Category: Semafor

Liz’s view A few weeks ago, an Anthropic executive was asked a question on every CEO’s mind: Why should we trust that you won’t steal our business? “It’s a fair question,” Syed Mohiuddin, Anthropic’s head of healthcare, said at a venture-capital event I attended last month on Cape Cod. “Because ...

A chart this week from Bank of America ricocheted around Wall Street and Silicon Valley, capturing the “generational transfer” of profits in the AI ecosystem. Huge capital expenditures are collapsing big tech companies’ free cash flow, a metric prized by shareholders. Meanwhile, the less sexy companies that make the processing ...

One of the biggest things going for Salesforce, Workday, and the other SaaS companies threatened by AI has simply been inertia. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told us in May that the market was overreacting, at least in the short term, to the SaaSpocalypse. “It’s easy for me to vibe code ...

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space startup, is seeking to raise $10 billion at a $130 billion valuation, Semafor confirms, hoping to play catch-up with Elon Musk in the space race. Given SpaceX’s head start, record of smooth launches (something Blue Origin has struggled with lately), and huge funding advantage, here ...

The UN said actions carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan’s civil war amounted to a genocide, with experts warning of further mass atrocities. Human rights investigators said the RSF encircled El Fasher in an attempt to starve its population, while survivors described being raped in rooms ...

The News Firms moving goods across the border from the UAE into Saudi Arabia are complaining of delays lasting up to several days in some instances, in a sign of the simmering tensions between the Gulf’s largest economies. Delays at the border have been getting worse in recent months, according ...

The first shipment of Mexican natural gas to Asia is en route, evidence of the reshaping of global energy markets. Mexico’s new LNG export terminal is one of several developments on the Pacific coast of the Americas, with confidence in traditional export avenues waning. Five years ago, the two main ...

Russia banned the export of diesel following Ukrainian strikes on refineries that have led to the worst fuel shortages since the fall of the Soviet Union. Kyiv’s increased offensive capabilities — some refineries as deep as Siberia have been struck — have forced Russia, the world’s third-biggest oil producer, to ...

Argentina announced the construction of a new nuclear reactor and the UK extended the life of one of its existing ones, part of a worldwide revival of atomic energy. The Buenos Aires project is backed by $1.2 billion in US money; Britain’s Sizewell B will now run until 2055 rather ...

Maine Democrat Graham Platner suspended his Senate campaign on Wednesday night, denying new allegations of sexual assault but conceding that he couldn’t keep running after his party abandoned him. “The corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury, and executioner,” Platner said in an 11 ...