WSJ : Iran Says It Will Open Secret New Enrichment Site After U.N. Atomic Agency

Iran Says It Will Open Secret New Enrichment Site After U.N. Atomic Agency Censure
Move casts shadow over nuclear talks while Trump says an Israeli strike ‘could very well happen’

Key Points
  • Iran will open a third uranium enrichment site, after being cited for non-compliance by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
  • President Trump said an Israeli strike on Iran “could very well happen,” while the U.S. is set to hold a sixth round of nuclear negotiations with Iran.
  • Iran will accelerate production of near-weapons-grade uranium and install centrifuges in the new site, according to Iranian state media.

Iran said Thursday it would soon open a third uranium enrichment site, while President Trump said that an Israeli strike on the country “could very well happen.”
Iran’s announcement about the enrichment site came after the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency decided for the first time in two decades that Tehran had failed to comply with its nonproliferation obligations.

The U.S. is set to hold its sixth round of nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran on Sunday. Trump is trying to persuade Tehran to stop producing fissile material as part of a new nuclear deal.

Trump said earlier this week that he had grown less confident about striking a deal with Tehran, but in remarks to reporters on Thursday said that he thought an agreement was “fairly close.”

“I would love to avoid a conflict,” he said. “They’re going to have to be willing to give us some things that they’re not willing to give us right now.”
The president has said he could take military action against Iran if nuclear talks fail. Israel has long warned it would strike Iran’s sites if it believed Tehran was starting to build a nuclear weapon, something Tehran claims it has never sought to do.

Asked if an Israeli strike on Iran was imminent, Trump replied on Thursday: “I don’t want to say it’s imminent but it looks like something that could very well happen.”

The head of Iran’s atomic agency, Mohammad Eslami, said Tehran would accelerate its production of near-weapons-grade uranium and open a previously unrevealed enrichment site in what he said is a secure location, according to Iranian state media.
Eslami said Iran was starting the process of readying and installing centrifuges in the new site and would start producing fissile material there as soon as it was ready. That would suggest Iran has been working on the site in secret for some time.
He said Tehran informed the International Atomic Energy Agency about its plans immediately after Thursday morning’s vote. The IAEA didn’t immediately comment.
Iran currently has two main enrichment sites. One is underground, at Natanz, while another is built deep into a mountainside, near the holy city of Qom, at Fordow. Iran kept the construction of Fordow secret for years before it was revealed by Western officials in 2009. Both are built in a way to protect them from strikes by Israel or the U.S.
Tehran’s announcement comes ahead of a sixth round of nuclear negotiations with the U.S. Photo: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Iran has in the past made claims about its planned nuclear work that haven’t come to fruition. The country is also heavily monitored by foreign intelligence agencies, which have frequently picked up Iranian nuclear work the country sought to keep secret.
Under IAEA rules, Iran is supposed to give the agency advance notice of any plans to build nuclear sites, but Tehran has refused to abide by those obligations for several years, citing the collapse of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. The IAEA and Western member states have repeatedly urged Iran to resume compliance, saying the issue is unrelated to the 2015 agreement.
Iran has rapidly escalated its production of fissile material in the past six months and is producing around one nuclear weapon’s worth of 60% highly enriched uranium a month, principally at Fordow. As part of Thursday’s announcement, Iran said it would further increase its production of highly enriched uranium at Fordow by replacing basic centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium with more advanced, faster ones.
The addition of a third enrichment site would give Iran greater latitude to speed up its nuclear program. Iran already has enough highly enriched uranium to make around 10 nuclear weapons, according to IAEA data.
David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for 19 nuclear weapons within three months, allowing it to start to build a real nuclear arsenal.

Eslami provided no details of the new site. There have long been concerns in Israel and the U.S. that Tehran was planning to place a new enrichment facility deep underground at its Natanz site, where it has carried out several years of construction work on a tunnel complex. Such a location could be very hard to strike.
Albright said that Iran could be nearing completion of its work on the underground complex and that the location could hold a small enrichment site.
Iran’s announcements came after Iran was declared to be in noncompliance with IAEA safeguard rules for the first time in 20 years. The IAEA board of member states passed a noncompliance resolution by 19-3. The resolution was pushed by the U.S. and European powers. Russia, China and Burkina Faso voted against it, diplomats said.

The vote was called over Iran’s repeated refusal over the past six years to explain the presence of undeclared nuclear material in Iran.
Last month, the IAEA warned it couldn’t say with certainty that Iran hadn’t diverted undeclared nuclear material—potentially for a military purpose—that was found in the country after 2018, when the U.S. pulled out of the 2015 nuclear accord.
The U.S. says it has no evidence Iran has decided to develop a nuclear weapon, but U.S. officials say it could take Iran just a few months. U.S. intelligence officials said last year that it was becoming more likely Iran might decide to build a bomb and that Tehran was conducting work that could help it do so.
The IAEA vote opens the way for Iran’s nuclear work to be referred to the U.N. Security Council for action. European diplomats, who pushed the resolution alongside Washington, say that unless Iran reverses course, they would later this year reimpose the international sanctions lifted on Iran under the 2015 deal.
A recent satellite image of Iran’s Natanz facility. Photo: Planet Labs PBC/Associated Press
Iran has said that if sanctions are snapped back, it could kick out inspectors and leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which obliges participants not to develop nuclear weapons.
Speaking in Oslo, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the IAEA board decision will make Sunday’s nuclear talks in Oman harder.
“Of course, this meeting will take place in the context of a new resolution that has been adopted by IAEA, which adds to the complexity of the discussions,” he said. “However, we will be in Muscat to defend the rights of the Iranian nation…and to defend the nuclear achievements of Iranian scientists.”
The vote comes as the U.S. moves to draw down its presence in parts of the Middle East to essential personnel, the State Department and Pentagon said Wednesday.
Experts and former officials say that Israel could try to defuse what it sees as the threat to its security of a nuclear-armed Iran if the deal talks are stymied. Trump said recently that he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against taking action—such as a military strike—that could threaten the talks with Iran.
Iran has warned that it would respond to any attack by hitting U.S. bases in the region.
Iranian Defense Minister Amir Aziz Nasirzadeh said Wednesday that if “a conflict is imposed on us…all U.S. bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”
The U.S.-Iran nuclear talks have stumbled over a fundamental divide between the two sides. Trump has said he wants a deal that ends Iran’s enrichment of fissile material, saying that is the only way to ensure Tehran can’t develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has made continuing enrichment its core red line over two decades of nuclear negotiations.

WSJ : Why Warner Boss Zaslav Is Having to Split Up the Media Empire He Built

Why Warner Boss Zaslav Is Having to Split Up the Media Empire He Built
The studio and cable conglomerate that David Zaslav created couldn’t overcome outside forces and massive debt

Key Points
  • Warner Bros. Discovery will split into two companies after a merger three years ago.
  • CEO David Zaslav will lead the studio/HBO Max company; cable channels form the other.
  • The merger burdened the company with debt, leading to cost cuts and a stock decline.

Warner Bros. Discovery WBD Chief Executive David Zaslav loves the 1941 Humphrey Bogart classic “The Maltese Falcon” about a group of unsavory characters searching for an elusive statuette of a gold jewel-encrusted falcon.

The falcon is “the stuff dreams are made of,” Bogart’s character famously says, driving people to do just about anything to possess it. Combining Warner with Discovery was Zaslav’s Maltese falcon. And like the movie’s protagonists, Zaslav couldn’t secure it.

His old world entertainment titan’s ambition collided with the realities of a media business in turmoil. Now, three years after he closed on a deal that merged his Discovery cable TV networks with AT&T’s WarnerMedia business, Zaslav is breaking it into two separate companies.

The CEO, who has enjoyed industry-topping paydays throughout the tumultuous three-year marriage, will sit atop the company home to Warner movie and television studios and HBO Max streaming service. The second will consist primarily of cable channels such as CNN, TNT and Food Network, and own a 20% stake in the other.

“We now have healthier, sturdier businesses that can be separated and grow and soar,” Zaslav said in an interview.

Accelerated cord-cutting, streaming’s ascendance, Hollywood labor strikes and AI’s rapid development reshaped the media and entertainment industries while the merged company grappled with a hefty debt load and deep cost cuts. But the company was also plagued by Zaslav’s own bad bets and missteps.

The biggest problem: Zaslav took on more than $50 billion in debt to do the deal.

The company couldn’t shoulder a sum that large. To pay it off, Zaslav cut $5 billion in costs. Warner laid off thousands of workers. It scrapped high-profile movies and canceled television shows and the CNN+ streaming service.

The belt-tightening hurt the company’s ability to compete and grow. Morale sank. Workers were especially angry with Zaslav’s opulent lifestyle and $140 million in compensation over the last three years.

In Warner’s most recent employee survey in February, 5% of employees disagreed that they were satisfied working for the company, a spokesman said after this story was initially published.

“The merger of the companies was ill advised because of the massive debt it took to make it happen, and because the brands never fit together as neatly as advertised,” said Paul Verna, Emarketer’s vice president of content. Ultimately, Zaslav’s “only option was to undo much of what he engineered with the merger of Discovery and Warner Media.”

Warner’s fortunes sank. Last year, it took a $9.1 billion write-down on the value of its cable networks. Wall Street soured. Since the company’s creation in 2022, the stock has lost 60% of its value. Under pressure from an activist, the company earlier this year added a private-equity veteran to its board.

Making deals
A protégé of the late Jack Welch, who ran General Electric when it owned NBC, Zaslav got his start as a lawyer at the conglomerate making deals for its cable networks. He helped launch CNBC and MSNBC and quickly rose in the industry.

After taking the helm of Discovery in 2006, Zaslav doubled down on low-cost reality shows, rather than the low-rated educational fare the company was built on, boosting ratings and revenue as well as expanding globally.

He also laid off 20% of the staff.

Zaslav built Discovery through acquisitions, culminating with the 2018 $12 billion deal to buy Scripps Networks and its channels including Food Network and HGTV.

Yet he feared Discovery was too small—and wanted movie and television studios to help build a global streaming service for the new era of television. When AT&T was looking to unload WarnerMedia, he pounced.

The deal went through a lengthy regulatory process. When the companies combined, Warner staffers hoped Zaslav would put an end to AT&T’s restructuring.

Yet more and more consumers were cutting the cord, hurting cable viewership and sinking ad revenue. The pandemic wreaked havoc on production, then was followed by strikes.

Zaslav lost support inside and outside Warner. Hollywood jeered his gutting of much of the staff of the Turner Classic Movies network, which industry officials view as a sacred cow. The decisions to cancel the movie “Batgirl” and other projects were also unpopular. Company insiders noted that Zaslav and his lieutenants talked about investing in the future, but killed off forward-looking, albeit expensive, projects such as the CNN+ streaming service.

Warner also initially struggled to execute its vision for its “Max” streaming service. Launched in 2023, executives touted the appeal of the service’s breadth of offerings, from prestige TV in HBO to Harry Potter films and TV from Discovery networks including HGTV, Food Network and TLC.

But after trying to catch up to larger rivals like Netflix, executives realized they should focus more on distinct content than being everything to everyone, and take better advantage of the HBO brand. It was renamed “HBO Max” earlier this year.

The streaming business boosted its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to $677 million last year from $103 million a year earlier. The company projects it will rise to $1.3 billion for the current year.

Then there was the National Basketball Association, a reliable source of viewership, which called Warner’s TNT network home for more than three decades. The league grew irritated after Zaslav said at an industry conference in late 2022 that the company didn’t “have to have the NBA.”

Negotiations were difficult. Ultimately, the NBA signed a new deal with Disney’s ESPN and brought in NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime Video as new partners.

Angering staff
Some Warner staff grew disenchanted with Zaslav’s leadership. Early on, he challenged executives over greenlighting a Clint Eastwood-directed movie that was a box office disappointment. “Alto Knights,” a mob movie starring Robert De Niro and written by his Hamptons neighbor and “Goodfellas” scribe Nicholas Pileggi that Zaslav championed, was a commercial and critical flop.

A chunk of the CEO’s compensation is based on free cash flow, which soared as the company cut costs. Many division heads, in particular, chafed at having to rein in production and marketing budgets to help pay down the debt and increase free cash flow.

Warner employees grimaced at the optics of Zaslav sitting courtside at New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers games, next to pals such as John McEnroe, David Geffen and Dustin Hoffman while staff lost their jobs.

Some of Zaslav’s strategic moves might pay off in the long run. Keeping the NBA would have meant more than doubling the $1.2 billion average annual rights fees TNT was paying, money it has since used for other sports rights.

Despite losing the NBA, Warner was able to negotiate new long-term distribution agreements for TNT and its other cable networks at increased fees with big cable operators Comcast and Charter. That will help position the cable networks company for the future.

After a tough start to the year, the Warner movie studio is on a hot streak as of late thanks to hits “Sinners” and “Minecraft.” The company is also releasing a much-anticipated new “Superman” movie this summer.

The company’s debt has been cut by $19 billion, and most of the remaining $34 billion will sit on the global networks company, led by Warner’s current finance chief Gunnar Wiedenfels.

The global networks company could benefit from the cash-generating channels, but a good chunk of that ad revenue will go to paying down debt. The studio and streaming company, meantime, could prosper from hits such as HBO’s “The Last of Us” and box office successes, and if HBO Max keeps adding subscribers.

Yet most industry officials and analysts expect Zaslav’s endgame is for each to be acquired.

FT : BlackRock sets $400bn fundraising target to take on private capital giants

BlackRock sets $400bn fundraising target to take on private capital giants
Asset manager unveils ambitious goal as part of plan to double market capitalisation by 2030

BlackRock has set an ambitious $400bn fundraising target for its private investment businesses, as executives laid out a plan to almost double the market value of the world’s largest asset manager by 2030.

The 2030 targets show how BlackRock and its chief executive Larry Fink hope to build the business as it moves to compete with giants of the alternative asset world including Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and KKR.

BlackRock last year agreed to spend about $28bn to buy Global Infrastructure Partners, credit investment shop HPS Investment Partners and private fund data provider Preqin in quick succession, as Fink shifted the group away from its public market roots.

Fink told investors BlackRock “probably did not use M&A enough in the years” after its landmark deal to buy Barclays Global Investors in 2009. The purchase gave the group the iShares exchange traded fund platform, making BlackRock the world’s largest asset manager.

“Strategic acquisitions have strengthened our firm, have built a better culture . . . bringing top talent,” he said. “What makes our acquisitions so successful was a steadfast commitment to integrate the organisations.”

GIP has been active under its new owner, striking a deal in March worth $22.8bn to buy dozens of ports, including two on both sides of the Panama Canal, as well as partnering with Microsoft on a new $30bn artificial intelligence investment fund. BlackRock’s takeover of HPS is expected to close in July.

Fink has said BlackRock clients are increasingly seeking out private markets and that the company decided to compete by acquiring top players in the industry.

“It is our job to stay ahead and to continuously reinvent BlackRock,” chief operating officer Rob Goldstein added. “We have been investing in the building blocks to serve clients,” he added, characterising the three businesses as a “game changer”.

The company said it believed revenues could eclipse $35bn a year by 2030, growing roughly 10 per cent a year.

Much of that expansion will be fuelled by its private investment and technology businesses. Martin Small, BlackRock’s chief financial officer, said shifting just a small portion of client assets from public market funds into its new private investment strategies could generate $1bn of base fee growth for the group.

BlackRock expects 30 per cent or more of its revenues will be generated from those areas by 2030, up from 15 per cent at the end of last year. The new fundraising target for the private investment divisions works out at about $65bn a year between 2025 and 2030.

The New York-headquartered business also set a $15bn adjusted operating income target and said it believed its market value could rise to $280bn by 2030, up from $154bn today.

Fink said one of his top priorities was working with BlackRock co-founder Rob Kapito and the group’s board of directors to develop the money manager’s leadership team. The company has seen a number of top executives depart in recent years, including Mark Wiedman, who left to join US bank PNC, and Salim Ramji, who is now chief executive of rival Vanguard.

“I’m not planning to leave BlackRock any time soon,” Fink added.

L’informe : R évélations sur les comptes très inquiétants de Sorare, l’ex-star d


Révélations sur les comptes très inquiétants de Sorare, l’ex-star de la French Tech

Chiffre d’affaires en chute libre, pertes abyssales… malgré 680 millions de dollars levés, le roi du « fantasy football » est dans une situation financière critique.

Son nom est indissociable de ces stars du foot qui lui servent d’ambassadeurs de luxe - les Kylian Mbappé, Antoine Griezmann, Lionel Messi, Zinedine Zidane... Mais dans la French Tech, il évoque surtout un record : celui de la plus grosse levée de fonds jamais réalisée par une start-up tricolore. Sorare a amassé 680 millions de dollars en 2021, quand les liquidités coulaient à flots vers les jeunes pousses dans le marché du « venture capital ». La crème des VCs n’avait pas hésité à valoriser la pépite du « fantasy football » 4,3 milliards de dollars. Le Vision Fund de Softbank, Accel Partners, Bessemer, Eurazeo, Atomico et d’autres ont ainsi rejoint au capital d’autres investisseurs plus anciens comme Kima Ventures, le fonds de Xavier Niel (actionnaire de l’Informé, ndlr) ou Partech.
Avec Sorare, on est pourtant loin de l’intelligence artificielle comme chez Mistral AI, ou d’applications devenues incontournables comme Doctolib. Pour les non-initiés, le fantasy football peut se définir comme un jeu en ligne où l’on collectionne des cartes de footballeurs pour former des équipes qui s’affrontent dans des matchs virtuels dont l’issue est liée aux performances des sportifs dans la réalité. L’utilisateur est une sorte d’entraîneur pouvant acquérir et vendre en toute sécurité des cartes enregistrées dans la blockchain (sous forme de NFT) et qui ont une certaine valeur marchande varie selon leur rareté. Si Sorare a levé autant d’argent, c’est pour pouvoir acheter des licences auprès des ligues professionnelles les plus prestigieuses pour éditer des cartes officielles. Elle a par exemple signé avec la Premier league anglaise, la Liga espagnole ou la Bundesliga allemande. Tout en nouant des partenariats en France avec des clubs comme le PSG, l’Olympique de Marseille ou l’AS Monaco. Mais le frenchy est aussi sorti du foot et d’Europe en s’attaquant au marché américain par la grande porte : il a topé avec la NBA et la Major League Baseball. Bref, tout semblait sourire à Sorare et à ses deux dirigeants fondateurs, Nicolas Julia et Adrien Montfort.

Sauf que, derrière ces succès, le bilan est beaucoup plus contrasté pour la start-up. Début juin, sa sortie des indices Next 40 et Next 120 de laFrench Tech avait déjà donné un signal négatif. Les comptes que l’Informé révèle pour la première fois - la société ne les publie pas - dévoilent une situation catastrophique puisque son chiffre d’affaires net (qui correspond aux commissions qu’elle a effectivement encaissées sur les ventes de cartes réalisées sur la plateforme) est en chute libre depuis trois ans. Après avoir atteint 143 millions d’euros (pour 500 millions d’euros de transactions) en 2022, il a baissé de 59 % en 2023 pour s’établir à 59 millions d’euros. En 2024, il s’est encore effondré de 27 %, tombant à 43 millions. Dans ses documents internes (oui ?), l’entreprise se montre prudente pour 2025 puisqu’elle n’a budgété que 42 millions d’euros de recettes. Auprès de l’Informé, elle est légèrement plus optimiste, prévoyant un chiffre d’affaires en croissance sur l’exercice.
Cette chute du chiffre d’affaires de Sorare s’explique-t-elle par une baisse globale du nombre d’utilisateurs réellement actifs sur sa plateforme ? La société ne répond pas vraiment à la question se contentant de rappeler qu’elle évolue dans un marché des cryptos et des NFTs en net recul depuis 2022. « La plupart des concurrents de Sorare, aux USA et partout ailleurs dans le monde, n’ont pas survécu ». La start-up indique à l’Informé avoir drainé une « communauté de six millions de fans de sport », dont « 800 000 utilisateurs actifs en 2024 » pour « 100 000 clients ayant acheté des cartes sur la plateforme ». Sorare dit attendre beaucoup d’une innovation qu’elle a introduite l’an passé : un mode de jeu qui incite des joueurs à racheter des cartes saison après saison. « L’objectif était de générer des revenus de manière plus récurrente, mais également d’avoir une meilleure visibilité sur les revenus à venir », commente-t-elle.
La chute des revenus n’a pas aidé la start-up dans sa course à la rentabilité : selon nos informations, l’Ebitda a encore été négatif de 100 millions d’euros l’an passé. Si les pertes sont le lot de la plupart des start-up, bien obligées d’investir massivement pour amorcer leur croissance, ce montant reste colossal pour une jeune pousse du Web née il y a sept ans. Il est toutefois deux fois inférieur à 2023, année où le déficit avait dérapé pour atteindre plus de 220 millions d’euros.

Sorare a effectivement taillé dans les dépenses, un effort qui s’est d’abord traduit par la renégociation des contrats initialement passés avec les ligues professionnelles et les clubs. Sorare indique à l’Informé avoir « réussi à diviser (ses) coûts de licencing annuels par cinq, tout en maintenant le même portefeuille de partenaires. » En échange de leurs efforts, certaines ligues se sont vues accorder un accès au capital. « L’essentiel de ces partenariats a été noué en 2022 dans un contexte de concurrence féroce et de pression économique très forte, poursuit la jeune pousse. Sorare étant alors une jeune entreprise, encore peu connue du grand public et des acteurs économiques du monde du sport, il a fallu déployer une stratégie de financement ambitieuse pour gagner la confiance de ces partenaires prestigieux. »
Pour limiter les pertes, Sorare a aussi passé ses dépenses opérationnelles au peigne fin. Début 2024, elle a proposé un plan de départ aux salariés de son bureau new-yorkais et recentré la plupart de ses effectifs à Paris. Sorare compte poursuivre sa chasse aux coûts en 2025 avec l’objectif d’atteindre un Ebitda négatif de « seulement » -43 millions d’euros. Selon une source, l’hypothèse de nouveaux départs dans les équipes serait une piste explorée. Sorare n’a pas voulu commenter cette information à l’Informé.

Dans une interview accordée au site Maddyness mi-avril, Nicolas Julia évoquait « un horizon de retour à la profitabilité dans les 12 à 18 mois, avec un plan très clair qui ne repose pas sur le recours à une éventuelle série C » (un terme qui désigne, dans le jargon du capital-risque, une troisième levée de fonds auprès d’investisseurs). Il faut dire que le trésor de guerre que s’était constitué Sorare lors de son tour de table de 2021 commence à fondre sérieusement. La jeune pousse avait 78 millions d’euros en caisse en fin d’année dernière, contre 196 millions d’euros fin 2023. Ce qui signifie qu’elle a brûlé en moyenne 10 millions d’euros de cash par mois. Sorare indique toutefois espérer « finir l’année 2025 sur une note très positive, avec un « burn » (ndlr une consommation de cash) très limitée, et notamment avec une trésorerie beaucoup plus importante qu’initialement projetée ». Selon nos informations, elle prévoyait début 2025 de terminer l’année avec 35 millions en caisse.

Les difficultés de Sorare impactent évidemment directement les fonds de capital-risque présents à son capital. Selon plusieurs sources, ceux-ci ont procédé à des dépréciations massives de leur participation, souvent au-delà de 50 % et parfois à près de 100 %. Certains fonds estimaient même en début d’année la valorisation virtuelle de la totalité des actions de l’entreprise à seulement un peu plus de 200 millions d’euros au début du printemps. De quoi se poser des questions sur l’avenir même de Sorare. Dans l’immédiat, la start-up espère sortir confortée par le nouveau statut des « jeux à objets numériques monétisables » qui va entrer en vigueur l’automne prochain, après d’âpres débats parlementaires. Et Nicolas Julia espère encore introduire sa société en Bourse dans quelques années.

TechCrunch : Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft — and people are paying any

Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft — and people are paying anyway

A central premise of robotaxis is that high usage and lower labor costs will ultimately make it a cheap transportation option. That is still far from true, but now there’s some data that gives us an idea of by how much.
Obi, an app that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services, has just published what it’s calling the “first in-depth examination of Waymo’s pricing strategy.” The company found Waymo’s self-driving car rides to be consistently more expensive than comparative offerings from Uber and Lyft – and it doesn’t seem to matter.

The report, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, is based on a month’s worth of data collected between March 25 and April 25 in San Francisco, California. Obi pulled nearly 90,000 “offer records” from Waymo, Lyft’s “standard” offering, and UberX in order to compare price and ETA. It then compared ride requests from the same times and routes. Obi found Lyft offered the lowest average price at $14.44. Uber was next at $15.58. Waymo’s average price across the month’s worth of data was $20.43.
Image: Obi
Ashwini Anburajan, Obi’s chief revenue officer, told TechCrunch this was somewhat surprising given the early popularity of Waymo’s service. Waymo said in May it’s providing 250,000 paid trips per week across its first four cities. Higher pricing has apparently not dimmed that excitement.
“Colloquially, there is an idea that autonomous vehicles are something that will erode driver jobs and put drivers at risk. And I think the irony of what we’ve seen is that it’s actually quite expensive to run an AV, and that that’s not going to be happening, at least in the near term,” she said.
At peak hours, Obi found Waymo’s average price to be about $11 more expensive than a Lyft and nearly $9.50 pricier than an Uber.
“I didn’t expect consumers being willing to pay up to $10 more,” Anburajan said. “I think [that] speaks to a real sense of excitement for technology, novelty, and a real preference to sometimes be in the car without a driver.”
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Obi found that not only was Waymo more expensive, but there was greater variability in its pricing than with Uber or Lyft.
Anburajan said one explanation is that Waymo’s pricing model is not as sophisticated. Uber and Lyft, she said, have had more than a decade to refine how they price rides. Those platforms are also a bit more dynamic, with drivers clocking in and out on their own time, or joining or abandoning the gig work altogether.
Waymo, meanwhile, has a mostly fixed but slowly growing supply of vehicles (though the pace of that growth may soon accelerate). This has led to what Anburajan said is more of a “pure supply and demand” pricing scheme.

That has two big impacts on customers. One is that short trips tend to cost more than longer ones. Obi found that Waymo rides cost roughly $26 per kilometer if the ride stays under 1.4 km.
This was true of the Uber and Lyft rides, too. But Obi found the shortest Waymo rides were priced 41.48% and 31.12% higher than Uber and Lyft, respectively. That gap shrunk as the rides got longer. In rides lasting between 4.3 km and 9.3 km, a Lyft cost $2.60 per km, an Uber cost $2.90 per km, and a Waymo cost $3.50 per km.
Image: Obi
The other impact is that longer wait times equals more expensive trips. After all, sending a car a long way to pick up a customer means it will perform fewer high-margin, short-distance rides.
That still isn’t discouraging Waymo customers, Anburajan said, even though Obi found Waymo to have a higher variability in wait times.
In addition to the data-based deep dive, Obi also surveyed riders in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix, Arizona to get a better understanding of what might be driving these trends.
The company found that 70% of users who had taken a Waymo ride said they preferred a driverless car to a traditional rideshare or taxi.
Despite that enthusiasm, Obi found that safety is still a big concern for riders. Of those surveyed, 74% said safety is their biggest concern about robotaxis. Nearly 70% of respondents said they think there should be some form of remote human monitoring of the rides (something that is already a common practice).
Perhaps even more striking is how people answered a question about whether they would be willing to pay more for a Waymo. Nearly 40% said they’d pay “the same or less.” But 16.3% said they’d pay less than $5 more per ride. Another 10.1% said they’d pay up to $5 more per ride. And 16.3% said they’d pay up to $10 more per ride.

Anburajan said responses like those help further explain Waymo’s pricier rides.
“There’s something about being in the car alone” that is winning customers over, she said. “It is there for you to, like, kind of live in a little bubble and get from point A to point B, and be very comfortable doing so.”

The information : OpenAI Has Discussed Raising Money From Saudi Arabia, Indian I

OpenAI Has Discussed Raising Money From Saudi Arabia, Indian Investors

The Takeaway
• OpenAI has talked to Saudi’s PIF and India’s Reliance for its $40 billion fundraise
• Lead investor SoftBank has also been buying employee shares
• OpenAI has told investors it wants to raise another $17 billion in 2027

OpenAI has talked to Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries and existing shareholder United Arab Emirates’ MGX about investing in the next installment of its $40 billion financing led by SoftBank, according to two people familiar with the fundraise. The investors could put in at least hundreds of millions of dollars each, they said.

An investment in OpenAI by Saudi Arabia’s $900 billion–plus wealth fund would underscore the kingdom’s renewed interest in directly investing in U.S. technology startups. It’s a change from years past, when it backed tech startups through dozens of U.S. venture funds, such as Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq Capital, as well as SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

PIF has long ties to SoftBank, which was the biggest investor in the telecom conglomerate’s $100 billion first Vision Fund. More recently, PIF established a new artificial intelligence company, Humain, which plans to set up a venture fund to back AI companies that will use Humain’s technology.

OpenAI, which hasn’t previously received investments from Saudi Arabia’s PIF, has also been strengthening ties in the country. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh last month, which coincided with the kingdom’s AI announcements.

To meet its mammoth funding needs, OpenAI has to expand its investors beyond main backer Microsoft and Silicon Valley venture firms. The company’s staff have also told some investors it expects to raise an additional $17 billion in 2027, although the size and timing of that round could change.

OpenAI is talking to Saudi’s PIF and other investors about raising $30 billion to complete the previously announced $40 billion funding round. The round values the ChatGPT maker at $260 billion before the investment.

OpenAI has already received the entire $10 billion of the first installment, including $2.5 billion from investors other than SoftBank.

Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, which previously bought shares in OpenAI from other shareholders, and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, a new investor, have each invested at least $200 million in that installment, the people said. Microsoft, Thrive Capital, Coatue, Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global Management have also invested.

Thanks to the additional backers, SoftBank’s portion of the first installment has fallen to $7.5 billion from $8.5 billion in April, according to the people.

Details of the new investments and funding talks haven’t previously been reported.

Rising Compute Costs
For the second installment of $30 billion slated to close in December, SoftBank has said it could invest at least three-quarters, leaving it to find investors to cough up another $7.5 billion. But it’s not clear how the telecom conglomerate run by Masayoshi Son will finance an investment of more than $20 billion. It could take out loans or sell some of its public shares, such as those it has in British chip designer Arm Holdings.

OpenAI has also discussed raising at least $100 million each from Coatue and Founders Fund as part of the $30 billion raise, according to the people. Talks with investors in the $30 billion raise, including PIF, are still early and the line-up could change.

OpenAI’s capital needs are unprecedented. Since late March, the San Francisco startup has been serving more than 500 million active users of ChatGPT per week, up from 300 million in December as the chatbot becomes an essential tool for consumers and enterprises.

Between 2025 and 2027, OpenAI has projected spending about $35 billion just on servers to power existing products and another $55 billion on servers to develop its technology.

Completion of the second installment depends on OpenAI’s ability to enact a corporate restructuring by year-end. OpenAI, which is governed by its nonprofit’s board of directors, last month backed down from an earlier plan to separate the for-profit arm, which plans to convert into a public benefit corporation, from the nonprofit’s control.

Instead, the nonprofit will continue to oversee the for-profit unit. But it will continue with a plan to give shareholders traditional equity rather than the capped profit units it has awarded in the past.

SoftBank Buy-In
If OpenAI isn’t able to complete the watered-down restructuring, SoftBank could slash the size of the total round in half, to $20 billion. XAI CEO Elon Musk and some California nonprofits have contested the conversion, and the attorneys general of California and Delaware are investigating it.

While this process plays out, SoftBank has been buying shares from OpenAI employees. Between March and May, the firm purchased about $240 million worth of shares from a small group of current and former employees, according to a person familiar with the fundraise.

Last fall, before the $40 billion megaround commenced, SoftBank bought about $2 billion of new and existing OpenAI shares.

To raise the second installment, OpenAI may lean on entities with which it has a growing relationship. Its executives have discussed a potential product and sales partnership with Reliance, which owns India’s top wireless carrier, Jio, as well as the world’s largest oil refinery.

OpenAI wants Reliance businesses to distribute or sell its AI. India is OpenAI’s second biggest market by users, Altman said in February.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, SoftBank and MGX—along with Oracle—have teamed up on the Stargate project to finance and build $500 billion in AI data centers.

Few U.S. tech startups have raised directly from Saudi funds in recent years. Some have not wanted to take money from Saudi Arabia over concerns the investments would get entangled in U.S. national security probes. However, the Trump administration has encouraged American AI firms to forge closer ties to the kingdom.

For instance, Cisco Systems and AMD are planning to make equity investments in a division of PIF’s Humain that sells access to chips for building and running AI models.