WSJ : OPEC Signals Unity After U.A.E. Exit With Pledge to Boost Oil Output

OPEC Signals Unity After U.A.E. Exit With Pledge to Boost Oil Output
Agreement is seen as symbolic because of effective closure of Strait of Hormuz

  • OPEC+ agreed to raise oil output by 188,000 barrels a day in June, days after the United Arab Emirates departed the cartel.
  • The U.A.E.’s departure, as OPEC’s third-largest producer, weakens the cartel amid internal disunity and the Iran war.
  • Analysts see Iraq as a potential flight risk and say OPEC’s unity could face another test when the Iran war ends.

OPEC sought to project a united front Sunday, agreeing to a symbolic increase in oil output just days after the bombshell departure of the United Arab Emirates. But the pledge masks fault lines that could soon resurface.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies agreed to raise production by about 188,000 barrels a day in June, a third consecutive ⁠monthly increase and a signal to markets that the cartel’s policies remain unaffected by the rupture.

In a statement following a virtual meeting Sunday, a group of seven countries belonging to the broader OPEC+ didn’t even reference the U.A.E.’s exit. The seven members are Saudi Arabia—the group’s de-facto leader—along with Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan and Oman.

“OPEC+ is playing it cool. By sticking to the same production path—just minus the U.A.E.—it’s acting as if nothing has happened, deliberately downplaying internal fractures and projecting stability,” said Jorge León, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy.

With the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the production increase is largely viewed by analysts as a statement of intent rather than a market-moving event. Kuwait, for instance, didn’t export any barrels of crude in April, for the first time since the 1990 Gulf war, according to the ship-monitoring company TankerTrackers.

The sudden departure of the U.A.E. dealt a heavy blow to OPEC at a time when the Iran war is scrambling alliances and investment priorities among the world’s top oil producers. The move further weakens the cartel, which was already under pressure amid internal disunity and the rise of American oil output.

The U.A.E. was OPEC’s third-largest producer and has in recent years wanted to boost its output beyond levels allowed by the cartel’s quota system.

On Sunday, as OPEC+ met virtually to vote on its output decision, the U.A.E.’s state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced plans to spend $55 billion on new projects over the next two years.

The U.A.E.’s departure illustrates how the Persian Gulf state has grown less willing to compromise as its relations with OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia—a neighbor and sometimes military partner—have frayed amid competition for regional leadership.

The big question now facing both OPEC and wider oil markets is whether other nations decide to leave the group.

Saudi Arabia was blindsided by the U.A.E.’s exit, according to Gulf officials familiar with the matter. The move led to concerns not only that the split would reduce OPEC’s ability to manage oil markets but also that it could spur further defections, they added.

The kingdom in recent days has raced to contact other members to ensure OPEC’s unity remains intact and to project support for the group, the officials said.

Saudi officials also consulted members on the output decision days in advance of Sunday’s meeting, a departure from the usual practice of only informing smaller members of the group just before, according to Gulf OPEC officials.

Some OPEC members have publicly insisted that the U.A.E.’s departure is a unique event.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Saturday described the U.A.E.’s withdrawal as a “non-event.” The core pillar of the organization remains Saudi Arabia, he said, according to Algeria’s news agency APS.

Iraq and Kazakhstan—which have previously protested Saudi dominance of OPEC in private—have both recently affirmed their commitment to the alliance.

However, OPEC delegates warn that while the risk of further departures is contained because of the Iran war, disquiet remains.

Some members haven’t always adhered to the group’s quotas, and have at times been critical of Saudi Arabia’s approach to market management—whereby it adjusts production to influence oil prices.

Analysts see Iraq, the cartel’s second-largest member, as a potential flight risk. That’s partly because the country has frequently produced above its allocations to rebuild its war-damaged economy.

Iraqi oil officials told The Wall Street Journal that the country has no plans to leave the organization.

When the Iran war ends, OPEC’s unity could well face another test, analysts say, particularly if Saudi seeks to curtail output. When oil flows freely once again, it will be much harder to ask members to hold off boosting production, they say.

Differences that have existed between Saudi Arabia and other countries could then resurface.

FT : US pullback on long-range missiles leaves Europe exposed

US pullback on long-range missiles leaves Europe exposed
Cancelled deployment of weapons battalion as continent is re-arming threatens Nato deterrence against Russia

Europe already knew it had to develop its own long-range missiles. The Pentagon’s announcement on Friday that it will no longer send a battalion bringing the critical weapons as a stopgap has suddenly made that task even more urgent.

A spat between US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the war in Iran led Washington to cancel the deployment of a US contingent armed with several types of long-range weapons. 

Its abandonment, announced at the same time as a US decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, has left the continent with a glaring security gap — one that analysts say will be met with glee in Moscow.

“The message it sends to the Kremlin is that the US is backtracking from its central role as Europe’s security guarantor,” said Carlo Masala, a professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr university in Munich. “We already knew that. But now it’s materialised in terms of capabilities.”

Due to arrive in Germany some time this year, the Biden-era deployment plan had been aimed at strengthening Nato’s deterrence against Russia while six European nations worked on developing their own systems.

Trump’s abrupt decision to cancel that plan has deepened a major fear in European capitals: that the US will withdraw weapons faster than Europe can develop alternatives.

Long-range missiles, referred to as deep precision strike (DPS) capabilities, are one of the critical weapons systems that European nations must produce themselves after decades of relying on the US for such platforms.

The Pentagon has also refused to provide Nato with a detailed timeline of planned withdrawals from Europe of other critical systems such as air and missile defence platforms, strategic airlift capabilities and satellite intelligence, spooking European capitals that need to know which investments to prioritise, according to defence officials.

If Trump were to withdraw other capabilities on an ad hoc basis it could create large and dangerous gaps in Europe’s security for years while governments strive to develop, test and deploy domestic replacements, the officials said.

“The signalling of this is absolutely terrible . . . it’s a nightmare,” said Ulrike Franke, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “This was a military gap identified by Nato and Germany, a piece of a puzzle and it all made sense . . . And now this is Trump using wrecking ball policy to take it all down.”

“Doing this, ad hoc and without a plan . . . it’s very Trump,” Franke added. “There is a capability gap that now isn’t going to be plugged anytime soon.”

The plan to temporarily deploy an American battalion armed with long-range missiles in Germany dates back to a carefully choreographed announcement at the Nato summit in Washington in 2024.

Then-president Joe Biden and his German counterpart Olaf Scholz said sending the troops — equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of more than 1,500km, SM-6 ballistic missiles and a new long-range hypersonic weapon called Dark Eagle — would “demonstrate the United States’ commitment to Nato and its contributions to European integrated deterrence”.

The following day, Germany, France, Poland, the UK and Italy announced their intent to work together on developing an array of mid- to long-range cruise and ballistic missiles under a programme called ELSA. Sweden also later joined.

The decision to station US long-range weapons on German soil for the first time since the end of the cold war was delicate for Scholz, who during his three years as chancellor was deeply cautious about anything that might be seen in Moscow as an escalation by Berlin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last week spoke by phone with Trump, always hated the Biden-era plan. He described it as a provocation that would trigger a cold war-style missile crisis.

But the US and Germany billed the move as a response to Putin’s own decision to station nuclear-capable Iskander missiles — and fighter jets equipped with Kinzhal hypersonic air-to-surface missiles — in the Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, putting Berlin within reach.

Officials said the aim was to show a potential aggressor that, were they to attack western European cities, their own command facilities, airfields and missile launch sites would not be safe from a counterattack.

Washington and Berlin also presented it as a “bridging” solution until European nations had their own DPS capabilities that they could use without Washington’s blessing.

“We need to take responsibility ourselves for developing systems like these,” said defence minister Boris Pistorius at the time, but warned that it would take at least five years for Europeans to develop their own similar missiles. 

“Until then, the Americans are supporting us,” he added.

German officials sought to downplay Friday’s announcement that jeopardised that entire strategy, saying it had been clear for some time that the deployment was at risk as the US has shown growing ambivalence towards Europe. The war in Iran has also put a heavy strain on US missile supplies. Nato leaders would discuss further how to avoid security gaps at the alliance’s annual summit in Ankara in July, they said.

But it was telling that Pistorius, who said the decision to withdraw 5,000 US troops was “foreseeable”, made no public comment about the abandonment of the plan to deploy the long-range missiles battalion.

One military official from another European country said that, while the German defence minister was “putting on a brave face”, it was alarming news for the whole of Europe. “It’s not about Germany — it should be assessed in terms of impact on Nato deterrence and defence,” he said.

European countries are developing an assortment of land-based cruise missiles, plus a small number of projects to make ballistic missiles. But many of these remain stuck at early stages of design and development.

That includes a British-German plan, announced in 2024, to co-develop their own DPS capabilities with a range of more than 2,000km “within a decade”. Two years on, there is still no industrial contract in place. 

Berlin in 2025 made an official request to the US to buy its own Tomahawk missiles and Typhon launch systems in an attempt to have its own stopgap solution but there are long delivery times. Germany’s defence ministry was not able to confirm on Sunday whether or not it had even signed a contract.

Masala, of the Bundeswehr university, said plans to update existing systems could offer a quicker timeline than some of the projects starting from scratch. But he warned: “The problem is that we have only a few systems in Europe which can reach Kaliningrad or other places in Russia.”

Fabian Hoffmann, an expert on missile technology at the University of Oslo, said he was less pessimistic than some officials and analysts on the implications of Trump’s latest decision. Writing on X, he said it was always “questionable” whether the president would have been willing to use the US’s Germany-based battalion as a tool to manage possible escalation with Russia.

“In the end, there is no alternative to a European solution for Europe, independent of American presidential decision-making,” he said. “What Germany and Europe need are missiles, missiles, and more missiles.”

FT : Trump administration cites national security to widen clampdown on wind far

Trump administration cites national security to widen clampdown on wind farms
Defence department is stalling 165 projects as president steps up efforts to stamp out the industry

The Trump administration has brought US onshore wind development to a halt citing national security concerns, representing a major escalation in the president’s crusade against renewable energy. 

Approvals for about 165 onshore wind projects on private lands are being stalled by the Department of Defense, including wind farms which were awaiting final sign-off, others in the middle of negotiations and some that typically would not require oversight by the department, according to the American Clean Power Association (ACP) and people close to the matter.

Wind farms require routine approval from the defence department to ensure they do not interfere with radar systems. This typically involves the level of risk being assessed and the developer paying an agreed sum for the army to update its radar filter system so it can locate the windmill. Some projects can be deemed not to pose a risk due to their distance from army facilities and flight paths. Normally these assessments can take as little as a few days to complete.

Since August 2025, developers have faced a mix of setbacks, including not receiving expected communications from DoD, having meetings to discuss the status of their projects cancelled without the opportunity to reschedule, and being informed that the department has stopped processing their applications, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The affected projects include 35 that had completed negotiations and are awaiting sign-off from the DoD — first reported by Axios in March.

More projects are now facing a shutdown — 30 of which had undergone negotiations, received verbal signoffs and were waiting for written confirmation, about 50 are in the process of negotiations and 50 that previously would probably have been declared risk-free, according to developers and consultants.

The wind farms could generate 30 gigawatts, enough to power 15mn homes.

Letters sent to developers in early April said the agency was reviewing its processes for evaluating energy projects’ impact on national security.

The moves represent a dramatic escalation of the administration’s effort to shut down wind energy in the US, reaching for developments on private lands as well as public ones.

President Donald Trump has a particular animosity towards wind farms. He has called them the “worst form of energy” and said his “goal is to not let any windmill be built”.

Since its second term in office, the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to shut down work on several offshore wind sites in areas administered by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, also citing national security concerns, as well as other renewable energy projects on federal lands. Some of these actions have been thwarted in federal courts.

“This is so unprecedented,” said Jason Grumet, chief executive of the ACP. “The fact the administration is telling private landowners they’re not allowed to pursue economic activity and generate value from their property is hard to reconcile with conservative values.”

The administration has recently started refunding offshore wind leases in exchange for investments in fossil fuels, such as a $1bn deal with TotalEnergies in March.

“The Trump administration’s attempts to block wind projects keep getting struck down in court, so it’s reaching for ever more extreme and absurd methods,” said Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at NRDC.

The DoD did not respond to a request for comment.

TechCrunch : The best AI dictation apps, tested and ranked

The best AI dictation apps, tested and ranked

AI dictation apps have come a long way in a short time. For years they were slow and inaccurate — unless you spoke with a particular accent and enunciated clearly.
Advances in large language models (LLMs) and speech-to-text models have changed that, producing systems that can decipher speech more accurately while retaining enough context to format the text correctly. Developers have also built in features to automatically remove filler words, fix stumbles, and handle punctuation — outputting text that needs far fewer edits.


With dozens of such apps now on the market, we’ve rounded up our picks for the best and most useful dictation apps available right now.

Wispr Flow
Wispr Flow is a well-funded AI dictation app that lets you add custom words and instructions for dictation. It has native apps for macOS, Windows, and iOS; an Android version is in the works.
The app lets you customize how it transcribes your text by choosing from “formal,” “casual,” and “very casual” styles for different kinds of writing, such as personal messaging, work, and email. And if you use it with vibe-coding tools like Cursor, you can turn on a feature to automatically recognize variables or tag files in the chat.
The app lets you transcribe up to 2,000 words per week for free on desktop, and 1,000 words per month on iOS. Paid subscription plans offer unlimited transcription and start at $15 per month.
Image Credits:Wispr Flow

Willow
Willow advertises itself as a big time-saver for those who don’t like to type. Alongside common features like automatic editing and formatting, the app uses large language models to generate a full passage of text from just a few dictated words.
Willow also takes a more privacy-focused approach by storing all transcripts locally on your device and lets you opt out of model training entirely. It also lets you add custom vocabulary to help it adapt to your industry’s terminology, or your local dialect.
Image Credits:Willow
Willow lets you dictate 2,000 words per month on its desktop app for free. Individual subscription plans start at $15 per month, unlocking unlimited dictation and enabling the app to remember your writing style.

Monologue
If privacy if your priority, Monologue lets you download its AI model directly to your device for transcriptions, keeping your data off the cloud entirely. What’s more, the app lets you customize its tone depending on the app you use it with.

Monologue lets you transcribe 1,000 words per month for free; a subscription costs $10 per month or $100 per year. The company also sends its most active users a physical shortcut device called the Monokey to use with the app.

Superwhisper
Superwhisper is primarily a dictation app, but it can also transcribe from audio or video files. The app lets you choose and download AI models, including several of its own at different speeds and accuracy levels, along with Nvidia’s Parakeet speech-recognition models.
The app also lets you write custom prompts to steer the output, and you can view both processed and unprocessed transcripts directly from your system keyboard.

The basic voice-to-text feature is free to use, and you get 15 minutes to test Pro features such as translation and transcription. The paid tier lets you use your own AI API keys and connect cloud and local models without any usage caps.
The monthly plan costs $8.49 per month, the annual plan costs $84.99 per month, or you can pay $249.99 for a lifetime subscription.

VoiceTypr
The VoiceTypr app takes an offline-first, no-subscription approach, letting you use local models for transcription. It also has a GitHub repository for those who want to host and run the open source version themselves. VoiceTypr supports over 99 languages and works on both Mac and Windows.
The app is available to try for three days for free, and after that, it will allow you to buy a lifetime license. The app costs $35 for one device, $56 for two, and $98 for four devices.

Aqua
Aqua is a Y Combinator-backed voice-typing app for Windows and macOS that claims to be one of the fastest tools in the category in terms of latency (the delay between when you speak and when text appears on screen).

Besides handling grammar and punctuation, Aqua also lets you autofill text by saying phrases — you can say “my address” and have Aqua type it in, for example.
The app also offers its own speech-to-text API, letting other apps plug into Aqua’s transcription engine.

The free tier gets you 1,000 words per month. Paid plans start at $8 per month bill annually and unlock unlimited words and 800 custom dictionary values.

Handy
Handy is an open-source, free transcription tool that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The app is pretty basic and doesn’t offer much customization, but if you want to start using your voice more and don’t want to pay, it is a good option.
The app has a basic settings menu that lets you toggle push-to-talk and change the hotkey to activate transcription.

Typeless
Typeless stands out for its high free word count. The company claims it doesn’t retain any data or use it to train AI models. Typeless also offers to rewrite sentences you may have fumbled.
The app lets you dictate up to 4,000 words per week (roughly 16,000 words per month) on its free tier. You can pay $12 per month (billed annually) to unlock unlimited words and get access to new features. Typeless is available for Windows and macOS only.

VoiceInk
VoiceInk is an open-source private dictation app for Mac. The app supports global shortcuts for recording start/stop, along with a push-to-talk mode. It reads the context on screen and adjusts its output accordingly.

The app can automatically detect certain apps and URLs and apply custom formatting or rules to each. It also has an assistant mode that can answer your questions. The app costs $25 for lifetime access for one device, $39 for two devices, and $49 for three devices.

Dictato
Dictato is a dictionary app for Mac priced at €9.99 — roughly $12 — that gives you lifetime access and two years of feature updates. The app works with offline models like Parakeet, Whisper, and Apple Speech Analyzer, and uses Apple Intelligence for light reading and filler word removal. Thanks to these local models, the app claims a super fast 80ms latency, meaning text appears almost instantly after you speak.

AudioPen
AudioPen began as a web-based voice notes app, but it has evolved over the years. Its Mac version now lets you dictate text and rewrite it in your preferred format and style, switching between different styles at any time. Besides live transcription, AudioPen allows you to store audio notes across platforms, combine notes for summaries, upload audio files, and rewrite existing notes using AI. The app costs $33 for three months, $99 for a year, and $159 for two years.

WSJ : Stock Indexes Are Contorting Themselves to Include SpaceX and OpenAI

Stock Indexes Are Contorting Themselves to Include SpaceX and OpenAI
Hot stock IPOs are coming to an ETF near you, like it or not

If what you want from your index fund is access to the latest hot stocks, you’re in luck. The passive funds holding trillions of dollars of 401(k)s and other investments are rushing to change their rules as the IPOs of SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic draw closer.

The latest, on Thursday, was a proposal from S&P to drop the requirement to make a profit and wait a year for IPOs to get into the flagship S&P 500.

Index providers argue that the IPOs are so big that previous precautionary rules have too distorting an effect on their ability to track the market. But really this is about giving users what they seem to want: more hot stocks.

S&P’s suggestion, out for consultation with index users, is particularly egregious. It wants to ditch its profit requirement for IPOs big enough to make the top 100 by value, while retaining it for other companies.

In essence: Size shouldn’t buy special treatment, but it does. IPO a midsize stock, and you are stuck in S&P limbo until you make a profit, or become big enough.

IPO a giant, and S&P no longer cares about profit—making you eligible for a share of the billions that flow into the stock if it gets into the index, and helping keep you big. Other indexes are considering or have brought in special fast-track entry rules for giant IPOs that don’t apply to smaller ones.

The S&P 500, despite what people believe, is actually a hybrid between an active and passive index. Stocks get in only if they are selected by an index committee. The S&P 500 isn’t the 500 largest companies—more than 50 smaller ones make it in instead.

The other major U.S. indexes—from Russell, MSCI, and Nasdaq—are all driven entirely by rules, while the S&P sets a bunch of rules then has people choose from those that qualify.

The widely-tracked Russell 1000 is the closest to a pure measure of the top companies. But like most big indexes, it weights stocks using the free float, or the percentage of the shares that actually trade, excluding stock locked up by insiders. That leads to some odd outcomes: Wireless networking stock Ubiquiti, for example, would be ranked as 202nd-largest with its $62 billion market value, but its low free float means it actually comes in 861st.

Other efforts to make indexes better for investors also make them diverge from being a true measure of the market. The MSCI U.S.A. index includes just over 500 stocks, but excludes those with “extreme price increases.”

That leaves out Sandisk, the memory-chip stock spun off from Western Digital last year. After a near-30-fold explosion in size, it is now the country’s 62nd-largest by value, worth $175 billion. Because of the extreme price rule, Sandisk is stuck in MSCI’s small-company index instead, even though it is big enough for the S&P 500, Russell and Nasdaq-100.

Tesla shows how important the choice of index can be: In 2020, the S&P lagged behind MSCI U.S.A. by 3 percentage points, the most in a calendar year ever, mainly because S&P didn’t admit Tesla until that December. That meant owners of S&P tracker funds missed out on Tesla’s near-eightfold rise, in which it added half a trillion dollars to its market value.


Something similar could happen with SpaceX, another Elon Musk venture. If it gets the $1.75 trillion valuation being discussed, SpaceX would be the eighth-largest U.S. stock, above Meta.

Its small free float will limit its importance, but if it moves a lot that could again make the choice of index important. Add in OpenAI and Anthropic, and usually irrelevant details such as how long an index takes to admit a big new stock (S&P wants to cut from 12 months to six) will really matter to investors.

That’s triply so in the Invesco QQQ ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq-100. New rules that went into force on Friday provide for accelerated entry after 15 days for IPOs of stocks big enough to make the top 40 listed on Nasdaq. It has also reversed its recent introduction of a 10% minimum free float to qualify.

Because the index eschews the modern index practice of free-float weighting in favor of the full market-value weight, that created a problem. QQQ is huge—with more than $400 billion in assets—and it might end up buying half of the outstanding stock if it had to try to apply full-market weighting to a company with only a 2% free float, as FTSE Russell assumed for SpaceX in its rule consultation. To prevent this issue, Nasdaq will weight stocks at the lower of three times their free float or full market value.

The first winner is likely to be British chip designer Arm Holdings, which has only a fraction of its stock public, but had its weight limited by arcane rules about its ADRs. Under the new rules, QQQ and other followers of the Nasdaq-100 will probably need to buy more after next month’s rebalance as its weight triples.

Exaggerating the importance of low-float stocks in an index used purely for investment purposes looks awful to many, including my colleague Jason Zweig. And it is. But it is way better than the previous design, which could have led to a company with only 10% of its stock available being weighted at 10 times that.

Investors who really want to take part in the big IPOs are already trying to find ways in through specialist vehicles, some of which leave a lot to be desired. If the index provider rule changes go through as planned, those hot stocks are coming to an ETF near you, like it or not.

FT : The silent treatment: Saudi Arabia’s long game for managing Opec

The silent treatment: Saudi Arabia’s long game for managing Opec
Middle East conflict forces Riyadh to postpone any response to the UAE’s decision to quit the oil cartel

The silence from Riyadh tells its own story. Days after the United Arab Emirates stunned its neighbours by announcing its immediate exit from Opec, neither the oil cartel nor its de facto leader Saudi Arabia has offered any public response. 

The vacuum reflects both the shock of the decision and the position that Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has found itself in. While the country’s rift with the UAE has been simmering for several years, the timing of the announcement, in the middle of a regional war, caught many off-guard. 

Several people familiar with the situation said Riyadh received little warning and no opportunity to negotiate before a formal letter was delivered to Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, the Saudi oil minister. 

“They knew this was coming, but some people are upset that they were not given a heads-up,” said one person close to officials in the kingdom.

Helima Croft, an oil analyst at RBC Capital, said it was “an interesting moment to do it in the middle of the war”.

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator close to the royal court, said the UAE’s move appeared “more politically motivated than economically persuasive”.

“It may be aimed at escaping Saudi-dominated decision-making, but the UAE faces the same basic dilemma as Saudi Arabia: maximising output can erode prices,” he said. “And by distancing itself from its natural Gulf producer bloc, the UAE risks gaining autonomy at the cost of influence.”

For now, Saudi Arabia’s priority is to contain the fallout. Officials are acutely aware that any public show of anger could unsettle already turbulent oil markets or affect the 21 other members of Opec and the wider Opec+ alliance as they consider their own position. 

Instead, Riyadh is projecting calm and reassuring its allies that its ability to manage the market has not been weakened ahead of a meeting of seven Opec members on Sunday to discuss production increases. “They have to show stability now,” said the person close to Saudi officials. “We will be closely watching for cohesion optics coming out of Sunday’s meeting,” added Croft.

Mohamed Ramady, author of OPEC in a Shale Oil World: Where to Next?, predicted that Prince Abdulaziz would avoid burning any bridges with the UAE. “His response will be that all doors will be left open to the UAE to have an association with Opec,” he said. He added that he expected Saudi Arabia to reduce its quota slightly on Sunday to bring its limit closer in line to Russia’s.

Behind the scenes, Opec’s secretary-general, the Kuwaiti diplomat Haitham Al Ghais, has sought to reassure market watchers that other member states are not looking to exit and the group remains intact despite the UAE’s departure. Opec did not respond to a request for comment.

The UAE’s move may have been abrupt, but it was also carefully timed. The country has for many years made clear that it wanted to produce more oil than its Opec quota would allow.

But by acting while Gulf oil flows are already disrupted by war, Abu Dhabi has minimised the immediate market impact and reduced the chances of retaliation.

“They were very worried that the Saudis would surge their oil production to crash prices and punish them,” the person close to Saudi officials said. “Doing it now takes all the risk away.”  

Jim Krane, a Middle East energy expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said Saudi Arabia had few good options to respond while oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz remain constrained.

He noted that the way Saudi Arabia, the only oil producer with significant spare capacity, traditionally enforced discipline in Opec was to raise the threat of a price war, since its ability to pump more oil dwarfs that of any other member. “That’s not [currently] on the cards,” he said. 

Even so, Krane and others expect consequences over time.

One potential pressure point is the extensive land border between the two countries, a vital artery for trade. “It is a super busy border crossing, and the UAE is really dependent on Saudi for food, particularly dairy, especially now the strait is closed,” he noted. But he cautioned that any disruption would amount to a “pretty serious escalation”. 


Krane, who estimated in 2023 that the UAE could earn an additional $50bn a year in oil revenues outside Opec by selling freely, said the country did not pose an immediate threat to the cartel. Expanding production will take time, and Abu Dhabi might opt to retain spare capacity for strategic reasons.

In the near term, Saudi Arabia may face more disruption within Opec itself. The departure of the UAE may encourage other members to press for looser production limits, especially in the wake of the Iran conflict, when Gulf members will want to regain market share. 

“They are going to use this as a source of leverage,” said one long-term Opec watcher. “They will say, we love you Saudi but can we just revisit the question of our quota? Saudi is expecting everyone to be unruly for a while.”

Frederic Lasserre, head of research at oil-trading group Gunvor, said the “real challenge” would be to restrain Russia, Iraq, Kazakhstan and others that have been accused of sometimes pumping above their official quota. But he noted that Saudi Arabia had a long history of managing the group. “We should not underestimate their ability,” he said. 

A second former Saudi official said it was currently impossible to judge the impact of the UAE’s decision. “We are in turmoil with the war. There are lots of uncertainties after the war. In a normal situation we would know if this would be bad, but until the Strait of Hormuz reopens we are just groping in the dark,” he said. 

Nevertheless, he said Riyadh was confident that Opec will endure. “They are not going to change now because one country withdraws. Opec will continue.”

9to5 : Following Apple shoutout, Perplexity elaborates on Mac-native ‘Personal C

Following Apple shoutout, Perplexity elaborates on Mac-native ‘Personal Computer’ platform

Apple gave Perplexity a shoutout during its Q2 2026 earnings call yesterday, and now the company is offering more details on why it is building its Mac-first Personal Computer platform. Here are the details.

Personal Computer highlighted during Apple’s earnings call
Last month, Perplexity announced Personal Computer, a Mac-native platform built to primarily run on a Mac mini (though it can run on any Mac) and serve as the user’s personal agentic assistant running across their local and cloud environments.
Here’s Perplexity on Personal Computer:
Personal Computer is the future of work. It brings multi-model orchestration to your own machine, working across local files, apps, and the web in one system. On a Mac mini, it runs 24/7, letting you begin work from your phone and come back to it done.
According to the company, the biggest advantage of Personal Computer is the acknowledgment that a useful AI agent should operate across both local and cloud environments, rather than being limited to “a chat window or run inside an isolated virtual machine next to your apps.”


Perplexity adds that Personal Computer “builds on the continuity Apple users already expect to get work done no matter where they are.”
Yesterday, Apple CFO Kevan Parekh mentioned the product during Apple’s Q2 2026 earnings call, citing it as an example of developers choosing the Mac as the platform for “enterprise-grade AI assistants:”
With Apple silicon and this powerful unified memory architecture, leading AI developers, like Perplexity, are choosing Mac as their preferred platform to build enterprise-grade AI assistants that power autonomous agents and boost workplace productivity.
His comment came in the context of the Mac mini and Mac Studio being sold out in several countries worldwide, thanks to the success of agentic platforms such as Personal Computer. Apple would later confirm that availability will remain extremely constrained for several months.
Interestingly, Parekh’s comment came on the heels of Perplexity’s invite-only Ask NYC event, where the company’s CEO Aravind Srinivas stressed the fact that the company built Personal Computer to run “on any Mac, with a Mac mini as one of the best ways to deploy it at full capacity.”

He also revealed that since launch, Personal Computer “has performed more than $2.8B in labor-equivalent work for Pro, Max, and Enterprise subscribers.”

At the event, Perplexity also announced a series of enterprise-focused updates to Personal Computer, including support for Microsoft Teams, a native Excel integration now in beta, a new workflows feature for repeatable tasks, and deeper data connectors with Snowflake and Databricks.

Perplexity also announced a partnership with 1Password that will allow Personal Computer to act inside authenticated tools without exposing user credentials to the model.

Electrek : BYD just sold its most expensive EV ever for nearly $3 million

BYD just sold its most expensive EV ever for nearly $3 million

BYD’s 3,000 hp electric supercar, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme, sold for nearly $3 million at the Beijing Auto Show, making it the event’s highest-priced vehicle.

BYD’s Yangwang U9 Xtreme sells for a record $3 million
Although BYD is best known for low-cost vehicles like the $10,000 Seagull (Dolphin Surf in Europe), Dolphin hatch, and the Atto 3 SUV, the company is quickly expanding into new luxury segments.

Outside its core Dynasty and Ocean series, BYD has several luxury sub-brands, including Denza, Yangwang, and Fang Cheng Bao, each offering unique vehicles.

While all are considered premium brands, Yangwang is the most expensive, focusing on performance and advanced technologies.

Yangwang debuted the production version of the U9 Xtreme, a 3,000 hp electric supercar, at the Beijing Auto Show last week. According to Li Yunfei, general manager of BYD’s branding and public relations, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme sold for over 20 million yuan a piece, making it the most expensive car sold at the event.

The electric supercar is extremely limited, with only 30 units for sale globally. However, this isn’t your average vehicle either.

Built on a 1,200V platform and equipped with four electric motors, the Yangwang U9 Xtreme delivers a combined 2,977 hp (2,220 kW) of output.

In September, it became the fastest production car in history with a top speed of 496.22 km/h (308 mph), and weeks later BYD announced the Yangwang U9 Xtreme “conquered the Nürburgring Nordschleife in record time, completing the lap in 6:59.157, making it the fastest EV production vehicle around the track.”

With just 30 units for sale globally, calling it a “production vehicle” is questionable. At nearly $3 million (20 million yuan), it would be the most expensive production vehicle BYD has sold to date. In comparison, the standard Yangwang U9 starts at 1.8 million yuan ($265,000) in China.

Either way, the Yangwang U9 is an impressive vehicle with BYD’s DiSus-X intelligent body control system, enabling it to “dance,” jump, and drive on three wheels.