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The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: AI, Fintech And E-Commerce In The Lead

1. Mercor, $350M, AI hiring: San Francisco-based Mercor, a provider of AI-enabled tools for hiring, secured $350 million in Series C funding at a $10 billion valuation. Felicis led the financing, which included participation by Robinhood Ventures, General Catalyst and Benchmark.

2. (tied) SavvyMoney, $225M, fintech: SavvyMoney, which offers tools for financial services providers to embed features like credit scores and personalized offers into their consumer offerings, announced a $225 million investment co-led by PSG Equity and Canapi Ventures. Founded in 2009, the Dublin, California, company currently works with more than 1,500 financial institution customers.

2. (tied) Whatnot, $225M, e-commerce: Whatnot, a live shopping platform and marketplace, has closed a $225 million Series F round, more than doubling its valuation to $11.5 billion in less than 10 months. DST Global and CapitalG co-led the financing, which brings the Los Angeles-based company’s total raised to about $968 million since its 2019 inception.

4. (tied) Sublime Security, $150M, cybersecurity: Sublime Security, a developer of agentic AI tools for email security, raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Georgian. The financing brings total funding to date for the 6-year-old Washington, D.C.-based company to around $240 million, per Crunchbase data.

4. (tied) Harvey, $150M, legal tech: Harvey, developer of an AI-enabled platform for legal professionals, closed on a fresh $150 million, bringing total reported funding to date to $1 billion. Andreessen Horowitz led the latest round, which reportedly set an $8 billion valuation for the 3-year-old, San Francisco-based company.

6. (tied) Human Interest, $100M, finance: Human Interest, a San Francisco-based startup that helps small businesses offer 401(k) plans to their employees, raised more than $100 million at a $3 billion valuation, Axios reports. That valuation is up from the $1.3 billion the company was last valued at in 2024. Previous investors Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, Marshall Wace, Morgan Stanley and TPG again backed the company.

6. (tied) Substrate, $100M, semiconductors: Substrate, a San Francisco-based startup seeking to build semiconductor factories with new laser-based technology, raised $100 million from Founders Fund, General Catalyst, IQT and others.

8. Zag Bio, $80M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zag Bio, a developer of thymus-targeted medicines, announced its public launch with $80 million in financing, including a recently closed Series A round. Polaris Partners founded and incubated the startup and co-led the Series A financing with the JDRF T1D Fund.

9. ConductorOne, $79M, identity security: ConductorOne, an identity security startup building an AI platform geared for human, non-human and AI identities, landed $79 million in a Series B financing led by Greycroft. The 4-year-old Portland, Oregon-based company says it saw 400% revenue growth last year.

10. Blueprint, $60M, personal care: Blueprint, a Los Angeles-based brand that markets supplements, skin and hair care products, and foods geared to promote well-being and longevity, raised $60 million from a long list of venture and celebrity investors including Paris Hilton, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Logan Paul.

The AI rally has many investors wondering where to turn in anticipation of its end. The medical-device maker is one solid option.

Key Points

• Boston Scientific’s cardiovascular segment is forecast to grow more than 22% year over year.
• The Watchman product for AF patients saw sales grow 35% in the third quarter, reaching 12% of the estimated five-million-patient market.
• Analysts expect Boston Scientific’s total sales to grow 11% to $23.4 billion in 2026, potentially leading to midteens earnings per share growth.

Investors seeking a stock unrelated to artificial intelligence should take a look at Boston Scientific.

The historic rally in everything AI has inevitably led to thoughts about how the whole thing will end. Maybe some companies’ earnings will disappoint the market? Or maybe something more widespread will occur, like Big Tech significantly reducing its spending expectations? The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has seen several days when it was deeply in the red recently, which could foreshadow a true drawdown if any of these—or other—risks emerge.

With all this in mind, we look to medical-device makers. These companies are constantly enhancing their products to help improve patients’ health. For example, Intuitive Surgical’s new versions of its robotic surgery machines have helped the stock rise 23% in the past month, and Abbott Laboratories’ newest glucose-monitoring device has brought its stock close to new highs.

In cardiac health, innovative products are giving surgeons more confidence in their decisions to operate. Spending on cardiac procedures in the U.S. is expected to grow at just over 7% annually through 2030, to about $92 billion, driven mostly by an aging population, according to Grand View Research.

Boston Scientific is at the heart of it. Of its $20 billion in 2025 sales forecast by analysts, $13 billion is expected to come from its cardiovascular segment, up 23% year over year, according to FactSet. Some of that is because of small acquisitions and currency fluctuations.

Still, not all the growth is priced into the stock, which is trading at $100, even after its recent rally. Analysts are forecasting a 13% increase in sales of cardiovascular products next year, to $14.9 billion. The company said at its September investor day that it expects low-double digit growth over the long term as it takes market share. Analysts aren’t doubting that right now, especially after the company continued its record of beating quarterly earnings estimates on Oct. 22, with greater-than-expected cardio revenue in the third quarter amid larger-than-anticipated sales across every segment.

Part of the cardio growth story is the Watchman product, a small implant that closes the left atrial appendage of patients with atrial fibrillation, or AF. This product is intended for patients who can’t take blood thinners to stop blood clots. Watchman lowers the likelihood of blood clots, in turn reducing the risk of stroke.

Watchman sales grew 35% in the third quarter, reaching over 600,000 patients, or 12% of the five million total addressable market estimated by the company. The implant is preferred right now versus Abbott Laboratories’ competing product, Amplatzer, judging by hospital purchases. Roughly 90% of their purchases of AF products are for Watchman implants, according to a physician survey from BTIG analyst Marie Thibault.

That isn’t a surprise. The American College of Cardiology, a group of professionals that publishes medical journals, concluded Watchman has caused fewer postprocedural medical complications and is currently the safer product.

That story could continue in the first half of 2026, when Boston Scientific releases results of its Champion-AF trial. This clinical trial, reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration, will publish results for Watchman FLX, the latest version of its heart implant. FLX aims to improve the healing process and close larger appendages. Positive results on its effectiveness and safety would underscore Boston Scientific’s ability to continue to grow its presence with heart surgeons—and potentially spark stock gains.

Watchman isn’t the only avenue through which Boston Scientific can protect its competitiveness. With large profit margins and hefty free cash flow—an expected $3.4 billion this year, and growing—the company has acquired dozens of small companies over the years. An example: It bought Elutia’s BioEnvelope business for $88 million in September. Elutia sells small materials that protect cardiac patients from postoperative complications, such as infection. It’s the type of deal that allows Boston Scientific to package multiple products in its offerings to surgeons, providing a competitive advantage.

Acquisitions are also instrumental in the other areas of Boston Scientific’s business, including medical surgical, or MedSurg, which analysts expect to grow close to 10% annually over the long term. A subsegment of that business is urology, for which the company bought Axonics for $3.7 billion in 2024. Axonics makes an implantable device that treats bowel and bladder conditions, such as overactive bladder.

Urology sales could reaccelerate next year, CEO Mike Mahoney said on the third-quarter earnings call. Sales were interrupted after Medtronic asked the International Trade Commission to block the sale of the products over alleged patent infringements. Late last year, a jury found that Axonics didn’t infringe on Medtronic’s patents for competitive products. The companies reached a settlement, and Axonics products are selling without restrictions again. Management expects improving growth over the course of 2026, another potential catalyst that could unlock more confidence from the market—and stock gains.

Overall, Boston Scientific could grow total sales by 11% in 2026 to $23.4 billion, according to FactSet. Sustaining such growth can bring profit margins a touch higher over time, as it can outpace the increase in operating expenses such as employee compensation and depreciation.

This would spur midteen earnings per share growth annually over the long term, especially as Boston Scientific continues to repurchase shares and onboard acquisitions. The company says it will prioritize deals over buybacks, but the deals will increase EPS if they are accretive.

Given management’s tendency to do deals and deliver higher-than-expected growth, EPS growth could approach 20% annually, says Andrew Choi, a portfolio manager at Parnassus Investments.

That would pump the stock higher, partly because it isn’t as expensive as it could be. Shares trade at 30 times expected EPS for the coming 12 months, below its peak of 36 times this year and just a 20% premium versus the iShares U.S. Medical Devices exchange-traded fund’s 24.9 times. When Boston Scientific shares hit peaks this year, the premium was 28%.

So, the stock could trade at a larger earnings multiple—and benefit from higher earnings, particularly as the market sees continued evidence that Boston Scientific can continue to take market share. “If they do 11% [sales growth], there’s a path toward value creation” for shareholders, says Choi.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t risks: The Champion-AF trial results for Watchman could disappoint, pressuring expectations for Watchman demand, or Abbott could significantly improve Amplatzer’s safety.

We doubt those risks will materialize, a key reason being that Boston Scientific can spend a lot of money on research and development to keep its offerings competitive. Analysts expect almost $2 billion of such spend this year, close to Abbott’s $2.8 billion. But Abbott has to spread that spending across far more businesses, including diabetes care, while Boston can use most of that money to focus on heart-related care.

On the whole, Boston Scientific demonstrates an excellent risk/reward scenario for patients—and for those who want to buy the stock.

CEO Kelly Ortberg has made the company investible again. Why shares could climb more than 25%.

Boeing went from a fairy tale to a tragedy in the blink of an eye. Now the story shifts to redemption—and it could pay off for the stock.

Once viewed as the perfect cash-flow machine, Boeing has been through seven years of misery, largely of its own doing. Starting with the crash of two 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019, the company struggled to make headway with a corporate culture that had put engineering so far down its list of priorities that even the simple task of making sure the door on a plane was installed correctly seemed out of its reach after a blowout in January 2024. Just making planes had become a slog: At the end of last year, Boeing had delivered 265 737-model jets, less than half its annual target and down from 396 delivered in 2023. At Thursday’s close, Boeing stock sat 55% below its March 2019 all-time high of $446.01.

Sometimes, though, a leader emerges just when all hope seems to be lost. Kelly Ortberg has been that leader. Since being hired in July 2024 to replace Dave Calhoun, Ortberg, an engineer with decades of experience in the aerospace industry, has done the seemingly impossible: made Boeing stock investible again. He has improved supplier relations, shaken up management ranks, reallocated resources to new program development, and, perhaps most important, is spending more time in Seattle, near where the 737 MAX is produced.

Boeing stock has gained 7% since he was named CEO. Though shares declined after Boeing’s third-quarter earnings release on Wednesday, they look set to rise even further as Ortberg demonstrates that the company’s resurgence is real.

“I love these stories,” says Hightower Advisors Chief Investment Strategist Stephanie Link. “Companies with good bones that have been so poorly run then get a good CEO.”

Boeing declined to make Ortberg available for this article.

As much as Boeing’s decline seems to start with the first MAX crash, the problems actually started nearly 30 years ago. In 1997, Boeing CEO Philip Condit and McDonnell Douglas head Harry Stonecipher orchestrated the merger of the two companies. While the deal was celebrated on Wall Street, it marked the start of Boeing’s shift away from a focus on engineering planes toward financial engineering.

Condit moved the company’s headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001, a move designed to de-emphasize the core commercial aerospace business by separating management from production. It was a questionable decision and a culture killer. Things took another hit under Jim McNerney, who took over in 2005 and admitted out loud that “cowering” employees motivated him. After a painful nine-week strike in 2008, Boeing broke ground on its nonunion plant in South Carolina, where it makes the 787 Dreamliner today.

Under McNerney, Boeing’s financial path was set. From 2011 to 2019, a period that covered the development of the MAX through its grounding, Boeing spent about $49 billion on research and development and new plants and equipment, amounting to about 6.2% of sales. Airbus spent about $52 billion, or 9.4% of sales, over the same span. Boeing returned some $59 billion to shareholders over that period, including about $40 billion on share repurchases, which decreased shares outstanding from roughly 751 million at the start of 2014 to 568 million at the end of 2018.

It wasn’t money well spent: Boeing was forced to sell some $16 billion in common shares at a paltry $143 apiece in October 2024 to help repair its ailing balance sheet. Boeing now has about 760 million shares outstanding, as well as convertible debt sold in October 2024.

Nothing, however, was as damaging as the development of the 737 MAX, which was brought to market by CEO Dennis Muilenburg in 2017. Boeing decided to modify the existing 737 platform to respond quickly to Airbus’ A320neo family of jets. It turned out disastrously, with two deadly crashes due to malfunctioning sensors and new flight-control software. The crashes grounded the MAX worldwide for almost two years, tanking Boeing’s earnings and cash flow. Dave Calhoun took over for Muilenburg and managed to get the MAX recertified for commercial flight. He announced his departure shortly after an emergency-door plug blew out of a 737 MAX 9 jet while in flight on Jan. 5, 2024.

“At this point, everyone knows the story, right?” says Yale School of Management lecturer Gautam Mukunda. “[Boeing] has been brutally mismanaged for basically my entire adult life.”

Enter Ortberg. The first thing investors need to know about him is that he is an engineer. He joined Rockwell Collins in 1987, and became president and CEO in 2013. Collins was eventually acquired by United Technologies —now RTX —in 2018. Ortberg left the company in 2021, serving on corporate boards until Boeing came calling.

Ortberg hasn’t been afraid to reverse prior management’s decisions. He has moved management back to Seattle so it could be near Boeing’s workers. He raised cash by issuing stock and convertibles and selling portions of Digital Aviation Solutions to Thoma Bravo for more than $10 billion. He also stopped the development of the X-66 truss-braced-wing demonstrator plane—a futuristic concept designed to improve efficiency with long, thin wings—which might one day have produced technologies usable on a commercial jet, but was too far off to help in the next few years.

Gone, too, is the imperial management style that projected confidence when everything seemed to be working, but came across as hubris when the company ran into trouble. “We have seen a far less arrogant tone,” says Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard, who is also a fan of new Chief Financial Officer Jay Malave, who came over from Lockheed Martin. “This improvement has also been noted by customers and suppliers, with a number now commenting that they have much more faith in Boeing actually delivering on its projections.”

AeroDynamic Advisory aerospace consultant and managing director Richard Aboulafia called out two additional management changes as evidence of positive momentum: naming Stephen Parker to run Boeing’s ailing defense business, and putting former Wisk CEO Brian Yutko, an MIT Ph.D. in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronautical engineering, in charge of commercial aircraft development. Ortberg “isn’t afraid of anyone with talent,” Aboulafia says.

He also isn’t afraid to make nice when he has to. While 3,200 Boeing defense workers are currently striking in St. Louis, where the company makes the F-15 and F-18 fighter jets, its labor strife likely peaked with the seven-week strike that ended in November 2024. Current Boeing management could have offered more up front, says Yale’s Mukunda, but a work stoppage might have been unavoidable, given the built-up animosity. Boeing workers won significant pay increases in their new four-year contract and a guarantee that the next narrow-body jet Boeing designs would be built in Washington state.

Boeing still has many problems to solve. The company isn’t expected to make a profit in 2025, marking seven consecutive years of losses. It’s the worst current streak for a company in the S&P 500

and one of the worst streaks ever, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, which looked at the current components of the S&P 500. No company in the index has lost more money since 2019 than Boeing.

But there are signs of improvement. Demand, for one, hasn’t been a problem for Boeing or Airbus for a while. People like to fly, and the industry has survived shocks including 9/11, SARS, and Covid-19. Today, Boeing has more than 6,600 unfilled orders on the books. The issue has been meeting customers’ needs for more planes.

In the six years since the second tragic MAX crash in March 2019, Boeing has delivered about 2,200 jets. In the six years before the tragedy, Boeing delivered twice that many. Deliveries in 2025 should be about 600 jets, according to FactSet, up from fewer than 350 in 2024 but still nowhere near the 806 Boeing delivered in 2018.

The Federal Aviation Administration capped 737 MAX production at 38 a month in the aftermath of the 737 MAX door-plug blowout. It recently raised the cap to 42 a month. Boeing will work toward 46 or 47 a month and, eventually, 50 MAX jets a month. Higher production could help it generate over $11 billion in free cash flow in 2028, Wall Street’s current call.

“It’s actually a pretty simple story at this point,” says BofA Securities analyst Ron Epstein, who has a Buy rating on the stock. “Can it deliver more airplanes? And if they can deliver more airplanes, they generate more cash.”

Projecting Boeing’s financial performance still isn’t easy. Since the second MAX crash, Boeing has missed Wall Street estimates about 70% of the time—often by a wide margin. That is unheard of. Apple, by comparison, has missed earnings about 10% of the time over that span, while GE Aerospace—a Boeing peer that has evolved from its own turnaround story into a must-own, industry-leading stock—missed earnings about 25% of the time.

And Boeing just missed estimates once again. The company lost $7.14 a share during the third quarter, hit by a $4.9 billion charge related to the long-delayed 777x program, much worse than Wall Street’s expectation of a $5 per share loss. Third-quarter sales, however, rose to $23.3 billion, up from $17.8 billion in the third quarter of 2024 and the third consecutive quarter of revenue beats. Boeing also delivered 160 commercial jets, up from 116 a year ago, and reported its first quarter of positive free cash flow since 2023.

Valuing a mature company that hasn’t made money in roughly seven years is complicated. BofA’s Epstein uses “normalized” free cash flow of $11 a share to reach his $270 target—up 35% from a recent $200—while Vertical’s Stallard uses a combination of 2027 earnings and cash-flow multiples to reach the same valuation. Another way is to look at where Airbus trades on 2028 free cash flow. It earns a multiple of 22, and a comparative valuation implies a price of up to $300 for Boeing stock—up 50%—with the difference between that and today’s value reflecting the need for investors to buy into the turnaround story.

Other catalysts can build confidence, too. Boeing is working on certifying the 777X and the 737 MAX 7 and 10—the 10 is a longer version of the 7—for commercial service. Timing is uncertain and dependent on regulators, but all three planes should be ready for delivery to customers in 2026 or 2027.

What is clear is that the Boeing story is at the “end of the beginning,” to use Stallard’s words from when he upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold in September. He had downgraded shares in 2020, but cited supply-chain improvements, stability in the defense business, and Ortberg for his sunnier view of the stock.

And as the old problems recede, Boeing will be able to turn to the future. That will mean designing a new plane—a risk but an opportunity, too. A new plane will necessitate using tens of billions of dollars in cash flow spread out over a few years, but it can also help restore the market share it lost to the Airbus A320neo family, which has 70% market share of deliveries since the A320neo and MAX jets entered service. Beyond market share, a new jet would be another step in putting engineering back at the center of the company, something that is long overdue.

“Boeing is no longer denying the need for its creation, and they are no longer denying that they are looking at options,” AeroDynamic Advisory’s Aboulafia says.

This way redemption lies.

We think it’s more likely the company will raise more funding privately before it goes public.

There’s a solid history of companies raising large slugs of cash in the year or two leading up to the IPO, often from the kinds of public market investors that also buy into the listing. In OpenAI’s case, it already has several of these public market investors, including T. Rowe Price and Fidelity Management.

I’m sure there’s demand from other deep-pocketed investors too. For instance, OpenAI previously held conversations with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and multinational conglomerates such as India’s Reliance Industries about potential funding, we’ve reported.

As for what happens in 2027, an IPO seems like a decent bet. Earlier this year, as OpenAI was lining up investors to buy employee shares at a $500 billion valuation, its executives told some investors it expects to raise nearly $90 billion in capital in 2027 alone, according to a person with knowledge of the projections. In theory, that could include capital from an IPO.

OpenAI had about $9.6 billion in cash at the end of June, according to financial disclosures to shareholders, and the board of lead investor SoftBank recently approved its $22.5 billion investment in OpenAI’s $41 billion fundraise. That means OpenAI has more than enough money to get to 2027, considering the roughly $26 billion it had projected to burn through the end of next year.

For OpenAI, the cash is necessary to feed its ever-growing server needs, which it projects will total nearly $125 billion over the next three years and will be a key factor in its projected cash burn of $115 billion through 2029.

Pre-IPO funding rounds also serve another purpose: drumming up demand from investors that straddle both private and public investing and are looking for a quick valuation jump. They can also give investors a close look at a company’s financials—including problems that could thwart a successful IPO, such as a concentration of too many sales with one customer.

But OpenAI will still need to run the gauntlet of requirements for a public listing, including establishing a regular quarterly reporting schedule and ensuring that its financials meet public transparency standards.

The company also will likely need to address some unusual risks facing its investors. For instance, the OpenAI Foundation’s board can name and remove the OpenAI corporation's board, and the corporation’s board can only consider the mission to benefit humanity, not the interests of shareholders, when it comes to safety and security issues.

And if the company hits a $5 trillion valuation after 15 years, the nonprofit could also gain additional shares through warrants, giving it a single-digit percentage of incremental ownership over time worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two people with knowledge of OpenAI’s plans.

One factor that smoothed the way for the restructuring was the $500 billion valuation, which was much higher than the round led by SoftBank that valued it at $300 billion. That’s because OpenAI, Microsoft and their bankers (Goldman Sachs and veteran banker Michael Klein for OpenAI, Morgan Stanley for Microsoft) agreed to value the stakes using the Black-Scholes option pricing model. That takes into account the spot price (the current value of OpenAI) as well as the company’s potential future value, said a person with knowledge of the discussions.

When OpenAI was worth $300 billion, Microsoft’s 27% stake would have been worth just $81 billion, giving it an incentive to push for a higher percentage of equity. At the $500 billion valuation, the 27% stake is worth $135 billion. No doubt that seemed a lot more palatable to Microsoft.

In this case, OpenAI showed that its ability to sell shares to investors solves many problems. A future IPO will test that ability again.

Funding would support the development of satellites for President Trump’s Golden Dome project

SpaceX is set to receive $2 billion to develop satellites that can track missiles and aircraft under President Trump’s Golden Dome project, people familiar with the matter said.

The funding was included in the tax-and-spending bill that Trump signed in July, but wasn’t publicly linked to a contractor. The planned “air moving target indicator” system could eventually field as many as 600 satellites, some of the people said.

The Elon Musk-led company is expected to play a major role in two other Pentagon satellite networks, according to people familiar with the situation. One, called Milnet, would relay sensitive military communications, while the other involves satellites capable of tracking vehicles on the ground, the people said.

The traction that SpaceX has gained with the coming satellite fleets is another sign of the company’s growing influence in U.S. national security.

Government officials have described Golden Dome as a complex system of satellites and other technologies that are capable of destroying missiles before they hit their targets. The Pentagon has released few specifics about how the missile shield would work.

Defense officials haven’t awarded major contracts for Golden Dome while they set its spending plans. Lawmakers and industry executives are expecting more details from the Pentagon about Golden Dome in the coming weeks.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment on SpaceX’s involvement in the planned satellite systems: “We do not provide details relating to specifics of architectural discussion or predecisional matters.”

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Musk’s space company, known for its rocket launches, has built a big satellite business serving military and intelligence agencies. Officials have praised SpaceX’s prowess at advancing technologies for national security and rapidly deploying satellites.

“What we’re relying on is industry to help us innovate by showing us the art of the possible—bringing ideas to us,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top operations official at the Space Force, said at an industry event last year.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that SpaceX, along with the defense technology companies Anduril Industries and Palantir Technologies, had pitched their services to help develop Golden Dome’s infrastructure on a fast timeline. Traditional defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and L3Harris are also proposing technologies for the shield.

Trump has said Golden Dome would cost $175 billion, though analysts estimate it would cost hundreds of billions more.

The president has pushed for the system to operate by the end of his term. The brisk timeline offers SpaceX an edge in securing work on the project because the company can manufacture and launch satellites more quickly than rivals, according to government and industry officials.

SpaceX recently said it had launched more than 10,000 satellites for its Starlink internet service. Starlink’s rapid growth has made it the largest satellite fleet in history.

Breaking Defense earlier reported on SpaceX’s involvement in Milnet.

The Milnet system has been under development for several years and involves both the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. spy agency focused on classified satellites. The NRO, which hired SpaceX several years ago to develop and launch a swarm of intelligence satellites, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Many military leaders and lawmakers are leery of threading too many national-security satellite networks through SpaceX, fearing the U.S. would become overly dependent on the company.

Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) recently said he would keep pushing for competition as Trump’s missile shield takes shape. “I don’t want to end up where we pick one company and we go down a path,” he said, without naming any company.

Inside the Defense Department, leaders call such a scenario “vendor lock.” Those situations can “negate the strengths of the market by stifling innovation and inflating prices,” the Defense Science Board, a technical advisory group for the Pentagon, said last year in a report about commercial space.

Government officials said some of Musk’s actions have reinforced the need to have several contractors supporting national-security operations in space. One example: his threat to decommission a spacecraft that transports National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronauts to the International Space Station.

Musk walked back the threat, and SpaceX executives have often pointed to the company’s close relationships with government officials and agencies.

“The government will get what they need—just like always,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said at an investor event last year, discussing how the company would dedicate Starlink internet to the U.S. in the event of a conflict.

The Defense Department has taken steps to spur the broader satellite industry. The Space Development Agency is fielding another military satellite network using companies like York Space Systems and Boeing.

Sotheby’s plans to kick off bids for Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-karat masterpiece at $10 million; no sitting on this throne

An artist sculpted a toilet out of 223 pounds of gold, a weight valued at about $10 million in current gold markets. Sotheby’s is betting it can auction off the golden bowl for even more.

The 18-karat toilet was created by Maurizio Cattelan, the same impish artist behind last year’s $6.2 million duct-tape banana.

Next month, the auction house will set its starting bid for Cattelan’s fully functioning toilet at the $10 million mark, or whatever the daily rate in gold markets would be for a 101.2-kilogram chunk on the day of the sale, Nov. 18. But watch this throne: Sotheby’s expects it to serve as a rare and wry test of art’s appeal beyond its material worth as a precious metal. Cryptocurrency will also be accepted.

Just don’t try before you buy. Ahead of the sale, Sotheby’s expert David Galperin said the house will install the golden loo in a fourth-floor bathroom within its new Manhattan headquarters. Potential bidders will be allowed to see it in situ, he said, but they won’t be allowed to use it.

“We don’t want people sitting on the art,” Galperin said.

Cattelan is known for making sculptures that explore social and historical taboos. The Italian artist’s 2016 commode has a storied history that predates last year’s banana bonanza, when his fruit duct-taped to a wall, “Comedian,” caused a pop-culture stir and even buoyed confidence in the slumping art market after selling for quadruple its $1.5 million high estimate.

“It’s the perfect sequel to the banana, even though he made it earlier,” Galperin said of Cattelan’s toilet.

The artist initially intended to create five matching versions of his toilet, which he titled “America” as a way to question which spaces in a museum get deemed sacred versus profane.

Cattelan said Thursday he wanted to put something shiny and expensive in an overlooked spot. “In the end, we are all the same,” he said, “and we remember it right there, in the least noble and most necessary place.”

The first example was installed in a bathroom at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016.

The piece proved an immediate hit, with critics comparing it to ready-made master Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 porcelain urinal, “Fountain.” A steady stream of 100,000 visitors lined up to see—and use—Cattelan’s creation. A museum guard stood outside the bathroom, and janitors cleaned the piece every 15 minutes or so.

Rising gold prices also played a role in its lore.

During its initial run at the Guggenheim, the piece was said to be worth about $2 million. Three years later, the Guggenheim sent its commode to England’s Blenheim Palace, where it was installed in Winston Churchill’s wood-paneled bathroom. By that time, gold prices had climbed and the piece was worth at least $4 million.

One night in 2019, thieves wielding sledgehammers broke into Blenheim, ripped out the toilet and fled with it, causing flooding issues at the 18th-century home. Several men were later arrested for the crime.