Apple Sends Siri Staffers to Coding ‘Bootcamp’ in Latest Shakeup For Organization
The Takeaway
- Apple is sending Siri programmers to a multi-week AI coding bootcamp.
- Siri team has reputation as laggard, struggling with AI advancements.
- A new Siri, powered by Google Gemini, is expected to debut at WWDC in June.
Apple is sending a portion of its Siri programmers back to coding school just two months before the company is expected to unveil a major, AI-powered revamp of the voice assistant, people familiar with the team said.
The company plans to send a significant chunk of people working on Siri—a group that totals in the hundreds—to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, according to the people. The group of programmers that will go to the bootcamp is expected to be less than 200, one of the people said.
The changes will leave around 60 members of the core Siri development team, while an additional 60 will work in a group that evaluates how Siri is performing, including handling commands from users and whether it’s meeting Apple’s safety standards, one of the people said.
The move suggests that Apple feels that a portion of the Siri organization needs to tune up its skills to take advantage of fast-moving changes in programming. AI coding assistants such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex have upended the programming profession, allowing experienced software developers to produce far more code than they have in the past.
In some parts of Apple, such as its software engineering organization, those AI coding tools have taken off, prompting some of its teams to allocate large budgets for Claude Code, other people familiar with Apple’s use of AI tools said.
The company’s Siri group, though, has developed a reputation as a laggard inside Apple. Over its 15 years in existence, the team has become known for its bloat and divisive politics. The group has had difficulty keeping the voice assistant competitive, especially in recent years with the rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other similarly advanced large-language models.
Apple has made repeated efforts over the years to reorganize the Siri to address its underlying problems. Most notably, early last year, the company took the Siri team out of Apple’s AI organization, then headed by John Giannandrea, and placed it in the hands of software chief Craig Federighi. Apple tasked Mike Rockwell, the leader behind the company’s Vision Pro headset, with directly overseeing the Siri product under Federighi.
That reorganization occurred after Apple revealed an embarrassing delay to the launch of a new Siri, which it originally planned to release in early 2025. Apple is expected to finally debut its long-awaited Siri revamp at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The new version of Siri will be powered by Google’s AI model, Gemini, and is designed to offer a more conversational version of the voice assistant that will have the ability to directly answer questions, provide emotional support to users and help accomplish tasks such as booking a trip. There is still a lot of work to do, including on Google’s side, which Apple is in discussions with to host its servers to run the new Siri, The Information previously reported.
Separately, Giannandrea, who announced his retirement from Apple in December, will work his last day as an advisor at the company this week, Bloomberg reported Sunday.
Pentagon held talks with Ford and GM about supporting weapons production
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth has pushed to overhaul US military procurement
The Pentagon has held talks with General Motors and Ford about how Detroit carmakers can contribute to US weapons supply chains as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of military procurement.
The “wide-ranging” talks covered how auto manufacturers could help to produce components or parts for a range of weapons systems, including through the deployment of advanced manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing, according to people familiar with the matter.
The discussions with senior Pentagon officials come as defence secretary Pete Hegseth has driven efforts to radically change military procurement.
Army secretary Dan Driscoll last year accused leading US defence companies, known as “primes”, of duping the US military into relying excessively on highly specialised systems that are more expensive and difficult to produce than their commercial equivalents.
The Pentagon is “very motivated to restructure procurement, to move faster, to get things done at lower cost and to remove roadblocks and increase production”, one person familiar with the talks said. “So they have reached out to GM and Ford and the focus is, on a preliminary basis, what can you do to help?”
The talks went beyond the companies’ existing contracts with the military and focused on how the Detroit automakers could “break production and supply chain bottlenecks for the existing defence contractors”, the person said.
“Nothing has been inked yet,” they added.
GM already has a dedicated defence subsidiary, which has been working with the US military on developing capabilities including autonomous vehicles capable of transporting wounded personnel.
The company behind the Chevrolet and Cadillac brands is also part of a group of businesses working on a new lunar rover for Nasa’s Artemis programme. The rover’s battery and off-road capabilities are also of interest to military planners.
“For more than 100 years, GM has supported America’s security, safety, and those who protect our nation,” the company said in a statement. “While that commitment continues, we do not comment on speculation.”
Ford, which does not have a dedicated defence subsidiary, declined to comment.
A Pentagon official told the FT that “the Department of War is committed to rapidly expanding the defence industrial base by leveraging all available commercial solutions and technologies to ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage”.
“The Department is aggressively pursuing and integrating the best of American innovation, wherever it resides,” they added.
The talks were first reported in the Wall Street Journal.
The tax-focused hedge fund craze taking over Wall Street
New breed of products from firms such as AQR and Quantinno has soared in popularity, raising regulatory concerns
Hedge funds have added $90bn in assets from a strategy that slashes wealthy investors’ tax bills since the start of last year, making the controversial area one of the fastest-growing parts of the industry.
AQR Capital Management and Quantinno Capital Management are among the hedge funds behind the surging popularity of a new wave of tax-loss harvesting strategies, which aim to deliver both market-beating returns and gains derived from lowering investors’ tax liabilities — dubbed “tax alpha”.
Tax-loss harvesting is a longstanding practice where securities are sold at a loss to offset gains elsewhere in a portfolio. Firms such as Morgan Stanley-owned Parametric have long specialised in a long-only version, which involves strategically selling lossmaking positions.
But the $207bn hedge fund AQR and Quantinno, which was set up by a group of former AQR traders in 2018, have pioneered an approach that uses leverage and algorithmic trading to buy and short securities at scale, and to systematically realise losses on positions.
“The magnitude of losses you’re getting is larger, and they’re more stable and consistent,” said Shang Chou, co-founder of the multi-family office Dishmi Capital. “This works in up and down markets.”
AQR said that the “primary draw for investors” should be the returns from its strategies — the “pre-tax alpha”, or market-beating performance — before any tax benefits.
“Without pre-tax alpha, these strategies are not worth the fees,” AQR said. “This business is the culmination of our longstanding focus — producing attractive investment returns while helping taxable investors keep more of what they earn.”
But the surge of new investments has raised concerns elsewhere on Wall Street that the strategy has grown too quickly.
Fidelity Management halted new investments in long-short separately managed accounts in February, according to people familiar with the matter.
AQR and Quantinno run hedge funds where investors’ capital is commingled, as well as tax-aware separately managed accounts for investors, which Quantinno founder Hoon Kim described as “mini hedge funds”.
Critics also argue the strategies’ widespread use of leverage and short selling makes them riskier than they may appear, with losses potentially compounded by any stock market crash.
“The problem with it is it comes with a cost that people don’t understand or appreciate,” said one multi-family office executive. “It’s compounded when you do that with leverage.”
They added that investors often piled in at the wrong time, with the “best time” to invest in the strategy being after the stock market had already suffered big losses.
AQR and Quantinno differ from earlier iterations of tax-aware investing strategies by seeking to generate income losses as well as capital ones through the use of swaps and other expenses.
That allows investors potentially to offset regular income taxes as well as reducing their capital gains, according to people familiar with the matter. Though investors must pay taxes when they liquidate the funds, they are able to defer that payment indefinitely if they hold the investments until death.
Pat Nerney of wealth advisory group Dynasty Financial Partners said the new hedge fund strategies put previous approaches “on jet fuel”.
The tax-aware strategies have helped AQR to add $47bn since March last year and Quantinno $39bn since January 2025, according to investment presentations seen by the FT and people familiar with the figures. That compares with growth in the wider hedge fund industry of about $628bn last year, according to data provider HFR.
Almost a third of AQR’s total assets were held in its tax-aware funds by the end of December.
“It’s the hottest product in Greenwich,” said one person who works on Wall Street of tax-aware funds.
Fathers at a recent local sports game were fixated on AQR’s Delphi Plus fund, which specialises in ordinary income losses, the person added. “Everyone’s piling into them now.”
Quantitative funds including Two Sigma and WorldQuant Millennium Advisors have launched similar offerings, according to people familiar with the matter.
Two Sigma’s fund, Two Sigma Beacon, has been offered to employees since 2022 but was opened up more widely at the end of last year and now has about $950mn under management, according to an investor presentation seen by the FT and a person familiar with the matter.
Quantinno founder Kim declined to estimate how much the firm had saved clients in taxes. But he acknowledged that the funds, which allow investors to defer the payment of taxes for years, had soared in popularity in recent months.
“Once the word started spreading, it spread very quickly,” he said.
Demand for the strategies has led to higher minimum investment thresholds.
JPMorgan Chase’s private bank now requires clients to invest at least $25mn for one strategy with a 1.1 per cent management fee, and $50mn with a 0.65 per cent fee for another, according to an internal document seen by the FT.
Bank of America’s Merrill increased the minimum investment for another AQR product to $1mn from $350,000 earlier this year, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank has more than $600mn in client assets with the fund, the people added.
JPMorgan and BofA declined to comment.
Some investors and advisers also warned of potential regulatory scrutiny. “The deepest and most fundamental risk is that the IRS catches wind of this,” said one financial adviser.
Tax lawyers and investors said the strategies could become a target if Democrats win the White House in 2028.
Existing laws already prevent some extreme forms of tax-loss harvesting, such as the 1921 “wash-sale” rule, which bars investors from selling and buying identical securities within 30 days. But other grey areas remain.
“Democrats will both have the interest and the financial incentive to raise some revenue and shift the pendulum back” on tax loopholes, said Steve Rosenthal, a former senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.
“If the Democrats re-take the executive branch, they will step up enforcement — and aggressive enforcement at that — against sophisticated tax planning by the rich. So then the question is: how quickly could they act?”
AQR noted the risk in the small print of investor materials, warning that tax benefits “may be less than expected”, including in the event of a successful challenge by the IRS. “Penalties may apply,” it added.
Apple Sends Siri Staffers to Coding ‘Bootcamp’ in Latest Shakeup For Organization
The Takeaway
- Apple is sending Siri programmers to a multi-week AI coding bootcamp.
- Siri team has reputation as laggard, struggling with AI advancements.
- A new Siri, powered by Google Gemini, is expected to debut at WWDC in June.
Apple is sending a portion of its Siri programmers back to coding school just two months before the company is expected to unveil a major, AI-powered revamp of the voice assistant, people familiar with the team said.
The company plans to send a significant chunk of people working on Siri—a group that totals in the hundreds—to a multi-week bootcamp to learn to code using AI, according to the people. The group of programmers that will go to the bootcamp is expected to be less than 200, one of the people said.
The changes will leave around 60 members of the core Siri development team, while an additional 60 will work in a group that evaluates how Siri is performing, including handling commands from users and whether it’s meeting Apple’s safety standards, one of the people said.
The move suggests that Apple feels that a portion of the Siri organization needs to tune up its skills to take advantage of fast-moving changes in programming. AI coding assistants such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex have upended the programming profession, allowing experienced software developers to produce far more code than they have in the past.
In some parts of Apple, such as its software engineering organization, those AI coding tools have taken off, prompting some of its teams to allocate large budgets for Claude Code, other people familiar with Apple’s use of AI tools said.
The company’s Siri group, though, has developed a reputation as a laggard inside Apple. Over its 15 years in existence, the team has become known for its bloat and divisive politics. The group has had difficulty keeping the voice assistant competitive, especially in recent years with the rise of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other similarly advanced large-language models.
Apple has made repeated efforts over the years to reorganize the Siri to address its underlying problems. Most notably, early last year, the company took the Siri team out of Apple’s AI organization, then headed by John Giannandrea, and placed it in the hands of software chief Craig Federighi. Apple tasked Mike Rockwell, the leader behind the company’s Vision Pro headset, with directly overseeing the Siri product under Federighi.
That reorganization occurred after Apple revealed an embarrassing delay to the launch of a new Siri, which it originally planned to release in early 2025. Apple is expected to finally debut its long-awaited Siri revamp at the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The new version of Siri will be powered by Google’s AI model, Gemini, and is designed to offer a more conversational version of the voice assistant that will have the ability to directly answer questions, provide emotional support to users and help accomplish tasks such as booking a trip. There is still a lot of work to do, including on Google’s side, which Apple is in discussions with to host its servers to run the new Siri, The Information previously reported.
Separately, Giannandrea, who announced his retirement from Apple in December, will work his last day as an advisor at the company this week, Bloomberg reported Sunday.
I Helped Pick Stocks for the Dow. I’m Watching the SpaceX IPO Carefully
SpaceX’s financial challenges have become clearer in the past week, thanks to new reporting from my colleague Cory Weinberg. Last week, he broke news on SpaceX’s nearly $5 billion loss last year, and on Monday, he scooped details on the growth of Starlink and the losses in the company's space and AI businesses.
Armed with that information, it becomes clear how hard it will be for Elon Musk to raise the cash he wants at anywhere near SpaceX’s most recent $1.25 trillion valuation. It explains why he’s pushing so hard to juice demand by getting the stock quickly added to the major stock indexes.
Whether the stock soon joins the S&P 500 and other big indexes is critically important, because inclusion in indexes creates tens of billions of dollars in demand from index investors who will be forced to buy SpaceX shares, no matter how they feel about its business or valuation.
I am watching with an extra degree of curiosity to see how the indexes handle this, because a few years back I helped pick the stocks that made up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It was the strangest part of my job running the finance coverage at The Wall Street Journal.
At the time, the Journal’s editor-in-chief was responsible for picking the 30 stocks in the Dow. In practice, one of the paper’s top finance editors did all of the work. That was me. (The Journal’s editor no longer picks the stocks.)
The goal was to have a mix of companies that reflected the U.S. economy, which had shifted away from the industrial sector and toward finance, tech and healthcare. Tech was easy: We added Microsoft and Intel in 1999. And the big pharma companies were obvious.
We also added financial companies like banks and insurers. Those industries had been growing fast, thanks to a boom period with relatively low interest rates and a soaring housing market. That meant a ton of mortgages, which helped spur a flood of financial innovations, including the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that turned toxic in the downturn.
In early 2008, we added Bank of America. Months later, the bottom fell out of the financial system. Over the next year and a half, we pulled Citigroup and AIG (and General Motors) out of the index after Washington bailed them all out.
How does this relate to SpaceX? Because it’s a reminder of how things can go wrong on what you think are certain bets. Back in the years immediately preceding 2008, few believed the housing boom would end. But it did, leading to a nationwide decline in home prices that had never happened before. Investors who thought mortgages were safe and lucrative investments lost big. Among those investors were the banks and insurers we had put into the Dow.
Fast-forward to the present. While tech has struggled this year, few people can imagine a yearslong sell-off that wipes out trillions in investments. But valuations are relatively high, debt levels have risen and the sector has lashed itself to the booming yet unproven market for AI.
Musk has also tied SpaceX to the AI boom with his promise to put data centers into space, as my colleague Theo Wayt has reported. That is presumably Musk’s justification for the valuation of SpaceX’s successful but slow-growing rocket company, its lagging, cash-burning AI company and its solidly performing satellite internet service.
If the initial public offerings of SpaceX, and later Anthropic and OpenAI, come in below investors’ lofty expectations, the damage could be widespread. The tech sector accounts for about a third of the U.S. stock market’s value, as well as a large portion of its gains over the past three years.
SpaceX won’t join the Dow anytime soon. That doesn’t matter much because very little money tracks that benchmark. The index that matters is the S&P 500—roughly $20 trillion in both index funds and investments are benchmarked against it.
S&P has pretty strict requirements about letting companies in. SpaceX will pass most of them but could get tripped up by requirements that companies be profitable and rules about their float, meaning the portion of a company’s shares that trade on the market.
If SpaceX does get into the index at a $1.25 trillion valuation, the stock would land in the top 10 of the market at current prices, right behind Tesla and making up roughly 2% of the index. That would spur some $400 billion of buying. Knowing those forced buyers were waiting in the wings, investors could invest with confidence their shares would go up.
Such perceived safety in what are actually risky assets has often been the cause of financial crises.
Here’s where problems could crop up. My colleague Cory’s reporting shows that SpaceX lost $5 billion last year and that $11.4 billion of its $18.7 billion in revenue came from its satellite internet company, Starlink. The space and AI businesses burned $17 billion in cash, while Starlink generated about $3 billion.
Yet SpaceX is valued at 266 times last year’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Every company above it in size is valued at a fraction of that amount except for Tesla, which comes in at 119 times.
If Musk’s dreams of robotaxis, robots and data centers in space don’t come true, millions of investors could be stuck holding two expensive stocks without much to justify their prices. It won’t be another financial crisis, but it will cause real losses in the markets.
Veteran investor Mark Mobius dies at 89
Renowned fund manager was a pioneer in emerging market investing
Mark Mobius, a pioneer of investing in emerging markets and a longstanding fund manager at US firm Franklin Templeton, has died aged 89.
Mobius was “widely regarded” for being an early investor in developing economies and became known for travelling extensively to gain first-hand insights into countries “overlooked by global investors”, according to a statement on his LinkedIn page, which announced his death.
The renowned investor made his name at Franklin Templeton where he worked for more than three decades after joining in 1987, and where he launched one of the industry’s first funds to focus on emerging markets.
He led the flagship Templeton Emerging Markets investment trust until 2015, expanding it from $100mn of assets under management to $40bn during his tenure, before leaving the company in early 2018.
Mobius, who was widely recognised for his trademark closely shaved head, was also known for being plain speaking, once calling Donald Trump “as dumb as a fox” in an interview with the FT in 2018.
He said in his biography: “I’d put in enough time on commercial flights to earn myself a number of frequent-flyer first-class flights to the moon.
“I’d toured rubber plantations in Thailand and road-tested bikes over the pothole-ridden roads of rural China.
“I’d choked on roasted camel’s meat, sheep’s eyeball, guinea pig and dined (surprisingly well) on scorpions on toast . . . All to find ‘undervalued companies’ before other investors do.”
Jenny Johnson, chief executive of Franklin Templeton, said: “Mark wasn’t just the father of emerging markets. To my family and me, he was a dear friend.
“Mark opened the world’s eyes to emerging markets and inspired generations of investors to think more globally, more boldly and with greater imagination about what’s possible. He changed how we invest and how we see opportunity across the world.”
She added: “His impact will continue for generations to come.”
The legendary investor surprised the market when he established Mobius Capital Partners shortly after leaving Franklin Templeton, with former colleagues Carlos Hardenberg and Greg Konieczny.
He said at the time: “I don’t want to retire.” Mobius stepped back from running the trust in 2023.
Mobius Capital Partners’ flagship investment trust, which has £110mn in assets, has reported a 78 per cent increase in net asset value since launching in October 2018, according to its latest factsheet.
China to drive a weight-loss drug price war
The active ingredient semaglutide is starting to lose patent protection and China can produce GLP-1 related treatments at scale
Obesity rates are on the rise globally with more than 1bn adults now classified as living with obesity. What was once mostly an adult condition is also reshaping childhood. For the first time in history, there are more children living with obesity than those who are underweight, according to Unicef.
Weight-loss drugs are now available in most countries. Originally developed for Type 2 diabetes, GLP-1 therapies are the first medications capable of delivering clinically meaningful weight loss comparable to metabolic surgery.
But in some countries they can cost up to $1,300 per month, putting them out of reach for many people. In the US, uptake of GLP-1 therapies has been closely tied to insurance coverage. Cross-country comparisons show higher adoption in markets where obesity drugs are reimbursed than where patients pay out of pocket.
Does that mean the world needs cheaper weight-loss drugs? Not on their own. Obesity is driven by a mix of diet, environment and behaviour, so medication alone is not the answer. But cost still matters because it determines how widely these drugs are used and how large this market becomes for drugmakers.
Until now, the economics of weight-loss drugs still resemble traditional pharma. Supply remains constrained, patents are strong and Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have significant pricing power.
But that may not last much longer. Semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, is beginning to lose patent protection across key markets. Preprint studies — research that is yet to complete peer review — suggest the drug could be mass produced for $3 for a monthly dose in its injectable form, or around $16 as a pill. Pricing is already fragmenting across markets.
China will drive much of this shift. More than 60 drugs are in advanced testing, with cheaper semaglutide versions on the way. China has the manufacturing scale to produce these treatments at a fraction of their list prices. Partnerships with global pharma groups suggest that some Chinese-developed molecules are competitive with leading global treatments, even if many remain early stage.
Companies such as United Laboratories and Innovent Biologics show how this is already playing out. United’s experimental drug has attracted significant investment from Novo Nordisk, which paid $200mn upfront for global rights outside Greater China, with phase 2 data showing nearly 20 per cent weight loss in 24 weeks. Meanwhile, Innovent’s therapy, mazdutide, is already approved and commercialised in China.
But the biggest threat to western pharma lies in manufacturing. Many Chinese drugmakers control the entire supply chain, unlike western peers that often outsource the production of raw ingredients or specialised components such as injection pens to third-party contractors.
United Laboratories is a major producer of intermediate chemical compounds. By producing both the raw materials and finished drugs, it reduces reliance on external suppliers, making it easier to cut prices while maintaining margins.
None of this is surprising when you consider pharmaceutical markets have always followed a family cycle of innovation, peak pricing under patent protection and eventual competition that brings those prices down. Statins, once among the most profitable drugs in history, became low-cost therapies as competition grew.
GLP-1 drugs are different because of the timing. The traditional sequence between innovation, mass adoption and price cuts is beginning to overlap much earlier in the lifecycle of these drugs.
Estimates suggest that more than 30mn Americans could be on GLP-1 treatment by 2030, up from about 20mn on branded therapies this year, according to JPMorgan. But this does not automatically mean more profit for existing producers if prices fall faster than volumes grow — and if that volume is captured by lower-cost competitors.
For patients, the broad industry shift will improve access. It is more complicated for investors. Pharma valuations are built on the assumption that breakthrough drugs generate long periods of monopoly pricing and high-margin cash flows. That shapes everything from R&D spending to sector valuations.
If GLP-1 drugs set a precedent for a shorter period of peak profitability, the industry shifts from scarcity to a volume-driven model, making it harder for drugmakers to sustain an edge. Innovation in drugmaking will still matter. But it may no longer be enough on its own.
Battery Maker CATL’s Profit Climbs Despite Slowing China EV Sales
First-quarter net profit rose 48.5%
- Contemporary Amperex Technology reported a 48.5% rise in first-quarter net profit to 20.74 billion yuan despite a slowdown in EV sales in China.
- The company plans to acquire a 49% stake in Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric for about $600 million to expand into data-center energy systems.
- Analysts view CATL as well-positioned for growth in energy storage systems, holding a 30% market share in 2025.
Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology 300750 4.44%increase; green up pointing triangle reported robust first-quarter profit growth despite a slowdown in electric-vehicle sales in China.
The Tesla supplier’s profit climbed even as changes to government subsidies and tax benefits dented demand in China for EV batteries.
Net profit rose 48.5% to 20.74 billion yuan, equivalent to $3.04 billion, the company said late Wednesday. Revenue climbed 52.5% to 129.13 billion yuan.
Shares rose sharply Thursday morning after the results, rising 9.5% in Hong Kong and 5.8% in Shenzhen.
“We continue to like CATL on its market leadership and industry-leading profitability,” Nomura analysts said in a note.
CATL, which commands a 46% share of the Chinese EV battery market, has contracts with global automakers like Volkswagen, BMW and Geely.
The surge in oil prices due to the Middle East conflict could prompt more consumers to buy EVs as they face higher prices at the pump, HSBC analysts said.
The Ningde, Fujian-based company is also well-placed to cash in on its pivot toward energy storage systems, another part of the broader battery industry it has established a dominant position in, analysts said.
The war in the Middle East has heightened concerns about energy security, boosting interest in renewable energy and storage solutions, analysts at Bernstein said.
According to SNE Research data, CATL held a 30% slice of the energy storage system battery market in 2025.
HSBC views CATL as one of the companies best-positioned to capture the next phase of growth in energy storage, citing its rapidly growing energy storage system exposure, supported by a strong cash position.
Higher prices for lithium and copper in the first quarter—driven in part by the conflict—have pressured the company’s margins, but Bernstein analysts say the squeeze is likely to be short-lived as CATL can pass on costs.
CATL said last week that it planned to acquire a 49% stake in Hangzhou Zhongheng Electric, a supplier of data-center power equipment, for the equivalent of about $600 million, a move aimed at expanding into the fast-growing market for data-center infrastructure energy systems amid a global surge of AI development.
Shares of the company have held up relatively well during the recent market turmoil caused by the Middle East conflict. The stock is up about 23% year to date in China and 41% higher in Hong Kong, reflecting investor confidence in CATL’s dominant position in the battery industry.
Altman Attack Suspect Called for ‘Luigi-ing Tech CEOs’ in Online Messages
Law enforcement is highlighting recent alleged Luigi Mangione copycats; from internet nerd to ‘AI doomer’
- Daniel Moreno-Gama was arrested for allegedly attempting to murder OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and burn down OpenAI’s headquarters.
- Moreno-Gama, a Texas college student, was obsessed with AI’s dangers. He suggested “Luigi’ing some tech CEOs” before his arrest.
- The incident highlights anticorporate fervor and copycat fears, prompting Sam Altman to condemn violence despite AI concerns.
SAN FRANCISCO—Months before his arrest for allegedly attempting to murder the chief executive of OpenAI, Daniel Moreno-Gama suggested “Luigi’ing some tech CEOs” in an internet chat.
The Texas college student casually referenced Luigi Mangione, the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, during an online conversation with producers of “The Last Invention” podcast, according to screenshots shared with The Wall Street Journal. They wanted to interview him for a series on artificial intelligence.
In January, Moreno-Gama recorded the interview, detailing his path from curious internet nerd to a crusader obsessed with AI’s dangers. He said those chilling words shouldn’t be taken literally, according to a recording shared with the Journal.
“I understand the frustration with a person who might advocate for that, but it’s not practical,” Moreno-Gama said. “It’s not worth it.”
Last week, authorities alleged Moreno-Gama, 20, traveled from the Houston area to San Francisco, threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s mansion and then attacked OpenAI’s headquarters’ entrance, planning to burn the building down.
The incident spotlights a brewing anticorporate fervor in some internet subcultures, amplified by the national attention on Mangione, an Ivy League-educated 27-year-old who has pleaded not guilty. Only weeks ago, Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, was charged with sparking a blaze at a Kimberly-Clark warehouse in Southern California. He complained about wages and compared himself to Mangione, federal prosecutors said.
“A lot of people are going to understand,” Abdulkarim said, likening what he did to when “Luigi popped that m——,” according to the federal complaint. Abdulkarim has pleaded not guilty.
Copycat fears
In the OpenAI case, investigators found a manifesto, allegedly Moreno-Gama’s, warning that AI would wipe out humanity. It included a message to Altman: “If by some miracle you live, then I would take this as a sign from the divine to redeem yourself…”
Moreno-Gama faces federal and state charges, including attempted murder and arson. He has yet to enter a plea. Diamond Ward, his public defender in the state case, said prosecutors overcharged Moreno-Gama, calling the incident a “property crime, at best.”
“It is unfair and unjust for the San Francisco District Attorney and the federal government to fearmonger and exploit this young man’s vulnerability simply due to the high-profile status of the people involved,” Ward said.
Ward said Moreno-Gama has a history of autism and mental-health issues, adding that the actions “appear to have been driven by an acute mental-health crisis, not a desire to harm.”
Moreno-Gama’s parents said they have been trying to get him mental-health treatment and were concerned about his well-being. “He is a very caring person and has never been arrested before,” they said in a statement.” Until very recently, he was working hard at a restaurant and attending college classes.”
The attack prompted Altman last week to share a rare photo of his family on his blog, saying it “might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me.”
In a statement, Altman acknowledged concern about artificial intelligence—but said that shouldn’t lead to violence. “We should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics,” he wrote.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
Online origin
In the podcast interview, released in edited form Wednesday by media startup Longview, Moreno-Gama recalled thinking OpenAI’s ChatGPT was “awesome” during his high school years, because he could “cheat on everything.”
Online, Moreno-Gama used the handle Butlerian Jihadist, referencing a fictional war between humans and thinking machines from the sci-fi classic “Dune.” Though he recorded the podcast interview under the moniker “Discord Dan,” the podcasters decided to reveal his identity in light of recent events. The Journal was able to independently confirm his identity.
Andy Mills, Longview’s editor in chief, said the podcast initially offered anonymity to Moreno-Gama, but that “his own actions and online statements have since established a clear link between his pseudonym and his real identity.”
The podcasters, Mills said, had reached out to Moreno-Gama while working on an episode exploring perspectives of those who believe “we may need to consider violence to protect humanity from what they believe is a digital supermind that may lead to our extinction.”
During the interview, Moreno-Gama described learning about AI’s dark side by reading prominent AI critics like Eliezer Yudkowsky, who warned in a 2023 Time magazine opinion column that “the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally everyone on Earth will die.”
“I was like, OK, I hope he’s kind of wrong, but over time, I realized very few of his main criticisms ever got refuted,” Moreno-Gama said.
He debated strangers online, yet remained unconvinced by their arguments against Yudkowsky’s thesis. He pestered his parents and friends about the risks of AI.
“I kind of became a bit, like, annoying, a bit autistic about that,” he said.
Moreno-Gama’s mother suggested that he find a group, and in 2024 he joined PauseAI, which advocates halting development of the most powerful AI systems. Impressed by the tireless activists he met online, he tried to emulate them, evangelizing and writing articles on Substack.
Maxime Fournes, Pause AI’s CEO, said Moreno-Gama joined the group’s public Discord server and posted 34 messages. “None of his messages contained explicit calls to violence,” Fournes said. “We unequivocally condemn this attack and all forms of violence.”
On another online forum called Stop AI, Moreno-Gama last year asked, “Will speaking about violence get me banned?” according to that group. He stopped posting after he was told “Yes.”
“Stop AI has always adhered to nonviolent activism,” the group said.
During the podcast interview, Moreno-Gama bristled at stereotypes of hysterical “AI doomers.” If people read as much as he did about AI, he argued, they would be just as concerned as he was.
“Before we even think about violence, we need to exhaust all our peaceful means,” he said. “I think protesting, I think sharing information, I think doing podcasts like this, that needs to come way before we even consider that.”
But like many young people, Moreno-Gama viewed Mangione as a political touchpoint. He said he disagreed with the alleged killer’s tactics, but he noted it was interesting how with Mangione, “a lot of people were able to excuse it.”