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Crypto exchange began restoring withdrawals Sunday after suffering from a $6.3 billion hack.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, saw $5.8 billion in net outflow of assets after it resumed processing withdrawals for users on Sunday morning following a historic $6.3 billion hack.

The net outflow figure, tracked by crypto analytics platform DefiLlama, represents about 3% of Binance’s $171 billion total assets under management before the hack.

Binance said in an update on X Sunday midday that after an initial spike, withdrawal volumes have declined and are stabilizing. The FBI said North Korea was responsible for the hack, while Binance has pledged to cover all losses. Bitcoin price was flat over the weekend, trading around $77,700 after falling from $80,000 before the hack on Thursday.

British-German group Hypersonica raises €100mn to strengthen ability to hit long-range strategically important targets

A British-German start-up developing hypersonic long-range missiles has raised €100mn of funding, boosting European efforts to develop the ability to strike deep inside Russia.

Hypersonica said it had secured the new cash in a deal co-led by Silicon Valley venture capital firms Lightspeed and General Catalyst. The deal valued the company at roughly €700mn, people familiar with the matter said.

The funds will allow Hypersonica to accelerate the development of its deep-strike missiles at a time when Europe is pushing to strengthen its ability to hit long-range strategically important targets without the help of Washington.

“The debate over whether Europe needs these kinds of deterrence capabilities is over. It’s absolutely clear we need them,” said Hypersonica chief executive Philipp Kerth in an interview.

“It’s now really a question about who can deliver those systems and that’s what the [funding round] is positioning us to do.”

The company is part of a flagship defence co-operation project between the UK and Germany. The countries agreed, under their Trinity House agreement signed in 2024, to produce a family of advanced ground-launched missiles with a range of more than 2,000km.

Germany’s Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation, which looks for the next technology innovations, also participated in an earlier €23mn funding round in February. Hypersonica said at the time that it had become the first privately funded European defence company to complete a successful hypersonic test flight.

The programme envisages the development of two types of weapons: an advanced cruise missile and a hypersonic glide vehicle — a type of weapon that travels at ultra-high speed on an unpredictable trajectory, making it hard to track and intercept.

Hypersonica is involved in the plan, as is the pan-European missile maker MBDA. The project is still in the conceptual phase with the aim of starting development in 2027.

France has also sought to join the accord, which gained fresh urgency among officials earlier this year when Donald Trump cancelled a plan to deploy a battalion equipped with Tomahawk missiles and other long-range weapons to a US base in Germany.

The company aims to enter full operations by 2029. Kerth said hypersonic technology would give Europe an edge because it “turns the needle on deterrence”.

The latest investment round for Hypersonica also includes participation from existing European investors Plural and 201 Ventures. Kerth said that Europeans owned the majority of the company.

Alexander Schmitt, a partner at Lightspeed, said part of Hypersonica’s strength was that it had done “real testing, not only simulations”.

Hypersonica said that the funding would allow it to create hundreds of engineering and manufacturing jobs across the UK and Germany. The start-up has previously said its rapid development cycle was intended to reduce the time and cost to build advanced strike systems.

Investors have clamoured to back European defence technology groups in recent years, as the region’s governments increase their military spending. The industry is now under pressure to scale up production at speed and at lower cost.

In July, the UK said it would lead a European initiative to boost funding for deep precision-strike capabilities, aiming for a total spending of $50bn from European allies over the next decade.

Proposals would alter change-of-control provision to mean more long-term share awards vest earlier

Glencore is proposing to change its chief executive’s pay package to allow boss Gary Nagle to cash out his long-term share awards more quickly if the commodities group is taken over.

The UK-listed miner is talking to its shareholders about a new pay deal for Nagle, who has led the group since 2021, according to people familiar with the matter and a presentation made to investors.

As part of the negotiations, Glencore has proposed altering a change-of-control provision that could keep Nagle’s shares unvested, even if he leaves the company following a takeover.

Under the plans, Nagle’s shares in the company would vest if it were bought by a rival and he were replaced as CEO. A proportion of those share awards, which form the bulk of the CEO’s remuneration, would still not be able to be sold for a number of years. 

The exact details are still being worked on by the company, according to people close to the discussions. Glencore declined to comment.

The move has raised eyebrows among shareholders given talks early this year between Rio Tinto and Glencore over a $260bn mega-merger, which collapsed over differences on valuation as well as the management of the combined group. 

One investor with knowledge of the plans said that it would revive speculation about a deal by specifically addressing the pay issue in the event of a takeover.

The majority of Nagle’s pay comes through a “career shares award”, rather than traditional bonus structure. This year he was paid about $2mn in basic salary, with the remainder of his total pay of $7.5mn coming from long-term incentives vesting, a scheme which was put in place to align his interests with other shareholders.

The board agreed a career shares award of 512.5 per cent of salary, representing 97.6 per cent of the maximum, which the company said reflected the strategic progress achieved under Nagle.

Glencore is proposing to increase the upper end of the range of 525 per cent by a little more than a tenth, according to people familiar with the investor presentation, in part reflecting shareholder feedback regarding the board’s decision to issue the award so close to the top of the range.

Rio Tinto has proposed a 56 per cent bump in target pay next year for its chief executive Simon Trott. The proposed package includes raising long-term incentives to nine times salary from the current five times, and increasing Trott’s target pay package for next year to almost £10mn from £6.3mn.

Glencore is also proposing to slightly increase the rate of fixed pay for Nagle to take into account inflation, although the exact amount will be decided by the board at the end of the year. Nagle currently receives $2mn in fixed pay, a number which has not changed for three years. 

Nagle told investors last week that next year could be a bumper year for cash payouts, with the miner in advanced talks over two multibillion-dollar asset sales and its traders expecting a bumper year. Shares in the company have risen about 28 per cent since the start of the year, with the wider mining industry enjoying a boost from the rising price of copper.

Astronomers warn that megaconstellations of satellites will obstruct our view of the cosmos

Astronomers warn that fast-moving, light-reflecting satellites are leaving white streaks across photos at the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

There are over 17,000 active satellites in orbit today, and an astrophysicist estimates there will likely be over 100,000 in a decade.

The FCC approves satellite projects but has no rules regarding how bright satellites can be.

On the top of a mountain in the Chilean desert, an $800 million U.S.-taxpayer-funded telescope just opened its eye.

The brand-new Vera C. Rubin Observatory is supposed to complete a groundbreaking “survey” of the universe, the most comprehensive catalog of its galaxies, asteroids, supernovas and black holes ever completed. But Rubin’s scientists have encountered a problem. Fast-moving, light-reflecting satellites are leaving white streaks across their photographs.

The proliferation of satellites is an “existential threat” to the observatory’s work, said J. Anthony Tyson, its chief scientist, who is best known for mapping dark matter.

Tyson and other scientists warn that these orbiting machines will make it increasingly difficult to do astronomical research from Earth—and, eventually, will render the night sky unrecognizable.

Currently, there are more than 17,000 active satellites in orbit, compared with around 1,000 a decade ago, said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist who has cataloged every orbital rocket launch since 1957. A decade from now, he estimates, there will probably be over 100,000.

Satellites reflect sunlight back to Earth. As the number of satellites grows, so too will light pollution from space.

“You’d see twice as many stars in the sky,” said Hanno Rein, an associate professor at the University of Toronto who has modeled light pollution from planned satellite constellations. “But only half of them would be real.” The other half would actually be satellites transiting the sky.

Currently, satellites are mainly used for telecommunications. The majority are owned by Starlink, which provides internet connectivity around the world.

In the future, as it becomes cheaper to launch material into space, more companies and governments will launch their own satellites. Blue Origin, Google, Cowboy Space and others have all said they plan to build orbital data centers, which would likely consist of hundreds of thousands of satellites. SpaceX says its “Starmind” orbital data center would have over a million satellites.

Satellites now aren’t very large. Starlink’s satellites are about four square meters in size, roughly equivalent to a king bed. But satellites involved in orbital data centers would be much larger. SpaceX said in public filings that the satellites involved in its orbital data center would be up to 1,500 square meters. Cowboy Space said its satellites would be 4,800 square meters, close to the size of a football field.

SpaceX has voluntarily mitigated the brightness of its Starlink satellites, Tyson said. He has been discussing brightness mitigation with SpaceX staffers for almost a decade. Another Rubin scientist said it has had “positive dialogues” with a half-dozen other satellite companies.

“They’ve been very helpful, or they’re trying to be,” he said. But Starlink satellites are already brighter than International Astronomical Union recommendations and visible to the unaided eye, he said. Tyson hasn’t talked to any Chinese satellite manufacturers. Chinese satellites are sometimes brighter than American ones, scientists said.

SpaceX didn’t respond to requests for comment. Google and Blue Origin declined to comment. Cowboy Space couldn’t be reached for comment.

The FCC approves satellite projects, though it doesn’t have any rules about how bright satellites can be. “With the exception of a U.S. law preventing space-based advertising, there are no laws regulating the visual appearance of the night sky” anywhere in the world, stated a 2022 Dark and Quiet Skies Working Group report that reviewed satellite regulations across the globe.

Companies plan to make their orbital data centers “sun-synchronous,” which means they would almost always be illuminated by the sun, said Samantha Lawler, an associate professor at the University of Regina who recently co-wrote a paper about light pollution from orbital data centers.

These solar-powered satellites would reflect even more sunlight back onto earth than other satellites do. Lawler estimates they would be as radiant as Venus, already one of the brightest points in the sky. Collectively, hundreds of thousands of these satellites would probably “completely drown out” the Milky Way and dimmer stars at certain times of night, Lawler said.

Shane Ross, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, recently created a model of what SpaceX’s orbital data center would look like from Earth. His projection shows a belt of thousands of bright points, stretching from horizon to horizon, moving slowly across the night sky.

“It’s awesome, but it’s kind of unsettling,” he said.

When he shared the projection, reactions varied. “Some people were really excited about this,” he said. “Others said we were ruining some common heritage of humankind.”

Tyson and his fellow astronomers at the Rubin Observatory just started their 10-year survey of space. Now, he wonders if they’ll be forced to end the experiment early. Not only do satellites leave streaks across the telescope’s photographs, but Tyson also projects that megaconstellations of satellites would scatter so much light that it would brighten the entire sky.

Eventually, “the sky would be too bright to do anything,” Tyson said.

Gulf braced for escalation of war between US-Israel alliance and Iran

Diplomats warn that renewed conflict would be even more damaging than previous rounds of fighting

Top Middle East diplomats have warned that a threatened escalation of war between the US and Iran would probably be even more damaging than the previous rounds of the conflict, which have destabilised the region and caused turmoil in international energy markets. 

“We are very confident that . . . the second round will be more dangerous, more destructive and it will lead to nowhere,” said Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty on Saturday. “We are extremely worried,” he added.

In Saudi Arabia, authorities on Saturday mandated remote learning for schools nationwide as missile and drone attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen continued to target the kingdom.

The Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis on Sunday said it intercepted a ballistic missile and a drone launched by the Houthis towards the kingdom’s southern region. 

Qatar is leading regional efforts to mediate an interim deal between the US and Iran ahead of US midterm elections next week. Iranian officials spent Saturday and Sunday in Doha for talks with mediators after a Qatari delegation visited Tehran on Friday. 

Prices for Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, slipped 2.2 per cent to $110.9 a barrel on Monday on reports that US President Donald Trump had pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to continue with diplomacy.

There is concern in Iran and across the region that Trump and Netanyahu are planning to launch a new intense phase of the war after Americans vote on Tuesday, with the expectation that it would target Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, power plants and other infrastructure. 

Iran has promised a fierce response, prompting fears in the Gulf that the region’s energy sites and other civilian infrastructure, from airports to desalination plants, would again be targeted. 

Gulf states also worry that a new wave of Iranian attacks would further erode investor and traveller confidence in the region. 

Trade and transport in the region have already been disrupted by Iran’s attacks on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial artery for energy exports and a key regional supply route, while Arab Gulf states have suffered waves of Iranian drone and missile attacks targeting critical infrastructure.

Anwar Gargash, a top United Arab Emirates diplomat, said on Sunday that the US and Iranian stances were still far apart, and “if these positions are not bridged then we have to worry about the worst”. 

The region is “braced for the worst,” the UAE’s diplomatic adviser to the president added, asserting that it was ready “to protect our achievements, our development model, our country, our citizens and people who are resident here”. 

Both Gargash and Abdelatty were speaking at the IISS Manama Dialogue security conference in Bahrain. 

Iran has targeted civilian infrastructure and US military bases in the oil-rich Arab Gulf states both directly and via allies such as the Houthis, as it sought to raise the cost of the conflict on the global economy and American allies in the region. 

The UAE bore the brunt of Iranian missile and drone attacks in March, as Iran responded to the US-Israeli attacks by targeting Gulf states. Another wave of escalation in the summer, again following US strikes on Iran, mostly targeted Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan. 

The Islamic republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has warned that it would retaliate “without any geographical limitations” to fresh US-Israel attacks.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said last week that while Iran’s military was “fully prepared to defend the homeland, Iran continued to give diplomacy a chance to succeed”.

World’s second-biggest buyer of LNG targets shale resources on US Gulf Coast amid market upheavals

Japanese companies have embarked on a $21bn global deal spree to strengthen their grip on gas supplies following the market turmoil triggered by conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.

The investments since 2023 have been concentrated on shale resources in the US Gulf Coast, supporting Japan’s energy security drive and Donald Trump’s goal for US energy dominance, according to energy data analytics firm Enverus.

Japan is the world’s second-largest buyer of liquefied natural gas after China.

As well as seeking to replace disrupted Middle Eastern supplies and declining reserves in Asia, Japanese companies also have ambitions to insert themselves at the heart of the US power build-out for AI data centres and to act as a bridge to bring American LNG to developing Asian markets.

Japan has now overtaken the UK, Canada and Australia as the primary source of foreign investment in US gas resources, accounting for two-fifths of the total over the previous four years.

“A paradigm shift has taken place for Japanese energy procurement in the wake of the Iran war with a return to bolstering diversity of supply chains, even if it comes at an additional cost,” said Saul Kavonic, senior analyst at MST Financial.

The supply disruptions in the Middle East have cemented US leadership as a destination for gas investment and put previously unlikely supply sources such as Alaska or Argentina back into the frame.

Alongside substantial investment in US shale, Japanese LNG buyers have strengthened positions in gasfields in Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea in the past six months.

“For the gas markets this is a rearrangement caused by geopolitical circumstances,” said José Luis Vittor, oil and gas practice lead at Womble Bond Dickson. “For the Japanese, it’s having control of the resources.”

Tokyo sent a key policy signal in its foundational energy plan, adopted last year. It stated that gas would maintain a crucial role in the power system beyond 2040 and encouraged utilities to secure long-term LNG contracts and invest in gas resources and export infrastructure.

Jera, Japan’s largest power generator and the world’s biggest LNG buyer, spent $1.5bn last year to acquire the South Mansfield shale gasfield in Louisiana.

Global chief executive Yukio Kani said the US was previously under-represented for a “global supply portfolio” and “provides huge flexibility” to divert supplies elsewhere if surplus to Japan’s requirements.

However, Japan has had a troubled history of investing in US shale. A previous bout of ill-timed dealmaking in 2010-12 was disastrous, causing widespread impairments across the trading houses as gas prices fell.

Many are convinced that a supercycle in gas demand to power AI data centres means this time will be different.

Katsuya Nakanishi, chief executive of Mitsubishi Corporation, said the trading house’s $7.5bn deal this year for US shale gas producer Aethon would allow the group to ship gas to Europe but its main goal was to supply American customers.

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“The objective with Aethon is to capture US demand through local production for local consumption,” he said.

Owning the resources will help Japanese companies hedge against rising US gas prices and protect margins for LNG trading businesses.

Energy lawyers said Japanese companies seemed willing to pay a premium for ownership, although some warned that rising price tags could stifle future gas sector deals.

“The Japanese appear increasingly willing to pay up to own the molecule,” said Rob Wilson, president of East Daley Analytics.

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, the role AI is playing in it. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!

I’ve joked here and on the Equity and Autonocast podcasts that the autonomous vehicle industry feels a lot like 2016, at least in terms of the buzziness surrounding the sector.

But a recent conversation with Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva has me rethinking that comparison. There’s evidence that 2026 is even hotter — at least by certain measures — than those frothy dealmaking days of 2016 and 2017.

Trucks VC, which specializes in early-stage investing, has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups so far in 2026 — two-thirds more than last year and enough to surpass the boom years of a decade ago. The VC firm argues in a new blog post that we’re in the midst of a second, even bigger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Yes, I’m talking about AI.

“For a long time AV companies were trying to go from what was AV 1.0 to AV 2.0, which is kind of this holy grail end-to-end architecture for AVs,” Meruva told me. “And I think the foundation models now provide a technical architecture that makes those end-to-end systems possible.”

These foundational models are particularly good at generalizing across different environments and scenarios, potentially making AVs cheaper and faster to deploy. The arrival of powerful open source models like Nvidia’s Alpamayo and Qwen’s general-purpose vision-language-action models has made it even easier for startups to get off the ground.

The barrier to entry is lower than ever before. Meruva said Trucks is consistently seeing startups deploy within a few months and with less than $1 million raised. (And while Meruva wouldn’t name names, the firm has invested in some of them.)

Of these 81 startups that pitched Trucks VC, I mistakenly assumed most would be applying their AV tech to construction, warehouse, agriculture, and mining. And yes, those were in the mix. But what surprised me was the growing number of startups pitching pure-play robotaxi businesses. And many are positioning themselves as direct competitors to Waymo.

As wild and galaxy brain-thinking as that may sound, Meruva thinks there is room for smaller players.

“In this world, smaller, more niche autonomy companies can compete — maybe they’re not competing with Waymo on a global scale, but maybe they’re competing in specific regions or specific types of routes,” he said.

And Meruva doesn’t see the pace flattening. He expects even more AV startups to pitch the firm next year.

Regular readers of this newsletter know we’ve been closely following Slate Auto — breaking the original story on Jeff Bezos’ investment way back in April 2025. But the company it spun out of is what got our attention this week.

Re:Build, a Massachusetts-based manufacturing accelerator, raised $2.1 billion to “expand Re:Build’s capacity to manufacture hard tech products and launch new industrial startups.” The investment was led by General Catalyst and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group. Other investors weren’t disclosed.

The company, which was co-founded by Amazon’s former commercial CEO Jeff Wilke, has billed itself as “America’s answer to Shenzhen.”

Other deals …

Bedrock Robotics raised $600 million in a funding round that values the autonomous vehicle technology startup at $4.1 billion. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the Series C round. New investors US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Bessemer Venture Partners, and Temasek participated in the round, alongside existing investors 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital, and Nvidia.

DoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart for $17 billion. Meanwhile, DoorDash noted in its third-quarter earnings that it has, so far, only received a few hundred orders from AI agents.

PreScalar, a San Francisco-based startup developing software and testing infrastructure for factories, raised $7 million in seed funding co-led by Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures, with participation from Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler. The startup was founded last year by a trio who had stints at Cruise, Google, Rivian, and Waymo.

Elroy Air, a startup developing autonomous heavy-cargo drones for defense, rapid response, and commercial logistics, hired Jeremy Hux as its CFO in preparation for going public.

Ford announced two new EV chargers that will allow its forthcoming Fathom pickup truck to serve as a battery capable of delivering power to the home or grid.

GM is embracing hybrids now. Times sure have changed! The U.S. automaker is also trying to move past the driver data-selling controversy from several years ago. GM agreed to a $220 million settlement with 36 states (its settlement with California and the Federal Trade Commission happened earlier) to settle allegations that it illegally sold private driving behavior and location information to data brokers.

Kodiak AI will deliver 75 self-driving trucks to freight company DTL Transport starting in 2028. It’s the company’s first binding commercial deal for driverless big rigs that will run on public highways.

Rivian reported its third-quarter earnings, and a few items stood out to us. For one, the new R2 has been successful enough for the company to raise its 2026 delivery guidance by a couple thousands vehicles. Rivian, which had previously expected to deliver between 65,000 and 70,000 EVs this year, bumped up that floor to 67,000. But here is another potentially lucrative development: The $5.8 billion joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen Group is expanding to include AI assistants. No word yet on whether that means VW will invest even more money into Rivian.

Tesla turns to Turo to boost adoption of Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Waymo and Toyota have locked in a manufacturing partnership, officially moving them past the “we’re just talking” phase. Toyota will manufacture AV-ready bZ4X vehicles — and integrate Waymo’s self-driving system — at its factory in Japan. The vehicles will be used for robotaxi services in Japan, the U.K., and other international markets. Importantly, the companies hinted that this could eventually lead to a licensing deal in which Waymo AV tech is in personally owned vehicles.

Last call for founders, investors, and builders based in and around the Boston area. The Founder Summit — a one-day event in Boston — will be held on November 4. And I will be there! This event is really geared toward startup founders, aspiring founders, and investors. Attendees can expect advice-driven talks from VCs and serial founders, plus lots of chances to network.

For my TechCrunch Mobility readers, here is a 30% discount on tickets. Click this link and use the code mobility30.

After a court disclosure revealed thousands of products were shredded in Hong Kong every six months back in 2017, Chanel points to L’Atelier des Matières and new circular unit Nevold as proof that unsold goods are now recycled, not destroyed.

LONDON — Chanel is pushing back against figures recently disclosed in a Hong Kong courtroom, stressing they don’t reflect how the brand now handles unsold goods as Europe tightens the rules on fashion waste.

During the Tuesday trial of two former warehouse staffers accused of trying to steal 724 items earmarked for destruction, prosecutors said Chanel Hong Kong destroys 10,000 to 20,000 products every six months.

“The figure mentioned during the trial does not reflect Chanel’s current global practices, which have evolved in line with its sustainability commitments,” the company said in a statement shared with WWD.

“Today, all Chanel products worldwide that cannot be commercialized, including deadstock, unsold, or defective products, are managed through L’Atelier des Matières. Created in 2019 on the initiative of Chanel, L’Atelier des Matières recycles such products from luxury and premium brands in order to reuse them, supporting their reintegration into circular value chains,” the brand said.

L’Atelier des Matières sits under Nevold, an independent business-to-business hub for circular materials that Chanel formally launched in 2025.

Backed by 50 million to 80 million euros, Nevold pulls together L’Atelier des Matières, Filatures du Parc, a legacy wool-spinning mill with expertise in new and recycled yarns, and Authentic Material, an upcycled natural materials provider specializing in leather.

Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion and president of Chanel SAS, told WWD earlier that the goal is to turn waste into a resource at scale.

He noted that Nevold has already developed a thread blending virgin and end‑of‑life fibers that is being used by Chanel and other brands, and a recycled leather used for reinforcements inside handbags and shoes.

Around 30 percent of Chanel handbags and 50 percent of its shoes now contain those recycled components, with the brand targeting the removal of plastics in those areas.

Set up as a separate entity, Nevold is meant to work beyond Chanel’s ateliers in Rue Cambon, supplying recycled materials to other fashion players as well as industries such as sportswear, automotive, and aviation.

Pavlovsky argued that only by working at that broader, industrial scale can recycled options become price‑competitive and widely adopted.

Chanel’s response on Thursday could not be more timely.

From Sunday, the European Union is rolling out its Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, which will ban the destruction of unsold clothing, footwear and accessories and force companies to disclose how much stock they write off and under what conditions it is destroyed.

By building its own circular materials infrastructure and making sure that unsold goods are now systematically captured by L’Atelier des Matières, Chanel is positioning itself as part of the solution rather than a symbol of the problem.

Raffaella Loncao, founder of On This Planet Advisory and a former luxury executive, said what’s happening around Chanel is part of a much broader shift that fashion is moving from managing waste to trying to design it out of the system.

That transition, she added, is being driven by forces such as tougher regulation like France’s AGEC law, the rollout of AI in demand forecasting and inventory planning, heavy investment in new materials, and fast‑developing traceability tools that started in anti‑counterfeiting and now underpin repair, resale, recycling and coming digital product passports.

France’s experience is seen as a test case. Having operated under AGEC since 2020, companies there including Chanel have already been forced to make the organizational and operational changes before the wider EU implementation.

“The lesson is not a specific policy mechanism to copy, but that this transition is manageable,” Loncao noted, adding that brands which use the moment to rethink product design, planning and circularity, rather than just box‑tick on compliance, will be better positioned.

“The discussion has evolved beyond the destruction of unsold products. The future of luxury will not be defined by finding better ways to dispose of excess inventory, but by becoming precise enough not to create that excess in the first place,” she added.