China builds a rival satellite constellation

China builds a rival satellite constellation as SpaceX goes public

A Chinese state-backed satellite company is signing the partners and governments Starlink has pushed aside, days before SpaceX’s record listing.

Rest of World/iStock
By INDRANIL GHOSH
+
11 JUNE 2026
TRANSLATE





Chinese upstart Spacesail is trying to steal SpaceX’s thunder.

State-backed Spacesail launched two satellites on a reusable rocket on June 1, just days before SpaceX’s $1.8 trillion listing on June 12, the largest public offering to date. Much of SpaceX’s valuation rests on Starlink, the satellite internet service, which has over 10 million customers across 100 countries.


Spacesail appears to be deliberately targeting countries where Starlink has faced issues.”Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting

Starlink’s 7,000 satellites dominate internet service in virtually every market where they are present. User growth slowed in the first quarter of this year as sign-ups tapered in established markets, and rapid expansion left a trail of disgruntled partners and regulators.

Meanwhile, Spacesail launched three batches of satellites in five days, reaching 200 in orbit on June 5. The company has moved into markets where Starlink’s complacency had created openings.

“Spacesail appears to be deliberately targeting countries where Starlink has faced political or regulatory issues, or other market issues,” Blaine Curcio, founder of Orbital Gateway Consulting, a Hong Kong-based firm tracking the Chinese space industry, told Rest of World.

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SpaceX and Spacesail had not responded to Rest of World’s queries by the time of publication.
Going head-to-head

For governments that previously had no alternative to Starlink, Spacesail’s arrival changed the negotiating dynamic. A second provider, backed by Chinese state financing and willing to work on their terms, gave them the leverage they did not have before.

Starlink had signed a reseller agreement with satellite operator Measat in Malaysia years before Spacesail arrived. Measat then undercut its own partner by bringing in competing resellers, Curcio said. Spacesail signed its first international partnership with Measat early last year.

Starlink’s dominance led to similar friction in Africa, where users in several cities had no alternative provider as service quality declined. Spacesail last year registered trademarks in South Africa.

Governments across Africa have welcomed the prospect of a new entrant, Temidayo Oniosun, CEO of Space in Africa, a Lagos-based firm tracking Africa’s satellite industry, told Rest of World.

“After gaining market share, Starlink has done several price increases because the competition isn’t there,” Oniosun said. “People in those cities may be looking for alternatives.”

In 2024, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk refused to comply with a Brazilian court’s orders to moderate content on his social media platform X — leading to a five-week ban, and an opening for Spacesail. After Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Brazil for the G20 summit in November that year, a Spacesail deal with Brazil’s state telecom followed, and the telecom regulator granted Spacesail an operating licence in February, Curcio said.

In Kazakhstan, Starlink’s project to connect 2,000 schools stalled in 2024 after the company refused to meet the government’s data security requirements, he said. Spacesail registered a subsidiary in the country in January 2025.

Airbus agreed in December to include Spacesail’s network on its in-flight Wi-Fi platform, a deal that took Spacesail’s reach beyond individual country markets. Thailand’s state telecom signed a partnership in April, and Spacesail is reportedly negotiating with roughly 30 other countries.

Spacesail raised over $1 billion in 2024, and is seeking fresh capital to expand its constellation to 15,000 satellites by 2030. The June 1 launch used a new Chinese reusable rocket, similar to the technology that had allowed SpaceX to build Starlink affordably.

With 200 satellites now in orbit, Spacesail said it has enough capacity to support its first commercial application: tracking maritime vessels at sea. The company aims to begin broader commercial services by the end of 2026.
The U.S. is watching

Spacesail’s expansion into Starlink’s growth markets carries direct implications for U.S. companies that rely on satellite connectivity abroad, and for investors in the SpaceX IPO.

The growing dependence of countries on Chinese space infrastructure should alarm U.S. policymakers, said Ellis Scherer, a space policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that tracks Chinese space capabilities.


China still lacks a mission-ready, fully reusable rocket like SpaceX’s Falcon 9.” Ellis Scherer, space policy analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

“China still lacks a mission-ready, fully reusable rocket like SpaceX’s Falcon 9,” Scherer told Rest of World. “Until such a rocket is successfully developed by a Chinese company, Spacesail’s launch cadence will continue to lag significantly behind SpaceX’s, limiting Spacesail’s competitive edge.”

Even where Spacesail gains a foothold, replacing Starlink will take time, Oniosun said. Users who have invested in Starlink may be reluctant to pay again for Spacesail hardware — although in cities where Starlink’s quality has dropped because of overloaded capacity, users may be more open to a new provider, he said.

The IPO also reflects SpaceX’s expansion into AI computing. After merging with Musk’s company xAI in February, SpaceX now operates data centers in Memphis, Tennessee. In its regulatory filing, the company has disclosed a deal under which Google will pay approximately $920 million a month for computing capacity at those facilities through June 2029.

Spacesail’s playbook of state backing, non-Western markets, and government-level deals resembles that of BYD, the Chinese electric car maker that grew with billions in subsidies and overtook Tesla in global sales, Curcio said.

The parallel holds in strategy, but satellite internet has a grim track record: Iridium, Spacesail’s best-known predecessor, had failed before it found a viable business, Curcio said. Spacesail also has a rival at home in China — state-owned company SatNet — with which it competes for rockets and government support, he said.

“Other than Starlink, effectively no other satellite constellations have been very successful, at least before declaring bankruptcy first,” Curcio said.


Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect that Measat is a private entity.

Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats?

 Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats?

MS NOW · 4 hours ago
by Eugene Daniels · Elections


CHICAGO — In the halls of a Hyatt, serviced by unionized employees of course, hundreds of young, mostly college educated democratic socialists are milling about. It’s a bit too corporate for what is happening in the rooms: conversations on how they can expand, grow and fight back more.

The session names are the tell: “Winning Socialism in the South,” “Legislating as Socialists,” “Power Shift Opportunities.”

What you won’t find are the stars of the movement. No Mamdani. No AOC. No Bernie.

Instead, it’s the door knockers, the city council types, the local stewards who have gotten disillusioned with American politics and have taken their energy elsewhere. And in a lot of cases, that fight is aimed as much at the Democratic Party as at President Donald Trump.

Which raises the question that hung over the entire weekend, which nobody answered the same way twice: Are these people Democrats, or not?

Ask plainly and a half-dozen answers from people wearing the same label will give you the same answer.

“I think if the Democratic Party was actually delivering on the things that they say they care about and what is listed in their platform, I would feel comfortable saying yes to that,” said Hayley Banyai-Becker, a Democratic Socialists of America leader based in Portland, Oregon, who helped plan the summit told MS NOW. “The answer is no.”

Washington state Representative Shaun Scott, sitting next to her and running unopposed, wouldn’t take the yes-or-no. “I think that DSA is at the mainstream of American politics right now,” he said, then flipped it. “If we were to be considered part of the left wing of the Democratic Party, I would wonder what happened to the right or the center of the Democratic Party.”

Robert Levertis Bell, a public school teacher running for the Kentucky state house with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement, went further.

“I see many elements of the Democratic Party as absolutely being my enemy because I stand with the working class, and if you don’t represent the interests of the working class, if you’re not trying to build political power for the working class, and you actually are trying to build power for the capitalist class, then you are my enemy,” Bell said. “And the capitalist class runs the Democratic Party.”

Enemies or opponents? He split it. “Some of my enemies, some of my opponents, some of my friends.”

National co-chair Ashik Siddique explains the strategy rather than the sentiment. For him, the only way to gain electoral power is through the Democratic door. “All it takes to run in a Democratic primary is to be a registered Democrat, so that’s what we’re doing for the most part.”

Why not run outside it, like the Green Party: “There’s a clear ceiling to that strategy.”

Not exactly on the fringes anymore

The Democratic Socialists of America are in the midst of a year that has fundamentally begun to change their place in the country. The idea of it being a fringe is fading. By now the shock of the movement’s insurgent victories against tenured congressional incumbents in New York and Colorado has worn off and one of their own could soon win a competitive primary for governor in the presidential battleground of Wisconsin.

Asked why now, and they point you to 2016.

“Bernie Sanders’s campaign in 2016 showed how much space there really was in American politics for democratic socialist politics,” Siddique said. “I don’t think I was aware of what socialism really was, other than something in the history books, until he ran for president.”

Membership went from roughly 5,000 before 2015 to more than 120,000. Siddique rejects the lightning-strike version of that.

“Now is the moment where seeds that we started to plant a decade ago or even earlier are now bearing fruit,” he said. “In 2017, the year after Bernie had run for president, so many of us who had been motivated by his campaign just thought, okay, now what? It feels like we’re in the wilderness here with Trump as president, and we don’t know what to do.”

But those seeds can’t grow in bad soil. The conditions matter, and the conditions right now are a Democratic Party with approval ratings in the tank,, a base that keeps telling pollsters it wants someone willing to fight, and a summer of liberal self-loathing that has left an unusual amount of room to the left.

Insurgencies don’t happen when the establishment is delivering. There is no Zohran Mamdani, no Darializa Avila Chevalier, no runaway primary in Wisconsin, if Democratic leadership is fighting the way its own voters want it to.

Others in Chicago were blunter about the vacuum created by Democratic missteps.

“There is so much inconsistency with how the Democrats operate, and for a while I think they’ve been able to get away with ‘we’re not Trump’ but we’re in the second Trump presidency,” said Chanpreet Singh with the Seattle DSA. “…The absence of a positive political vision is going to continue to be a crisis for the Democratic Party, and, I think, an opportunity for us as an organization.”

Even with possibly ripe conditions, what the DSA is now grappling with in public is its own platform — abolish the Senate, abolish police and prisons, get rid of the Defense Department — and no DSA candidate is running on any of it, and everyone in Chicago says so freely. It is also opposition research that writes itself, and Republicans are enjoying it.

But the pamphlet being handed out in the halls of the convention center is missing some of the language that has created the caricature of the DSA and caused them to be pilloried after interviews. It shows they are still very far away from overtaking the Democratic party establishment.

“The language that we have in there is abolishing the police and prison system that protects capital over people,” Siddique said. Told it doesn’t roll off the tongue: “It doesn’t. You know, it’s not a great slogan. I’ll admit that.”

Asked whether murder and sexual assault would still be prosecuted: “To us, those are crimes. We want to limit that. I personally have no problem with having something called a prison be the place where people like that are kept.”

The great 2028 hope

A card circulating in one session urged members to line up behind a 2028 presidential run by a candidate who hasn’t said she’s running. Walking into one meeting, attendees were welcomed with that card featuring the face of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the heir apparent to what Bernie’s been able to build in American politics.

She’s not running for anything other than another term in her current job right now. But a push is afoot to align behind her quickly if she decides to go after the biggest job American politics has to offer.

“The 2028 Presidential Election is an unprecedented opportunity for the Left in the United States,” the card read before urging the DSA rank and file “to seize the moment, unite Labor and the Left, and elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as our Democratic Socialist President.”

The real version is less fun. A bloc of democratic socialists is set to arrive in Congress next year, and a movement built on refusing to compromise is about to be represented by people who will have to.

Siddique says the flexibility was always there. He points to the DSA bloc in the New York state legislature, “very agitational when it mattered” and still willing to work with anyone who’d move a bill. Data centers are his example, an issue where the anger crosses party lines and socialists in office “will work with whoever” to stop them.

Banyai-Becker explained how the organization plans to police its own once they’re sworn in. They “are still accountable to the working class, and we are able to talk to them.”

The test starts on Jan. 3, 2027.

The post Democratic socialists are done being on the fringe. But are they Democrats? appeared first on MS NOW.

Stripe and Advent reportedly drop $50+ billion bid for PayPal

 Stripe and Advent reportedly drop $50+ billion bid for PayPal. What might have been the largest fintech acquisition ever looks like it won’t be getting processed after all. Bloomberg reports that PE firm Advent and payment processor Stripe are walking away from their efforts to acquire PayPal, an OG in the payments space. They had reportedly offered more than $50 billion for PayPal. An earlier Wall Street Journal report said PayPal—which has a new CEO, and saw its stock rise amid news of the deal talk and a solid second quarter—had been seeking more money.

Ask ChatGPT to write a short story in the voice

 

Ask ChatGPT to write a short story in the voice of Ernest Hemingway, and you may not get one anymore.

Just a few months ago, Grammarly started writing in the style of famous personalities, both dead and alive, without any authorization. It resulted in a furor, and the company had to kill the “expert” writing feature. ChatGPT is now taking a safer path, as well.

As per user reports, it is now refusing to imitate the writing style of famous personalities such as Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. For example, when the folks over at ArsTechnica asked the chatbot to write like Hemingway, this was the response:

“I can definitely write with the hallmarks of atmospheric, character-driven horror and small-town dread, but I can’t write in Stephen King’s exact style or closely imitate his distinctive voice. Here’s an original opening that captures a similar feeling while remaining its own”

It looks like OpenAI is playing it safe with all those lawsuits piling up, alleging the company of wholesale piracy and unauthorized use of material lifted from books, magazines, newspapers, and websites, among other resources. The likes of Anthropic are no stranger to similar claims, and the linked lawsuits, of course.

India's automobile brands are outranking Tesla and BYD in EV efficiency

 In an unexpected twist, India's automobile brands are outranking Tesla and BYD in EV efficiency

Indian automakers Tata Motors and Mahindra have claimed the top two spots in a global electric vehicle efficiency ranking, beating out household names like Tesla and BYD. According to the International Council on Clean Transportation's 2025 report, which evaluated 22 of the world's largest EV manufacturers, Tata Motors led the field with an average energy consumption of just 106 watt-hours per kilometer, followed by Mahindra at 113 Wh/km. Tesla and BYD came in third and fourth respectively, while the overall industry average held nearly flat year on year at 131 Wh/km.

The results arrive at a significant moment for India's auto industry. EVs currently account for less than 5% of new passenger vehicle sales in the country, well below the global average of 25%, but the Indian government has set an ambitious target of electrifying 30% by 2030, a goal framed around cutting emissions, reducing oil imports, and expanding domestic manufacturing. India is the world's fourth-largest petroleum consumer, and officials are already shaping the third phase of tightened standards for automakers covering 2027 to 2032.

Efficiency gains alone, however, will not be enough to drive mass adoption. The ICCT ranking also revealed that Tata Motors ranked last among the evaluated manufacturers for charging speed and sixth from the bottom for driving range, two factors that weigh heavily on consumer decisions and will need to improve significantly if India is to meet its electrification ambitions.

Jersey Mike’s gets that bread from its IPO

 

Jersey Mike’s gets that bread from its IPO

Kevin Carter/Getty Images

Jersey Mike’s debuted on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, the culmination of a relatively quick turnaround from its sale to private equity firm Blackstone last year.

The purveyors of the Big Kahuna Cheese Steak priced its IPO at $23 per share to raise ~$1 billion, making it the largest IPO in the restaurant sector since Krispy Kreme raised $500 million with its 2021 IPO. The newly dubbed JMKE opened lower, at $21, and closed the day down ~6% from its IPO price.

Fast food: PE companies tend to hold for years, but Blackstone fast-tracked the sandwich chain for public trading in 18 months. Blackstone moved so quickly because of Jersey Mike’s rapid growth in recent years and the public’s current voracious appetite for IPOs:

• Since 2019, Jersey Mike’s has tripled sales while smoking rival Subway. Per the Wall Street Journal, the average Jersey Mike’s location made $1.36 million in sales last year while Subway averaged $510,000 (although Subway has many more locations).
• This year is shaping up to be a record one for IPOs—there has been $146.1 billion of common stock offered in the first six months of 2026 (more than half from SpaceX), which is already more than the combined totals between 2022 and 2025.

Up next: Inspire Brands, the owner of chains that include Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Dunkin’, could be the next restaurant operator to go public. It filed confidentially for an IPO in May with the intent to raise $2 billion, per Bloomberg.

Life came at this AI whiz kid fast

 

Life came at this AI whiz kid fast

Situational Awareness

It’s times like these when it’s very important to have a company name that doesn’t dunk on itself if something goes wrong. AI hedge fund Situational Awareness put out an emergency call to unload more than $10 billion from its public portfolio this week after absorbing massive losses. Billionaire Ken Griffin’s fund Citadel promised to buy a majority of the stock at a heavy discount yesterday.

Situational Awareness was founded two years ago by 25-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI staffer who wrote the popular essay “Situational Awareness” in 2024 about how he expected AI to change everything. The fund invested huge amounts of leveraged cash in the software and hardware companies that it believed the AI revolution would depend on:

• The hedge fund grew its portfolio to $45 billion in early July.
• But recent investor jitters about the sustainability of the industry have cratered many of the fund’s biggest holdings, like Nebius, Micron, and Sandisk. (All three rebounded yesterday, but Aschenbrenner had already sold them 🫠.)

Looking ahead…Per some reports, Situational Awareness was also floating the sale of its stake in Anthropic, but the fund denied that. With the cash influx from Citadel, it’s possible that the fund is simply trying to keep its head above water until Anthropic’s expected IPO later this year. But the rest of Wall Street is on edge because large hedge funds crashing out have been early signs of crises

Apple wants to be the company you rent your gadgets.

 

Apple wants to be the company you rent your gadgets from, not just buy them from.

Apple has officially launched Apple Upgrade, a leasing program that lets customers pay monthly for an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch rather than purchasing the device outright. Built in partnership with Klarna, the program replaces the iPhone Upgrade Program that Apple has offered since 2015 and expands the concept across nearly the full current hardware lineup. Lease terms run 12 or 24 months for phones and watches, and 24 or 36 months for iPads and Macs. Pricing starts at $31.99 a month for a 256GB iPhone 17 Pro on a 24-month term, $24.99 a month for a 256GB iPad Pro over 36 months, and $38.99 a month for a 16GB MacBook Pro over the same stretch. Notably, the iPhone 16, base iPad, and MacBook Neo are not eligible, and iPhone lessees must be on a postpaid plan with AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon.

The structure of the program carries some meaningful fine print. Apple requires no security deposit and performs only a soft credit check through Klarna, but Klarna owns the billing relationship for the life of the lease and handles payments through its own app. Early upgrades are permitted but come with a fee that scales with how many payments remain. Devices must be returned in good condition, or damage charges apply, and unlike the old iPhone Upgrade Program, AppleCare is not bundled into the lease price. Customers have 14 days to cancel without penalty, but missing that window triggers an early termination fee. At the end of a full term, customers can upgrade, return the device, or pay a one-time fee to buy it outright, though waiting more than six months after the term ends triggers an automatic purchase charge.

The launch marks a meaningful shift in how Apple positions its hardware business, moving from a model centered on ownership toward one where monthly payments are the norm and keeping a device is an extra step rather than the default outcome.

TCL built a 22-speaker soundbar for turning living rooms into movie theaters

 TCL built a 22-speaker soundbar for turning living rooms into movie theaters, but it’s skipping the US

Here's everything inside TCL's new flagship Q95K soundbar, from its Bang & Olufsen tuning to its 360-degree sound tech.
By Shikhar Mehrotra Published July 27, 2026 11:45 AM

TCL

I’ve used enough soundbars to know most “360-degree audio” claims are marketing fluff dressed up as innovation. TCL’s new flagship might actually have the hardware to back that claim up for once.

The Q95K is TCL’s new flagship soundbar. It’s built around an 11.1.4 channel Hi-Fi architecture and tuned in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen. To me, it sounds like a serious attempt to compete with premium home theater setups.TCL
So what’s actually inside this thing?

The system spreads 1420W of peak power across 22 independent speaker units. The exceptional output is split between a main bar handling seven horizontal channels, two overhead channels, and a subwoofer channel, along with wireless surround speakers covering rear, rear-side, and rear-overhead audio.

This is the kind of speaker layout that doesn’t only make things louder, but also excels at creating a convincing sense of sound moving around you, especially while watching movies.

A three-way acoustic design covers a wide 30Hz to 20kHz frequency range while still keeping distortion under 1%. The device uses neodymium magnets and aluminum diaphragms for clarity in the mids and highs.

Bass comes from a dual-engine subwoofer with opposing 7-inch drivers designed to cancel out cabinet resonance, while 12 separate amplifier chips drive individual speakers to cut down on crosstalk. These additions address the biggest problems with high-powered soundbars: muddy bass and messy audio separation.TCL
What about the rest of the lineup, and can you buy it yet?

TCL’s 360-degree sound field tech leans on software, adapting via the TCL app regardless of your wall layout. Connectivity covers HDMI 2.1 with eARC, Wi-Fi 6, and AirPlay 2, and the floating base design works for both desktop and wall-mounted setups.

TCL also launched two smaller siblings: the Q85K (16 units, 1180W) and Q75K (14 units, 580W). Unfortunately, none of the soundbars are available in the United States right now. The company already sells its flagship TVs and other audio products in the region.

All three are currently China-only, priced at 7,999 yuan (~$1,181), 5,999 yuan (~$886), and 4,699 yuan (~$694) respectively, with no confirmed global release yet.



Shikhar Mehrotra
News Writer
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For more than five years, Shikhar has consistently simplified developments in the field of consumer tech and presented them…

Musk Leaves Room For a Potential SpaceX-Tesla Merger

Musk Leaves Room For a Potential SpaceX-Tesla Merger
First came xAI-SpaceX. Now brace yourselves for SpaceXAI-Tesla.
BY ECE YILDIRIMPUBLISHED JULY 22, 2026, 11:39 PM ET

READING TIME 2 MINUTES

Elon Musk © FotoField / Shutterstock
READ LATER COMMENTS (31)



Elon Musk has a lot of companies, and lately his hobby has been mergers.

Earlier this year, the billionaire’s space company SpaceX acquired his artificial intelligence company xAI (now SpaceXAI) in a $1.25 trillion deal. The joint entity, known just as SpaceX, went public in a record $75 billion IPO earlier this summer (though its stock has been trending down since).


On the heels of that financial success, people are largely expecting Musk to further capitalize on that hype and merge his electric vehicle company Tesla with SpaceX. The two companies already work together on a lot, including the integration of SpaceXAI’s Grok chatbot into Tesla’s vehicles and a giant join-venture chip factory in Texas called the Terafab.

When asked about it by analysts in Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday, Musk avoided answering the question.

“Well, I mean, as you can tell from all the many collaborations on so many fronts with SpaceX, there’s more and more overlap, especially with the Terafab, that’s really going to be a gigantic project,” Musk answered. “But obviously, you know, we can’t talk about combining companies, that kind of thing, on earnings calls.”

Then Musk went on what sounded like a sales pitch for how he thinks SpaceX can further Tesla’s mission. He said SpaceX’s Starlink can ensure better and more expansive connectivity for Tesla’s autonomous vehicles like the Cybercab, even in any “Bermuda triangles with lack of cellular connectivity,” and promised the merits of integrating SpaceXAI’s Grok into Tesla’s Optimus robots, a plan that he debuted earlier this year in a project called “Digital Optimus.”

Following Musk’s answer, analysts seem to have upped their bets that a merger is indeed on the horizon.

“Going into the call, I thought there was an 80% chance the two companies come together in the next few years,” investment company Deepwater’s co-founder and managing partner Gene Munster said in a post on X. “I’m raising that to 90%.”

This latest earnings report left investors with more questions than answers. The company’s stock was down after the report dropped, as the company’s increasing expenses poured into AI have started to weigh on its financials. Even though revenue came above expectations, the company’s earnings per share (a metric that shows how much profit a company makes per share of its stock) was down way below market expectations.

Tesla is expecting to spend more than $25 billion this year, largely due to AI. That financial commitment helped drive the company’s free cash flow negative this past quarter.

“This is a massive capex year, but I’m confident that all the things that we’re investing in will yield incredible returns,” Musk said at the call, in an effort to justify the numbers.

Musk said he specifically asked his team to spend money “as fast as we can without it being too wasteful,” because aiming for “extremely high efficiency” spending would allegedly only slow down the amount of innovation and production that the company has been aiming for.

“We’re bringing an incredible amount of construction and production growth in so many different arenas simultaneously,” Musk claimed. “I think probably this is the fastest industrial scale up since World War II in America.”

Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement pays Harry Potter publisher $19M

 

Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement pays Harry Potter publisher $19M

Anthropic has reached a $1.5 billion copyright settlement with thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to train its Claude AI chatbots, with Bloomsbury Publishing set to receive roughly $19 million of that total. The London-based publisher, home to J.K. Rowling, Sarah J. Maas, and Susanna Clarke, had 14,087 titles listed in the settlement at a proposed compensation of about $3,000 per title. After attorney fees and other expenses are deducted, that sum will be split between Bloomsbury and the affected authors, with payments expected to begin arriving in instalments as early as the second half of this fiscal year.

The case, which began when novelist Andrea Bartz and two other authors filed suit in 2024, has been described by the authors' lead lawyer as the largest known copyright recovery in history. A US district judge approved the deal on Monday, calling it meaningful relief for those affected. About 91 percent of the 482,000 works covered in the lawsuit have been claimed by rights holders, a figure Anthropic itself highlighted as a sign of broad acceptance.

The settlement is the first major resolution to emerge from the dozens of AI copyright lawsuits working their way through US courts on behalf of authors and news organizations, making it a significant marker for how the industry might reckon with its use of protected creative work going forward.

Read More →

Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books

Judge approves a $1.5B Anthropic settlement over pirated books used to train the Claude chatbot




Thriller novelist Andrea Bartz is photographed in her home, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
Updated 11:01 AM GMT-7, July 21, 2026
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $1.5 billion copyright settlement in which artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay thousands of authors about $3,000 per book after using pirated copies of their works to train its Claude chatbot.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said in a Monday ruling that the class-action settlement provides “meaningful relief” to affected authors and publishers.

About 91% of the more than 482,000 books covered by the ruling have been claimed by authors or publishers who are now due payment.

Plaintiff attorney Justin Nelson said in a statement that the settlement was “the largest known copyright recovery in history. We look forward to making distributions to the Class as promptly as possible.”

U.S. District Judge William Alsup issued the preliminary approval in San Francisco federal court last September and has since retired. Alsup had dealt the case a mixed ruling last summer, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.

Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, Aparna Sridhar, highlighted that ruling Friday as a landmark showing “that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law.”

“We are pleased that more than 91% of authors and publishers covered by the settlement have claimed their share of the payment, and we’re looking forward to bringing this matter to a close,” Sridhar said in a written statement.


Bestselling thriller novelist Andrea Bartz first brought the suit with two other authors in 2024. It’s the first major settlement in dozens of AI copyright lawsuits that are still working their way through courts.

Lake Mead expected to drop nearly 33 feet by June 2028

 Lake Mead expected to drop nearly 33 feet by June 2028, and that’s not even the worst-case scenario by Greg Haas - 07/18/26 10:47 AM ET

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) – A critical year is ahead for the nation’s two largest reservoirs, with no relief after a record-low snowpack and a continuing drought.

A comment posted on the Colorado River Basin’s Facebook page Wednesday morning might have said it best: “Not enough water in the Monsoons to help. There’s only 2 things that can save Mead and Powell right now: 150 percent Colorado Rockies snow pack for 5 consecutive years, or God himself.”

Projections released earlier this week show Lake Mead dropping to the lowest levels seen since Hoover Dam was built in the 1930s, falling to 1,035.86 feet in November. That’s about 6.5 feet lower than Lake Mead’s level Friday at noon — 1,042.52 feet. Lake Mead is the nation’s largest reservoir, but it’s currently at 27 percent capacity.
The latest projections

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s 24-month study, which is updated monthly, published “most probable” lake levels through June 2028, when Lake Mead is expected to be at 1,009.69 feet. That represents a drop of nearly 33 feet over the next two years. When the lake is at “full pool,” the lake’s surface is at 1,229 feet.

Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir, is currently at 24 percent capacity. The federal government has consistently prioritized keeping Powell at levels that protect Glen Canyon Dam’s ability to produce hydroelectricity. To do so, the reservoir’s target level has been established as 3,525 feet. But Lake Powell is currently at 3,524.03 feet right now.

To keep Powell at its current level, the federal government has increased releases from Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Utah-Wyoming border, bolstering flow in the Green River, the Colorado River’s largest tributary.

The government has also reduced releases from Lake Powell. Lower releases will have an impact on Lake Mead.

Water shortage levels that determine Colorado River allocations are based on Lake Mead’s level. And even under the most optimistic forecasts, that will mean less water for Arizona and Nevada in 2027. Those decisions are based on projections that come out in August, looking ahead at the lake’s projected level at the end of the year.
Water for the Las Vegas valley

Officials from the Southern Nevada Water Authority aren’t worried about the water supply to Las Vegas. Despite continuing growth in the valley, SNWA says Nevada is using far less than its allocation. That’s the result of water recycling and reduced use of water outdoors. SNWA receives credits for water that is recycled and returned to Lake Mead.

About 90 percent of the Las Vegas valley’s water comes from Lake Mead, with the remaining 10% from wells.

Total consumptive use of Colorado River water in Nevada is estimated to be 198,001 acre-feet in 2026 out of its 287,000-acre-foot allocation under current water shortage conditions. (An acre-foot is equal to 325,851 gallons — literally, the amount of water it takes to cover an acre in water a foot deep.)

The federal government is expected to establish new rules that will take effect in 2027 regarding river water allocations. Those rules might be released around the same time that Reclamation releases its next 24-month study in the middle of August. Current rules expire at the end of the year.
Worst-case scenario

Reclamation also released projections that show the best- and worst-case scenarios, shown in the graphic below. The red dashed line shows that under “Probable Minimum” projections, Lake Mead would drop below 1,000 feet by June 2028.

Some scientists say the “Probable Minimum” has been a more accurate reflection of actual reality during the drought that began in 2000.
Lake Powell’s place in the projections

Continued efforts to maintain Lake Powell’s elevation at 3,525 feet are not reflected in the projections released on Wednesday. Reclamation shows Lake Powell going far below that immediately in its projections with 10 consecutive months of declines that would put Powell at 3,491.75 feet.

If the federal government continues to prioritize Lake Powell, that’s water that won’t be sent downstream to Lake Mead, possibly amplifying the effects on Lake Mead.

The graphs in the slideshow below show levels at Lake Mead (the first slide) and Lake Powell compared to levels over the past five years.

The Colorado River supplies water to 40 million people, but scientists have said that climate change has reduced the amount of water in the basin by about 20%.

The result: More water is promised to users than the amount that actually exists.

The federal government — the Interior Department and the Bureau of Reclamation — are now shaping future agreements on how to manage the Colorado River after the seven states in the river basin failed to come to a consensus.

How big is the federal deficit?

How big is the federal deficit?

Last month, we covered the federal debt. Now it’s time to cover what adds to it each year: the deficit. That's the gap between the money the government brings in and what it spends in a given period. If the country is running a deficit at the end of the fiscal year, that amount gets added to the national debt. Here’s how the current deficit compares with historical data.

The deficit for fiscal year 2026 (which will run from October 2025 to the end of September 2026) reached $1.37 trillion by June. That’s $29.1 billion higher, or up 2.2%, from the same point last fiscal year.

The government has run a budget surplus in 12 nonconsecutive fiscal years since 1933. The most recent surplus year was FY 2001.





The deficit more than tripled from $983.6 billion in FY 2019 to $3.1 trillion in FY 2020, largely due to pandemic-related spending on unemployment insurance, stimulus checks, and small business support.

The deficit reached 5.8% of GDP in FY 2025.

The deficit has topped 5% of GDP in 10 of the last 19 years, starting in 2007 during the Great Recession. It crossed that threshold only once in the 50 fiscal years between 1947 and 2007, in FY 1983. The all-time high was 26.9% of GDP in FY 1943.

The nation’s neighbors are also its biggest trading partners

The nation’s neighbors are also its biggest trading partners. In 2025, imports and exports with Mexico totaled $971 billion. These primarily included capital goods, such as machinery, equipment, and other production process tools.

Imports and exports with Canada, primarily industrial supplies and materials such as oil, chemicals, and plastics used in production processes, totaled $879.9 billion.

While the nation’s trade deficit with Canada shrank last year (down $12.1 billion from the year prior), it grew with Mexico (up $22.3 billion).

Google Ordered to Give A.I. Rivals More Access on Android Smartphones

 Google Ordered to Give A.I. Rivals More Access on Android Smartphones

The decision by European Union regulators is a response to fears that Google will use its vast Android user base to gain an edge in A.I.

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Google’s Android operating system powers about 60 percent of all smartphones in the European Union.Credit...Poppy Lynch for The New York Times



By Adam Satariano


Reporting from London
July 16, 2026

See more of our coverage in your search results.Add The New York Times on Google



Google was ordered by European Union regulators on Thursday to lift restrictions that limit how rival A.I. companies can reach users of Android smartphones, a sign of increased government scrutiny of the booming business of artificial intelligence.

The decision is a response to fears that Google will leverage the enormous user base of Android, which powers about 60 percent of all smartphones in the European Union, to gain an edge in the growing A.I. market and undercut competitors like OpenAI and Anthropic.

As the daily use of artificial intelligence grows across society, an emerging commercial battleground is how to reach users through their smartphones. A.I. companies believe that the more deeply an A.I. service is integrated into a person’s hand-held device — including email, photos and other apps — the more a chatbot can serve as a personal assistant. Think of asking a chatbot to order a car service, suggest a response to a text message or provide information about a recently visited location.

Google and Apple are seen as having a major advantage because the companies make the world’s most used smartphone software, allowing them to set the rules for app developers trying to reach mobile users.



On Thursday, E.U. regulators said the company would be required to give rival A.I. services “equal footing,” including through voice commands and the ability to delegate actions in apps. The decision is binding, and Google is required to carry out the changes by next July.

Google was also ordered to begin sharing anonymized search engine data with rivals, including makers of A.I. chatbots, by January, in an attempt to create more competition.

Google did not say if it planned to challenge the decisions in court. The company said European regulators risked creating new security and privacy vulnerabilities because outside developers would get access to sensitive information kept on a person’s smartphone or search history.

“Today’s decisions risk undermining vital privacy and security guardrails for millions of Europeans,” Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, said in a statement.

The European Union has long been the world’s most aggressive regulator of tech industry business practices and is now expanding its scrutiny into artificial intelligence. Authorities view the technology as the new entry point for people to gain access to digital services and the online world.



An E.U. competition law, the Digital Markets Act, requires large tech companies like Google and Apple to make their products interoperable. That means outside developers should be allowed to offer competing A.I. digital assistants instead of Google’s Gemini and Apple’s Siri.

The competition law is creating friction. In June, Apple said it would withhold the release of new A.I. features for Siri in the European Union because it could not reach an agreement with regulators.

At the same time, A.I. companies are taking steps to develop their own devices to loosen Apple’s and Google’s grip. Last year, OpenAI hired Apple’s former top designer, Jony Ive, to lead its efforts to develop new A.I.-centric hardware products.

Last week, Apple sued OpenAI, accusing it of stealing company secrets. OpenAI denied the accusations.


Adam Satariano is a technology correspondent for The Times, based in London.

US Companies Are Realizing That Chinese AI Models Are Way Cheaper

US Companies Are Realizing That Chinese AI Models Are Way Cheaper, Ditch American Ones
"'Hey, we don't need the best model, we can use the faster, cheaper models.'"


By Frank Landymore


Published Jul 13, 2026 4:01 PM EDT
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As corporate AI bills spiral out of control, many companies are beginning to ask themselves a simple question: why pay a pretty penny for the US’s leading AI models when Chinese ones are far cheaper?

Major companies like DoorDash, Airbnb, and Siemens are adopting Chinese AI tools, the Financial Times reports, attracted not only by their lower costs but their “open-weight” approach that allows them to be molded to each company’s particular needs.

According to data from OpenRouter, a platform that provides all-in-one access to major AI models and tracks their usage, leading Chinese models from DeepSeek and Z.ai have overtaken US equivalents like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Cost-cutting, it seems, trumps all geopolitical rivalries.

Chinese models are “the elephant in the room,” Eugene Cheah, CEO of the AI platform Featherless AI, told the FT. “Enterprises are starting to realize, ‘Hey, we don’t need the best model, we can use the faster, cheaper models.'”

US-based AI models have frequently been seen as the most advanced, but that perception is shifting. The release of GLM-5.2 from the Chinese startup Z.ai last month caused a stir in Western tech circles, as major Silicon Valley figures hailed it as capable or nearly as capable as US systems despite being significantly cheaper to use.

Cheap Chinese AI couldn’t be coming at a more opportune moment. The corporate world, wooed by AI companies’ promises of supercharging their productivity, has spent the past year deploying AI across its workforces, and many are being put off by the costs. One organization reportedly blew through $500 million in a month on Claude usage fees. That’s an extreme outlier, but recent research from the Ramp AI Index found that the businesses most dedicated to AI are spending around $7,500 per employee every month on AI.

Considering the culture around AI, it’s no surprise why: some companies like Meta mandate their employees use AI systems as much as possible, factoring it into their performance reviews. Software engineers, now expected to produce more work than ever, often run multiple AI agents at the same time to complete tasks in the background.

If companies are unwilling to crank back the AI knob, then the next best choice is to look for cheaper models. DoorDash cofounder Andy Fang said on X last week that it was saving a lot of money by having “lower-level work” performed by a model from the Chinese startup Moonshot AI. San Francisco startup Lindy has completely ditched Anthropic’s AI tools in favor of DeepSeek’s latest V4 models.

“Enterprises have an incentive to shift some of their workload to cheaper models. Why would you pay a premium for Anthropic, OpenAI models when for a lot of the workloads you need, the Chinese models are generally workable?” Sam Bresnick, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told the FT.

But cost isn’t the only consideration: many Chinese models are “open-weight,” meaning their parameters or values are entirely visible to the user. That allows an organization to mold a model to its specific needs — and from a cybersecurity perspective, have more control and insight into how it might process sensitive company data.

For foreign companies disillusioned by US leadership, the choice is even easier to make. There’s less faith in the US as stewards of AI, especially after the Trump administration suspended access to Anthropic’s Mythos model overseas.

“The Mythos ban was certainly the most tangible event, and people having their access revoked,” Aidan Gomez, CEO of the Canadian AI group Cohere, told the FT. “It exposes the risk of relying on any one single entity for any of your workloads.”

More on AI: OpenAI Is Shutting Down Its Browser That Was Supposed to Change Everything

Indian students cool on 'American Dream' as EU opens its doors

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Indian students cool on 'American Dream' as EU opens its doors
By Praveen Paramasivam, Sai Ishwarbharath B and Charlotte Van CampenhoutJuly 19, 20267:40 PM PDTUpdated 8 hours ago

Item 1 of 5 A student reads a brochure next to a study abroad sign at the office of KC Overseas Education, an education consultancy, in Bengaluru, India, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Priyanshu Singh
[1/5]A student reads a brochure next to a study abroad sign at the office of KC Overseas Education, an education consultancy, in Bengaluru, India, February 18, 2026. REUTERS/Priyanshu Singh Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary
Trade pact sets clearer post-study pathways for Indian students
EU tuition fees are about 50% to 80% less than the U.S.
EU gains appeal as U.S., Canada, UK tighten visa rules
CHENNAI/BENGALURU/AMSTERDAM, July 20 (Reuters) - A. Shrinikheathan is breaking from his family's tradition of studying in the United States, opting instead for a master's degree in Germany.
The 22-year-old Chennai engineering graduate is learning German and taking a language proficiency test as ​he applies for courses, drawn by the low cost of studying in Germany and its traditionally strong industry links.

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His decision reflects young Indians' growing interest in European universities as the India-EU trade ‌deal's mobility provisions and tighter U.S. immigration rules prompt many to rethink the American Dream, a dozen students and education consultants said.
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"The world is becoming more multi-polar. Earlier, the U.S. was all that everyone was talking about," Shrinikheathan said, adding he was happy to have study choices beyond the "wildly more expensive" United States and Canada.
If sustained, the shift could reshape global student flows, with Europe emerging as a viable alternative to North America for Indian students as the EU seeks young talent to offset labour shortages from an ageing population.
European tuition fees ​are typically 50% to 80% less than the U.S., according to education consultant KC Overseas, with lower living costs also reducing the bill.
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"The European Union has become a leading destination for Indian students," an EU ​official said in a statement to Reuters. "Indian students bring entrepreneurial spirit, cultural richness, and research excellence."
He added: "(Indian students enrich) European campuses while deepening EU-India ties in innovation, ⁠trade, and diplomacy ... this trend will continue to grow, benefiting Europe's talent pool and India's globally competitive workforce."
India's overseas student outflow fell to about 626,000 in 2025 from more than 908,000 in 2023, government data showed, with students ​wary of tougher visa rules and rising costs in the U.S. and other popular study destinations such as Australia and the UK. Last week, Washington moved to tighten the duration of visas for foreign students as part of a wide-ranging immigration ​crackdown that began after Donald Trump took office in January 2025.

00:01South Korean student says stocks 'only salvation' after $200k loss



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WANTED: INDIAN TALENT AT SCALE
Indians' interest in Europe has risen since the January trade deal, which aims to make it easier for students and skilled workers to move to Europe through easier visa pathways, clearer post-study work routes and improved recognition of Indian qualifications.
"The EU-India mobility framework is part of a broader set of initiatives aiming to make the EU a global magnet for attracting and retaining talent, including for Indian students and talent," the EU official said.
"For ​the first time, a major economic bloc is saying, 'We want Indian talent at scale'," said Arnav Kumar, co-founder of study-abroad platform Leap.
India and the EU will work over five years on social security pacts with member states, initially setting up ​a tech-focused office to guide Indian students and professionals.
"Indian students have been growing in Europe without any overarching framework. Now, we have structured pathways from education to employment," Kumar said, forecasting a 60% to 70% jump in student and worker flows over ‌three to ⁠five years.
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Consultants say students are increasingly matching destinations to career goals and lifestyle, choosing Germany for engineering, the Netherlands for work-life balance, Portugal for affordable postgraduate research and France for management.
The prospect of greater mobility across the EU and a growing number of English-language postgraduate programmes are also attracting Indian students and professionals to Europe.

Education consultancy Europe Study Centre has seen enquiries jump 25% to 30% since the trade deal, with director Sivaraman Pandian calling Europe the "red-hot destination" for families put off by rising costs and tougher visa rules elsewhere.
More than 121,000 Indians study in the EU, about half the U.S. total, but the bloc has steadily grown in popularity, emerging as a leading destination alongside the U.S., ​Canada and Australia, government data showed.
CHALLENGES APLENTY TOO
Challenges remain, ​however.
"If somebody says you will get a job in ⁠this country, don't blindly believe it. Just because you studied in that country, it does not entitle you to get a job," said Pandian.
"You study, and you develop a skill-set; your doors are open."
Several students pointed to language barriers, housing shortages in major cities such as Amsterdam, intense competition for jobs, and the need for specialised skills.
Some ​others also acknowledged concerns about the rise in far-right political parties and hardening attitudes towards foreigners in parts of Europe, according to Reuters interviews and social media posts.
EARLY ​DATA SIGNALS EUROPE SHIFT
Still, Indian enrolment ⁠in the Netherlands climbed to about 3,700 in 2025/26 from 2,630 in 2018/19, making Indians the third-largest non-EU student group, Statistics Netherlands said.
Eindhoven University of Technology reported about 2,140 pre-enrolments from India for the coming academic year, up from roughly 1,390 a year earlier.
Leiden University's Indian intake in regular master's programmes, which are less demanding than its master's by research courses, jumped to 120 this year from 70 in 2021.
Italy's Padua University said partner agencies in India were reporting rising interest in ⁠Europe, including from ​regions that traditionally sent students to the United States.
However, whether the surge in interest translates into sustained enrolments will depend on how smoothly ​the agreement is implemented.
Chennai-based engineer T Suthir, who is exploring colleges in the Czech Republic and Italy, said perceptions were already shifting.
"Earlier, before the deal was finalised, my family was saying Europe is not good," he said. "Now, they are saying it's good."


Reporting by Praveen Paramasivam in Chennai, ​Sai Ishwarbharath B in Bengaluru and Charlotte Van Campenhout in Amsterdam; Additional reporting by Abhirami G in Bengaluru, Giselda Vagnoni in Rome, Bhanvi Satija in London and Saurabh Sharma in New Delhi; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Kate Mayberry

Chinese AI labs keep releasing open-weight models while US firms lock theirs down

 

Chinese AI labs keep releasing open-weight models while US firms lock theirs down

A wave of open-weight AI models from Chinese labs is putting fresh pressure on Silicon Valley and drawing pointed reactions from Washington. In the span of just a few weeks, Z.ai released GLM 5.2, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, and Alibaba released the latest version of its Qwen line, all with open weights, all benchmarking close to the best Western models, and all optimized for the agentic coding tasks that have become the year's dominant AI trend. K3 in particular has drawn the sharpest attention: Trump AI adviser David Sacks called its performance "concerning," Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent floated the idea of sanctions on Chinese AI companies, and White House science and technology policy director Michael Kratsios alleged that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic's Fable model to build K3, calling it "stealing proprietary US technology."

The episode is drawing comparisons to the DeepSeek moment of January 2025, and for good reason. It reinforces a widening divergence between how American and Chinese labs think about openness. Anthropic kept its most capable Mythos model restricted to approved collaborators for months over hacking concerns, then briefly had to take both Mythos and Fable 5 offline after White House export controls were issued following a wider release. OpenAI delayed the launch of GPT 5.6 after receiving a White House request. Chinese labs, by contrast, have moved in the opposite direction, betting that free, downloadable, customizable models attract more users, collaborators, and goodwill than the locked-down approach American frontier labs have increasingly adopted.

Alibaba's Monday announcement is the clearest signal yet that this strategy is holding. Earlier this year, rumors had circulated that the company might pivot toward closed-source development after reorganizing its AI teams, but its decision to release Qwen 3.8 with open weights suggests it is not changing course. The open-versus-closed debate, once largely a philosophical argument within the AI community, is now inseparable from the geopolitical competition between the United States and China, and the gap between the two camps appears to be growing.

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Report: Netflix invents cable TV

 

Report: Netflix invents cable TV

Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

While some people turn into their parents as they get older, some streaming companies turn into cable television. Netflix is considering adding live channels and bundles to boost sagging engagement, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The report states that Netflix is concerned about a decline in engagement (i.e., how often a viewer stays with a show, movie, or series), which can signal subscription cancellations. Among the solutions being discussed, per the WSJ, is Netflix edging closer to the very thing it disrupted—traditional TV:

• Executives are reportedly weighing adding live channels that constantly stream shows and movies of a specific genre, because the one thing Netflix subscribers were missing was a random weekday airing of Couples Retreat at 2pm.
• Also on the table: Bundling with other subscription-based streaming platforms and selling those packages through the main app, similar to what rivals Amazon and Apple already do.

Live TV means more ad sales: Netflix generated ~$1.5 billion in ad revenue last year and projects to double that this year. A new channel showing Golden Girls on a 24/7 loop, for example, would certainly increase that number.

Isn’t Netflix the No. 1 streamer? By subscribers, yes, but shares are down 40% over the past 12 months. Some recent projections have come in below analyst expectations, and its TV viewership in April reached its lowest level since May 2025, according to Nielsen.

Netflix is also reportedly in the running to purchase Letterboxd, the app for people who love movies and miss writing book reports. Sony, Paramount, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian are also reportedly showing interest in the app, per Puck News.

Letterboxd has more than 30 million global members ready to be targeted with ads by whichever corporation lands the social media site. LionTree, an investment bank handling the sale, is “floating” a $250 million valuation.