The US military has lost dozens of Reaper drones collectively worth more than $1 billion while carrying out surveillance and attack missions over Iran. Now the Pentagon is seeking large numbers of cheaper drones that can perform such missions despite the expectation that many will be lost in combat. In a call for industry pitches, the Defense Innovation Unit’s notice described the US military’s cu...
The US military has lost dozens of Reaper drones collectively worth more than $1 billion while carrying out surveillance and attack missions over Iran. Now the Pentagon is seeking large numbers of cheaper drones that can perform such missions despite the expectation that many will be lost in combat. In a call for industry pitches, the Defense Innovation Unit’s notice described the US military’s current reliance on drones and crewed aircraft, each costing more than $30 million, as being “unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities.” It envisions deploying more “cost-effective” drones to “overwhelm enemy air defenses even while experiencing numerous [drone] losses.” That is, in practice, what Ukraine’s military has been demonstrating with its long- and mid-range strike campaign against Russian supply lines, oil refineries, and various energy or industrial targets within Russia or occupied Ukraine. The Ukrainian campaign has been overwhelming Russia’s overstretched air defense capabilities by launching hundreds of relatively inexpensive drones and missiles on a daily basis to attack targets far behind the frontlines, while continuing to damage or destroy Russia’s most sophisticated air defense systems. Read full article Comments
QTS Realty Trust LLC is seeking to raise $2 billion to repay debt tied to US data centers and pay dividends to Blackstone Inc. The company is marketing a $1 billion term loan at an interest rate of 2.25 to 2.50 percentage points above the benchmark, according to a person familiar with the matter. The debt is being offered at a discounted price of 99 cents to 99.5 cents on the dollar, the person ad...
QTS Realty Trust LLC is seeking to raise $2 billion to repay debt tied to US data centers and pay dividends to Blackstone Inc. The company is marketing a $1 billion term loan at an interest rate of 2.25 to 2.50 percentage points above the benchmark, according to a person familiar with the matter. The debt is being offered at a discounted price of 99 cents to 99.5 cents on the dollar, the person added, asking not to be identified because they’re not allowed to speak publicly. The loan is backed by a portfolio of 12 data centers across four states that have been completed and fully leased to three investment-grade hyperscaler tenants. QTS is also planning to offer $1 billion of other secured debt, the person added. QTS’s rapid growth has made the company a poster child for how private equity has fueled the data center industry’s breakneck expansion. The company, which was acquired by Blackstone in a $10 billion deal in 2021, has been tapping every corner of the credit markets as it ramps up spending. Recent fundraising has included a $4.6 billion investment-grade bond sale in April to help finance a massive Microsoft Corp. -backed data center project. The company has also sold bonds backed by data center cash flows in the asset-based securities market. Proceeds from the leverage loan and the other secured debt — which typically comes in the form of junk bonds — will be used to repay some construction financing and fund general corporate purposes, including a distribution to Blackstone or its affiliates. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is leading the transaction. Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co. are additional bookrunners.
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would fly from Turkey to Britain on an older Air Force One aircraft, an unexpected switch that raised questions about a retrofitted Boeing 747 donated by Qatar that he unveiled only weeks ago as his new presidential jet. The trip to Turkey was the first international trip for the new plane. The switch follows months of scrutiny over the luxury g...
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he would fly from Turkey to Britain on an older Air Force One aircraft, an unexpected switch that raised questions about a retrofitted Boeing 747 donated by Qatar that he unveiled only weeks ago as his new presidential jet. The trip to Turkey was the first international trip for the new plane. The switch follows months of scrutiny over the luxury gift intended to serve as a temporary replacement while Boeing struggles to deliver long-delayed...
SweetBunFactory/iStock via Getty Images Thesis Currently, Mobileye Global Inc. ( MBLY ) makes most of its revenue from selling its Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) solution, EyeQ. Their long-term strategy targets two emerging markets: Robotaxis and humanoid robots. Any company that secures a share of either of these two markets has a bright future. My question for Mobileye is whether they...
SweetBunFactory/iStock via Getty Images Thesis Currently, Mobileye Global Inc. ( MBLY ) makes most of its revenue from selling its Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) solution, EyeQ. Their long-term strategy targets two emerging markets: Robotaxis and humanoid robots. Any company that secures a share of either of these two markets has a bright future. My question for Mobileye is whether they can achieve their ambitious goals of gaining a significant share in two competitive markets in parallel, even though they do not yet lead either market. According to the Q4/25 earnings call , success in their new business ventures might materialize only in 2027. 2026 may be a transition period in which investors reassess what Mobileye actually is. Investors still lack data to assess Mobileye's performance in both markets. I will focus on exploring catalysts that indicate breakthroughs. My thesis is that by detecting early when one of these catalysts materializes, an investment in Mobileye could pay off. Until then, I invest cautiously or hold. From ADAS to Robotics Mobileye has maintained a solid business with automotive companies since 1999. Its current business model is to sell ADAS solutions to automotive companies. The sales figures were stagnating in 2025 (Source: Accounting documents); Q1 2026 broke the pattern. Sales progression (Author) ADAS helps drivers drive better with small aids such as detecting lanes on the streets and warning drivers if they cross them. If you have been driving for a while, you have likely noticed many of these small ADAS helpers. The ultimate goal in the automotive industry is to replace drivers. For this reason, the industry itself separates these driving aids from full self-driving (FSD) solutions and does not consider FSD as an evolution of ADAS. If Mobileye's core ADAS business is replaced in the future, it must do what most ADAS suppliers do. They must innovate and deliver FSD solutions. Let's explore their standing in Robotaxis first...
Prime Intellect, which provides computing power to train frontier AI models, has raised $130M at a $1 billion valuation. The company said the Series A funding was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia Ventures ( NVDA ), Intel Capital ( INTC ), Dell Technologies Capital ( DELL ), and existing investors. Bringing its total funding to over $150M to build the open superintelligence s...
Prime Intellect, which provides computing power to train frontier AI models, has raised $130M at a $1 billion valuation. The company said the Series A funding was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia Ventures ( NVDA ), Intel Capital ( INTC ), Dell Technologies Capital ( DELL ), and existing investors. Bringing its total funding to over $150M to build the open superintelligence stack. The round was also joined by angel investors: Box's CEO Aaron Levie, Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince, John Schulman from Thinking Machines, and Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Ramp Karim Atiyeh, among others. "We train open frontier models and ship the same stack to our customers. It spans the full stack of training, deploying and continuously improving models — compute, large-scale RL, environments, sandboxes, evals, and deployment," said the company in its press release. Prime Intellect noted that it has over 6,000 customers working with it, including many of the leading AI startups, neolabs and enterprises, who use its stack — across compute, reinforcement learning, or RL, and post-training, sandboxes, inference, environments, and evaluations. The company added that said that in under a year, that demand has scaled to over $100M in annualized revenue. Prime Intellect's CEO Vincent Weisser confirmed the $1B valuation in his post on X. "Companies can now own their model optimization loop: train directly on your product, optimize for your specific workflows, and build agents that improve continuously in production," said Weisser in the post on X. More on Nvidia and Dell Nvidia: It's About To Get Much Worse Dell: I Would Wait For A Pullback To Enter The Stock Nvidia: The Outlier In AI Remains A Buy Nvidia rises as it looks to partner with competitors; China reportedly allows sales ClearBridge Dividend Strategy adds Nvidia, TSM; exits UnitedHealth among Q2 moves
Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin is reportedly nearing the end of a fundraising round that values the rocket launch company and SapceX competitor at $130 billion.
Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin is reportedly nearing the end of a fundraising round that values the rocket launch company and SapceX competitor at $130 billion.
Catherine Delahaye/DigitalVision via Getty Images Back in February, I first reviewed Owlet, Inc. ( OWLT ), and despite loving the mission of this founder-led company, I didn’t love the valuation, and there were far too many question marks. Since that “Sell” rating, the S&P 500 returned over 8% while Owlet dropped by over 50%. There have been numerous changes for the company, including shifts in se...
Catherine Delahaye/DigitalVision via Getty Images Back in February, I first reviewed Owlet, Inc. ( OWLT ), and despite loving the mission of this founder-led company, I didn’t love the valuation, and there were far too many question marks. Since that “Sell” rating, the S&P 500 returned over 8% while Owlet dropped by over 50%. There have been numerous changes for the company, including shifts in senior leadership, and with those also an adjustment of company priorities. Let’s review the company’s new strategic focus as well as discuss the company’s recent Q1 financial results. Change In Leadership And Change In Focus In my prior article, I noted that former CEO Jonathan Harris had just stepped into the role in late 2025. A leadership change after such a short duration is usually never a good thing, but I will say that in looking at Harris' resume, he appeared to be what many consider a “job-hopper.” Additionally, having Kurt Workman back, who is the company's co-founder and past CEO, in the role makes perfect sense and would be about as easy of a transition as you could imagine. With this CEO transition, there’s also a change in strategy. As Workman noted in the Q1 earnings call, Owlet is prioritizing the company’s subscription and telehealth opportunity and moving away from a focus on hardware. Here’s what Workman had to say about this change on the earnings call : By extending high-value subscription features that span the child's first 2 years, we aim to increase engagement and retention over time, evolving the customer relationship from a onetime user into a 4-year subscriber. This evolution from a hardware-centric sales to a multiyear subscription model fundamentally shifts our growth trajectory, compounding our recurring subscriber base into the millions. Owlet is increasingly operating with a subscription-first approach across the business. That means the product road map, marketing and channel partnerships are aligned toward increasing subscription penetratio...
(RTTNews) - European stocks tumbled on Wednesday, with several markets in the region recording their sharpest fall in several months, as escalating Middle East tensions rendered the mood bearish.
(RTTNews) - European stocks tumbled on Wednesday, with several markets in the region recording their sharpest fall in several months, as escalating Middle East tensions rendered the mood bearish.
SpaceX shares fell over 6% and Tesla dropped nearly 4% on Tuesday, wiping more than $50 billion off Elon Musk's net worth and pushing him below the $1 trillion mark. Meanwhile, SpaceX's bitcoin wallet — holding 18,712 BTC — made its first transaction in six months. CoinDesk's Jennifer Sanasie hosts "CoinDesk Daily."
SpaceX shares fell over 6% and Tesla dropped nearly 4% on Tuesday, wiping more than $50 billion off Elon Musk's net worth and pushing him below the $1 trillion mark. Meanwhile, SpaceX's bitcoin wallet — holding 18,712 BTC — made its first transaction in six months. CoinDesk's Jennifer Sanasie hosts "CoinDesk Daily."
September ICE NY cocoa (CCU26 ) today is up +313 (+5.43%), and September ICE London cocoa #7 (CAU26 ) is up +244 (+5.72%). Cocoa prices are surging today amid weather risks in West Africa, with NY cocoa posting a 6-month high and London cocoa posting a 7-month high. Cocoa prices...
September ICE NY cocoa (CCU26 ) today is up +313 (+5.43%), and September ICE London cocoa #7 (CAU26 ) is up +244 (+5.72%). Cocoa prices are surging today amid weather risks in West Africa, with NY cocoa posting a 6-month high and London cocoa posting a 7-month high. Cocoa prices...
delectus/iStock via Getty Images Since I last wrote about the gold Canadian miner Agnico Eagle Mines Limited ( AEM ) in September 2025, the stock has seen a marginal correction. Going by the gold price drop YTD, this would come as no surprise. Except for the fact that since last September, the SPDR Gold Shares ETF ( GLD ), which invests in gold bullion, is up by over 13% instead. In other words, A...
delectus/iStock via Getty Images Since I last wrote about the gold Canadian miner Agnico Eagle Mines Limited ( AEM ) in September 2025, the stock has seen a marginal correction. Going by the gold price drop YTD, this would come as no surprise. Except for the fact that since last September, the SPDR Gold Shares ETF ( GLD ), which invests in gold bullion, is up by over 13% instead. In other words, AEM's price drop is for reasons other than just a gold price correction. This raises the question—what explains it? And more importantly, can the stock rise from current levels? Price Returns (Sep 2025-Present): AEM, GLD, SP500 (Source: Seeking Alpha) Macros impact gold... First, a look at the reasons for why the stock has fallen. A look at the AEM price chart reveals that it was doing exceptionally well, with gains of 65% from the time I wrote until the war started. Since then, however, much like other gold mining stocks, it has been on a sharp downslide (see chart below). Underlying the drop is a 22% fall in the price of gold since, which is perplexing on the face of it considering that gold is the safe-haven investment in times of uncertainty. Price Returns (Feb 27, 2026 - Present): AEM, NEM, B, WPM (Source: Seeking Alpha) But two macro factors this time around have resulted in a price correction. These are as follows: A key macro fallout of the war was a fuel price rise. Brent crude's price pushed well past $100/bbl for the first time since 2022. Higher inflation has ensued , resulting in rising expectations of an interest rate increase , especially as the real economy remains firm. Higher interest rates mean that the opportunity cost of holding gold increases, reducing its demand. A stronger U.S. dollar YTD has also worked against gold. Since the yellow metal is invoiced in U.S. dollars, it becomes pricier in foreign currencies as a result. And this is after the gold price jumped by 75% last year already. Owing to macro conditions and gold price trends, the outlook on t...
The partnership, signed through Autoliv (Shanghai) Management, combines Autoliv's expertise in automotive safety systems with Xpeng's work in “smart” electric mobility.
The partnership, signed through Autoliv (Shanghai) Management, combines Autoliv's expertise in automotive safety systems with Xpeng's work in “smart” electric mobility.