TheChek News Flow

The 2003 birthday book also includes a letter that references Trump with a crude joke about a woman from another Epstein associate

An image of the letter bearing Trump’s signature, which has been turned over to Congress by the Epstein estate.

Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein’s estate have given Congress a copy of the birthday book put together for the financier’s 50th birthday, which includes a letter with President Trump’s signature that he has said doesn’t exist.

On Monday, House Oversight Committee members confirmed that they received a copy of the birthday book including the letter bearing Trump’s signature and a second letter that references Trump with a crude joke about a woman from another Epstein associate.

The Wall Street Journal in July reported on the book and the letter bearing Trump’s name, which contained typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman. The letter concluded: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” The signature was a squiggly “Donald” below the waist, mimicking pubic hair.

Trump has denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, calling it “a fake thing.” He also filed a lawsuit against the Journal’s reporters, Journal publisher Dow Jones, parent company News Corp and executives, alleging defamation and saying the letter was “nonexistent.” A Dow Jones spokeswoman said, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting.”

Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a social-media post that Trump’s legal team will continue to pursue its defamation case against the Journal. “As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” Leavitt said in a post on X.

The Trump administration’s shifting statements about whether it would release the files it has on Epstein have hung over the White House for months. On Sept. 3, Trump called efforts to make public more details about Epstein a politically driven hoax, just as some of the convicted sex offender’s victims visited Capitol Hill to tell their stories of sexual abuse and implored the president and Congress to release further records.

Allies of Trump have long sought release of Epstein-related materials, but the Justice Department said in July that there isn’t a client list of people who participated in Epstein’s trafficking of young girls, and new files wouldn’t be released. That determination triggered an uproar among some of Trump’s prominent supporters and efforts in Congress to seek the records.

Lawyers for the co-executors of Epstein’s estate turned over a copy of the birthday book on Monday in response to a subpoena from Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chair of the House Oversight Committee. In a July 25 letter to the Epstein estate’s lawyers, Rep. Robert Garcia (D., Calif.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) had pressed the estate to release the book.

“President Trump called the Epstein investigation a hoax and claimed that his birthday note didn’t exist. Now we know that Donald Trump was lying and is doing everything he can to cover up the truth,” said Garcia, who is the committee’s Democratic ranking member. “Enough of the games and lies, release the full files now.”

In a social-media post Monday, Comer accused Democrats of “cherry-picking documents” from the Epstein estate and said he was focused on running a thorough investigation.

The birthday book given to Epstein in 2003—before his first arrest in 2006—was professionally bound and contained letters from dozens of Epstein’s then associates, including Trump, former President Bill Clinton and billionaire Leon Black, the Journal has reported. Some of the messages were anodyne birthday wishes, but others contained sexual references and suggestive drawings or photos.

The Epstein estate also turned over another letter from the book that references Trump. It came from businessman and longtime Mar-a-Lago member Joel Pashcow, who made a crude joke about a woman whom Epstein and Trump each courted in the 1990s, according to court testimony and people familiar with the matter.

The Pashcow letter included a photo of a posterboard-sized check for $22,500, which had been mocked up to appear that it was sent from Trump to Epstein. Beneath it, a caption said: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women sells ‘fully depreciated’ [woman’s name] to Donald Trump for $22,500.” The woman’s name is redacted in the image.

An image of another birthday letter to Epstein, which has been turned over to Congress by the Epstein estate.

The woman, a wealthy European then in her 20s, severed all ties with Epstein around 1997 and had no romantic relationship with either Epstein or Trump, her lawyer said. The lawyer added that she doesn’t know Pashcow and has no knowledge of the letter naming her, which he called a “disgusting and deeply disturbing hoax.” Pashcow and his attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The woman became a point of tension in Epstein and Trump’s friendship, according to people who were close to Epstein. Epstein told these people that he believed the woman enjoyed spending time with him over Trump, and that he was bitter when she ended up choosing to go out with Trump.

Trump and Pashcow were listed under the “Friends” section in the book’s table of contents, along with Clinton and about 20 other associates, the Journal reported. Trump and Epstein socialized in the 1990s in Palm Beach, Fla. Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet, flight logs show. Epstein was photographed multiple times at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

When Epstein was arrested a second time in 2019, Trump said he hadn’t talked to Epstein in about 15 years. This summer, he told reporters that he had a falling-out with Epstein because his wealthy neighbor poached some employees from the Mar-a-Lago club.

The Justice Department informed Trump in May that his name appeared several times in the government files related to Epstein, the Journal reported. Many other high-profile figures also were named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the files isn’t an indication of wrongdoing. The White House called the story “fake news.”

Startup’s leaders have discussed last-ditch prospect of leaving California if regulators complicate transition to for-profit company

OpenAI executives are growing concerned that mounting political scrutiny in California could stymie their efforts to become a for-profit company and have discussed a last-ditch option of moving out of the state.

Some of California’s biggest philanthropies, nonprofits and labor groups are joining forces to push back on the startup’s high-stakes restructuring plan. Because OpenAI is controlled by a nonprofit, they are asking the state’s attorney general to ensure the new company it creates doesn’t violate the state’s charitable trust law.

Attorneys general in California and Delaware are investigating OpenAI’s proposed plan. The regulators have a legal responsibility to protect their states’ charities. They have the power to sue OpenAI for potentially breaking nonprofit law or require the company to pay a settlement as a condition for the restructure.

An OpenAI spokesman said the company has no plans to leave California.

Failing to restructure could be catastrophic for the world’s most valuable startup, imperiling its future fundraising efforts and a potential public listing. Led by CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI is currently run as a subsidiary that doesn’t issue traditional equity and is controlled by a nonprofit parent. That is an unpopular structure among its investors, who are pushing for the change.

OpenAI’s financial backers have conditioned roughly $19 billion in funding—almost half of the startup’s total in the past year—on receiving shares in the new for-profit company. If the restructure doesn’t happen, they could pull their money, hampering OpenAI’s costly ambitions to build giant data centers, make custom chips, and stay at the bleeding edge of AI research.

The growing political pressure is adding to an array of challenges the company is facing, including how to stem billions of dollars a year in losses, fighting poaching efforts from rivals in an escalating talent war and trying to loosen Microsoft’s grip over its business.

OpenAI executives didn’t expect such intense public blowback to the restructuring plan when they first announced it late last year, according to people familiar with the matter. The outcome of the California attorney general’s investigation has been a particular concern in recent months, the people said.

OpenAI has discussed potentially relocating out of California as a last-ditch option if the state’s attorney general complicates the restructuring, the people said. Such a move would be difficult, given that its AI researchers are heavily concentrated in San Francisco.

“We continue to work constructively with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware,” an OpenAI spokesman said. He added that the company wants to create one of the best-resourced nonprofits in history.

Seeking support

OpenAI recently hired a slew of advisers with close ties to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, including former Sen. Laphonza Butler, to build support for the plan in Sacramento. The startup spent the summer hosting listening sessions with civil society groups across the state, and pledged to spend $50 million to support nonprofit and community organizations.

In May, OpenAI delivered a major concession to its opponents by announcing that the nonprofit would remain in control of the proposed new company, abandoning an earlier effort to separate the two entirely. It was a major setback for Altman and his investors, but executives privately said the decision was necessary to dent opposition to the conversion.

But political scrutiny is growing. On Friday, the California and Delaware attorneys general wrote to OpenAI with concerns about its commitments to AI safety in light of new reports of recent suicides from people who had prolonged interactions with ChatGPT.

Part of the discussions between OpenAI and the California attorney general are centered on ensuring the nonprofit has robust and independent control over the new company. The office’s regulators see the suicides as a sign OpenAI has prioritized ChatGPT usage and revenue over its mission of creating AI for the public benefit, according to a person familiar with its work.

“The recent deaths are unacceptable. They have rightly shaken the American public’s confidence in OpenAI and this industry,” they wrote in a letter to OpenAI. “OpenAI—and the AI industry—must proactively and transparently ensure AI’s safe deployment. Doing so is mandated by OpenAI’s charitable mission, and will be required and enforced by our respective offices.”

OpenAI has said it is addressing issues around sycophancy—when the programming of AI systems leads them to be agreeable to users—and would introduce parental controls for ChatGPT. “We are fully committed to addressing the Attorneys General’s concerns,” Bret Taylor, chairman of OpenAI’s board, said in a statement.

Growing opposition

OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015, but created a for-profit subsidiary that allowed it to raise tens of billions of dollars from Microsoft and venture capitalists. The decision enabled it to build and sell its expensive AI technology, but opened it up to criticism that it was illegally diverting nonprofit resources to enrich private shareholders, not the general public.

Investors grew unhappy with the structure, which gave them fewer governance rights and so-called profit-sharing units instead of traditional equity. They pushed for change.

In late 2024, OpenAI said it was converting the subsidiary into an independent, for-profit corporation.

The California attorney general opened an investigation into OpenAI after the restructuring plan was made public, citing its responsibility to “protect assets held in charitable trust” in a December letter to the board of directors. Shortly after, leading nonprofit legal scholars, former OpenAI employees, and industry leaders opposed the plan, arguing that it was an abdication of the nonprofit’s founding mission.

Rival Meta Platforms has urged the California attorney general to block the conversion. And Elon Musk made a bid for control of OpenAI’s assets earlier this year that the startup rejected.

OpenAI is also fighting a lawsuit filed by Musk and his rival AI startup xAI that is seeking to block the conversion, alleging that it violated its nonprofit mission. The case is expected to go to trial next year. OpenAI has said the suit is baseless and without merit.

In April, a coalition of over 60 nonprofits led by the San Francisco Foundation, one of the state’s largest philanthropies, sent a letter to the California attorney general asking it to investigate whether OpenAI violated its federal tax-exempt status.

Absent enforcement action from the attorney general, the coalition wrote that “other startups, looking at OpenAI as a model, are likely to consider whether to take similar advantage of nonprofit status to create accelerated and amplified possibilities for individual financial benefit.”

Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, the state’s largest coalition of labor unions, said the organization has spent more than a year discussing the restructuring with the attorney general’s office.

“We have been very clear in our position that they benefitted from being a nonprofit, they’re now going to make massive profits, and that money should come back to the people who it would have gone to in the first place,” she said.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Of all the tech companies to reinvent themselves through the power of artificial intelligence, Oracle may be the most surprising. The software giant of yesteryear (well, the 1980s and ‘90s), which stumbled in software’s transition to the cloud, has gotten a new lease on life as an AI cloud provider. We’ll get an update on its progress on Tuesday when Oracle reports results for its quarter ending in August—the first of its 2026 fiscal year. (Oracle’s fiscal year runs June through May). But there’s been some clues dropped lately that suggest the company is slashing costs to help pay for its costly AI cloud expansion.

My colleague Anissa Gardizy hears Oracle executives are discussing eliminating cash raises and bonuses for employees this year, with additional stock grants likely to offset the cash compensation that isn’t being paid. That’s on top of widespread reports of layoffs at the company, at least some of which are based on regulatory layoffs in states such as California. (We reached out to Oracle for comment but didn’t hear back.) Still, severe cost-cutting is a predictable response to the financial strain that Oracle is under.

In the May quarter, the company burned cash (technically it reported negative free cash flow) of $2.9 billion, thanks to capital expenditures of $9.1 billion, roughly triple what the company spent a year earlier.

As it had generated cash earlier in the year, Oracle’s fiscal 2025 full-year result was a small cash burn of $400 million. Analysts are projecting the company will show higher cash burn for fiscal 2026, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, following the company’s projections that capital expenditures will rise 19% to at least $25 billion. Nowadays, you don’t see too many companies of Oracle’s age (it will be 50 in 2027) burning cash. Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta Platforms are all spending furiously on AI as well—and also cutting jobs here and there to control costs. But they all generate so much cash from their main businesses that they can comfortably pay for the massive capex—at least for now. (This will likely change: It’s getting a bit tight at Amazon, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statement on Thursday that Meta will invest $600 billion on data centers through 2028 suggests it could change for Meta as well).

Oracle is banking on this big investment paying off in the years to come. Indeed, its quarterly revenue growth accelerated over the past 12 months from 7% in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 to an expected 13% for the first quarter of fiscal 2026. CEO Safra Catz has forecast 16% revenue growth in fiscal 2026 and analysts see that growth accelerating to 20% in fiscal 2027 and 24% in fiscal 2028. But top line growth is no guarantee of higher profits if costs rise even more. As we’ve written here, getting new data centers open on time can be much more expensive than planned.

Moreover, as Anissa reported in this piece, Oracle’s risk in AI is heightened by the fact that Oracle is building giant facilities for just one customer—OpenAI—rather than lots of customers as other cloud firms do. In the long run, Oracle employees may appreciate having received extra stock grants instead of cash. But any slowdown in the AI spending boom could throw everything into reverse, potentially hitting Oracle harder than its bigger rivals.

DAX:

MDAX:

SDAX:

The company aims to expand in Southeast Asia after announcing a $250 million partnership with Malaysia earlier this year

British chip designer Arm ARM 0.70%increase; green up pointing triangle wants to do more in Southeast Asia, its chief commercial officer says.

The market has huge potential as demand for data centers and artificial intelligence rises, said CCO Will Abbey, who has been at SoftBank-backed Arm since 2004.

Arm is aiming to expand in Southeast Asia after announcing a $250 million partnership with Malaysia earlier this year—its first ever with a country. Abbey sees opportunity for a similar tie-up with Singapore.

“We see Southeast Asia as a hotbed of activity, and we’d like to do more in this region,” he said in an interview on the back of the Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore. “Demand is still growing.”

Arm is one of the many big tech names looking to the region for business opportunities.

Southeast Asia has been drawing in billions of dollars in data center and AI investments from tech giants like Microsoft, TikTok owner ByteDance, and Google as demand surges. Analysts say the region’s neutral geopolitical stance is part of its appeal, particularly during times of heightened geopolitical tensions.

Part of the demand comes from the need to host data domestically.

There is an “urgency for Southeast Asian players to build AI-ready data centers…to ensure that data and infrastructure remain on shore in a world of growing geopolitical tensions where data is the new currency,” Deloitte said in a recent report.

Under the partnership with Malaysia, Arm is providing intellectual property licenses and technology. It will also facilitate the development of locally made semiconductor products, and will collect royalties on chips sold.

For Malaysia, the end goal is to sell “Made by Malaysia” AI chips, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said earlier this year.

Shares of Nasdaq-listed Arm have come under pressure this year due to concerns that tariffs will hurt the semiconductor market. The company withheld guidance for the year, adding to worries about how the macroeconomic environment could hurt demand.

Arm generates revenue from licensing fees for its chip designs, and collects royalties on every chip shipped. About 10%-20% of the royalty revenue comes from U.S.-bound shipments, and China is one of its largest customers.

Arm has said tariffs will likely have only a limited direct impact on royalty and licensing revenue, but warned it was getting more difficult to predict end-demand.

Clients like Nvidia and Apple face more direct hits from tariffs, and rising cross-border trade costs could ultimately crimp Arm’s revenue stream.

But Abbey sees some silver linings.

Tariff barriers are a sign of a maturing market, he said, one in which “state actors, countries start to think about how do I take control, how do I build and solve my own problems nationally.”

Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, semiconductors have “become a real critical national level strategy that you need to think intelligently about,” Abbey said.

Countries’ push for self-sufficiency in tech should boost demand for AI computing, buoying demand for Arm’s technology, he added.

Rather than having hosted services from large-scale cloud infrastructure providers, countries are thinking: why not build compute capacity for themselves, he said, calling data “the new oil.”