bet

Mexico has made an extremely ambitious bet on the Mayan Train. And now a judge has suspended her

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“It is a magnum opus, we are not exaggerating if we say that there is no one like it in the world today.” The phrase It was pronounced at the end of 2023 by former Mexican president Manuel López Obrador, and although in politics (no matter the nation) the use of superlatives is common, the truth is that it was not misguided. What López Obrador was referring to was the Mayan Trainan ambitious railway circuit of more than 1,500 kilometers that started more than two years ago between Campeche and Cancun and continues to take shape become a priority of the Government. Mexico needs it to be a success, but not at any price. What has happened? That the Mexican justice system has just reminded the country’s administration that, no matter how important and strategic it may be, the Mayan Train cannot advance with its back to the regulations. That is why it has issued a suspension order that will mark the works of one of its most controversial sections. For the project to continue advancing, from now on the authorities will have to put more effort into protecting natural resources in one of the most sensitive areas through which the railway must circulate: the region located between Cancún and Tulum, right where it passes. Section 5 of the Mayan Train. What has justice done? Dictate a final suspension order focused on that specific section. That does not mean that it has condemned the project or that the Mayan Train should give up its Cancún-Tulum stretch, although it does represent a wake-up call for those responsible for the project and a reminder that the work must advance while respecting its environment. Basically what the magistrate has done is demand that the environmental authorities of Mexico confirm that the project complies with the regulations and are responsible for monitoring it. The court order obliges the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) to carry out direct and permanent inspections in the Cancún-Tulum section. No revisions on paper or reports signed from the offices in Mexico City, miles from where the works are being carried out. The ruling was issued thanks to the mediation of the organization ‘Save me’ and is addressed to Profepa and the General Directorate of Crimes, Commutations, Complaints and Complaints. Is it so important? Yes. According to precise The Chroniclerthe order places several duties on the competent agencies that, in practice, will force them to reinforce their surveillance. To begin with, they will have to carry out direct, field supervision of the project. They must also verify the effects on protected species, the protection of cenotes and control underground rivers. Finally, the ruling points out the need to prepare detailed reports. If these demands are not met, those responsible could face sanctions. What do environmentalists say? Sélvame has valued the judge’s decision as “a significant achievement” in the defense of the media. “It is an important step towards the protection of natural resources and guarantees that verification, inspection, conservation and protection actions will be carried out in the event of pertinent public complaints,” celebrate. The groups that have been warning for some time about alleged irregularities, such as tree felling or unsupervised work that affects wetlands, they advance that they will be attentive so that the order is carried out. What area does it affect? That is one of the keys. The Mayan Train is a wide railway circuit, more than 1,500 kmbut the focus has been placed on a very specific point: Section 5, which is in turn divided into various segments (north and south) between Tulum and Cancun. In total, according to the Mayan Train Guidemeasures just over 100 km. Beyond its length, shorter than other sections, the local press stands out which is one of the most sensitive. The reason: the presence of vulnerable ecosystems, caves and underground rivers and the threat to their biodiversity. In August 2024 the Verified platform assured that the construction of the Mayan Train had affected approximately 7.3 million trees, a good part (3.5 million) in Section 5. In 2024 A court has already ordered work to stop until geological, geophysical and hydrological studies are delivered. Why is it important? To begin with and as López Obrador himself recognized in December 2023, when he presided over the inaugural tour of the Mayan Train, because the railway circuit is not just any project. And not only because of its impact on the environment, its dimensions, its costs or enormous ambition. With it, the Mexican authorities aspire to promote the development of the southeastern region, articulating a new communications backbone that favors tourism. The problem is that its implementation is not being easy. Its premiere has not had the expected success (at least in passenger traffic) and its management has just change handsmoving to the Secretary of Defense. Images | Mayan Train In Xataka | In case Machu Picchu had not already become a tourist theme park, Peru has had an idea: add an airport

Only once did he bet on a scientist and help us understand it better

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If today we think of an astronaut, we usually imagine someone with advanced scientific training, prepared to live for weeks or months in a challenging environment, master complex systems, robotics and even several languages. But in the sixties, when the space race was a race of speed and prestige, the mold was different: NASA was looking for operational profilespeople capable of making decisions under pressure and flying machines that no one had flown before. That was the pattern that marked almost the entire Apollo program.. And yet, there was one exception that broke the norm: for the first and only time, one of those who set foot on the Moon was specifically selected as a scientist, and that influenced what we learned about it. The protagonist of this exception was Harrison H. “Jack” Schmittand his case is unique within the lunar program. On Apollo there were astronauts with doctorates or advanced technical training, yes, but that does not automatically make them “scientist-astronauts.” The difference is in the selection criteria. Buzz Aldrinfor example, had a doctorate in astronautics, but entered the astronaut corps through the usual route of the military pilot (Group 3), like so many others. In June 1965, according to NASA, a specific group was selected to incorporate scientists, Group 4, and Schmitt was the only member of those members who ended up assigned to a moon landing mission, Apollo 17. The astronaut who came to be a scientist Before becoming an astronaut, Schmitt was already working, literally, with the Moon in mind. According to the USGSin 1964 he joined the Astrogeology team at the Flagstaff Science Center as a geologist after receiving his doctorate from Harvard. participated in lunar geological mapping and led the Lunar Field Geological Methods project, focused on how to do field geology applied to satellite exploration. That experience put him in a unique position within the program: He was not a newcomer to lunar science. After joining NASA, his contribution went beyond flight. The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition highlights who organized the lunar scientific training of the Apollo astronauts, represented the crews during the development of hardware and procedures for exploring on the surface, supervised the final preparation of the descent stage of the Apollo 11 lunar module, in addition to serving as a mission scientist. Apollo 17 was not just another mission within the program. NASA defined it as the last of the three J-type missions, a series characterized by greater hardware capacity, more scientific load and the use of the Lunar Roving Vehiclethe electric rover that expanded the real exploration radius. That explains why the exploration of the Taurus-Littrow valley was not chosen at random. The objective was ambitious: to work in an area where rocks older and younger than those recovered in previous missions could be found. Added to this scientific ambition was an operational design with room to deploy and activate surface experiments, perform sampling, and complete photographic and experimental tasks both in lunar orbit and upon return to Earth. In an interview with the Japanese space agency (JAXA)Schmitt explains that a specialist comes with years of accumulated experience, and that allows him to decide much more quickly what is important and what is not. Schmitt recalls that NASA trained its pilot astronauts to observe well and understand the problems they were working on, but insists that there is no substitute for experiencewhether in geology, medicine or any other discipline. That is the practical logic that sustains their presence in Apollo 17: when the objective is no longer just to arrive, but to interpret an environment and choose samples judiciously, having someone on the ground who has done field geology for years changes the quality of the decisions. And there appears one of the most memorable episodes of Apollo 17. In the middle of the field work in Taurus-Littrow, Schmitt and Eugene Cernan identified the so-called “orange soil”a finding that generated great expectation in the scientific community. Within the framework of the mission, this material has been described as volcanic glass or pyroclastic material, and is interpreted as especially clear evidence of ancient explosive volcanism on the Moon. It wasn’t just a color oddity. It was a clue about the thermal and geological history of the satellite, and a perfect example of why the mission had looked for a place where different materials could appear, older and also younger than those brought by other expeditions. If Schmitt’s story seems strange it is because, within the same group of scientist-astronauts, he was the only one with a lunar destiny. The USGS notes that, From more than 1,000 applicants, six were selectedand that three of them, Joe Kerwin, Owen Garriott and Edward Gibson, would end up flying in Skylab in 1973 and 1974. That is, science, yes, but far from the moon landing. NASA wanted to reinforce the scientific component of manned flight, but the priority of the lunar program remained different and the space for “specialists” was limited. In this context, Schmitt stands out not only for stepping on the Moon, but for what it implies: even within a group created to add science, the moon landing remained almost exclusive territory of the operational profile. Schmitt’s story has value precisely because it is not just a biographical oddity, it is a mirror. In Apollo, the ideal astronaut was an operator, and only once, in the last moon landing, that mold was opened to integrate someone selected for their scientific profile. As we have seen, currently, astronaut training is designed for long and complex missions, with different requirements. And right now, when the moon race looms again, that question makes sense. Since Apollo 17, in 1972, humans have not returned to the surface, but NASA proposes a way back with Artemis, with Artemis II as a manned flyby and Artemis III as the planned moon landing if plans are fulfilled. With China also targeting the satellite, the return is no longer read only in a historical key. Returning … Read more

This is South Korea’s bet to enter the Western market

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There are military contracts that are won based on specifications. And there are others that play in the field of story. South Korea is betting on the latter in its offensive to place attack submarines in Canada: it not only talks about platforms, capabilities or industry, but about how to live within them. In the center of the speech appears a phrase that seeks to stay in the head of the reader and, above all, of the political decision-maker: building submarines as “five-star hotels.” Kang Hoon-sik, chief of staff of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, said this: in a message posted on Facebookintroducing Seoul’s diplomatic and industrial campaign. Industrial size offer. The proposal that South Korea is moving in Canada points to a program of around 12 diesel attack submarines whose investment is estimated at 10 billion euros. It is not only a military issue, it is also a candidacy with a strong industrial component, with a front that brings together the Government and large private actors. Names such as Hanwha, HD Hyundai and Hyundai Motor Group appear in that package, which are vying for a contract and, at the same time, a letter of introduction to Western buyers. Strategic agreement. South Korea’s interest in this contract is not explained only by the size of the project. In The Korea PostKang frames the objective as a big entry into the Western market and as a step to move towards the NATO environment, always in its formulation. That same ambition is presented as an attempt to consolidate defense partnerships with Western countries. It should be noted that South Korean and Canadian companies have already signed six cooperation agreements ranging from steel to artificial intelligence, rare earths, satellites and sensors. The recipient of that speech is not coincidental.. Canada has been suffering the wear and tear of an aging submarine fleet for years, and its replacement program is based on a specific fact: replacing some vessels that, as IE points out, were acquired in the 1990s. Therefore, what is at stake is not a simple replacement of material, but a decision that will condition the Royal Canadian Navy for decades, with enormous industrial, operational and budgetary implications. In this context, any candidate who wants to compete cannot limit himself to offering a platform, he also has to present a framework of reliability and long-term continuity. Germany also wants that contract. South Korea does not compete alone. In the race for the Canadian program the German Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) appearswhich is one of the world’s leading providers of integrated solutions in maritime defense technology. The bidding, therefore, is not reduced to choosing a submarine model, but to deciding which industrial partner best fits a long-term program. In this context, each candidate tries to gain ground not only with benefits, but also with the type of relationship it promises to build with the purchasing country and the ecosystem it trails behind. The battle for the Canadian program leaves a clear idea. The Western defense market is in full competition, and South Korea wants to play on the front line. Your proposal has been presented as more than just a product. On the other side appears a European rival with experience and a name of its own. For now, the only certainty is that there is an intense political and industrial effort to position itself. What is missing, precisely, is what decides these processes: the fine print, the guarantees and Ottawa’s final decision. Images | Royal Canadian Navy | Kang Hoon-sik In Xataka | Germany was a sleeping military giant: now it has been awakened and it is already surpassing the US in bullets produced per year

Someone bet $30,000 that Maduro would fall the night before he fell. He has won $400,000

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Early on Saturday, January 3, a raid by the United States Delta Force broke into the Fuerte Tiuna military complex, located in the south of Caracas, to arrest Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, the president of Venezuela and his wife. Shortly after, someone was looking at his account. Polymarket and he rubbed his hands: that same Friday he had invested $30,000 betting on Maduro’s departure. With his arrest on Saturday, he had obtained a profit of $436,759.61. How lucky. A new account and a lucrative “hunch”. Polymarket’s Burdensome-Mix account barely I was a week old on the PolyMarket platform, but in record time it became one of the most fervent and active in “predict”“ Maduro’s departure during the hours before the operation. In a few hours he had gone from injecting money when the bet investment was at bargain prices to skyrocket: his participation had obtained a total return of more than 1,333.33% and a profit of at least 1,233.33% more than what he bet in less than 24 hours. PolyMarket. Tyson Brody Many people may have been caught off guard by Maduro’s arrest, but it certainly wasn’t for everyone: there are people who anticipated events and earned thousands of dollars as a result. Whether for him pizzometer or looking at Polymarket and company, something was brewing. In fact, there are already those has developed a tool to track suspicious activity on Polymarket because yes, there are those who decide to invest in what Elon Musk will become president of the United States and throw away his money like that (spoiler: he is South African and the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners), but he has long since emerged as one of the best seers of immediate events. As explained one of the creatorsPolymarket API keys are available to everyone and from here, it’s a matter of analyzing new wallets, unusual sizes and repeat entries into certain market niches. Suspicious behavior like the one that took place on Friday, when his tracker flagged five different alerts hours before Operation Absolute Resolve happened. The market that was betting on Maduro’s departure rose strongly before 10 p.m. on Friday after being at very low figures during the previous weeks, as picks up The Wall Street Journal. Polymarket What has happened in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro was captured by US special forces following Operation Absolute Resolve in an intervention that threatens international lawalthough the United States relies on its domestic jurisdiction. Yesterday he was transferred to Stewart Air National Guard Base, a military airport in New York, and later landed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he will face trial for drug trafficking and weapons possession. Donald Trump gave the details of the operation at the relevant press conference ensuring that “We are going to govern Venezuela until there is a safe transition” and that after the operation, American energy companies will take care of Venezuela’s oil industry. The official White House rapid response support account published a video where Nicolás Maduro was seen detained, being escorted through a hallway while he congratulated the new year to the people who were in his path. Tap to go to the post The insider trading of the prediction market. The Polymarket user’s operation draws so much attention that it seems evident that he knew what was going to happen in some way, which closes the circle to spheres very close to the president insofar as neither Congress nor his Defense Committee knew about this operation (much less had they authorized it, as he complained the governor of New York State on Twitter). Needless to say, what is known in financial markets as insider trading (trafficking of privileged information) It also happens in prediction markets like Polymarket, Kalshi either PredictIt and it is not only that it is allowed, but it is an ecosystem that favors it: Polymarket accounts are anonymous, global and transparent using technology from the blockchainso from there it is not possible to pull the thread of that lucrative operation. Furthermore, they are decentralized systems and operations are in USDCa stablecoin linked to the US dollar to avoid volatility and with very low commissions. The Polymarket phenomenon returns to its old ways. This is not the first time we have talked about Polymarket in terms of striking movements linked to politics, so Maduro’s thing is not something that is new. Without going any further, these markets came to the fore when they were revealed announcing a clear discrepancy in the 2024 United States Presidency elections compared to traditional analyzes and in turn, most accurate with respect to reality. With that move, French investor Freddi9999 struck gold: betting Due to Trump’s victory, his profits amounted to 85 million dollars, according to Bloomberg. Polymarket and company are not a mere betting platform like those for sporting events, but they have changed the discourse from betting to investmentwhich affects both linguistics and regulation. Thus, they are defined as “event contracts”, which allows them to sneak into the traditional financial system with the approval of leading players in the sector. like the owners of the New York Stock Exchange. The idea on paper is simple: as a user, you can express your opinion by buying or selling shares in eventual outcomes of events in operations executed between peers using smart contracts. Markets grow as they have more participants and prices mirror the perceived probability of an event occurring. It is clear that a lot of money can be made by predicting major news events, although we will have to see how long. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion In Xataka | I don’t bet, I invest: Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing” Cover | Chancellery of Ecuador from Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0 and Hanna Pad

Investors are beginning to bet more and more on Chinese firms

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Things would have to be twisted a lot for The United States does not end up winning the AI ​​race. Has the most capable models and the most powerful chipsand has also prevented China, its biggest rival, from having access to its technologies. So how is it possible that more and more investors are putting their money in Chinese companies? what’s happening. They count in Reuters that many international investors are beginning to diversify their bets in artificial intelligence companies towards Chinese companies. Shares of Chinese companies listed abroad such as Alibaba, Tencent either Baidu have grown significantly in recent months. It’s not that investors have stopped believing in big tech Americans, they are covering their backs. Why is it important. He fear of the AI ​​bubble has been taken seriously by many investors and firms are recommending reducing exposure to a possible blowout. Furthermore, China’s efforts to create your own chips and be self-sufficient have caused a change in perception: one in which China is closing the technological distance with the US. This is what the British financial company Ruffer says: “the gap may not be as wide or as deep as many think. The competitive landscape is changing.” A smaller, but safer bet. The Swiss firm UBS Global Wealth Management recently published a report titled “look for opportunities in China” in which they highlight that “China’s domestic technological innovation is accelerating.” AI in China receives more political supportis cheaper and they are managing to monetize it much faster than the American one. Perhaps it is not presented as such a lucrative bet, but it is more reliable. National chips. The US blockade left China unable to use its chips for AI and Beijing’s response was to make it technological self-sufficiency was a national priority. The push to manufacture our own chips is bearing fruit and recently two companies dedicated to the task have had a spectacular debut on the stock market. One of them was Moore Threads, known as Chinese NVIDIA, which had a growth of 500%. Shortly after I followed in his footsteps MetaX and increased its shares by 688%. They are not the only companies looking for the holy grail of chips, there is also Cambricon, Biren Technology and of course Huawei and SMIC, which are also squeezing all the possibilities to get the best chips with the technology they have. At the moment China is still behind when it comes to technology, but the prudent bet for an investor in the face of uncertainty is to diversify. Image | Karola G, Pexels In Xataka | Thousands of trucks saturate the Vietnam border: it is the back door through which China avoids US tariffs

Aragón has just activated its second major data center project. The bet goes through a challenge that is difficult to ignore

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Aragón is going through a unique moment: in just a few years it has gone from competing to attract data centers to announce three mega facilities new ones promoted by Forestalia that aim to strengthen their position on the European cloud map. The announcement by the regional government comes in the midst of a race to attract technological investment, but also in a territory where the electrical network works to the limit and every great project depends on decisions that have not yet been made. The result is a scenario as ambitious as it is full of unknowns, which will determine the real impact of this expansion. How these digital complexes work. A data center is, in essence, a technological heart that stores and processes information for millions of users and companies. Every series that is streamed or every operation carried out in the cloud passes through servers that require stable power and constant cooling. That is why the choice of location is so relevant: electrical capacity and operational security are needed. Aragón has been gaining ground on that map and today is seen as a strategic option for new facilities. The project. The Government of Aragon has detailed that the Búfalo Project includes three data centers in Magallón, Botorrita and Alfamén, backed by an investment of 12,048 million euros. The deployment includes DCM Data, DCM Dédalo and DCM Blue, whose works would begin between 2028 and 2029 and will extend for approximately eight years. According to official estimates, the construction will generate about 30,000 temporary jobs. In the operational phase, each facility will add hundreds of workers, with a total that clearly exceeds a thousand stable positions. Aragón on the international board. The accumulated investments in data centers exceed 70,000 million euros and place the community in the same conversation as consolidated European hubs. According to the President of the Government of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, the computing capacity that is being configured rivals that of Dublin and Paris and aspires to approach that of Frankfurt. The regional Executive also states that the data that will be managed will have a European scope, from Germany or France to Italy and the United Kingdom, reinforcing the international dimension of the project. Distributed renewable self-consumption. The Government of Aragon presents self-consumption as a distinctive element of the Búfalo Project, since approximately half of the energy consumption will be associated with wind and photovoltaic parks powered by Forestalia. This volume of generation allows for a renewable supply, although it does not eliminate dependence on the general network, which will provide the rest of the energy. The underlying idea is to combine own generation with existing infrastructure to sustain large-scale facilities. Press to see the message in X The word “self-consumption” may lead one to think that data centers and renewable plants share the same physical space, but this is not the case. Forestalia is setting up parks in various regions of Zaragoza and Teruel, located where the natural resource is most favorable. The data centers, as we say, will be in Magallón, Botorrita and Alfamén, and the connection between both worlds is made entirely through the Red Eléctrica network. It is a distributed scheme that coordinates generation and consumption without a single energy campus. A network to the limit. Aragon produces more electricity than it consumes and exports about 54% of its generation, but that abundance contrasts with a distribution network that functions practically at maximum. A report published in September 2025 sets its occupancy level at 94.3%, well above the national average of 84.3%. This saturation leaves little room to incorporate large consumers such as data centers. The result is a paradox: available energy, but an infrastructure incapable of delivering it to all projects. Projects that have already reached their peak. The bottleneck is not a future hypothesis, but a reality that already affects several operators. According to Heraldothe data centers in the pipeline have requested more than 6,000 MW and only a part has firm access, with cases such as Vantage, which has 90 MW authorized despite aiming for 300. Microsoft also depends on tenders in saturated nodes. The Government itself recognizes that everything will be linked to Red Eléctrica’s planning and the decisions of the central Executive. Water, a debate that is still open? The cooling of data centers has generated concern in Aragon since Amazon asked for late 2024 48% more water for the complexes that already operate in the region. Ecologistas en Acción and the Tu Nube Seca Mi Río platform then warned of the water impact of these facilities in the midst of a structural drought. Azcón maintains that future Forestalia centers will use a closed circuit with “practically imperceptible” consumption and affirms that the debate “is over.” In any case, everything indicates that this matter remains under public scrutiny. To facilitate the path of the Buffalo Project, The Government of Aragon has declared the initiative as of Autonomous General Interest, a figure that allows procedures to be simplified and the different administrations involved better coordinated. This declaration speeds up procedures, but does not resolve the main point of friction: the available electrical capacity. Hence, the regional Executive insists on its willingness to work with the central Government and Red Eléctrica, the only actors that can modify the network planning. Real progress will depend on those decisions. The announcement of the three new data centers, together with the rest of the initiatives in the pipeline, places Aragón at a decisive moment to consolidate its presence on the European cloud map. The investment is notable and so is the promised employment, but much of the result will depend on decisions that are not entirely in the hands of the community. The region has shown intention and movement, although it remains to be seen what the real scope of this bet will be. Images | İsmail Enes Ayhan | Jorge Azcón (X) In Xataka | The European Commission’s pendulum with AI is real: it will sacrifice privacy to … Read more

SoftBank abandons NVIDIA in its prime. What comes next is the biggest bet in its history

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SoftBank has sold its 32.1 million NVIDIA shares for $5.83 billion, completely liquidating its position in the chipmaker, according to CNBC. It has also divested part of its stake in T-Mobile for another 9.17 billion. Why is it important. The sale speaks of a radical strategy: SoftBank is abandoning the physical infrastructure (chips) to bet directly on the application layer (AI models). This is not necessarily a lack of trust in NVIDIA (although that is not a great sign), but an extreme concentration of capital in OpenAI, where it has committed up to $40 billion and leads the stargate project of 500,000 million for data centers. The facts. SoftBank announced profits of $16.3 billion in its fiscal second quarter, driven primarily by your investments in OpenAI through the Vision Fund. The fund earned 19 billion in the July-September period, offsetting losses in other positions such as another AI giant: Alibaba. Between the lines. This is not the first time that SoftBank has sold NVIDIA. He already did it in January 2019, then liquidating a position of 4,000 million acquired in 2017. That move, made when NVIDIA shares had fallen more than 50%, received a lot of criticism for its timing. Now it repeats the move, but in a radically different context: NVIDIA is at all-time highs and dominates the AI ​​chip market. The difference is that in 2019 SoftBank sold due to the need for liquidity after the WeWork fiasco. In 2024 he sells by strategy: he needs a lot of cash to finance his bet on OpenAI and he cannot do so without liquidating winning positions. In any case, the reading is clear: when it comes to AI, SoftBank believes more in the profitability of the models than in that of the infrastructure. The money trail. SoftBank has already invested 9.7 billion in OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 since September 2024. The company will lead the Stargate project with OpenAI, contributing 19 billion of the initial 100 billion (OpenAI will put in another 19,000). Each firm will control 40% of the project. To contextualize the magnitude: SoftBank’s total commitment to OpenAI (40 billion) is equivalent to almost seven times the value of the NVIDIA shares it just sold. The contrast. The really surprising thing is not that someone is selling NVIDIA at maximums, but that that someone is precisely SoftBank. Masayoshi Son He has built his reputation as one of the most aggressive investors in the tech world, known for holding positions even when the market turns against him and for doubling down on bets in times of uncertainty. This sale of NVIDIA, the most coveted asset of the moment in technology, would have made more sense coming from conservative funds or traditional institutional investors looking to secure profits. But SoftBank is not that type of investor. That it is precisely the Vision Fund that abandons the star AI stock says more about the magnitude of its commitment to OpenAI than about its vision of NVIDIA. Yes, but. SoftBank remains indirectly linked to NVIDIA. The Stargate project will rely heavily on NVIDIA chips for its data centers. The company also maintains its majority stake in ARM, whose architecture competes with NVIDIA’s in certain segments. In addition, Son’s record in big bets is lime and sand: the Vision Fund lost 27.4 billion in 2022 due to failed investments like WeWork (100 million invested) and FTX. OpenAI could be your great redemption. Or your biggest mistake. At stake. SoftBank’s bet represents a clear hypothesis about where value is captured in AI: not in making the chips that train the models, but in owning the models and the infrastructure that runs them. It is choosing to be OpenAI rather than being the provider of OpenAI. Time will tell if they were right to change picks and shovels for the mine itself. In Xataka | AI is a bonfire of money and the ‘big tech’ have just decided that they are going to add even more fuel to it Featured image | Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons

Spain wants to bet on rent with an option to buy in the face of the housing crisis. First you must solve your black hole

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The Government has decided to expand its arsenal to alleviate the serious housing crisis that Spain is going through, a crisis marked by the decoupling between housing supply and demand, the rise in prices and a market so inaccessible that more and more young people find that the only way to have a home is to wait for their parents donate it. A few weeks ago, during a speech in Congress, Pedro Sánchez advanced that the Executive wants recover aid for rent with option to buy. The measure is part of a broader plan with more legs, but in recent weeks it has generated as much expectation as skepticism. The reason: although there are still unknowns to clear up, everything indicates that the scope of the new aid will be limited. What will the help consist of? What the Government plans is to offer aid up to 30,000 euros for rent with option to buy homes with permanent protection. The initiative is designed for young people from up to 35 years and its objective is that that amount ended up being discounted of the final price of the property, in case the tenant decides to buy it. “The aid will be used to pay the rent, which will allow the young person to save to own their home,” they need from the ministry. When focusing on VPO, the focus is on properties that must conform to a series of requirements, such as respecting a pre-established price and certain guidelines when changing hands. “This means that if in the future you want to sell that home, you will have to do so at an appraised price and to a person who meets the same requirements as the previous owner,” explains the Government. “In this way we protect the homes paid for with state resources.” Click on the image to go to the tweet. Do we know anything else? Yes. There are still details to be outlined, but we know that the measure is included in the State Housing Plan (PEV) for the period 2026-2030where it is combined with other proposals that aspire to “consolidate a public system of access to housing” and revolve around five major goals: creating more and better supply, reducing the rate of financial effort, focusing on stressed markets and lowering the age at which young people become independent. As? To achieve that ultimate goal the PEV contemplates offer rental aid for the purchase of housing in municipalities of emptied Spain (La Moncloa speaks of 10,800 euros for localities “at demographic risk”), youth guarantees and “aid for renting with the option to buy housing with permanent protection of up to 30,000 euros.” Sanchez too has spoken of non-payment of rent insurance for young people. Support for VPO on a rent-to-own basis is not exactly new. It was already contemplated in the state housing plans 2005-2008 and 2009-2012. How has the idea been received? Sánchez launched his announcement to mid octoberduring the interparliamentary meeting of the Socialist Group, but a quick Google search shows that in recent weeks it has generated some skepticism. Not so much because of the fear that it will end up causing an increase in rents (something that the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, reproached her for) but because of the doubts that exist about the real impact that the aid will have. The reason: in reality in Spain very few VPOs are built for rent with an option to buy. His mark is testimonial. Are there so few? The official data published by Raquel Sánchez’s department speak for themselves. If we talk about protected housing for rent with the option to buy with “definitive qualification” (that is, already completed), the state registry shows only 2,300 over the last decade. There are not many and they are concentrated in just seven autonomous communities. What’s more, there is not a single one between August of last year and June, a period of 11 months during which no home eligible to benefit from the aid announced by the Government was completed. If what we are talking about is “provisional ratings” (still under construction) the balance sheet is not buoyant either (less than 70 in the last 15 months). The data includes both VPOs from state and regional plans. What do the experts say? Not everyone agrees. For Javier Burón, manager of Nasuvinsa, the key lies not so much in what has been built so far but in what is done for the future. That is, the effectiveness of the measure in stimulating supply. “There is an attempt to restart the machine for building protected housing, although focused on rentals, so it makes no sense to look at the past,” he explains in an interview with The Country. In fact 40% of resources of the PEV focus precisely on increasing the supply of protected housing on a permanent basis. For Carolina Roca, president of the Association of Real Estate Developers of Madrid (Asprima), the reading is somewhat different. “The aid announced in the PEV has, once again, a conceptual error: we have a problem of supply of subsidized housing and not demand. The PEV should be aimed at increasing the construction of subsidized housing, so aid should go to supply rather than demand. What sense does it make to provide aid of 30,000 euros for a figure for which only 65 homes are built per year?” Roca asks in statements to the Idealista portal. Images | Ronni Kurtz (Unsplash) In Xataka | The Basque Country wants more homes but does not have much land. Solution: build 2,000 apartments on top of other houses

NVIDIA is the most powerful company on the planet because it made a bet and it is winning: Crossover 1×28

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At NVIDIA they can’t stop rubbing their hands. They sell by piece and they don’t stop signing circular financing agreements that do nothing more than enlarge your position current. The company has made gold with the rise of artificial intelligence, and to talk about it we have dedicated this new Crossover 1×28 to recount the history and evolution of a company that is in a state of grace. We started by talking about how NVIDIA gained a privileged position in the world of gaming and how in the 2010s it (briefly) took advantage of the rise of cryptocurrency mining. All of this has managed to make NVIDIA enjoy the leading role in the duopoly that exists in the graphics card market for gamers: only AMD overshadows it, although Intel in recent times has tried to carve out some space for itself. However, what catapulted the company was a singular bet: to ensure that its GPUs could be used for the field of artificial intelligence. That market was still in its infancy. when CUDA emergedbut little by little the researchers working in that field were verifying that this platform was a great ally for their advances. And then, of course, ChatGPT arrived and with it the AI ​​gold rush. NVIDIA has become more essential than ever, and everyone, large and small, wants their AI accelerators for new data centers. It’s non-stop amazing and somewhat disturbingbecause the exaggerated growth of NVIDIA only validates the hypothesis that we are facing a gigantic AI bubble. On YouTube | Crossover

They have closed a door on Luzia on WhatsApp, but her bet was already going the other way

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The news was an expected splash of cold water: Meta will close general chatbot access to its WhatsApp business API starting January 15, 2026. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Poke or Luzia will be left out. Only Meta AI, the company’s own assistant, will remain. For Luzia, the Spanish chatbot that reached one million users faster than Instagram thanks to its viral function of transcribing WhatsApp audiosthe measure is a setback, they admit, but minor. “It is not the news that makes us most amused,” admits Álvaro Higes, CEO of the company. “It is not our main channel, but it is one of the secondary channels” where they find users who, due to having modest phones or data problems, depended on WhatsApp as a comfortable and convenient access point. Luzia already has more than 70 million downloads on its mobile applications, its main channel, and maintains “very healthy” organic growth on WhatsApp as well. The platform continues without charging its end users, financing itself with the 30 million euros raised in investment rounds. But that is changing. Contextual ads and in-chat purchases The startup has begun to monetize through contextual ads inserted into conversations“marking very clearly that it is an advertisement,” according to Higes. The logic they apply is that of commercial intent: “If you go to Amazon, you go looking for a specific product. But if you go to Leroy Merlin, you go with a problem and you come out with a product to solve it.” Luzia is in that whole part of the commercial funnel. Brazil is the laboratory. There they have launched a shopping tool integrated into the chat that allows you to browse and buy products from Amazon, Mercado Libre and other stores. When the AI ​​detects that it can recommend a product, it opens a catalog with which you can chat until the purchase is completed. This is where they want to move: pure transactionality. “Eventually we will also release a premium plan,” adds Higes. Better models, better generated images, without limits. But the CEO is skeptical about the paywall as a main model: “It is going to be very difficult to monetize via paywallthe differentiation between AI products is complicated,” he says in line with something we have commented on more than one occasion: the commoditization. Álvaro sees it more as a tool to close distribution agreements in bundle with other services, in the style of Perplexity with Telefónica just a year ago. The two routes are complementary: Contextual ads and transactions on the one hand. Distribution agreements by another. “It is still not a priority, we prefer to prioritize growth,” says Higes, “but it is something we have already started to do.” Forty people, more than half in engineering Luzia’s team is around forty people, distributed mainly between Spain and an emerging presence in Brazil. 60% work in engineering and product. The rest focuses mainly on branding, a department of five people that Higes considers essential: “Unless you are a super technical runner, people usually buy Nike because they think it’s pretty and because they know the brand. In AI it’s a bit similar,” he says as a simile. The analogy makes sense in a market where models are becoming trivialized. Higes invests a lot of effort in what they call the classifier, a system that identifies in real time the topic and the user’s intention to direct them to the most appropriate model. “If you say ‘hello’ to me, I’ll send you a very basic model. If you ask me about mathematics, I’ll send you a different model and give you different tools,” explains the CEO. That optimization is relevant because cost per user is a delicate balance. On the one hand, the price per token of a model equivalent to GPT-4 (more than suitable for the most basic queries) has fallen 90% in two years. On the other hand, the market has also been launching more expensive products that require more inference. “One force counteracts the other,” he summarizes. Higes recently wrote about this idea: There comes a time when the models are good enough for most use cases and there is no longer a need to always play with the most powerful one. “If someone says ‘hello’ to me, we are not going to use GPT-5 to answer ‘hello.’” Instead, the flows of e-commerce that they are building have a higher inference cost, but also direct monetization potential. AI for the 70% who “do not spend the day on a computer” The competition is evident: ChatGPT and Gemini They dominate the market. But Higes sees them as tangential rivals. “We make AI for the 70% of people who are not in front of a computer all day.” The bet is on presenting AI in a more accessible, more intuitive way. They have a specific tool for solving mathematics that generates four times more use than if the user had to ask the question in a blank chat. “We see that people solve more math if you are super clear and say: ‘I can help you solve math.’” It is the lesson they have learned by observing OpenAI data on how people use ChatGPT: Percentages by topic have barely changed from GPT-3.5 to GPT-5. “The level of use is still very limited,” says Higes. “There is a lot of work to present the product in the most intuitive way to the user and remove that cognitive load.” The biggest initial challenge was to change the mental model of users who arrived thinking that the AI ​​was Alexa or Siri. “They asked us the time and asked us to set timers. Many people said ‘this is rubbish, why doesn’t it tell me the time?’, when it can tell you many more things.” Presenting what AI can do is more relevant than the jump from GPT-5 to GPT-6. Maybe people don’t care about that as much as they care about having their problems solved. 2026: transactionality as focus The plan for next year is clear. … Read more

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