- Delivery Hero (DHER TH) +5.7%
- Delivery Hero Says Received €33/Share Approach From Uber
- TUI (TUI1 TH) +4.2%
- MTU Aero (MTX TH) +2.7%
- Nokia (NOA3 TH) +2.6%
- STMicro (SGM TH) +2.2%
- LVMH (MOH TH) +2%
- ASML (ASME TH) +1.8%
- BE Semiconductor (BSI TH) +1.8%
- Leonardo (FMNB TH) -1.4%
- Bawag (0B2 TH) -2.1%
- SBM Offshore (IHCB TH) -2.4%
- Eni (ENI TH) -3%
- TotalEnergies (TOTB TH) -3.3%
- Repsol (REP TH) -3.4%
SpaceX and AI IPOs to ignite trading frenzy
The gargantuan IPOs for SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI could prompt an unprecedented wave of buying and selling as US exchanges’ new “fast entry” rules quickly inject the stocks into Wall Street indices.
The rules, implemented this month by Nasdaq, mean billions of dollars of passive money will automatically flow to the three companies shortly after they go public. This would not only drive up their share prices but force investors to sell other stocks.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX filed for an initial public offering on Wednesday that is expected to be the largest on record, hours before OpenAI’s plans to list were revealed and rival Anthropic said it was on track to turn a profit, laying the groundwork for its own flotation, write George Steer, Harriet Clarfelt and Emily Herbert.
SpaceX will make relatively few shares available to public investors at its IPO next month, a small “free float” which under old rules would exclude the rocket company from indices tracked by trillions of dollars of passive investments.
However, Nasdaq has loosened its rules as it battled to win the SpaceX listing over its rival NYSE, allowing the stock to join the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 days. SpaceX and other new entrants will also be given an index weighting equivalent to three times the value of the shares floated. S&P Dow Jones Indices is also consulting on changes that could fast-track the stock’s entry into the S&P 500.
The initial impact on the rest of the index will be limited by the relatively small number of shares on offer, but is likely to increase after a lock-up period expires, which will be staggered over the first 180 days of trading, according to the SpaceX prospectus.
JPMorgan estimates that if 50 per cent of the company’s shares are eventually floated with a valuation reaching $2tn, passive investors would have to sell $95bn of Wall Street’s eight biggest existing tech stocks. The FT has previously reported that SpaceX is aiming for a $1.75tn valuation.
Inside Chris Hohn’s Top Hedge Fund
How Chris Hohn built the world’s most profitable hedge fund
Most hedge fund managers put earthly matters above the business of the soul. But then most hedge fund managers are not like Chris Hohn. His spirituality, he believes, augments his considerable investment skills.
Hohn, 59, is perhaps the closest thing Britain has to Warren Buffett, the legendary US stockpicker, write Costas Mourselas and Amelia Pollard. His Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) has become the fifth most profitable hedge fund of all time, last year bringing in more profits after fees than any other firm.
Yet unlike its behemoth rivals Citadel and Millennium, which employ thousands of people, his fund has done this with about half a dozen elite analysts and one all-powerful portfolio manager at the helm.
His success as an investor has allowed him to turn his charitable foundation into one of the UK’s largest, giving away billions to public health, climate and children’s causes. Buffett, whom Hohn speaks to often, tells the FT his record is “exceptional”.
Hohn is driven by deep convictions: friends and former colleagues describe an investor of supreme self-confidence, a fierce activist unafraid to confront unruly executives, and a devoted philanthropist who personally gave away more than £1bn last year.
“Most of us see the world in shades of grey, where there are three or five things which are important to an investment thesis,” Rishi Sunak, the former UK prime minister who once worked at the fund, tells the FT.
“Chris has an incredible ability to think in black and white. He focuses on one, maybe two things that drive the investment thesis and then has the confidence to scale up the bet so it’s a big part of the fund.”
Hohn has built his record of success on a series of colossal multibillion-dollar bets, currently managing roughly $77bn in only 15 positions globally. Yet his convictions are increasingly being tested. A wave of advances in AI is crashing against his portfolio and challenging his biggest holdings.
It is folly to say concentrated investors are destined to fail, he says, citing his hero as an example: “The most famous concentrated investor is Warren Buffett. Anyone who knows his work knows he spoke frequently on concentrated investing. No one questions his genius.”
Sec of State Rubio: We're either going to have a good agreement (with Iran), or we're going to have to deal with it another way
- We're going to give diplomacy every chance to succeed before we explore the alternatives
- We have what I think is a pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the Straits
- Pretty solid deal on the table to enter into a time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off
HS2 paid consultancies £65mn last year in run-up to project ‘reset’
Higher spending likely to raise questions about taxpayer-funded body’s approach to long-delayed railway
The taxpayer-funded body in charge of the High Speed 2 railway line paid consultants £65mn in 2025 as it sought advice on a “reset” of the controversial £103bn project that will take at least 15 more years to build.
The sharp rise in expenditure is likely to raise concerns about HS2 Ltd’s approach, after transport secretary Heidi Alexander said delays and cost overruns on the line had become “a symbol of this country’s decline”.
PwC and Deloitte were paid £26.7mn and £23.1mn respectively for advice in the 11 months to November last year, according to data from Tussell, which monitors government contracts. Boston Consulting Group, Bloom, E&Y and PA Consulting also received payments.
In total, HS2 Ltd spent £64.6mn on consultants’ advice on the reset and other issues in the period. Nichols Group was awarded a nine-month, £2mn deal to support Mark Wild, who joined as chief executive in late 2024.
The figure marks a sharp uptick in HS2’s spending on external consultants, which had previously been on a downwards trajectory. Consultancy spend dropped from £32mn in the year to March 2022 to just £14mn in the year to March 2025.
Tony Travers, infrastructure expert at the London School of Economics, said: “This further reliance on consultants is evidence that HS2’s in-house team still finds it hard to comprehend the project it is attempting to deliver.”
The reset, led by Wild, last week revealed the total cost of the new railway between Birmingham and Euston station in central London had risen from a previous estimate of about £80bn to up to £102.7bn.
Despite the project first being drawn up in 2010 and expected to be completed by 2026, Alexander told MPs the scheme would not be finalised until the 2040s.
Trains will run at 320km/h, down from the planned 360km/h, and passengers travelling to and from the Midlands and central London will have to change trains at Old Oak Common in the north of the capital.
The scheme — due to connect London to Leeds and Manchester in a Y-shaped route before it was slashed by the previous government — is the most expensive railway per mile of track in the world after lucrative contracts were handed to suppliers when designs were only at early stages.
A separate review by Sir Stephen Lovegrove, former national security adviser, this week criticised a “tactical reliance on consultants” by HS2, noting that consultants “do not take responsibility for advice given to ministers”.
In evidence to parliament in late 2024, Wild warned cost overrun problems were “rooted in the main civil works contracts” because they “intrinsically moved the risk to HS2 to manage”. But HS2 says it only started to try to renegotiate the contracts in March this year.
Two people familiar with the matter said total expenditure on consultancies ahead of the reset was closer to £100mn because the government had yet to report figures for the past six months.
PwC is the biggest winner of consultancy work overall at HS2, taking £69.8mn from 21 contracts since 2016 on work ranging from “commercial reset services” to “finance managed services”, according to Tussell.
Simon Kirby, CEO at HS2 between 2014 and 2016, later worked for Nichols, a move that prompted the then anti-corruption watchdog to call for fresh powers to vet former quango staff taking up private-sector roles. Kirby is now a special adviser on rail and other big projects at PwC.
Mark Thurston had been a consultant at Nichols before he served as boss of HS2 between 2017 and 2023.
The railway’s consultancy contracts are in addition to those held by the project managers such as Balfour Beatty, Ferrovial and Bouygues. Their business models rely on subcontracting out the majority of the work to specialist subcontractors, many of whom subcontract again.
Alexander said Wild — who earns between £660,000 and £665,000 a year, four times the salary of Sir Keir Starmer — had “an almost impossible job” but that the new leadership team was “turning things around”.
“HS2 Ltd is reviewing its supply chain contracts and the incentives within them to ensure we finish the job at the lowest reasonable cost. And it is managing those contractors properly to make sure supplier performance is up to scratch,” she added.
HS2 Ltd did not dispute that a large proportion of the £65mn was spent on advice on the reset and said: “Fundamentally resetting HS2 was the only way to regain control of the project . . . This is a hugely complex task, requiring a vast amount of external industry expertise.
“Any costs associated with the reset will ultimately pay for themselves through improved management and efficiencies,” it added.
As SpaceX and OpenAI Prepare for Public Debuts, What Recent IPO History Signals
The Takeaway
- AI-focused tech IPOs show strong gains, unlike most other recent listings.
- Median performance for last year’s tech IPOs has dropped over 32%.
- Upcoming mega IPOs like SpaceX face scrutiny over high valuations.
Smart-ring maker Oura and crypto company Blockchain.com said last week they had filed paperwork to go public, adding to a growing number of companies, including OpenAI, that are making moves to list in the wake of SpaceX’s upcoming mega initial public offering.
If recent history is any guide, the startups closely tied to AI will do well. For the rest, the outlook may be bleaker.
Tech listings have been sparse so far this year, but two stocks related to AI have done well. Those are AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems and geothermal power company Fervo Energy, which aims to generate electricity for AI data centers. Both have gained roughly 40% since their IPOs this month. A weaker performer has been satellite defense firm HawkEye 360, which has gained about 17% since its offering earlier this month.
Of the tech companies that went public last year, the median performance has dropped over 32%, according to data compiled by The Information. Among the worst performers: fintech company Klarna, which as of Friday’s close had fallen almost 60% from its September IPO price; fintech Chime, down 34%; ticketing platform StubHub, which has lost nearly 60%; and design tool Figma, down over 30%.
The two outliers on the plus side from last year are AI cloud computing company CoreWeave, up over 160%, and stablecoin issuer Circle, which has surged 265% from its IPO price. Intense demand for AI cloud computing capacity is underwriting CoreWeave’s rally. And Circle has benefited from legislation passed last year that boosted the legitimacy of stablecoins as a mainstream financial instrument.
Whether the next crop of IPO candidates make their public debuts will depend largely on the state of the stock market. Long-term bond yields spiked to 19-year highs last week, amid continuing uncertainty about the Iran war and oil prices. At some point, rising bond yields are likely to choke off the stock market rally, which may prompt companies to delay IPOs.
That’s already proved to be the case for crypto firms looking to go public. Grayscale and Kraken both filed confidentially to go public last year and haven’t moved ahead, reflecting the bleak crypto market. Whether Blockchain.com moves forward is an open question.
Investor reception of SpaceX’s blockbuster IPO, expected to go to market in mid-June, is also likely to affect other companies’ decisions. The rocket ship company’s filing last week revealed slowing revenue growth and deepening cash burn as the company remade itself as an AI data center company. Its hoped-for valuation of $1.75 billion is well above the value of its core businesses, based on valuations of companies in comparable industries.
“A lot of these IPOs feel priced to perfection,” Darian Shirazi, a managing partner at seed-focused venture capital fund Gradient Ventures, said on TITV earlier this month, noting that overinflated entry points leave little upside for investors in the public market.
“The point of an IPO is to raise capital, market your company, and then also to make sure your investors are going to make money, especially the new investors in the IPO. So I worry about that for the ones that are very highly priced,” he added.
The IPO candidates to watch are OpenAI, which is prepared to file for an IPO in the next few weeks, likely an effort to go public ahead of rival Anthropic. Both are likely to try to raise tens of billions of dollars in their public listings.
These listings will finally return cash to venture firms’ limited partners, the pensions and endowments that invest in VC funds, for which cash distributions over the past few years have been few and far between.
The Dreamie alarm clock got me to stop using my phone in bed
I have accomplished the unthinkable: I have learned to sleep soundly through the night without my phone at my bedside. Please, hold your applause. If it weren’t for the Dreamie alarm clock, I’m not sure that this Herculean feat would have been possible.
If it feels as though I am bragging that I brushed my teeth this morning, then you are not Dreamie’s target audience. But I certainly am, and I’m not alone in feeling so attached to my phone that I’m basically a cyborg.
I know that using my phone in bed interferes with my sleep, and poor sleep interferes with basically everything else about my mental and physical health. Yet before Dreamie, I went more than a decade with my phone at my bedside every single night – that’s tens of thousands of nights spent so attached to my glowing rectangle that I couldn’t imagine the horror of waking up in the middle of the night without it.
I’m not totally helpless. Over the last few years, I’ve established a habit of reading before bed, which makes me feel markedly more relaxed when it’s finally time to shut my eyes. Still, I’ve never been a good sleeper (just ask my parents, who suffered endlessly for taking me to see a museum exhibit about the Titanic when I was a child, which made me think I was going to die on the Titanic). Sometimes, when I can’t drown out my noisy brain, the only thing that can get me to sleep is to close my eyes and listen to podcasts or audiobooks (as long as they’re not about the Titanic).
Whoever designed the Dreamie seems to share my affliction, because what sets Dreamie apart from all of the other fancy alarm clocks is laughably simple: It can play podcasts.
Before we get to the podcasts, though, we need to zoom out. Here’s how Dreamie works.
In “ambience” mode, it’s just a normal clock – but it has another series of modes that make up your sleep routine.
The “wind down” starts your routine, signaling that it’s almost time for bed. I have mine set to sound like a fireplace crackle with a soft, orange light, which fades and glows to imitate actual fire. I have the fireplace running for about 25 minutes, during which I’m usually reading. Then, it transitions to the “noise mask” mode, which I set to sound like a thunderstorm — but if I get sleepy earlier, I can turn it on then. Whatever sound you pick will play until your wakeup routine begins, with the “sunrise” light slowly getting brighter until it’s time for your alarm to go off. (You can also choose no sound, if you prefer.)
Dreamie’s best feature is its “back to sleep mode.” If you wake up in the middle of the night, you can turn on “back to sleep,” which plays whatever media you choose, whether it’s a breathing routine that comes loaded onto the device, another soundscape, or any podcast you want to listen to. You can choose the episode or show ahead of time so that you’re not scrolling around the interface in the middle of the night, making you feel even more awake. You can opt to use Dreamie with Bluetooth headphones, so if you share a bed with someone else, you won’t disturb them… but you have to wear headphones to sleep.
Dreamie is Wi-Fi enabled, which means it can download whatever podcast you want from the internet. For that, you have the architecture of podcasts to thank – since podcasts are distributed by RSS feeds, any developer can create their own custom RSS app, which is how Dreamie can play them. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate RSS, one of the last relics of the open internet, which Spotify has actively tried to quash in favor of its own walled garden.)
It’s embarrassing that this feature is so useful for me. Usually, if I wake up and can’t fall back asleep, I have to pick up my actual phone to turn on a podcast. But you see, I’m a millennial, which means that if I’ve gotten any notification after I’ve fallen asleep, I will reflexively open that notification before I turn on my podcast or audiobook. From there, it’s a cascade of bad decisions that lead to me being awake for two hours in the middle of the night.
My own actions are to blame here, but I know that my bad habits are not unique – one survey of 2,000 American adults found that 87% of us sleep with our phones in our bedrooms. I don’t need scientific studies to tell me that I sleep worse when I spend too much time looking at my phone, but there’s data to support my experience. With Dreamie, I can simply just swipe down to turn on the “back to sleep” mode and listen to nerds talk about baseball statistics.
My bad phone-in-bed habits extend to the morning. When I wake up, I usually spend about half an hour scrolling on my phone before I get out of bed. But if I’m not distracted by my phone, I can get out of bed much faster and start my day feeling like a person, rather than a hungry, caffeine-deprived zombie who has to pee.
Dreamie costs $250, which is steep for an alarm clock. At least there’s no subscription or companion app that you need to download. Even though it’s pretty dense with features, the user interface is pretty straightforward, resembling the iPhone Clock app.
At times while testing the Dreamie, I “cheated” and used my phone in bed to listen to audiobooks (sometimes, you just really want to listen to something specific that isn’t a podcast). At first, I kept the spirit of the Dreamie alive and prevented myself from using my phone for any other reason. But that just wasn’t realistic. Inevitably, I used my phone in the middle of the night.
I don’t know if Dreamie can ever realistically support apps like Libby or Libro.fm, since there are technical limitations at play. Maybe in the future, Dreamie can give us a way to upload our own media, including downloaded audiobooks.
Toward the end of my review period with Dreamie, I also started testing the Brick, which I have been using to block every app on my phone at night except for podcast and audiobook apps. At $59, it’s more affordable than the Dreamie, so if I were to buy one of these devices for real, I think I’d be able to get most of the same benefits from the Brick. Still, there’s something nice about being able to leave my phone in a completely separate room. Even if your phone is “Bricked,: it’s still your phone. And do you really want your phone to be the last thing you see every day?
Global stocks climbed to near a record high while crude oil fell after officials signaled the US was near a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restore oil flows. The dollar weakened. The MSCI All Country World Index, the broadest measure of global equities, rose 0.3% to approach an all-time high reached earlier this month. A gauge of Asian shares gained 1.2%. Japan’s Nikkei index jumped over 3% to a record, with tech stocks rallying. The moves came as Brent dropped over 4% to about $99.25 a barrel, the lowest level in more than two weeks, amid optimism a deal will help resume the flow of energy through the vital Middle East artery. Cheaper oil prices and lower inflation expectations helped lift Treasury futures, with cash trading closed Monday due to a US holiday. Markets in Hong Kong and London are also shut for public holidays. Government bond yields in Japan, Australia and New Zealand also declined. Futures contracts for the S&P 500 rose 0.9% to a record, after the underlying gauge climbed for eight straight weeks in the longest winning run since 2023. The dollar weakened against all of its Group-of-10 peers. Non-interest-bearing assets such as gold and silver climbed as lower inflation lifts chances for interest-rate cuts. Senior US officials said Sunday that the US and Iran were nearing a deal that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though negotiations over key language were continuing and final approval from both sides could still take several days. However, Iran’s Tasnim news agency cautioned that the draft agreement could yet collapse because the US is obstructing some key clauses, including Tehran’s demand that its assets be unfrozen. The improvement in risk sentiment follows weeks of stalemate between the US and Iran after several previous efforts to strike a deal. Global equities have since surged to record highs on optimism that Middle East tensions may ease and on renewed enthusiasm for the AI trade, while elevated oil prices and higher inflation pushed bond yields to multi-year highs. While the US and Iran closed in on a deal, President Donald Trump said he won’t “rush” into an agreement. The US and Iran have developed a memorandum of understanding framework that extends the ceasefire 60 days as the two sides reach a final deal to permanently end the war, the Washington Post reported. In the mean time, the Strait of Hormuz will be demined and reopened, the report said. Traders remain focused on inflation. They have fully priced in a Federal Reserve rate hike by year-end, underscoring expectations that the US central bank chair Kevin Warsh will need to act swiftly. Later this week, US Personal Consumption Expenditures data and inflation readings across Europe will offer clues on price pressures and the direction of interest rates. Warsh, who has promised the biggest shakeup in decades at the US central bank, was sworn into office Friday. Trump stressed that he wants Warsh to independently lead the Fed, as he looked to downplay investor concern that he would pressure the new central bank chief on policy decisions. Strategists expect global bond yields to remain elevated even if a US-Iran deal eases oil-driven inflation pressures. Investors are also grappling with concerns that already large public debt burdens will continue to grow, while the capital demands of the AI investment boom are adding further strain to global markets. Elsewhere, China launched an unprecedented campaign against illegal cross-border trading to stem capital outflows, threatening severe penalties against popular brokers and ordering non-compliant accounts to be liquidated within two years. The pushback came in a quick burst after the onshore markets closed Friday when eight regulators issued a joint statement vowing a campaign against these trades, sending US-listed Chinese stocks tumbling. Meanwhile, Monday’s drop in oil came as signs emerged that ships are beginning to transit the Strait. Thirty-three vessels, including oil tankers, container ships and other commercial craft, the Strait of Hormuz over 24 hours after obtaining authorization from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy
Nikkei +2.85% Hang Seng Close CSI +1.02% Shanghai +0.69% Shenzen +0.48%
Eur$ 1.1637 CNH 6.7817 CNY 6.7820 JPY 158.87 GBP 1.3477 CHF 0.7822 RUB 71.3797 TRY 45.7347 WTI$ 91.43 -5.48% Gold 4,562 +1.15% BTC 77,014 +0.58% ETH 2,093 +0.13%
S&P +0.87% Nasdaq +1.37% EuroStoxx +0.96% FTSE Close Dax +0.97% SMI
Macro :
- Wind-Permit Stall Is Threatening $50 Billion in US Developments
- Nasdaq Gets Approval From SEC to List Bitcoin Index Options
- Iran War Saps US Military Ahead of Any Potential China Conflict
- Warsh Takes Charge of a Fed Facing Rising Inflation Threat
- Traders Bet Fed Under Warsh Will Hike Rates by December
- Lutnick Son Given Role of Strategy Chief at Family Property Firm
- Bond Strategists Warn Yields to Stay High Even If Iran War Ends
Keep an eye on :
- ABVX FP :Abivax Presents First Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Reports Three-Year Interim Data from Study 108, a Phase 2a/2b Open
Keep an eye on :
- ABVX FP :Abivax Presents First Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Reports Three-Year Interim Data from Study 108, a Phase 2a/2b Open
- AIR FP : US warns Japan of severe delays in Tomahawk deliveries due to Iran war - FT --> +ve for European MBDA missile shadows (Airbus (37.5%), BAE Systems (37.5%), and Leonardo (25%))
- AIR FP : Airbus Delays First A350-1000ULR Qantas Delivery to April 2027
- Anthropic IPO : Anthropic to Close Over $30 Billion Round as Soon as Next Week
- Anthropic IPO : Anthropic Seeks to Expand Project Glasswing to Add More Partners
- AZN LN : Astra’s Datroway Approved in US to Treat Some Breast Cancers
- BAYN GY : Brazil Prosecutors Sue to Ban Top-Selling Weed Killer Glyphosate
- BAS GY : Germany’s Troubled Chemical Makers Risk Disorderly Decline
- BA US : US jury finds Boeing not guilty in 737 MAX grounding lawsuit
- BOL FP : Paris Court of Appeals to Decide July 8 in Bollore-CIAM case
- Chanel IPO : Chanel’s Mega Dividend Brings Owners’ Windfall to $21 Billion
- CNH US : Permian’s Scott Hendrickson Bets on a 2x-4x Play on Management Change and the Ag Cycle - Sohn HK 2026
- CBK GY : Commerzbank rallies shareholders in fight for independence from UniCredit - FT
- 1 HK : CK Hutchison-owned chain store AS Watson's sill planning $30B dual IPO in Hong Kong and London - UK press - Watson is one of world's biggest health & beauty retailers by store size
- DHER GY : Delivery Hero Says Received €33/Share Approach From Uber, Uber weighs higher bid for Delivery Hero after €11.5bn offer rebuffed - FT
- DIS US : Latest ‘Star Wars’ Film ‘Mandalorian’ Debuts at $102 Million
- GILD US : Gilead Sciences Gets FDA Approval for 1st Hepatitis Delta Drug
- GOOGL US : Waymo Halts Robotaxi Service in Sixth City Due to Flooding Risks
- GOOGL US :Xreal, Google’s smartglasses partner, thinks it has finally mastered this notoriously tricky industry - TechCrunch
- JAR LN : Jardine Matheson Agrees to Buy I-MED for A$3.4b Enterprise Value
- JD US : JD.com Studies Potential Bid for The Very Group: Sky News
- LAMDA GA : Lamda Plans to Repay €320m Bond Subject to New Bond Issuance
- MEKO SS : Meko Says Andrew Long to Continue as Acting MD of Danish Unit
- META US : Norway’s $2.3 Trillion Fund Objects to Elkann’s Meta Board Seat
- MRO LN : GKN LN : Potential Tank Crack May Prevent California Chemical Explosion
- ORSTED DC : Wind-Permit Stall Is Threatening $50 Billion in US Developments
- ORSTED DC : Orsted Said to Mull Over $1 Billion Sale of US Renewable Assets
- PHARM NA : Pharming: EC Grants Marketing Authorization to Joenja
- SCT LN : UK’s Softcat Recasts Itself as AI Winner With Guidance Upgrade
- SPCX US : SpaceX Starship Deploys Mock Satellites in Successful Test
- SPCX US : SpaceX’s Money-Losing Rockets Are Biggest Asset in AI Dream
- STLA US : Stellantis Will Add Alfa Romeo Compact SUV to Expand Lineup
- UBER US : Uber Proposes Delivery Hero Takeover at €10 Billion Valuation
- UBI FP : Guillemot, Bank Extend Ubisoft Share Agreement Until April 2027
- UNA NA : Inside Unilever’s Plan to Go All-in on Beauty and Health - WWD
- VWS DC : Wind-Permit Stall Is Threatening $50 Billion in US Developments
- VIV FP : Paris Court of Appeals to Decide July 8 in Bollore-CIAM case
TechCrunch Mobility: Robotaxi reality check
Robotaxis are here! And yet, they’re not.
That contradiction neatly captures Waymo’s current reality. Anyone walking around San Francisco could reasonably declare that robotaxis have arrived. But arrival, even at scale, doesn’t guarantee permanence. Such is the dogged threat hanging over every company trying to commercialize autonomous vehicles.
Waymo paused operations in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio because its robotaxis are struggling to deal with heavy rain and flooded roads — and specifically knowing when not to enter them. As I prepared to send this newsletter, we learned the company extended that to Austin and Nashville as well. It’s been a persistent problem for Waymo, which prompted the company to issue a recall last week.
In the same week, Waymo halted robotaxi operations on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Miami as it works to improve performance in construction zones.
For now, the arrival of robotaxis is conditional. That doesn’t mean this conditional status will last forever, but it’s a reminder that launching commercially is not mission accomplished. Waymo — arguably the leader in commercial robotaxi ridership and fleet size — is in the thick of that process. For every new city it enters or capability it unlocks, a new edge case is discovered.
Situationship or corporationmaxxing?
I’m ditching my “Little bird” section this week to dive into SpaceX, its IPO, and the situationship in the Elon Musk business universe.
I typically don’t dedicate too much space in this newsletter to space. Heh. But the SpaceX IPO filing dropped this week, and the man at its helm is also deeply tied to Tesla. So, here we are, talking about space and, more specifically, how Elon Musk uses resources from one company to service another.
The interconnected nature of Tesla and SpaceX isn’t a secret; Tesla is a publicly traded company and does disclose financial transactions with other Musk-affiliated entities. This new IPO filing does the same and with a bit more detail. And now that Musk’s company xAI has merged with SpaceX, the IPO puts all of these transactions under one company.
For example, SpaceX purchased $506 million of Tesla’s commercial energy storage products, called Megapack, in 2025 — nearly a threefold increase from the previous year. SpaceX also bought $131 million of Cybertrucks last year. SpaceX paid Musk’s infrastructure firm, The Boring Company, $1 million to construct tunnels in Bastrop, Texas. Musk’s social media company X, which was acquired by xAI last year and has since merged with SpaceX, also spent $1 million leasing space from The Boring Company.
Then there is Tesla’s investment in xAI. Following SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI, that investment was converted into an equity interest in SpaceX.
These costs will likely be eclipsed by two future SpaceX-Tesla projects: building Terafab, a chip-manufacturing facility, and Macrohard, an AI platform the two companies are developing that will use autonomous agents to augment the work of humans.
All of this leads to my question for you. Will SpaceX and Tesla merge?
Xreal, Google’s smartglasses partner, thinks it has finally mastered this notoriously tricky industry
The smart glasses industry has long been a tortured dream of Silicon Valley. The premise is appealing enough: What if, to enjoy the benefits of mobile computing, people didn’t have to stare at their phones all day long and could, instead, simply wear a lightweight computing device on their face? Science fiction fans (a demographic that is strong in the tech industry) can see this vision perfectly.
However, the industry has — for much of the last decade — resembled a financial black hole into which gargantuan investments have been sunk and from which little to no profit has ever emerged.
“Everybody’s losing money,” said Chi Xu, the founder and CEO of the smart glasses company Xreal, which is a longtime partner of Google. I met Xu at Google’s I/O conference in Mountain View last week, where he was promoting Xreal’s Project Aura. That’s its latest effort to create a set of functional XR glasses that people actually want to use.
“That’s because it’s very hard, what we’re doing,” he said.
For much of the industry’s existence, the problems of smart glasses have seemed somewhat obvious: bulky, uncomfortable, and socially awkward form factor, paired with negligibly beneficial software. Now, however, industry insiders — including Xu — feel like their business has turned a corner and may be reaching an inflection point.
That supposed inflection point has something to do with Meta, whose 2023 partnership with Ray-Ban launched one of the first lines of models that has actually managed to sell a lot of units. (It’s worth noting, however, that the division responsible for the glasses, Reality Labs, still operates at a massive loss.)
Now, as form factors shrink and software improves, Xu feels that Xreal can finally become a leader in the space. “You need all the key pieces ready — you need the hardware ready, the operating system needs to be ready, and then you need a great user interface,” Xu said.
Xreal’s newest model Aura is wired smart glasses that have OLED displays embedded within them, meaning that you can watch high-resolution videos within the frames themselves. Somewhat awkwardly, Aura comes tethered to a “puck” — essentially a phone-shaped mini-computer that powers the experience behind the glasses. When using it, you can ostensibly just slip it into your pocket.
But in exchange for the awkwardness of the puck, the user gets a wider variety of fun experiences with the glasses, including an immersive Google Maps app, VR YouTube videos, and a “painting app” that lets you — via the powers of hand tracking — create holographic imagery that only you can see. There are also reportedly games, playable (again) via hand tracking, and basic web surfing functionality.
“Whether you are following a floating recipe while cooking, setting up a private workspace at a coffee shop or on a flight, or watching a movie on a virtual big screen at home, the experience is seamless,” the company promises.
Xu also says that he imagines the device being used not just by the casual consumer but by professionals as well. “It’s not just about watching the NBA game in a hologram type of format, you could also go to a coffee shop and do some work,” he said.
Currently, the glasses are only available for developers, but the plan is for them to launch commercially later this year. Xreal is also working on an IPO that is expected to take place before 2026 is over, although Xu declined to say much about it.
In the meantime, the company is working on that whole turning-a-profit thing. Xu notes that his company has been raising its gross margin while lowering its costs for marketing and sales. “Next year is the year when we could actually break even,” he says.