FT : Burnham to maintain ban on North Sea exploration licences Decision criticis

Burnham to maintain ban on North Sea exploration licences
Decision criticised by oil and gas industry as well as trade union

Andy Burnham will stick to Labour’s contentious ban on new exploration licences in the North Sea, dashing oil and gas industry hopes for a radical change in government policy towards fossil fuels.

With the incoming administration under pressure to cut household bills, deputy party leader Lucy Powell said on Sunday that fossil fuels from the North Sea would be part of Britain’s energy mix.

But she insisted that Burnham would not overturn Labour’s manifesto pledge to end new exploration licences in the North Sea. “Andy has been clear he stands by the policies in our manifesto in relation to that,” she told the BBC. 

One industry figure told the FT: “If they don’t reverse the ban on new exploration then the industry will be very unhappy indeed.”

Reports in recent days had suggested that Burnham would pivot towards a “drill baby drill” approach to the North Sea, an oil and gas basin approaching the end of its life. 

US President Donald Trump responded to those reports on Sunday by posting on Truth Social: “The People of Aberdeen, in Scotland, are dancing in the streets because the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has stated that he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil!”

But Powell appeared to reject the notion that there would be a radical shift in approach, saying: “I don’t think it is a change of policy, more a change of emphasis.” 

The deputy Labour leader said the government still believed that the best way to achieve lower bills and greater fuel security was through “clean” renewable and nuclear energy. 

“We’ve been absolutely clear that North Sea gas and oil is an important part of that transition,” she said. 

“And I think what Andy is talking about is taking a more pragmatic approach and working with the industry to make sure that it can contribute to that transition and to the mix that is needed over the long term.”

Powell made the comments after Burnham promised to help households with the rising cost of living, which has been exacerbated by the surge in energy prices unleashed by the Iran war.

One of his first acts after becoming prime minister on Monday will be to scrap the Labour government’s digital ID scheme in a “reset of priorities” while the water sector is braced for the administration to seize control of struggling utility Thames Water.

Some oil and gas industry figures still hope that Burnham could ease companies’ tax and regulatory burdens in other ways, such as softening the windfall levy on the sector.

Burnham is planning a trip to Aberdeen, the centre of the North Sea oil and gas industry, to reassure local workers and trade unions about Labour’s energy policies as part of a tour of the country after taking office. 

Although he will adhere to the moratorium on new exploration licences, he is expected to emphasise Labour’s support for greater use of “tiebacks”, which allow further drilling next to existing fields. Industry leaders feel a different administration could allow more flexibility on tiebacks. 

Enrique Cornejo, policy director of Offshore Energies UK said: “The incoming prime minister needs to deliver a genuine change in policy. He must clearly recognise the value of domestic energy production and back North Sea oil and gas over imports.”

The government must soon decide whether to approve the Jackdaw gasfield and Rosebank oilfield off the coast of Scotland, whose futures were thrown into doubt by a court ruling last year.

Sir Keir Starmer had wanted energy secretary Ed Miliband to approve the projects — which do not breach Labour’s manifesto promise as they received their licences years ago — but both have long been entangled in a complex judicial process.

While officials expect Burnham to approve Jackdaw and possibly Rosebank, the incoming administration has confirmed neither.

Polling last week from Opinium found 71 per cent of respondents backed domestic production of oil and gas. The idea of ending the moratorium on new exploration was backed by a margin of 49 per cent to 24 per cent.

Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB trade union, which is an affiliate of Labour, said the party’s policy was not sustainable and it was essential to have a secure domestic energy supply in a dangerous world. 

“Increasing our reliance on imported energy from overseas also has a damaging impact on the nation’s finances,” he said. “It’s high time to put a stop to the current reckless and damaging policy of choosing imports over UK energy production.”

But Tessa Khan, executive director of campaign group Uplift, said it would be a “terrible look if the first thing Andy Burnham does is cave to the demands of oil and gas profiteers”.

(ZeroHedge) State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat

State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution" As US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Into Regional Crisis

Summary
  • CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran
  • State Dept. Issues Worldwide Warning
  • CENTCOM says two US troops killed in Iranian attack on Jordan base.
  • Iran formally suspends MoU with the US, declaring agreement is over & commitments will no longer be fulfilled.
  • Fighting escalates into seventh straight day of heavy bombings.
  • Iran reportedly struck a US base in Saudi Arabia for the first time in four months.
  • US strikes disrupt southern Iran's telecom network, knocking out 116 communication towers amid new infrastructure war.
  • Iran pounds Kuwait's energy infrastructure, damaging power & desalination facilities.


CENTCOM Says US Forces Launch New Strike On Iran
CENTCOM said US forces struck Iranian missile and radar systems stationed along the Strait of Hormuz, further dismantling Tehran's surveillance and strike capabilities while eroding its ability to control the maritime chokepoint.
"Today at 6 p.m. ET, U.S. forces began launching new airstrikes against Iran at the Commander in Chief's direction," CENTCOM wrote on X.
CENTCOM added, "The strikes are designed to further degrade Iran's ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and swiftly punish Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces who launched attacks against American service members in Jordan last night."
State Department Issues "Worldwide Caution"
Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Jordan's Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, which killed two U.S. service members and injured others, are likely to trigger a major U.S. retaliation.
Israel's Channel 14 reported late Saturday that President Trump instructed CENTCOM to "open the gates of hell" on Iran.
The U.S. State Department issued a worldwide caution, warning: "Due to heightened tensions in the Middle East, the security environment remains complex, with the potential for unforeseen escalation."
Will tensions ease before the NY futures open on Sunday evening?

Americans Killed by Iranian Missiles on Jordan
Footage has been widely circulating over the past half-day showing massive Iranian ballistic missile strikes on Jordan. Iran said it targeted a US base there, and took out various aerial and radar assets, and caused casualties among American troops.
But the Pentagon has been radio silent on the extent of potential damage, until now: US officials are reporting that two American service members were killed in the overnight Iranian attack. According to emerging details in Axios:
Two U.S. service members were killed and more wounded in an Iranian ballistic missile attack on an airbase in Jordan on Saturday, military officials said.
This is the first time U.S. troops have been killed since the fighting resumed two weeks ago. The incident raises the number of U.S. service members killed in the war to 16.
On Saturday at least two Iranian ballistic missiles hit the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, which hosts U.S. troops and fighter jets.
CENTCOM posted to X, officially confirming the news: "On July 17, two U.S. service members in Jordan were killed in action as U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and partner forces defended against Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks. Additionally, one service member is currently missing in action."
The statement has noted additional injuries: "Four American service members were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals. They have since been discharged. Other personnel who were evaluated for minor injuries have returned to duty," CENTCOM said.

Iran Formally Suspends MoU
It is now "official": the Iranians have declared that the signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United States is dead. Tasnim is reporting Saturday that Iran will no longer fulfill its MoU obligations amid alleged repeat US violations. The past weeks have seen each side hurl warnings and threats to pull out, while attaching conditions that must be fulfilled.
But after what is now a full week of renewed fighting, it has been effectively torn up, with negotiations no longer happening. Al Jazeera is citing a top Iran official's precise statement on suspending the MoU in the following:
Previously, we have seen again and again Iranian officials accusing the US of violating the MoU and also putting some conditions if the aggression continues.
What we’re seeing is Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, who is also head of the Iranian technical negotiating team, saying that in practice, the US has violated all the commitments and suspended the MoU entirely.
“We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments,” he added.
So, officially, this is the first time the Iranians are saying the MoU is over and they’re not going to implement any clause.
Given President Trump has apparently just ordered dozens more aerial refueling planes to the region, the conflict looks to continue going up the escalation ladder for at least the next week or longer. Each side will seek to impose more economic and military pain, while waiting for the other to blink. Battle of narratives over damage and retaliation:
Saudi Base Attacked for First Time in 4 Months
Saudi Arabia has come under attack by Iranian missiles in the last 24 hours, the kingdom is confirming on Saturday, in a major escalation given that this is a first since near the start of the war several months ago. According to Reuters:
The Saudi civil defense early on Saturday issued two early warnings for Al-Kharj city and Yanbu to be alert to “potential danger,” but it later says the danger has passed in both areas, without providing details on the danger that triggered the warnings.
A US official tells the Axios news site that Iran targeted an American military base in Saudi Arabia with a ballistic missile, the first time that the Islamic Republic has directly attacked the kingdom in four months.
Locations in Jordan and even Syria have also been hit in recent salvos, but the US military has downplayed these attacks - and there's a battle of narratives over just how destructive these have been amid the fog of war.
Kuwait also reeling from stepped-up attacks...
116 Telecoms Towers In Southern Iran Taken Out
As we featured earlier, Iranian communications and even the supply of drinking water have been severely impacted in some places of southern Iran, amid continuing US airstrikes on civic and national infrastructure, amid the seventh consecutive day of war. "Hormozgan's chief of communications and information technology says the US's overnight attacks disrupted telecommunications in Bandar Abbas and Hajiabad, in the northern part of the province," Al Jazeera reports
Authorities there have tallied at least 116 telecommunication towers which were taken out of service due to the US onslaught. This has resulted in outages and disruptions of fixed-line, mobile, and internet services, per Tasnim news agency.
This suggests the US is returning to a strategy which seeks to create destabilization within, targeting the ability of the public to communicate and access information, returning the situation to the early weeks of the war, which saw Tehran authorities themselves curb internet and some telecoms access for the citizenry.

Kuwait Power & Desalination Plant Hit
Kuwait was bombarded overnight in one of the fiercest Iranian retaliatory strikes since the US-Iran conflict erupted in late February, with missiles and one-way drones targeting power infrastructure and other critical energy assets.
Local outlet Kuwait News Agency reports an unspecified site of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation suffered "significant material losses" as the week-long flare-up in Gulf tensions has derailed any near-term normalization of tanker flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
There was a report that the Al-Subiya power station was struck. This marks the second attack on Kuwaiti power infrastructure in just days, after a transformer at the Zour South electricity and desalination complex was hit on Friday.
Authorities disconnected several power-generating units as a precaution and urged residents to conserve electricity. A Kuwaiti army base was also struck during the latest escalation, injuring several personnel.
Infrastructure War in Full Swing
On March 2, we warned:
Bahrain and Jordan intercepted Iranian missiles and drones. The overnight barrage followed a seventh consecutive night of US strikes targeting Iranian surveillance sites, weapons storage, logistics infrastructure and maritime offensive capabilities as the Department of War seeks to erode Tehran's leverage on the Hormuz waterway.
As of late Friday, the previous US-Iran wrap stated:
  • Surge in more large US refueling planes headed to Mideast, signaling likely expansion of strikes on Iran.
  • US attacks hit Iranian energy and transport infrastructure.
  • Iran threatens stronger retaliation and claims strike on US base in Qatar - and deepens attacks to include US outposts in Jordan, Syria.
  • Iran urges power conservation; Hormuz shipping traffic declines further.
  • Oil prices rise to session highs on fears of broader regional conflict.
Brent chart
The latest Hormuz tanker transit data via Bloomberg shows that activity at the maritime chokepoint has all but ceased. This data is based on ships activating their transponders and doesn't account for ships that 'go dark'...

WSJ : Big Food Is Running Out of Moves with Shoppers and Investors Investors are

Big Food Is Running Out of Moves with Shoppers and Investors
Investors are rightly giving up on companies like General Mills and Kraft Heinz, which are squeezed by everything from inflation to GLP-1s

America’s biggest food companies have tried everything to win shoppers back. They’ve cut prices, ramped up marketing and added protein to everything from Cheerios to Goldfish.

It hasn’t worked.

Profits are falling at flagship names such as General Mills GIS -1.89%decrease; down pointing triangle and Kraft Heinz KHC -1.33%decrease; down pointing triangle as consumers turn away from their legacy products. Management mostly blames a strained consumer and insists conditions will improve. The market has reached a harsher verdict: These businesses are shrinking and don’t know how to stop.

Big Food stocks are now trading at their widest discount to the market in at least two decades. Dividend yields are unsustainably high.

Investors hunting for bargains should be careful. These stocks are like stale food on a grocery shelf with a big discount sticker: cheap for a reason. And with the Iran war pushing costs higher, the industry’s problems might get worse.

Why have things gotten so bad? Weight-loss drugs are the most visible reason. More than 1 in 10 American adults now take a GLP-1, and that number keeps climbing. But the drugs are only part of a broader shift.


Americans are reading ingredient labels more closely. GLP-1 users and everyone else are gravitating toward protein, fresh ingredients and cleaner labels. They are fleeing calorie-dense, ultraprocessed staples that fill the center of the store.

Then there’s the K-shaped economy, which squeezes from both ends. Affluent shoppers are getting more health-conscious and trading up, often to smaller brands. Meanwhile, lower-income households are counting every dollar and trading down, increasingly to private labels. (Premium private label is also a competitive threat at the higher end.) The pressure has only intensified as food-stamp aid has been cut.

Even U.S. population growth, the one tailwind these companies could always count on, has slowed to a crawl as the Trump administration cracks down on border crossings and steps up deportations. “What had been an advantage for this group throughout its history is now gone,” says Max Gumport of BNP Paribas.

General Mills has resorted to cutting prices even when it hurts earnings, just to stop consumers from walking away. Organic sales—which strip out the effects of acquisitions and currency swings—fell 2% in fiscal 2026, and the company is guiding to another year of flat-to-declining sales.

Last week, Conagra halved its dividend and guided to an earnings decline in the new fiscal year that was steeper than Wall Street expected. Kraft Heinz and Campbell’s are under similar pressure.

The group now trades at its lowest multiples in years. Conagra fetches about 9.8 times forward earnings, a nearly 60% discount to the S&P 500. General Mills, Campbell’s and Kraft Heinz all trade around 11 to 12 times. Over the past decade, each has lost roughly 50% to 70% of its respective value even as the S&P more than tripled.

At these levels, the worst might well be priced in. But the setup still looks worrisome. The prolonged Iran conflict has pushed oil higher, dragging fertilizer, packaging resin and freight up with it, notes Alexia Howard, an analyst at Bernstein.

Traditionally food makers pass those costs on, as they did in 2021, when shoppers had stimulus checks from the government. This time, Howard expects Walmart and its peers to refuse.


Retailers have increasing leverage through their own brands, and they don’t want to hit a struggling consumer with higher prices. Store brands now make up about 24% of grocery-unit share, according to the Private Label Manufacturers Association. The figure is higher at the chains that matter most: Store brands consist of 31% of units at Walmart and 34% at Costco, according to Numerator.

When shoppers are stretched, retailers “push the food companies even harder on price,” says Kunaal Kanagal, a portfolio manager at Bahl & Gaynor. That leaves food makers with two bad options: lose volume or lose margin. Better, he argues, to own stock in the retailers than the brands.

The fixes are real, but slow and expensive. These companies have little choice but to invest in brands people actually want, whether by building them or buying them. Gumport points to the fresh refrigerated dog food General Mills recently launched under Blue Buffalo, the pet-food brand it bought in 2018, as the kind of thing that works. What doesn’t work are gimmicks like slapping protein into old brands.

Bigger deals—breakups and combinations alike—have a mixed record. But they’re also on the menu because they can force focus or add scale, as with McCormick’s tie-up with Unilever’s food business announced earlier this year. Take-private deals to remove more of the troubled sector from public markets are also a possibility.

Real innovation takes years and money, though, and most of these companies carry heavy debt while their payout ratios sit at unsustainably high levels, Howard notes. Conagra’s dividend cut last week is what that pressure looks like.

This all leaves Big Food facing a long road back to the American shopper. Getting back into investors’ good graces will be an even longer journey.

FT : GameStop extends pursuit of eBay despite Wall Street scepticism Video game

GameStop extends pursuit of eBay despite Wall Street scepticism
Video game retailer doubles stake in online marketplace as chief executive Ryan Cohen presses ahead with quixotic deal

GameStop chief executive Ryan Cohen is pressing ahead with a long-shot pursuit of eBay despite Wall Street scepticism, quietly amassing a nearly 10 per cent stake in the online marketplace.

Cohen has been working behind the scenes in recent weeks to respond to eBay’s rejection of his $56bn cash-and-stock takeover offer in May, which criticised the deal’s financing, leverage levels of the combined group and Cohen’s own economic incentives.

“The publicity hasn’t affected my life one bit,” Cohen told the FT. “All I do is work. I want to own eBay — that’s all I’ve been thinking about.” Cohen’s attempt to buy a company fivefold larger than the video game retailer was laughed off on Wall Street, and his assertion in a CNBC interview that the deal was funded by “half cash, half stock” quickly became an online meme.

Cohen’s relentless pursuit of eBay is evidence of the changing face of corporate America. Cohen, supported by an army of retail investors who backed his swift takeover of GameStop, is attempting to swallow one of America’s most well-known online retail brands — albeit one that has stagnated while rival Amazon grew to a $1tn-plus market capitalisation.

GameStop has almost doubled its eBay stake and Cohen withdrew a bonus plan that eBay’s board criticised that could have paid him as much as $35bn. The GameStop boss has also reshuffled his legal and public relations advisers, reassembling the team that helped him seize GameStop, and has been canvassing the opinion of some of eBay’s other largest investors, according to people familiar with the matter

All of these manoeuvres could be a prelude to Cohen taking his offer directly to shareholders. “We’re keeping all our options on the table,” said Cohen. “The optimist in me tells me they should do the right thing and engage with us but the pessimist in me tells them they’re going to wait till the annual meeting. There’s a lot of steps we can take between now and then.”

Despite Wall Street’s scepticism of Cohen’s pursuit, the GameStop boss has already started drawing up plans for how he would shake up eBay if he ever gets inside the C-suite. The remedy is aggressive cost-cutting to bring eBay’s operating expenses in line with Chewy, the online pet food retailer Cohen founded, and rivals such as Wayfair.

Operating expenses at eBay have increased by 26 per cent over the five years to $5.6bn last year, while operating income has fallen by 14 per cent to $2.2bn. Despite that, shares in eBay have more than tripled over the course of chief executive Jamie Iannone’s six-year tenure, driving its market value close to all-time highs of nearly $50bn at Friday’s close.

Some analysts have, however, praised eBay’s recent performance, pointing to recent improvements in marketplace growth and a disciplined capital allocation strategy. eBay declined to comment.

Cohen revealed that he emailed Iannone in May immediately following his public takeover attempt to try to broker a meeting near eBay’s headquarters in San Jose, California. But Iannone was unwilling to meet with the man gunning for his job. “This is really a vote on who shareholders want to run the business,” said Cohen. “It’s about who they want to be the CEO — me or the current CEO.”

Reuters - Institutional demand for CXMT's $8.6 bln Shanghai IPO dented by chip s

Institutional demand for CXMT's $8.6 bln Shanghai IPO dented by chip stock selloff
Chinese chipmaker CXMT Corp's $8.6 billion initial public offering was more than 500 times oversubscribed by institutional investors, according to a filing on Sunday, but ​the demand was less feverish than in recent Chinese tech IPOs, ‌reflecting caution amid a global selloff in chip stocks.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, July 19 (Reuters) - Chinese chipmaker CXMT Corp's $8.6 billion initial public offering was more than 500 times oversubscribed by institutional investors, according to a filing on Sunday, but ​the demand was less feverish than in recent Chinese tech IPOs, ‌reflecting caution amid a global selloff in chip stocks.

Attention will now shift to CXMT's listing expected later this month on Shanghai's STAR Market, which will test the market ahead of a ​slew of other high-profile IPOs as Beijing pushes for self-sufficiency in its ​tech rivalry with Washington.

In a statement on Sunday, CXMT (688825.SS), opens new tab, China's top ⁠memory chipmaker, said institutional investors including mutual funds, pension funds and insurers ​subscribed for a total of 1.24 trillion shares, compared with 2.17 billion IPO shares ​on offer to them.

That translates into an oversubscription ratio of roughly 570 times. The multiple points to solid demand, but is much smaller than in recent STAR Market IPOs.

For example, public ​sale shares by Zhuhai Trinomab Pharmaceutical Co (688806.SS), opens new tab, Chongqing Genori Technology Co (688797.SS), opens new tab, and Wuhan Changjin ​Photonics (688635.SS), opens new tab were all over 5,000 times oversubscribed by institutional investors.

CXMT's IPO, Asia's biggest so far ‌this ⁠year, comes amid a brutal sell-off in once high-flying chip stocks as investors from Seoul to Silicon Valley start asking whether the AI boom became over-leveraged and got ahead of itself.

In China, the STAR Market (.CSI000680), opens new tab, home to many leading chip stocks, has ​plunged roughly 25% ​from its July ⁠1 peak, wiping out over 4 trillion yuan ($590.32 billion) of market value.

Sunday's announcement came days after CXMT said the retail portion ​of its IPO was 243.93 times oversubscribed, also pointing to ​less investor ⁠fervour.

CXMT, the world's fourth-biggest DRAM chipmaker after Samsung (005930.KS), opens new tab, SK Hynix (000660.KS), opens new tab and Micron Technology (MU.O), opens new tab, has not disclosed when it will list on the STAR Market. Sources told Reuters the ⁠stock ​will debut on July 27.

The AI boom has boosted ​demand for DRAM, or dynamic random-access memory chips, which are used in smartphones, computers, servers and other ​electronics.

Reuters - Samsung cuts US jobs, offers relocations ahead of HQ move

Samsung cuts US jobs, offers relocations ahead of HQ move

  • Over 700 roles in New Jersey affected by shift of HQ to Texas
  • Samsung says a majority of those people affected have relocation offers
  • At least 100 people in Samsung's Texas office let go, source says
  • Consumer electronics divisions are grappling with surging chip costs and competition

SEOUL, July 19 (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), opens new tab has cut jobs at ​its U.S. display, phone and other consumer electronics operations — affecting workers mainly in New Jersey and Texas, according to documents and two people familiar with ‌the matter.

The South Korean tech giant said on Sunday in a statement to Reuters that 739 roles in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, have been affected by plans by Samsung Electronics America (SEA) — which is focused on consumer electronics and does not include chips — to move its headquarters to Texas.

A majority of people affected have received relocation offers, but others were let go, it added without elaborating.

At SEA's Plano, Texas office, some 100 workers ​including staff in its mobile division, have been let go, according to one person who said they were among the employees laid off. Sources declined to be identified ​because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The cuts — though related to the shift in headquarters — underscore diverging fortunes within the South Korean tech giant ⁠with its chip division skyrocketing to record profit but its consumer electronics units languishing as chip costs surge.

Samsung's decision to shift SEA's headquarters is striking because SEA employees in New ​Jersey only moved to new offices with much fanfare less than a year ago. SEA employs about 1,200 workers in New Jersey, according to a press release by U.S. Representative Josh ​Gottheimer, who attended an event to mark the opening of the new offices in September.

While the precise extent of the layoffs at SEA could not be learned, documents seen by Reuters show that the unit notified some employees on June 30 of an "enterprise-wide reduction-in-force", adding that there were a "significant number of impacts".

LinkedIn posts reviewed by Reuters also show more than 30 workers, including senior sales and marketing officials in both Texas ​and New Jersey as well as a few in other U.S. locations, said they have been let go or left the company over the past couple of weeks.

Details about the ​job losses at SEA have not previously been reported.

Samsung said in its statement that the shift of SEA's headquarters "may lead to changes in our workforce structure, such as employees who are unable to relocate, ‌or certain functions ⁠that are optimized to ensure our roles align to key business priorities."
CHIP DIVISION SOARS, BUT MOBILE MAY POST LOSS
Samsung has flagged it will likely post a 19-fold jump in second-quarter profit on strong AI-driven chip demand. It also announced plans last month to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new chip plants.

Its mobile division, however, is expected to post its first-ever loss, as it grapples with intense competition from Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab. Chinese rivals like TCL (000100.SZ), opens new tab and Hisense (600060.SS), opens new tab, (000921.SZ), opens new tab are also challenging Samsung in televisions and home appliances. Higher chip costs due to the AI boom have weighed ​on earnings for all of its consumer ​electronics products.

Samsung's job cuts mirror moves by other ⁠global firms including Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab, Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Meta (META.O), opens new tab, which have shed jobs while redirecting spending toward AI infrastructure.

It has also joined Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab and other tech companies in moving headquarters or major operations to Texas, known for lower taxes and business-friendly regulations. The state is already home to ​Samsung's chip factories and a mobile hub in Plano.

Samsung workers are concerned the recent job cuts could be followed by additional layoffs and ​a consolidation of the ⁠company's appliance, home entertainment and mobile divisions, as it focuses resources on chips, a current SEA employee said.

Samsung said in its statement there was currently no broad, global restructuring underway within its consumer product business.
The relocation of the unit's headquarters is intended to foster "stronger collaboration and optimize the organization by bringing more teams together within a growing technology and AI ecosystem," it said.

Samsung Electronics had 11,770 ⁠employees in ​the United States as of the end of 2025, which includes workers in its chip division.

Samsung's IT services ​affiliate Samsung SDS America (018260.KS), opens new tab, has flagged that 179 roles could be cut at Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, according to a June notice required under the state's laws.

Those personnel changes are due to the relocation of Samsung SDS' North American ​headquarters and had nothing to do with layoffs or restructuring, Samsung said.

Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlin in Los Angeles; Editing by Miyoung Kim, Rod Nickel and Edwina Gibbs

The Information : Oracle Data Centers Face Multibillion-Dollar Cost Surprises

Oracle Data Centers Face Multibillion-Dollar Cost Surprises

Building an AI supercampus increasingly means paying more than you bargained for. Oracle’s attempt to salvage a proposed $165 billion project on the rocks in New Mexico is a recent example.

The cloud provider earlier this year was planning to spend billions of dollars to build its own natural-gas plants to power Project Jupiter, a 1,400-acre, two-plus gigawatt AI data center for OpenAI near the Texas border town of El Paso. But a state environmental permit application stalled over air pollution and greenhouse-gas concerns.

So in April, Oracle abruptly pivoted to powering the entire campus with Bloom Energy natural gas fuel cells, which arguably have a better shot at getting approved because they produce far fewer pollutants and slightly less carbon emissions, and they use almost no water.

The change increased Oracle’s costs. Analysts have ballparked the cost of the fuel cell microgrid, reduced in size to 2.45 gigawatts, at around $8 billion, likely a few billion more than the cost of the original gas turbines. Oracle makes up for some of that difference with better fuel efficiency from the cells.

But the change also reduces Oracle’s long-term power flexibility. Unlike gas turbines, fuel cells degrade if they don’t run continuously, which would crimp Oracle’s ability to switch to cheap solar on sunny days. New Mexico last week issued its second rejection of proposed pipeline routes to deliver fuel to the site. It is now clear that the path to a workable fuel-delivery solution could be long and costly because the state’s politics are decidedly more hostile to fossil fuels than those of neighboring Texas.

Now New Mexico’s Environment Department has announced it will hold a public hearing on the air permit Oct. 19, citing significant opposition. The New Mexico Attorney General is investigating complaints from local residents and elected officials that their names were used in letters sent to the environmental regulator in support of the fuel cells, without these people’s consent or knowledge. And Source NM, a local publication, pointed out that the fuel cells for just that facility would still emit more greenhouse gases than what the state’s two largest cities say they emit, combined.

Oracle is also in the process of discussing financing for the project that prospective investors say has more favorable terms than in its prior capital raises, although the exact terms couldn’t be learned. An Oracle spokesperson said in a statement that it’s making rapid progress on AI sites and is “confident in the returns on the capital we are deploying.”

Environmental critics are calling for a statewide data center moratorium, even though Jupiter’s construction is well underway and despite the fact that Oracle promised direct support to schools and workforce development. The company also said it will treat non-potable water that it secured outside the municipal water system to cool the data center and operate the fuel cells.

Julia Robin, the head of infrastructure planning and sourcing at Oracle’s cloud provider unit, published a letter in a local paper stating that the changes it has made to its plans show that “we’re listening and continuously improving the project.” Oracle has built excess power capacity into the design at its own expense and, when it doesn’t need it, the company would “love to send those excess electrons back to consumers in the region,” she wrote.

The extraordinary steps Oracle and other tech firms are taking to earn the social license to operate AI megacampuses reflect two things: the unprecedented resource needs of their projects and the payback they expect to earn if they can just get the locals on board. They’re arguably rich enough to swallow the costs, but they likely didn’t imagine three years ago that they would be fronting this much to upgrade local municipal water or wastewater systems or paying the entire expense of a grid upgrade.

Previously, such costs were often forced on all the electricity customers who might conceivably benefit from them.

Wisconsin Problems

Today looks a whole lot different. In Wisconsin, even though OpenAI, Oracle and Microsoft pledged to “pay their own way” by covering all power costs associated with their AI projects, the state power regulator sided with consumer advocates and sought to close some loopholes that could still leave electricity payers fronting certain costs.

The regulator’s recent ruling on transmission cost-sharing, for example, could mean Oracle, OpenAI and their development partner Vantage Data Centers would pay for the entire construction of a transmission line for their Port Washington data center campus after the companies initially expected the public to help foot some of the bill. The decision may add $100 million or more to their costs. Oracle has also sued the commission over a recent ruling that requires it to put up financial guarantees in cash or lines of credit in case of a failure, due to its relatively low credit rating compared to other tech giants. Oracle said the ruling will cost it around $100 million annually.

Not every effort to satisfy the public has to cost more. On the Texas side of El Paso, just over the border from Oracle’s Project Jupiter, Meta may have made a cost-effective choice that is also less water-intensive.

Meta’s McCloud power project is partnering with local utility El Paso Electric to install 813 gas generators from power provider ERock for a 225 megawatt microgrid while it waits for the utility to build a substation to connect a Meta data center to the grid. Meta will pay 100% of the costs for two to five years as a “bridge” to getting grid power. Then the utility, which owns the generators, is proposing to use the generators as a low-cost “swing” power source in times of peak demand. These engines pollute more than large gas turbines but don’t use water and won’t need to run continuously in the future.

Another promising example involves Google’s projects powered mostly by renewable energy in the Texas Panhandle, which could also end up being cheaper per megawatt than huge off-grid gas projects. Lazard’s widely-watched report on the long-term costs for different power sources confirmed that solar is still cost-competitive even when supplemented with batteries and gas—as Google’s Intersect subsidiary plans to do—and despite inflation in the solar supply chain.

But there’s plenty of reasons to believe we’re only beginning to see the true cost of AI data center projects come to light.

Mystery Bacteria

In Wyoming, Meta is scrambling this month to explain why a rare and deadly bacteria found its way into Cheyenne’s wastewater system after it flushed out some pipes in a cleaning procedure. Its contractors had configured the pipes for a future “closed loop” cooling system that is becoming a standard feature of AI projects. It’s still a mystery where the bacteria came from, but the municipal utility alleges it came from Meta’s site and has now prohibited the plant from discharging fluids into its wastewater network. Meta may now need to build its own collection systems.

Meta is appealing the decision, saying in a statement that subsequent, independent tests detected no bacteria and the utility hasn’t shared its own testing data with Meta or the public. “We are committed to being a good neighbor in Cheyenne, which includes helping care for the local watershed,” a Meta spokesperson said.

Launched in the past few years, closed loop water systems were considered a major improvement to AI data centers because they barely use any water once the system is filled. But they require regularly draining small amounts of water into wastewater systems, and the Meta incident could increase calls for stepped-up treatment and monitoring. Water monitoring firm Ketos said AI facilities risk surprising municipal wastewater systems by discharging water with high concentrations of corrosion inhibitors, metals, and biocides and other substances that build up as the water is reused over and over.

To be fair, Ketos suggests wastewater discharge from AI facilities is a highly solvable problem if the water is properly monitored and treated. A Meta spokesperson said its data centers “operate under local sewer use permits that define acceptable discharge parameters, and our flows will fall within those limits.”

Near-Junk Credit Rating

Even before the closed-loop question surfaced, water sourcing and treatment in drought-stricken areas was emerging as a new, non-trivial expense. As we recently reported, Lancium, a power developer working with Oracle and other tech firms, appeared at the Texas legislature to pledge it would be a good water steward by drilling for and treating non-potable water in the Texas Panhandle that wouldn’t compete with farmers’ supply.

The next concession tech firms may agree to could be pricier still: capturing carbon emissions from all the new gas they’re burning.

Do these ballooning expenses make a project only borderline attractive? So far, I still hear an optimistic answer: even though the cost to build and power a gigawatt of AI is bordering on at least $60 billion, Nvidia servers powered by its Grace Blackwell chips, renting out at $3.50 an hour, could generate around $12 billion to $13 billion a year, including operating costs. That’s a relatively quick payback, assuming the chips’ value holds up the way it has in recent years.

But based on the surprises that keep coming, it’s a good bet tech firms will need to keep padding their cost estimates.

It’s probably no coincidence that last week, S&P Global lowered Oracle’s long-term issuer credit rating to just one level above non-investment grade, otherwise known as junk. The ratings agency cited “significant upfront capital investments and long-term data center leases, both of which we have continually underestimated.”

TechCrunch :Apple and Google ordered to purge ‘nudify’ apps from App Stores Luca

Apple and Google ordered to purge ‘nudify’ apps from App Stores

The city of San Francisco has ordered Apple and Google to remove dozens of “nudify” apps — — software programs that can digitally alter pictures to unclothe the people in them — from their app stores.

California law criminalizes any activity that “knowingly facilitates” or “recklessly aids or abets” the creation of non-consensual deepfake pornography. In 2025, California also passed a law that allows victims to pursue civil actions against third-party facilitators of such material. The city says that, despite these well-known regulations, both tech companies have continued to host and make money from such programs.

“Apple and Google are profiting off apps that exploit women and girls by generating nonconsensual intimate deepfakes,” San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “While the companies cut ties with some problematic apps, Apple and Google have a responsibility to be proactive and vigilant to prevent sexual abuse.”

Letters sent to Google and Apple by Chiu’s office, which were viewed by TechCrunch, note that the companies have “been on notice” for their role in “processing payments for illegal purchases for almost a year” but have, nevertheless, continued to do so.

According to the letters, both companies have been repeatedly warned that they are hosting these apps. In January and again in April, the Tech Transparency Project issued reports and sent letters to both companies noting that there were “dozens of apps” within their app stores that “sold deepfake NCII [non-consensual intimate images] in exchange for payments” from processed by the firms.

TTP’s report from April said that Google and Apple had intentionally “steered” users towards such apps and called both companies “key participants in the spread of AI tools that can turn real people into sexualized images.”

Additionally, Chiu told Wired that both companies had likely made “millions of dollars in fees” from apps that offered such services.

The letters from Chiu’s office warn that Apple and Google could face civil penalties for violating the law and request that they contact the city within 28 days.

When reached for comment by TechCrunch, an Apple spokesperson said that nudify apps were forbidden from appearing in its App Store, further noting: “We have removed three of the apps in question and are in the process of terminating their developer accounts from our program. We are in contact with four others that need to address policy violations or risk being removed as well.”

A Google spokesperson claimed that all five Play apps referenced in Chiu’s letter had been suspended from Google Play. “When violations are reported to us, we investigate and take swift action, which in the case of these apps has included suspending hundreds of violating apps and restricting related search terms like ‘nudify’ on our store,” the spokesperson added.


Deepfake pornography has largely been a problem for female celebrities, although nudify apps make it possible for anyone with a publicly available photo to be targeted.

TechCrunch :Agility Robotics plants its flag in Tesla’s backyard Tim Fernholz 1:

Agility Robotics plants its flag in Tesla’s backyard

Agility Robotics is opening a 60,000-square-foot facility to train its humanoid robots in Fremont, California, just up the highway from the factory where Tesla is expected to start manufacturing its Optimus robots this year.

Tesla has increasingly bet on Optimus. Elon Musk recently said he expects it to be “the biggest product ever” once it’s “useful outside of Tesla sometime next year.”

While Agility doesn’t have Tesla’s capital, it does have a robot, Digit, that is already useful in the real world. The robot is already generating revenue, carrying totes and bins in manufacturing and warehouse settings for customers like Amazon, GXO, Schaeffler, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada. The company says it has secured $300 million in contract orders for its robots.

“It’s great to have [Tesla] in the same area as us, because really, for a long time Agility was out there alone, and it’s good to have others in the humanoid space,” CEO Peggy Johnson told TechCrunch. “We have commercialized. We now know what it takes to walk into these facilities and meet their safety bars, their regulatory bars, compliance, plug into their IT infrastructure, plug into their warehouse management system.”

Agility hasn’t disclosed how many Digits that it has built or deployed, but outside observers estimate that dozens have worked in pilot or revenue-generating deployments. The company has said, for example, that Digits have moved 100,000 totes at a GXO logistics facility.

Johnson is currently leading Agility through a reverse-merger that is expected to make it the first pure-play humanoid robot company on the public markets later this year. Founded in 2015 by a group of researchers who developed new techniques that allow robots to safely walk on two legs, Agility is trying to capitalize on its lead over a newer generation of AI-inspired robotic startups like Figure, 1X, the Bot Company, or Sunday Robotics.

While the arrival of transformer-based neural networks that helped give rise to LLMs also promises major advancements in robotic behavior, Agility is taking a practical approach to autonomy.

“When you think about self-driving cars, you know, as a non-humanoid example, you really don’t want the anti-lock brake controller under AI control,” Agility co-founder and chairman Damion Shelton told TechCrunch. “The analog with humanoids is all the safety stuff needs to go through a path that’s not generative AI, right? You don’t want to get creative with your safety stack.”

What AI does do, however, is deliver on the promise of scale.

“One of the first times [Bruce Leak, the Quicktime inventor who serves on Agility’s board] asked us how we were going to go about coding applications for the robot, we didn’t really have a good answer,” Shelton said. “The number of things you can imagine a robot doing is far larger than the number of engineers who can program robots. And generative AI answers that question definitively.”

The new facility is designed to accelerate the company’s robotic deployments. Johnson says more than 30 customers are in talks with the company about deploying Digit, and the new facility will be where the six-foot-tall robot learns new skills in environments similar to those it will experience in the field.

Unlike many of the newer entrants to the humanoid space, Agility isn’t planning to offer in-home humanoid robots anytime soon. It’s a view that jibes with that of most independent robotics experts, who believe today’s most powerful robots aren’t safe enough for consumer use.
Digit operates in a human-free space right now, but the version 5, expected to be unveiled this fall, will have the ability to sense humans and won’t need to be kept in a robot-only zone.

Co-founder and chief robot officer Jonathan Hurst said there is plenty of work to keep Agility busy in manufacturing and logistics alone.

“Let’s start with the bins and the totes, and then let’s do the picking and the kitting,” Hurst told TechCrunch. “And then let’s like start working on cardboard, which is really hard, and loading and unloading tractor trailers and things like that. Okay, now we’re at 100 million robots, you know? A trillion-dollar company.”