, le leader français des casinos avait pourtant fait part, tout feu tout flamme, de sa vision dynastique : « Mon fils, Alexandre, a toutes les cartes en main pour prendre un jour la direction du groupe », assurait-il. Il ajoutait même : « Nous sommes très satisfaits de son travail, et il s’est parfaitement bien adapté. Il a l’intelligence de sa mère, la pugnacité de son père, et c’est le bonheur tous les jours de travailler avec mon fils. »

Langue de bois ou le doute s’est-il installé au fil du temps ? Toujours est-il que très vite, en privé, Dominique Desseigne ne fait guère mystère de sa déception, jugeant son fils pas assez solide pour diriger une affaire de cette ampleur. Plus embêtant, il ne se gêne pas pour le critiquer devant les cadres de l’entreprise quand ce dernier ose émettre une idée divergente des siennes. Rien de grave dans son esprit, une éducation à l’ancienne, à la dure, qu’Alexandre a néanmoins vécue comme humiliante. De l’avis de ceux qui l’ont vu grandir, le fils a toujours affiché un air inquiet, dont l’origine remonte sans doute à une enfance marquée par le drame et la solitude.

La légende familiale démarre pourtant dans les paillettes et les bulles de champagne. Quand, en 1980, Dominique Desseigne rencontre en boîte de nuit Diane Barrière, jeune et fière beauté blonde, ce notaire de province est surtout connu pour son goût de la fête, des jolies filles et des parties de tennis. Sa grande taille (1,91 mètre), son allure de play-boy et son bronzage insolent lui assurent un franc succès. Avec ses copains Thierry Roussel et Philippe Junot, on les surnomme « la bande des castors » : « Ils avaient fait le pari de se marier avec les filles les plus riches du monde », se souvient un de leurs amis. Le premier épousera Christina Onassis, fille du richissime armateur grec Aristote Onassis, le deuxième Caroline de Monaco. Dominique Desseigne, lui, tombera amoureux de Diane, fille adoptive de Lucien Barrière.

Dans les années 1980, le groupe Barrière est déjà très florissant. Tout a démarré en 1912 par la construction d’un casino privé à Deauville par un certain Eugène Cornudet, qui meurt sans héritier en 1926. C’est son associé, issu de la paysannerie ardéchoise, François André, qui se retrouve à la tête de la société et décide de la faire prospérer en investissant à Biarritz, Cannes et La Baule. Il a l’intuition de créer des hôtels à côté des casinos et comprend que l’avènement de l’automobile est une occasion incroyable pour développer Deauville. La station balnéaire devient alors le refuge de stars invitées de façon quasi permanente pour promouvoir la destination, comme Maurice Chevalier ou, plus tard, Régine. Joseph Kessel y a ses habitudes, comme de nombreux politiques.

La transformation d’un play-boy

« Au début des années 1960, François André était beaucoup plus puissant que le maire de Deauville, raconte Philippe Normand, spécialiste de l’histoire deauvillaise. Par la suite, le groupe a été un grand financier des campagnes électorales des candidats de droite. C’était du donnant-donnant. Barrière a ainsi obtenu de Charles Pasqua, ministre de l’intérieur, l’autorisation d’installer les premières machines à sous. » Les liens entre l’empire des casinos et la droite française perdureront longtemps, puisque, en 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy fêtera son élection à la présidence de la République au Fouquet’s, établissement phare du groupe Barrière sur les Champs-Elysées. Quelques mois plus tard, en 2008, il imposera la tenue du G8 à Deauville, une aubaine pour les infrastructures hôtelières de la marque.

Quand François André meurt à son tour, en 1962, il n’a pas non plus d’héritier direct, et c’est son neveu Lucien Barrière, né en 1923, qui hérite du petit empire. Celui-ci s’est marié avec une artiste de cirque hongroise, mère célibataire d’une fille appelée Diane. C’est cette blonde altière au caractère bien trempé, qui n’a aucun lien de sang avec les fondateurs des casinotiers, que Dominique Desseigne épouse en 1984. Leurs deux enfants, Alexandre et Joy, naissent en 1987 et 1990.

Lorsque, quinze ans après leur rencontre, survient l’accident tragique, le couple traverse une mauvaise passe, Dominique Desseigne lui-même n’en a jamais fait mystère. Diane a rencontré un homme qu’elle s’apprête à retrouver à Las Vegas, une simple passade, se convainc le mari. Le jour de l’accident, son épouse est censée atterrir à l’aérodrome de La Baule, de retour de Saint-Tropez. Le petit bimoteur n’arrivera jamais : il s’est écrasé en Vendée, le plein de carburant n’ayant pas été fait. Diane, devenue PDG du groupe à la mort de son père adoptif, en 1990, sort miraculeusement vivante de la carcasse en feu, mais des années de cauchemar commencent. Son corps est totalement disloqué, brûlé au troisième degré sur un quart de sa surface, elle subira plus de 80 opérations et restera tétraplégique jusqu’à son décès, en 2001.

Jusqu’alors considéré par certains comme un charmant coureur de dot, Dominique Desseigne impressionne l’entourage du couple par son dévouement envers sa femme. Il se transforme en infirmier, sollicite les meilleurs spécialistes, dîne quasiment tous les soirs avec son épouse, tente de lui organiser un semblant de vie sociale en conviant des amis ou en l’emmenant à des réceptions, organise des réunions de direction à son chevet afin de la tenir informée de la gestion du groupe.

Alexandre et Joy, eux, vivent une enfance étrange, dans une maison transformée en hôpital, entre une mère défigurée, en grande souffrance, dans la crainte permanente de la mort, et un père absorbé par les soins et la conduite des affaires. Car il a bien fallu qu’il s’y mette d’arrache-pied, avec l’aide des cadres de l’entreprise, lui qui ne connaissait rien au secteur. Matériellement, les enfants ne manquent de rien. Scolarisés dans les meilleures écoles privées, ils grandissent Villa Montmorency, partent en vacances dans les hôtels de luxe de la famille, ont de l’argent de poche, accès à tous les loisirs, mais qui s’occupe vraiment d’eux ?

Plusieurs fois, les médecins annoncent à la famille que Diane la miraculée va mourir d’un instant à l’autre ; à chaque fois, elle s’en sort de justesse. Lucide, elle sait qu’il faut préparer la suite. A plusieurs reprises, elle a fait venir les hommes de loi de son père, avocat et notaire, pour tenter de préserver au mieux la pérennité du groupe, qui a déjà contracté un prêt pour régler l’impôt sur la succession de l’héritage de Lucien. Un an avant sa mort, elle signe une série de donations de la nue-propriété des différentes sociétés à ses enfants, une disposition légale très couramment utilisée pour alléger la charge successorale. Un changement de régime matrimonial (de la séparation à la communauté de biens) est également acté le même jour dans le but de faire passer l’usufruit du groupe au dernier vivant des époux, là encore, une pratique notariale courante à l’époque pour permettre une exonération de droits fiscaux entre conjoints.

Depuis le décès de leur mère, les enfants possèdent donc la nue-propriété des entreprises et le père en a l’usufruit. C’est ce dispositif qui a été, bien plus tard, contesté par Alexandre, qui reproche notamment à son père d’avoir indûment touché les dividendes engrangés. C’est qu’entre-temps le petit notaire natif de la Meuse s’est mué en redoutable homme d’affaires, pragmatique et plein de bon sens. Non seulement il n’a pas coulé le groupe, comme certains observateurs inquiets le prédisaient à la mort de Diane, mais il l’a fait prospérer en le développant à l’international, en donnant de l’ampleur à la marque Fouquet’s à laquelle sa femme était attachée, et, surtout, en gagnant le bras de fer contre le principal concurrent dans l’univers des casinos, le groupe Partouche. En vingt ans, celui que certains appelaient avec un peu de mépris « le prince consort » a multiplié par six le chiffre d’affaires de l’empire. Un indéniable succès.

Pendant toutes ces années de règne sans partage, Dominique Desseigne n’a cessé de répéter qu’il n’avait qu’un seul but : préserver et faire grandir l’héritage de ses enfants. N’avait-il pas écrit en dédicace du récit qu’il a consacré en 2004 à son histoire d’amour avec Diane et au terrible accident qui l’a frappée, Tout pour être heureux (Plon) : « A Alexandre et Joy, A Joy et Alexandre, mes deux merveilles ». Il savait néanmoins que gâter sa progéniture, même de façon déraisonnable, ne suffit pas à créer les conditions d’une bonne entente. « Nous n’avons jamais été une famille », a-t-il un jour confié, lucide, à un ami. Manière de dire que, malgré toutes ces années passées sous le même toit, le père et ses enfants n’ont jamais appris à se connaître, ni à se parler.

Après le décès de Diane, le père ne fait que travailler. Et quand il ne travaille pas, il voyage aux bras de femmes riches et influentes comme Corinne Bouygues ou la femme d’affaires et jet-setteuse libanaise Mouna Ayoub. Quel enfant apprécie d’avoir un père volage ? Le coup de grâce vient avec l’obligation judiciaire faite à Dominique Desseigne, en 2016, de reconnaître la paternité de Zohra, la fille de l’ancienne garde des sceaux Rachida Dati. Alexandre et Joy devront partager l’héritage des biens personnels de leur père avec une nouvelle « petite sœur »…

Une première alerte dans la relation père fils a lieu un peu après l’épidémie de Covid-19, en 2021. Alexandre demande un jour sèchement à son père quand il compte prendre sa retraite. Ce dernier manque de tomber de sa chaise. La retraite ? Il n’y a jamais pensé ! Il se sent en pleine forme, il a fait entrer ses deux enfants dans l’entreprise familiale, mais il ne les estime pas encore prêts à lui succéder. Il juge la question de son fils déplacée, voire hostile, surtout au moment où le groupe sort fragilisé de la crise sanitaire.

Par la suite, Alexandre ne reparle plus de rien, mais l’ambiance devient détestable entre le père et le fils, qui ne font même plus semblant d’être aimables l’un envers l’autre lorsqu’ils se croisent à leur domicile ou au siège du groupe, au 33, rue d’Artois, dans le 8e arrondissement de Paris. Le père pense avoir clos le sujet. D’autant que l’empire se redresse de façon spectaculaire, avec des résultats exceptionnellement bons (1,3 milliard d’euros de chiffre d’affaires en 2022).

Dominique Desseigne l’ignore alors, mais son sort est déjà scellé. Son fils, qui occupe le poste-clé de la stratégie et du développement, n’en peut plus d’attendre pour diriger des entreprises qui lui appartiennent ainsi qu’à sa sœur. Une petite phrase du patriarche, dans l’édition des Echos Week-End du 25 mars 2022, le fait bondir de rage : « Vu l’impact durable de la crise, la sagesse veut que je continue », lâche Dominique Desseigne. « Une chose est sûre, le passage de relais n’est plus à l’ordre du jour », conclut le journaliste. Alexandre a compris le message : son père ne le jugera jamais apte à lui succéder. Il est décidé : puisque son père n’a pas compris la manière douce, il va devoir employer les grands moyens. La guerre est déclarée.

L’aîné essaye d’entraîner sa sœur cadette, Joy, dans son combat. Celle-ci refuse d’abord : cette jeune fille blonde et discrète, qui a commencé à travailler à Londres chez Publicis avant de rejoindre le groupe familial en 2020, partage les griefs de son frère, mais conserve de l’affection pour son père. Qu’importe, Alexandre dispose d’un autre allié. En 2019, il a fait entrer au conseil d’administration David Layani, entrepreneur à succès et fondateur de la société Onepoint. Ce spécialiste en conseil dans le domaine du numérique, un autodidacte de 44 ans, malin, souriant et charmeur, l’a pris sous son aile et a placé ses pions.

Il a commencé par proposer de faire appel à la société de traiteur haut de gamme tenue par sa mère et ses sœurs pour organiser les « pince-fesses » du groupe. Puis il a facturé à tour de bras ses rapports d’expertise numérique aux différentes sociétés : « Il y avait du Onepoint partout », se souvient un cadre de Barrière. David Layani a également conseillé Alexandre sur ses recrutements, si bien que, sans même qu’il s’en aperçoive, de nombreux postes importants ont progressivement échappé à l’influence de Dominique Desseigne.

Enfin, le brillant entrepreneur, qui inaugurait en juin ses nouveaux locaux en compagnie du ministre de l’économie, Bruno Le Maire, et annonçait 500 millions d’euros de chiffre d’affaires, a convaincu Alexandre, qu’il appelle « mon petit frère », de « montrer ses muscles » face à un père à la vision jugée poussiéreuse et dépassée. « Layani, le loup dans la bergerie », se dira plus tard Dominique Desseigne, lorsqu’il recevra, le 22 juillet 2022, une assignation à comparaître par huissier de justice de la part de son propre fils.

Ce jour-là, Alexandre déclenche donc le feu nucléaire. Il dénie à son père le titre d’usufruitier, l’accuse d’avoir profité de l’état de faiblesse de sa mère après l’accident de 1995 pour lui faire signer des documents en sa faveur et réclame 75 millions d’euros pour les dividendes qu’il estime abusivement perçus. En outre, il le somme d’abandonner ses fonctions illico. Le PDG est sous le choc. Qu’a-t-il bien pu rater pour que sa famille en arrive là ?

Il se tourne vers son ami Nicolas Sarkozy, celui-là même qu’il a hébergé plusieurs semaines Villa Montmorency lorsque son épouse Cécilia (une amie d’enfance de Diane) l’avait quitté, en 2007, et qu’il a fait entrer au conseil d’administration du groupe en 2019. Il demande également de l’aide à Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière, dirigeant de Fimalac (alors actionnaire à 40 % du groupe Barrière). Les deux hommes tentent de rabibocher père et fils. Ils comprennent vite que la mission est impossible. Ils convainquent donc M. Desseigne d’opter pour un accord à l’amiable.

Une querelle familiale aussi féroce ne peut rester longtemps secrète et sa publicité précoce mettre en danger le groupe, font-ils valoir. D’autant plus que Joy, qui habite également dans la maison familiale, décide finalement de se ménager un avenir aux côtés de son frère et de se joindre à son attaque.

Après plusieurs mois de discussions au couteau et « souvent mesquines », selon plusieurs proches du dossier, un accord est enfin trouvé. Dominique Desseigne reste légalement usufruitier, mais ses dividendes sont limités aux deux premiers millions annuels et il renonce à son pouvoir de nomination au conseil d’administration. Surtout, il accepte de lâcher le poste de PDG au profit de ses deux enfants. En échange, ces derniers lui garantissent un train de vie très conséquent : jusqu’à ses 85 ans, la jouissance de son bureau au siège parisien du groupe, d’un chauffeur, d’une secrétaire, de notes de frais, ainsi que le droit de continuer à disposer d’une suite dans les hôtels qu’il ne dirige plus. En revanche, il a été contraint de céder à Alexandre et Joy par une donation la fameuse maison de la Villa Montmorency, à condition de pouvoir y résider jusqu’à sa mort.

Cet accord, fixé dans le cadre d’un protocole secret qui interdit à chacun des protagonistes de s’exprimer publiquement, a évité le déballage judiciaire, mais il n’a cautérisé aucune plaie. Père et fils ne se parlent plus, mais se sont-ils réellement parlé un jour ? Quand ils se croisent dans les couloirs du 33, rue d’Artois ou au conseil d’administration, où Dominique Desseigne occupe (après une âpre bataille) un siège au titre honorifique de président d’honneur, leurs échanges se résument à de glaciaux « Bonjour » et « Bonsoir ». Quant à Joy, elle déjeune de temps à autre avec son père, soucieuse de ne pas totalement couper les ponts.

Derrière la façade aux pierres de taille cohabite, au milieu des collaborateurs encore traumatisés par ce qu’on appelle ici en chuchotant le « parricide », une famille en lambeaux. Dominique Desseigne ne fait pas mystère de son scepticisme quant à la stratégie de son fils, qu’il pense dictée par son « gourou » Layani, à commencer par le rachat, fin juillet pour 325 millions d’euros des parts détenues par Lacharrière, pressé de sortir de cet imbroglio. Alexandre et Joy sont depuis un mois considérablement endettés, mais désormais propriétaires du groupe à 100 %. Avec l’obligation de faire rapidement leurs preuves et de montrer qu’ils n’ont pas « tué » leur père pour rien.

- 30% of capital will go into energy transition in 2023

Sale will be important test of broadcast spending appetite as sector prioritises cost-cutting

Premier League officials are sounding out broadcasters ahead of a forthcoming auction for the rights to show top-flight football games on TV, in what will be an important test of media spending as their own customers endure a cost of living crisis.

The 2019-22 Premier League rights contracts with Sky, BT and Amazon — worth around £5bn — were rolled over to 2025 during the pandemic, meaning this will be the first competitive domestic auction since 2018.

However, analysts have warned there is a risk of a drop in values thanks to the pressure on broadcasters. The total value of European football media rights has already stagnated, according to analysts at Enders.

“If post-Covid inflation was factored in, we estimate that the value would be down 17 per cent on 2018-19 by 2023-24 in real terms,” they said, pointing to the competitiveness of the broadcasting market “where all indications point downwards consistent with the tepid consumer market”.

The retreat of telecoms operators using football as a draw for broadband packages in recent years has taken the heat out of European auctions, media executives say. Meanwhile, broadcasters in the pay-TV market are under pressure as consumers rethink increasingly expensive subscriptions, alongside a downturn in the advertising market.

“Obviously in a cost of living crisis . . . the price of everything is a concern,” admitted Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, earlier this month. “That is down to our broadcast partners to set the price of those subscriptions. All of these things we think about in the round when we are planning for our auction.”

Richard Broughton, executive director at consultancy Ampere Analysis, said he does not envisage any of the potential bidders “being particularly aggressive”.

“I don’t think there’s much incentive for anyone to go all out, particularly given their focus on cost-control measures,” he added.

One Premier League club executive also raised doubts over where there would be a big uplift in values. “If we came 5 per cent ahead I’d be delighted because it’s a slowing rights market,” the person said.

Premier League officials and broadcasters are watching the troubled auction of rights to show Serie A in Italy, which has still not been decided despite successive rounds of broadcaster bids. 

The “product” that the Premier League wants to sell is more valuable, according to broadcast executives, with strong domestic and global interest in English top-flight football.

Sky has said that the 2022-23 season was the most watched in history, and this season saw a record start with more than 8mn tuning in across the opening weekend. The Premier League’s increasing global popularity means that — unlike all other European football competitions — it already makes more money from international broadcasts than from its home market. 

However, many households — in the UK and elsewhere — are seeking to reduce the amount of money spent on TV subscriptions, which is likely to weigh on bidding.

Sky is the one of the few guaranteed bidders given how important sports rights have become to its brand. Losing a significant number of Premier League games is all but unthinkable, according to analysts.

“Sky might pay a premium just to keep everyone else out. They need those rights,” said the Premier League club executive.

But Sky’s revenue decreased 11.5 per cent to $17.9bn last year and the company has begun to cut jobs amid a slowing advertising market. Sky’s parent Comcast has already written down the value of the business by $8.1bn from $18.1bn in part owing to “reduced estimated future cash flows as a result of macroeconomic conditions in Sky’s territories”.

BT was its main rival in the last auction, but the dynamics have changed after it merged its sport operations with those owned by Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) to create TNT Sports this year. BT is also now on a cost-cutting drive, with plans to cut up to 42 per cent of its workforce by the end of the decade.

WBD, which is expected to eventually take control of the TNT Sports business, is also facing challenges in a streaming market where investors are demanding profits rather than more spending on expensive content. 

With Norway’s streaming service Viaplay under pressure after struggling to break through in a crowded market, DAZN, the lossmaking sports streaming service backed by billionaire Leonard Blavatnik, will also look to add top-flight English matches. Adding premium sports in the UK is seen by executives as important to the London-based group, but people close to DAZN say it is unlikely to want to spend significant sums.

The wild cards will be the large tech companies such as Amazon, which in the last auction acquired a small package of rights. Analysts see the US ecommerce giant as likely to participate, but to focus on securing games around important retail dates, as previously. Apple, which has been buying sports rights in the US to show globally, is seen as less likely to be interested in an expensive set of rights for a single country.

A DAZN spokesman said: “The UK market is of clear interest, but only if we can deliver the value and innovation that supporters want and the market needs.”

TNT is keen to retain premium sports rights, according to a person close to the company. When still wholly owned by BT, it had already renewed its rights to the Champions League and other Uefa competitions until 2027. Sky declined to comment.

Premier League officials are now looking at how to structure the auction — which could take place before the end of the year — to encourage greater bidding interest.

Mark Oliver, of Oliver & Ohlbaum Associates, said the league’s strategy needed to “create tension” — and divide the rights into packages that incentivise broadcasters to compete against each other.

But even so, he saw the price likely to be flat or slightly down. “They could get lucky if they parcel it up in the right way and get an increment of 5-10 per cent. Sky has learnt how to live with less of the Premier League, without the Champions League. TNT are probably not looking to up their bid. Amazon have elsewhere been incremental opportunists, and DAZN is the one unknown.”

Broadcast executives say that the most likely outcome is that the Premier League will try to push up the overall value by allowing more games to be broadcast, to gain a higher absolute price but potentially mask a fall in value of the price per game. Uefa was able to raise headline revenue from its rights auctions last year in part by increasing the number of games on offer.

This was also the strategy pursued by the English Football League (EFL), which managed to increase the price of the rights by 50 per cent but only by increasing the number of fixtures fourfold to over 1,000 matches per season. Sky retained the exclusive rights for the five seasons until 2028-29 for £895mn in fees and £40mn in “marketing benefits”.

Broadcasters are barred from airing games at 3pm on a Saturday, so more Premier Leagues games are being shifted to Friday, Sunday and Monday. One option will be for more — or even every — non-3pm game to be put into the auction for the first time. 

One said that the league could raise the number of matches from 200 at present to between 250-270, which could be divided into packages of sufficient scale to allow bidders to build their subscription services.

“Bidders need to see the chance to get at least one decent sized package with top matches every week,” another said.

“They will look at adding more inventory to monetise the league,” said another broadcast executive, who added that the Premier League could also review the three-year term of the rights.

Masters told reporters ahead of the new season: “I know people are frustrated that they can’t watch every game. We have progressively put more matches into our live rights packages. We’re at 200 now. And obviously we’re considering our packaging strategy — the volume of matches going into it for the auction. All those things are under consideration.”

Questions persist regarding artificial-intelligence demand and geopolitics

Chip maker Nvidia’s NVDA -2.43%decrease; red down pointing triangle blowout results this past week showed that strong demand will likely carry its business to new heights in the coming quarters—but questions persist about how long the boom will last.

Nvidia eased concerns of a short-lived AI rally by handily beating estimates and giving another glowing outlook, citing an expected boost in supplies. The company still isn’t shipping close to demand, Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, suggesting there is more upside even after a pair of record-breaking quarters.

Analysts, though, have raised questions about the supply chain and the long-term strength of the current boom, while tech executives have said they might cut back on the purchases of AI chips if they aren’t translating into new business.

“All major tech companies are going to plow money into this—not just big tech, but also software and services companies and of course the venture [capital] world,” said Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, an industry research firm. “The question is, how long will they continue to plow money in?”

In the near term, demand for Nvidia’s products could hardly be hotter. Customers are racing to install chips that underlie artificial-intelligence systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Companies are increasingly convinced that AI is indispensable for their growth, and analysts estimate that Nvidia has a market share of more than 70% in AI chips.

Like its chips, Nvidia’s shares have been sought-after by investors, having already more than tripled this year, propelling it to a valuation north of $1 trillion. The stock finished higher this past week despite falling later in the week following its earnings report Wednesday.

Analysts at UBS forecast Thursday that Nvidia’s current supply agreements could take its revenue to as much as $25 billion a quarter, not factoring in the expectation that supply will grow. The path to get to around that amount in fairly short order “seems pretty clear to us,” UBS said in a note.

That figure would be a large leap from the $13.5 billion of revenue for its recently completed quarter and the $16 billion it forecast for its current quarter. Just three years ago, Nvidia was averaging around $3 billion in revenue a quarter.

Some analysts still see potential problems ahead in Nvidia’s supply chain. The company designs chips but relies on contract manufacturers—primarily Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.—to produce them. That makes Nvidia dependent on others’ ability to increase production at times of high demand.

TSMC has been expanding its capacity, including with a $2.9 billion investment announced in July to expand advanced manufacturing that knits together numerous chips in one package. Nvidia uses that packaging in many of its advanced AI chips, and the company reassured investors Wednesday that it had secured more of it.

As its supplies grow, though, Nvidia might have to fend off companies ordering more than they need, which could mask weaker long-term demand. “For the time being, demand seems unbounded,” Susquehanna International Group analysts said in a note. “However, we worry about double-ordering and rationalization into 2024.”

China, which historically accounts for 20% to 25% of Nvidia’s sales in its data center division, is another wild card. Intent on curtailing Chinese access to advanced AI, the Biden administration last year blocked exports of Nvidia’s most advanced chips without a license. Further restrictions are under consideration, and Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress told analysts Wednesday that a broad ban on sales of AI chips to China would cost the U.S. industry a permanent loss of opportunities in one of the world’s biggest markets.

There is concern about the sustainability of demand in the longer term, too. Many technology transitions in the past have come with a boom of investment in new infrastructure followed by a lull in market uptake.

Big companies spending billions of dollars on AI chips will need to generate profits from them to justify further investments, according to analysts. Some see echoes of the 1990s rollout in the U.S. of fiber-optic cable, which only became commercially viable years later when broadband internet demand rose.

“End customers have to be able to derive business models off of this, whether it’s driving revenue or saving costs,” said Stacy Rasgon, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research. There was some evidence of those models starting to materialize, he said, such as the Copilot AI assistant that Microsoft is testing for its Office productivity software. Microsoft said in July that it would charge $30 a user monthly for the tool.

But given that AI investments for the most part have yet to translate into bumper sales, some consumers of Nvidia’s chips have started to raise concerns about costs. Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, plans to spend big on building up its AI computing capabilities into next year, but executives said last month that it wasn’t yet clear how strongly users would adopt AI-driven features.

“The scale of the adoption of those products is ultimately going to inform how much capacity we need,” Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, said on a call with analysts.

Frank Slootman, the chief executive of the cloud-computing company Snowflake, said this past week that a lot of the uses of AI today are experimental and aren’t bringing in money, adding that Nvidia’s chips are expensive.

“We cannot unleash AI and have no business model to pay for it,” he told analysts.

“A lot of the use cases will focus on what are we getting for this,” he said. “This is not just fun and games and planning your next trip to Yellowstone.”

Saudi Arabia weighs nuclear power offers from China and France in bid to sway US

Kingdom has made such technology a key demand in talks with Washington over sensitive security pact

Saudi Arabia is considering bids to build a nuclear power station from countries including China, France and Russia as the kingdom seeks to sway the US over a sensitive security pact.

The kingdom, which is the world’s largest oil exporter, has long sought its own civil nuclear capability and has made US assistance with the programme a key demand in a potential deal to normalise relations with Israel.

A breakthrough in relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia would be a major diplomatic victory for President Joe Biden’s administration, which has described it as a priority. But Washington has baulked at Saudi Arabia’s demand for there to be no restrictions on enriching its own uranium.

With the US insisting on placing curbs on the use of the technology, Saudi Arabia is considering alternative offers to develop the nuclear facilities from countries including China, Russia and France, according to people familiar with the matter.

One person said Saudi Arabia would make its decision based on the best offer. Another said that while Riyadh would prefer the US, which is seen to have better technology and is already a close Saudi partner, Washington’s restrictions on uranium enrichment would scupper co-operation.

The Israeli government, which has pushed for a diplomatic deal with the kingdom, has remained guarded on the issue. But Israeli security officials and opposition leaders have raised vocal objections, arguing the transfer of technology could lead to more nuclear proliferation in the region.

But Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer earlier this month suggested that Saudi Arabia could turn to China or other countries if the US withheld its assistance. Russia has also announced a bid.

Those countries would be expected to accept Saudi Arabia’s conditions on domestic enrichment, while Korea, which uses US technology, would need to work within US export constraints.

The process of finding a provider of nuclear technology has already been running for several years. Bidders including France’s state-owned EDF and Kepco of South Korea were initially shortlisted along with a Chinese offer in 2018.

Consultations have since continued, though there is little indication of when they might conclude or a developer might be chosen, one person close to the process said.

Kepco was chosen to build a nuclear plant in the United Arab Emirates, its first in the Middle East, which is now operational. EDF said the company’s “[bid] proposal addresses all expectations from Saudi stakeholders”.

China National Nuclear Corp, the country’s state-owned nuclear power group, did not immediately comment on the bidding process. But it has announced partnerships with Saudi Arabia in the past to develop the nuclear industry in the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has drawn closer to China, its largest trading partner, in recent years and earlier this week was invited to join the Brics group of emerging economies. It hosted Chinese president Xi Jinping last year for a Gulf summit, and months later Beijing brokered a rapprochement between the kingdom and its main rival in the region, Iran.

But the kingdom remains heavily reliant on US security assistance, and wants Washington to agree a defence pact.

Any such deal, along with nuclear co-operation on Saudi terms, would face opposition from some American lawmakers. Biden has largely patched up his relationship with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, after having pledged to turn him into a pariah following the 2018 murder of Washington Post commentator and Saudi critic Jamal Khashoggi by state agents. But the kingdom still faces strong criticism in Washington.

Earlier this week, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that the administration would ask the International Atomic Energy Agency for an opinion on nuclear co-operation with Saudi Arabia to guide any decision on assistance. “There are still some ways to travel,” he said of any deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Masayoshi Son could use up to $65bn to launch tech spending ‘counteroffensive’, analysts estimate

SoftBank’s listing of the chip designer Arm is set to to boost Masayoshi Son’s deal war chest to as much as $65bn after he vowed to go “on the counteroffensive” in pursuit of expansion.

Analysts, who based their projections on the Japanese group’s past dealings, said SoftBank could raise almost half that sum if it takes advantage of Arm’s upcoming IPO by using its own huge stash of shares as collateral for loans from banks.

As of the end of June, SoftBank had already accumulated cash of ¥5.1tn ($35bn) after the group offloaded a string of assets to bolster its balance sheet following record losses at the Vision Fund, an investment vehicle that the Japanese conglomerate manages.

The sale included most of its shares in the Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, Son’s most lucrative bet and an asset SoftBank had frequently used as collateral to raise cash.

“Arm will become the new Alibaba funding source,” said David Gibson, a SoftBank analyst at MST Financial.

“Masa is likely in the next six to 12 months to begin a spending spree over the next few years with over $50bn in capacity that we have not seen since the first Vision Fund,” he added.

Some investors believe Son has been preparing since last year to make a transformational, large-scale acquisition in a bid to regain his footing in the tech sector. The Arm listing comes at a critical juncture for SoftBank, as the value of its investment portfolio had been battered by the tech downturn.

Last year Son appeared at a press conference and declared that he was going into “defensive mode” — a phase that appeared to involve ceding day-to-day control of SoftBank to the more conservative chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto.

Yet when Son returned to the public eye in June, he declared that interlude over, saying the company was ready to go on a “counteroffensive”. SoftBank, the world’s largest technology investment conglomerate, would focus on artificial intelligence, he said.

Kirk Boodry, a SoftBank analyst at Astris Advisory in Tokyo, estimated that proceeds from the Arm listing would be about $6bn, if it achieved a valuation of $50bn to $60bn at the initial public offering and SoftBank sold a 10 per cent stake.

He projected that SoftBank would be able to borrow up to $25bn using its remaining stake in Arm as collateral. That would be about three times as much as the group currently borrows against its privately held shares in Arm, since banks would be more willing to lend once the UK group has a market valuation.

However, Boodry also cautioned that the amount of asset-backed financing and the actual proceeds of the IPO could be smaller, with many investors expecting Arm’s valuation to fall short of the $64bn that was recorded when the Vision Fund recently transferred its 25 per cent stake in the UK group to SoftBank.

Gibson said that it was possible that following the Arm IPO, Son’s company could hold about $65bn in cash and borrowings to finance an investment spree. That figure would include about $30bn in structured finance.

Son’s personal finances will also be closely tied with Arm’s valuation with the recent transfer of the first Vision Fund’s 25 per cent stake to SoftBank, which is owned one-third by its founder. He also stands to benefit from investments made by its second Vision Fund, in which he holds a 17.2 per cent stake.

SoftBank declined to comment. 

If AI becomes conscious: here’s how researchers will know

A checklist derived from six neuroscience-based theories of consciousness could aid in the assessment.

Science fiction has long entertained the idea of artificial intelligence becoming conscious — think of HAL 9000, the supercomputer-turned-villain in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. With the rapid progress of artificial intelligence (AI), that possibility is becoming less and less fantastical, and has even been acknowledged by leaders in AI. Last year, for instance, Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist at OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT, tweeted that some of the most cutting-edge AI networks might be “slightly conscious”.

Many researchers say that AI systems aren’t yet at the point of consciousness, but that the pace of AI evolution has got them pondering: how would we know if they were?

To answer this, a group of 19 neuroscientists, philosophers and computer scientists have come up with a checklist of criteria that, if met, would indicate that a system has a high chance of being conscious. They published their provisional guide earlier this week in the arXiv preprint repository1, ahead of peer review. The authors undertook the effort because “it seemed like there was a real dearth of detailed, empirically grounded, thoughtful discussion of AI consciousness,” says co-author Robert Long, a philosopher at the Center for AI Safety, a research non-profit organization in San Francisco, California.

The team says that a failure to identify whether an AI system has become conscious has important moral implications. If something has been labelled ‘conscious’, according to co-author Megan Peters, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, “that changes a lot about how we as human beings feel that entity should be treated”.

Long adds that, as far as he can tell, not enough effort is being made by the companies building advanced AI systems to evaluate the models for consciousness and make plans for what to do if that happens. “And that’s in spite of the fact that, if you listen to remarks from the heads of leading labs, they do say that AI consciousness or AI sentience is something they wonder about,” he adds.

Nature reached out to two of the major technology firms involved in advancing AI — Microsoft and Google. A spokesperson for Microsoft said that the company’s development of AI is centred on assisting human productivity in a responsible way, rather than replicating human intelligence. What’s clear since the introduction of GPT-4 — the most advanced version of ChatGPT released publicly — “is that new methodologies are required to assess the capabilities of these AI models as we explore how to achieve the full potential of AI to benefit society as a whole”, the spokesperson said. Google did not respond.

What is consciousness?

One of the challenges in studying consciousness in AI is defining what it means to be conscious. Peters says that for the purposes of the report, the researchers focused on ‘phenomenal consciousness’, otherwise known as the subjective experience. This is the experience of being — what it’s like to be a person, an animal or an AI system (if one of them does turn out to be conscious).

There are many neuroscience-based theories that describe the biological basis of consciousness. But there is no consensus on which is the ‘right’ one. To create their framework, the authors therefore used a range of these theories. The idea is that if an AI system functions in a way that matches aspects of many of these theories, then there is a greater likelihood that it is conscious.

They argue that this is a better approach for assessing consciousness than simply putting a system through a behavioural test — say, asking ChatGPT whether it is conscious, or challenging it and seeing how it responds. That’s because AI systems have become remarkably good at mimicking humans.

The group’s approach, which the authors describe as theory-heavy, is a good way to go, according to neuroscientist Anil Seth, director of the centre for consciousness science at the University of Sussex near Brighton, UK. What it highlights, however, “is that we need more precise, well-tested theories of consciousness”, he says.

A theory-heavy approach

To develop their criteria, the authors assumed that consciousness relates to how systems process information, irrespective of what they are made of — be it neurons, computer chips or something else. This approach is called computational functionalism. They also assumed that neuroscience-based theories of consciousness, which are studied through brain scans and other techniques in humans and animals, can be applied to AI.

On the basis of these assumptions, the team selected six of these theories and extracted from them a list of consciousness indicators. One of them — the global workspace theory — asserts, for example, that humans and other animals use many specialized systems, also called modules, to perform cognitive tasks such as seeing and hearing. These modules work independently, but in parallel, and they share information by integrating into a single system. A person would evaluate whether a particular AI system displays an indicator derived from this theory, Long says, “by looking at the architecture of the system and how the information flows through it”.

Seth is impressed with the transparency of the team’s proposal. “It’s very thoughtful, it’s not bombastic and it makes its assumptions really clear,” he says. “I disagree with some of the assumptions, but that’s totally fine, because I might well be wrong.”

The authors say that the paper is far from a final take on how to assess AI systems for consciousness, and that they want other researchers to help refine their methodology. But it’s already possible to apply the criteria to existing AI systems. The report evaluates, for example, large language models such as ChatGPT, and finds that this type of system arguably has some of the indicators of consciousness associated with global workspace theory. Ultimately, however, the work does not suggest that any existing AI system is a strong candidate for consciousness — at least not yet.

David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security was often quoted by Netanyahu as a critic of Obama's Iran deal. His latest warnings on a deal with Riyadh, however, will probably find a less receptive audience in Jerusalem

On Tuesday, President Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made sure to lower everyone’s expectations of an Israeli-Saudi breakthrough. There’s still a long way to go, he said, before the administration can announce any real progress on this front. That much is clear to Netanyahu as well, but the prime minister won’t lose hope. After all the ups-and-downs of his career, he still expects one last lifebelt that will save him from the actions of his own extremist government.

Netanyahu believes peace with Saudi Arabia will be a death blow to the protest movement against his current coalition. He thinks that the Gulf's oil money will flood the Israeli market, erasing the local economic damage caused by his judicial overhaul and bringing back some of his disappointed supporters who have vowed to leave Likud over pocketbook woes.

The Saudis have presented three key demands to the United States: a NATO-style defense pact; access to advanced American weapons; and U.S. support for a civilian nuclear project. For Israel, the last demand is the most problematic one.

Public debate on the issue grew louder this week after Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s closest adviser, told PBS that Israel won’t necessarily oppose nuclear enrichment on Saudi soil. Several experts on nuclear proliferation who spoke with Haaretz following Dermer’s interview expressed strong reservations about his position, warning that Saudi enrichment on the kingdom’s own soil could lead down the road to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Those voices are now joined by David Albright, one of the world's most prominent experts on this issue, who leads the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. Last decade, Albright criticized Iran’s conduct and the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic; as a result, Netanyahu and Dermer often quoted his observations in briefings to Israeli and international media outlets. But they probably won’t be quoting what he has to say this time.

Albright told Haaretz that he supports American involvement in producing a civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia, and even thinks the U.S. should consider “bending the rules a little bit” to make it happen. But providing enrichment capabilities to the Saudis on their own soil, he warned, is something else entirely.

The Saudis, he explained, say that they have vast reserves of underground uranium that they can utilize. “They may have it, we can’t say for sure, but there’s another question – is it economically and commercially viable to recover it from there? I would argue it’s clearly not. Russian enrichment is cheap compared to what the Saudis would need to pay to do everything on their own. There’s justified resistance to seeing enrichment spread to other countries, as a general practice, but especially in cases where it doesn’t make sense economically for a country to do their own enrichment.”

Albright says the lack of economic reasoning raises the concern that Saudi Arabia may have other plans in the long run. He brings as an example the Iranian case: “What’s true for Saudi Arabia is doubly true for Iran. Their enrichment is very expensive, and they’re not even bothering to pretend there’s an economic motivation behind it. Certainly the Saudis could try the same path – declare civilian purposes but actually have their program prepared for a time when they’ll decide to transform it for military purposes.” Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, it should be noted, said in 2018 that he wants his country to match whatever nuclear capabilities Iran has.

Albright also disagrees with Dermer’s comment to PBS that if the U.S. won’t provide the Saudis with everything they want, the kingdom will turn its back on Washington and receive nuclear enrichment capabilities from another country, like China or France.

He says that, while the Chinese option can’t be ruled out, such a move will carry big risks for both sides. China, he explains, will be providing its nuclear technologies to a country with a decades-long history of military and intelligence cooperation with the U.S., while Saudi Arabia risks massive retaliation from the U.S. Congress. Albright adds that for a leader who wants to repair their standing in Washington, this move will achieve the exact opposite. As for France, Albright believes that as a liberal European country, it will demand the same terms from the Saudis as the U.S. does.

He thinks that the more disturbing alternatives would be that the Saudis will try to procure nuclear capabilities from either Russia or Pakistan. Albright points to the Iranian reactor in Busher, which uses Russian technology and “has got all kinds of safety problems,” as an example. Still, he believes that if the Saudis tried this path of action, the U.S. will have ways to block it. “You can tell the Saudis that we’ll put an embargo, we’ll use sanctions, we’ll provide no more military equipment – you have leverage there.”

A preferable policy, from his perspective, is to tell the Saudis that the U.S. does want to cooperate with them on nuclear energy production – but to set clear red lines from the start. “The enrichment part is very complicated, and if they can’t justify it economically, it makes no sense to do it,” he says. “It will be perceived very negatively by other countries, which have agreed over the years to American constraints on their own nuclear programs.”

It’s not clear, however, if the Saudi crown prince would accept such conditions. In the past, the most important question in Israeli politics was: What does Netanyahu want? Not anymore. The prime minister’s current intentions are incredibly transparent: He wants to weaken the Israeli judicial system, end his own corruption trial and break the massive Israeli protest movement standing in his way. A historic agreement with the Saudis will help him achieve these goals, and therefore, he’ll agree to pay almost any price – except perhaps in the Palestinian arena, where concessions could endanger the support of his far-right coalition partners.

The same cannot be said of MBS. His intentions are still uncertain to Israeli decision makers, who admit that they’re struggling to understand his recent moves. On the one hand, he continues to discuss the normalization deal with top Biden administration officials. On the other hand, he met with Iran's foreign minister last week, and announced the creation of an envoy position representing Saudi Arabia to the Palestinians a week prior to that.

One view inside the Israeli establishment is that MBS isn’t very enthusiastic about a normalization deal – certainly not as much as Netanyahu and Biden, both of whom see this issue through an electoral-political lens. “MBS tells himself: I’ll put up maximalist demands, almost impossible for them to accept,” says one Israeli official involved in the talks. “If the Americans and the Israelis agree, that’s great. If not, they will be responsible for the failure of the negotiations.”

With Roger Federer finally exiting the stage, a new No. 1 leads a top ten that made a combined $196 million over the past 12 months.

Since 2007, Roger Federer has reigned as the world’s highest-paid tennis player. But while the 42-year-old Swiss ace is still collecting an estimated $95 million a year, his retirement last September means that one of his old rivals now wears the crown as the sport’s top earner—with an heir apparent looking increasingly ready to seize the throne.

Novak Djokovic is the new champion of Forbes’ annual tennis earnings list, hauling in an estimated $38.4 million (before taxes and agents’ fees) over the past 12 months. No other active player can match his total on the court ($13.4 million from prize money) or off the court (an estimated $25 million from endorsement deals, appearance fees, and licensing and memorabilia income). But Carlos Alcaraz, who outlasted Djokovic in an epic Wimbledon final in July to claim his second Grand Slam title, is not far behind by either measure. The 20-year-old Spanish phenom raked in $31.4 million over the past 12 months, including $11.4 million on the court and an estimated $20 million off it, to land at No. 2.

That is a big raise from last year, when Alcaraz made his debut on the list at No. 10 with an estimated total of $10.9 million—and then won the U.S. Open the following month. In the women’s game, Iga Swiatek, who has also won two Grand Slams in the past year, made a similar jump, from outside the top ten all the way to No. 3 this year, with an estimated $22.4 million in earnings. She is joined by three other first-timers: Coco Gauff (No. 7, $15.2 million), Casper Ruud (No. 8, $14.4 million) and Jessica Pegula (No. 10, $10.9 million).

Like Federer, 41-year-old Serena Williams was deemed ineligible for this year’s ranking after her apparent retirement last year, and her 43-year-old sister, Venus Williams, falls out of the top ten, along with 33-year-old Kei Nishikori. The reshuffling drops the average age of the top ten below 26, from over 31 in 2022.

The new faces also push the number of women in the top ten up to five, from four last year, matching the highest total in the 16-year history of the ranking. That is no small feat. Female players generally have fewer and less lucrative marketing opportunities available to them, and while men and women receive equal prize money at the sport’s four Grand Slam events, there are still some pay disparities at smaller tournaments. For instance, this month’s Western & Southern Open outside Cincinnati featured a prize pool of $6.6 million for the men, with Djokovic taking home $1,019,335 as the singles champion; the women, meanwhile, played for $2.8 million, with Gauff receiving $454,500 for her singles title.

In total, the ten highest-paid players amassed $196 million over the past 12 months. That figure represents a 38% drop from last year’s $316 million total—and a 43% decline from 2020’s record $343 million—but the loss of Federer and Williams, with a combined $125 million in earnings on the 2022 list, accounts for most of the difference. And with eight of this year’s top ten still under 30, this group of rising tennis stars is just getting started.

This week made us check the calendar to make sure we aren’t still living in the free-money days of 2021. Eight rounds this week topped nine figures, and three of those were more than a quarter-billion dollars. This may simply be coincidence — or companies wanting to announce rounds before what is likely a slow news week with the Labor Day holiday — but nevertheless, it is surprising considering the current state of the venture market.

1. Axiom Space, $350M, space: Space tech funding to startups may be down, but that did not stop Axiom Space from hitting the top of the list this week. The space tech startup scooped up a $350 million round led by Saudi Arabia’s Aljazira Capital and Korean health care company Boryung Pharmaceutical. Axiom did not release a valuation, but told Bloomberg it is now valued at more than $1 billion. The Houston-based startup is building a commercial space station. The station’s first module is under construction and is scheduled to launch by 2026. The firm also has a long-term NASA contract worth $1.26 billion to provide “Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services” and spacesuits for use on the moon and in other space programs. Despite Axiom’s big raise, funding in space tech has had problems taking off this year. Space tech funding rocketed in 2021, hitting an all-time high of $12.1 billion in more than 450 deals. Then, despite the slowdown in venture funding last year, the sector only saw about a 25% decline, with space tech startups raising $9 billion in just under 400 deals. However, this calendar year space tech has seen less VC love, raising under $3 billion in about 200 deals, per Crunchbase data. Founded in 2016, Axiom says it has now raised $505 million.

2. Ramp, $300M, fintech: Down rounds are very much a thing right now. New York-based Ramp, a corporate card and expense automation platform, became the latest startup to raise one when it locked up a $300 million round at a $5.8 billion post-money valuation — a 28% drop from its previous valuation. The new cash comes just 15 months after the fintech startup raised $750 million in debt and equity in a financing that set a valuation of $8.1 billion. Thrive Capital, Sands Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund and other existing investors participated in the new financing. Many startups have had to recalibrate their valuations as investors have pulled back on funding and put more value on profitability and cash flow. Large private companies such as Klarna and Stripe also have raised down rounds as the venture market has continued to slow since its highs of 2021. Just last month, Atlanta-based OneTrust became one of the latest unicorns to raise a down round, as it locked up a $150 million round at a $4.5 billion valuation — a 12% drop from the $5.1 billion valuation the privacy and security startup garnered after it raised a Series C in late 2020. Founded in 2019, Ramp has raised $1.7 billion, per Crunchbase.

3. Cellares, $255M, biotech: The third and final quarter-billion-dollar-plus round this week went to a South San Francisco, California-based biotech startup. Cellares raised a $255 million Series C led by new investor Koch Disruptive Technologies. The company specializes in cell therapy manufacturing and plans to use the new money to launch a commercial-scale “integrated development and manufacturing organization smart factory,” which combines robotics, technology and interconnected software. Founded in 2019, the company has raised $355 million, per Crunchbase.

4. Hugging Face, $235M, artificial intelligence: It wouldn’t seem like a weekly top 10 list without an AI company. This week it’s Hugging Face. The New York-based startup raised an approximately $235 million round led by Salesforce Ventures at a whopping $4.5 billion valuation. The startup allows companies to store and use AI software and hosts hundreds of thousands of open-source AI models that developers can use for AI applications. The new round doubles the startup’s valuation from May 2022, when it raised a $100 million round at a reported $2 billion valuation. The deal comes just a couple of months after Salesforce Ventures said it would double its fund size to $500 million. Founded in 2016, Hugging Face has raised more than $360 million, per Crunchbase.

5. Genesis Therapeutics, $200M, biotech: Artificial intelligence and biotech are two of the sectors that have remained hot with investors even amid the current sluggish pace of venture capital spending. So it’s not surprising a startup at the intersection of the two led this week off in a big way. Genesis Therapeutics closed a $200 million Series B co-led by previous investor Andreessen Horowitz Bio + Health, as well as an unnamed “U.S.-based life-sciences-focused investor.” The company is using AI to develop small-molecule drugs and make drug discovery more successful. The Burlingame, California-based startup plans to use the fresh cash to evolve into a clinical-stage company, invest in its AI platform, and expand its discovery pipeline. An AI or biotech startup — or, in this case, both — raising a monster nine-figure round is nothing new this year. More than 130 U.S.-based companies have raised rounds of $100 million or more in 2023, per The Crunchbase Megadeals Board. Biotech startups raised 34 of those rounds — the most of any sector — while artificial intelligence startups received 13 such rounds. Just last week, biotech startup Abcuro had the biggest raise of the week with a $155 million round, while AI firm Anthropic also landed a $100 million financing. Founded in 2019, Genesis has now raised more than $280 million, per the company.

6. Rapport Therapeutics, $150M, biotech: Boston-based Rapport Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing precision medicines for neurological disorders, raised a $150 million Series B led by Cormorant Asset Management. The company had just announced its $100 million Series A in March. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $250 million, per Crunchbase.

7. SpyCloud, $110M, cybersecurity: Austin, Texas-based SpyCloud, which protects digital identities, closed a $110 million growth round of primary and secondary capital led by Riverwood Capital. Founded in 2016, the company has raised nearly $169 million, per Crunchbase.

8. Modular, $100M, artificial intelligence: Palo Alto, California-based AI software developer Modular raised a $100 million Series A led by General Catalyst. A report earlier this month said the startup was looking to raise at a $600 million valuation. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $130 million, per Crunchbase.

9. Gympass, $85M, wellness: New York-based wellness platform Gympass closed an $85 million Series F led by EQT Growth at a valuation of $2.4 billion. Founded in 2012, the company has raised $605 million, per Crunchbase.

10. Nursa, $80M, health care: Salt Lake City-based Nursa, a nurse staffing and recruiting platform, raised an $80 million Series B led by Drive Capital. Founded in 2018, the company has raised $103 million, per Crunchbase.

Despite the big week in the U.S. for fundraising, the biggest round went to a battery startup abroad.