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he exchanged ballet for a fortune of 1.3 billion

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At just 29 years old, Brazilian Luana Lopes Lara has become the youngest self-made billionaire on the planet, with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. She is not the youngest millionaire, but she is the one who has achieved it on her own merits, and not as fruit of an inheritance. The rapid rise of her Kalshi betting platform has seen her co-founder surpass figures like Taylor Swift and the entrepreneur Lucy Guo in the ranking of the youngest millionaires in the world. Younger and younger millionaires. According to ForbesLuana Lopes Lara is the youngest self-made billionaire in the world with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. This fortune comes from his direct participation in the company he co-founded with Tarek Mansour, at a time when the valuation of the betting platform that rivals Polymarket has reached $11 billion. In this new map of great female fortunes, Luana has displaced Lucy Guo30-year-old co-founder of Scale AI, who had previously taken the title from Taylor Swift who surpassed the billion barrier at the age of 34 thanks to her tour The Eras Tour. Extreme discipline and turn towards technology. Luana Lopes Lara was born in the state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, into a family closely linked to science: her mother is a mathematics teacher and her father, an electrical engineer. Since she was little, she combined intensive study with classical dance, until she reached the prestigious Bolshoi Theater School in Brazil, where she combined academic studies with a strong discipline in dance. according to what he said People. After finishing high school, she worked for nine months as a professional dancer in Austria before “hanging up her shoes” and betting on her other great passion: computing. She moved to the United States to enroll at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she was able to do internships at financial firms such as Bridgewater Associates and Citadel, experiences that brought her closer to the world of markets and quantitative risk management. At MIT he met his current partner Tarek Mansour, also a computer science student. Kalshi’s big bet. The idea for Kalshi began to take shape in 2018, when Luana and Tarek did a summer internship at the investor Five Rings Capital. There they began to give shape to their idea of ​​creating a platform that allows operating directly on the probability of certain real-world events occurring, from elections and macroeconomic phenomena to sports results or pop culture topics. Convinced that there was room for a regulated prediction market, they submitted their project to Y Combinator, Sam Altman’s accelerator, and were accepted in 2019. As and how do they count On its website, in November 2020, Kalshi obtained the license from the Futures Trading Commission of US Commodities (CFTC) to operate as a Designated Contract Market (DCM), which allowed its products to be classified as event contracts and separated from unregulated betting, unlike competitors like Polymarketsanctioned with 1.4 million dollars for operating without federal registration. That regulatory difference gave Kalshi a strategic advantage over its main rival. The figure of Luana: leadership, resilience and vision. Beyond the figures obtained by his startup, Lopes Lara’s story has become a story of personal resilience and young leadership in the technology and financial sector. His time in professional ballet, marked by extreme discipline and training that left no room for error. “We saw that most stock trading occurs when people have a vision of the future and then try to find a way to translate it into the markets,” the millionaire businesswoman told Forbes. transform that bet on future events in a million-dollar business has been what has turned Lopes Lara into one of the new stars of Silicon Valley. In Xataka | “I’ve worked every day for the last three years”: the price of becoming the youngest AI millionaire Image | Flickr (Ronald Woan), Kalshi

AI needs 650 billion a year to sustain itself. The problem is who will put them on the table

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Those responsible for the JPMorgan banking entity they have done numbers. For AI companies to achieve a 10% return on their capital expenditure In 2030, they will need to collectively earn $650 billion. That’s like saying that the 1.4 billion iPhone users will pay $400 a year to use those models. It’s not impossible, but certainly it doesn’t seem simple. Many use it, few pay. Above all, because today the number of paying users is very small. According to the data from the consulting firm Menlo Venturestoday 1.8 billion people use AI around the world, but only 3% of them (54 million) are paying customers of some subscription. ChatGPT as an example. OpenAI esteem that in 2030 that percentage will rise to 8.5% for its user base, which they project will be 2.6 billion a week. That is to say: 220 million people will be subscribed to one of ChatGPT’s payment plans, which will probably have different prices than the current ones in 2030. They do not seem sufficient, at least a priori, to make the firm profitable as promised. Advertisements. It is more than likely that the advertisements they end up being the other great resource to earn revenue from AI models. Although Sam Altman indicated in the past that advertising would be “the last resort” to monetize, recent data reveal that those ads are about to be part of the user experience on ChatGPT. A very risky bet. JPMorgan’s estimate points to a future in which billions of people will pay a lot of money a year to use the best AI. Apple account with 1 billion subscribers to its services, Netflix with 300Spotify with about 280and Google account with 150 million subscribers on Google One alone. It is evident that there are many users willing to pay for services that are useful and entertaining. The question is whether AI will be for so many people. And AI companies, of course, are confident that they do. The non-surprise of the bubble. In The Economist indicate that a potential explosion of the AI bubble already it’s not going to surprise anyone. The curious thing is that there is no excessively notable concern for the consequences. In recent years the economy seems to have recovered surprisingly well from disasters such as the European energy crisis after the start of the Ukrainian War or the tariffs imposed by the US. Recessions, this economic newspaper points out, they are becoming rarer. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. Mass vulnerability exists, however. Stocks today represent 21% of Americans’ economic wealth —more than in the dotcom bubble—, and investment in AI companies is responsible for half of the increase in that wealth over the past year. And therein lies the danger. Recession in sight? People have earned more money and saved less: if the bubble bursts in a similar way to what it did with dotcoms, The Economist believes that net worth will fall by 8%. That in turn would cause a notable decrease in consumer spending. It is estimated that the US GDP would decline by 1.6%, enough to push the country into recession. The difference with dotcoms. In this case that global recession It might not be so deep for a clear reason: the root would be in the investment markets, and therefore it could be overcome with a little more room for maneuver. Central banks could cut interest rates to boost consumption, a good thing on that front but dangerous for vulnerable economies. The shock wave of the explosion. If the bubble bursts, what could also occur is a painful reconfiguration of global trade. Lower US demand would reduce its trade deficit, but would worsen the excess China production capacity. By not being able to sell (as much) to the US, it would flood other markets with its products, which would probably cause some protectionism in Europe and Asia. The world is preparing for the stock market crash, but not so much for the economic and geopolitical consequences that will follow. In Xataka | OpenAI has no problem inflating the AI ​​bubble – it has a problem with it bursting too soon

The police and firefighters have turned it into a 60 billion company

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It is true that in reality The iPhone did not completely kill Motorola, but it left it very touched. In 2007 their cell phones were selling like hotcakes. Their previous foldables, the RAZR, were part of popular culture thanks to the promotional agreements that made Paris Hilton, Eva Longoria Abril Lavigne or David Beckham They will pose proudly with them non-stop. But then the iPhone arrived and things began to change for many traditional manufacturers. Nokia and Blackberry were never the same again, and something similar—although not as severe—happened to Motorola, which, faced with declining sales, decided to split into two different companies in 2008. The “Motorola” of before is now Lenovo The first of them, Motorola Mobilityit ended up being bought by Google in May 2012 and then to be repurchased by Lenovo in 2014. This manufacturer has kept the brand and has managed to revive that part of the business with a remarkable mobile catalogbut the original company went down a completely different path. In fact, the firm has reinforced its proposal with the new Razrthe “mid-range” folding ones that present a certainly interesting option, especially for small cell phone lovers. The popularity of these devices is not the same as in the past, but this year we experienced a nice nod: Paris Hilton, who was already the star of a limited edition with the original Razr 20 years ago, has returned again. At the beginning of the year we knew the Motorola Razr Plus Paris Hilton Editionvery pink, very “exclusive” and not cheap at all. The real Motorola is now Motorola Solutions Inc. But what is truly striking is that Motorola Solutions Inc.the “boring” part of the company that was split up in 2008, has emerged strongly from the situation. It has done so by focusing on what it already did well then: critical communications. Source: Bloomberg. Their products have become a success among security forces and bodies, who use them massively in the United States, but also in countries such as Bulgaria, Brazil or the United Kingdom. In fact, Bloomberg highlights that since they separated from Motorola Mobility the return for investors has grown by 1,000%more than double what the S&P 500 index has achieved, for example, and much more than what other companies such as Ericsson or Nokia have achieved, to which the iPhone did much more damage. Source: Motorola Solutions Inc. Motorola Solutions’ products are very varied, and range from body cameras for police forces to communication equipment for emergencies in health or fire departments and, lately (of course) drones. Greg Brown, the company’s CEO, has achieved turn it into a 60 billion dollar giant. It has achieved this with a strategy in which acquisitions have been a fundamental part and have accelerated traditional organic growth, often much slower. Brown’s path has not been easy, although the hardest part was that division at a time when the company was suffering a real financial hemorrhage: “we froze pensions, we laid off 15,000 people, we announced that we were getting out of the mobile phone business… which were the true identity of the company.” He ended up surviving that and managed to revive the company precisely by returning to what it had become famous for: Motorola was already providing communication equipment to the police shortly after its founding in 1928, although we met it much later. First, when he developed the famous Motorola 68000 processor which was part of legendary computers from Apple, Commodore or Atari. Then, in 1983, when it began its particular mobile revolution with the legendary DynaTAC 8000X. The future of Motorola Solutions seems promising, although it is not without challenges. The company, which will turn 100 years old in 2028is now starting to integrate AI into its products. The SVX body camera integrates AI functions and is the clear exponent of where the current Motorola (Solutions) is heading. This year they launched a body camera for law enforcement that uses AI to create automatically audio transcripts, provides directions to remote operators, and examines surveillance footage. It is the demonstration that that original Motorola – not the current mobile phone, which is now Lenovo – is still alive and well. In Xataka | What happened to NeXT, the company that Steve Jobs founded when he left Apple and that ended up being his salvation

Sam Altman’s biometric project aimed to scan a billion eyes. It has not even reached 2%

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World, Sam Altman’s ambitious project for verify human identity using iris scanshas managed to register 17.5 million people since its public launch in 2023. A figure that, although it may seem impressive, it barely represents 2% of its initial goal of one billion users. a promise. Altman’s idea was to create a global network of digital identity verified by ocular biometrics. To do this, users have to appear before a spherical device called Orb which scans your irises and generates a unique digital code, the World ID. In exchange, they can access an application with various services while also receiving cryptocurrency tokens. worldcoinwhich is currently worth about 60 euro cents per unit. “He is creating the disease, but he also wants to create the cure,” claimed a former employee of the company told Business Insider. Regulation. The project has run into a wall of institutional rejection. Just like share The medium, Spain, Hong Kong, Portugal, Indonesia, Germany and Brazil have imposed vetoes, suspensions or precautionary orders, while in Kenya it was banned a month after the launch. German authorities concluded last year that data protection measures “would not be sufficient to implement an appropriate level of security against cybercriminals or state attackers.” In October, the Philippines issued a cease-and-desist order, Colombia ordered to halt operations and delete data, and Thailand conducted raids arresting suspects for operating a digital asset business without a license. according to Business Insider. On the other hand, the Chinese Ministry of State Security warned that collecting iris data for cryptocurrencies could pose a threat to national security. A questioned model. Beyond the legal obstacles, some experts consulted in the middle they have questioned the viability of the project. Nick Maynard, vice president of fintech research at Juniper Research, said that “I don’t see a definitive use case that they have solved that is going to generate significant traction. They need a real purpose to exist, and that is not entirely clear yet.” The corporate structure is also complex, as Tools for Humanity (based in San Francisco and Munich) develops the technology; the World Foundation, from the Cayman Islands, controls the project; and World Assets Limited, in the British Virgin Islands, manages the token distribution. At the moment, the company has raised $240 million from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital and Khosla Ventures, at a valuation of $2.5 billion. The expansion strategy. According to former employees who have contacted with Business Insider, the company opted for an aggressive growth strategy in emerging markets, prioritizing countries where the promise of free cryptocurrencies generated traction among economically vulnerable populations. In Mexico, local operators had to cover the majority of costs for scanning locations, although Tools for Humanity paid the rent for a year. In Argentina, external organizers they even sent buses with people who traveled to be scanned in exchange for money. Image: World Luis Ruben De Valadéz, who worked as head of operations in Mexico, commented to the media that had to raise about 100,000 Mexican pesos (about 4,705.75 euros at the exchange rate) from family and friends to open seven stores in Mexico City. As he shared, independent operators charged commission in Worldcoin, and it was common for exchange houses to emerge near Orbs stations where users immediately exchanged their tokens to obtain cash. The monetization dilemma. The company does not charge users to access its platforms, and its CEO Alex Blania has promised that they will not become data brokers. The company is known to earn revenue from verification fees (World ID fees) when external applications use its services. They also earn income through a program that allows them to rent or buy their own Orbs, and from processing fees on their World Chain blockchain. However, a former employee revealed The company expressed doubts about whether these fees would generate profits on their own, indicating that the financial future would depend above all on the continued flow of capital from investors. “I have trouble seeing it as a business. There is no incentive to buy or lease an Orb beyond making money by scanning tons of eyes, and for users it is to get more coins,” commented Martha Bennett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, told Business Insider. Bet on alliances. To accelerate growth, World announced partnerships with established companies. There is a pilot program with Match Group to verify Tinder users in Japan, and agreements with Stripe, Visa and the gaming company Razer. According to reported Semafor, Reddit was also in talks to use its verification services. Nikhil Bhatia, professor of finance at the University of Southern California and specialized in cryptocurrencies, commented to Business Insider that “it is difficult to judge something that is a crypto with a market capitalization of 2 billion as anything more than experimental or a fad. Worldcoin is not a contender in any way as a currency or asset against the dollar or Bitcoin.” And now what. The company has announced its intention to reach 100 million registrations over the next year, according to sources cited by the New York Post. But the road is full of questions. If you continue to require people to physically show up at your offices to have their eyes scanned, scalability could become complex. And if regulatory problems persist in the most populated markets in the world, it will be even more difficult for the company. World faces something common in many technological projects: with a powerful futuristic vision and plenty of capital, it does not seem to have a product that solves an immediate problem for the majority of users nor a clearly profitable business model. At the moment many people need to be convinced. In Xataka | The question is not whether AI will succeed in creating works of art. The question is whether we will consider them as such

Oracle signed a 300 billion agreement with OpenAI. Two months later it has lost 315,000 million in the stock market

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Since Oracle announced its $300 billion deal with OpenAI On September 10, its shares have lost $315 billion in market capitalization, as they have stated since Financial Times. The technology company He has bet everything on a single card: Become the premier infrastructure provider for the world’s most valuable AI lab. Investors are not convinced. The most expensive bet in its history. Oracle has tied its future to OpenAI in an unprecedented way in the technology industry. According to estimates At Jefferies, 58% of its future order book comes from a single customer: OpenAI. To put it in perspective, Microsoft has just 39% concentration with its largest customer, and Amazon 16%. Oracle has gotten into a mess and its business diversification has become a critical dependency on OpenAI. The plan is ambitious but risky. Oracle’s strategy is to reach $166 billion in cloud computing revenue by 2030, according to counted the company last month. To achieve this, its investment budget in the current fiscal year ending in May amounts to $35 billion. The analysts wait that this annual expenditure will stabilize around 80,000 million in 2029. But here’s the problem: Starting in 2027, most of that revenue would come from OpenAI, according to the calculations from RBC Capital Markets. That is, Oracle is not just building massive infrastructure, it is building massive infrastructure for a single tenant that has yet to prove its long-term commercial viability. The numbers don’t add up yet. Oracle’s net debt already stands at 2.5 times its ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), more than double what it was in 2021, and is expected to almost double again by 2030. Its free cash flow is also expected to remain negative for five consecutive years, according to the forecasts collected by Bloomberg. The company is financing with debt a gigantic server farm with the hope that OpenAI will generate enough revenue to justify the investment. Meanwhile, as has shared Financial Times, investors are so restless that the cost of insuring against a potential Oracle default is at a three-year high. The contagion effect of OpenAI. Oracle is not the only company that has suffered after announcing agreements with OpenAI. Broadcom and Amazon too have seen their shares fallwhile NVIDIA has barely moved since its investment agreement in September. A few months ago, any type of association with OpenAI caused prices to rise, considering himself the King Midas of AI. The most notable case was AMD’s in Octoberwhen its shares rose 24% after announcing a chip deal that included company warrants. That halo effect seems to have completely faded. Between the lines. The initial theory was that OpenAI was in a frantic race to catch up. general artificial intelligence (AGI) and that Oracle was the only company capable of scaling the necessary computing capacity at the required speed. Oracle promised the lowest upfront costs and the fastest path to revenue generation because it acted as a data center tenant, not an owner. Now investors are sending the signal that partnering with OpenAI is no longer a guarantee of success. The alternative reality is less rosy: Oracle doesn’t have as much operating profit as its competitors to burn on R&D, so it’s betting everything to keep its only big customer in exchange for a promissory note. Amazon, Microsoft and Meta can afford to spend between 70,000 and 130,000 million a year in infrastructure. Oracle is juggling financials to keep pace. And now what. Oracle has until mid-2026 to prove that your Abilene data center in Texas, with capacity for more than 400,000 GPUs and 1.4 gigawatts of power, can generate the promised returns. Meanwhile, the market has spoken and is awaiting evidence that this partnership will bear the promised fruits. Cover image | Oracle and OpenAI In Xataka | As if there weren’t enough AI companies, Jeff Bezos has just returned from the shadows to build another one, according to the NYT

Cambricon was a dying company in 2019. Today it is worth 68 billion thanks to an unexpected partner: the US

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Chen Tianshi has multiplied his fortune by more than twelve in two years until reaching 22.5 billion dollars. Your company, Cambricon Technologieshas seen its shares soar 765% in 24 months and its revenues have grown more than 500% in the last year. Why is it important. Cambricon’s meteoric rise is not so much a story of disruptive innovation as of strategic protectionism. And it well exemplifies how US technology sanctions have become the best trading partner for some Chinese companies. The context. In 2019, Cambricon depended more than 95% on Huawei, which canceled all its contracts at once. The company seemed doomed. Then came the US restrictions of 2023 and 2024, which cut off the supply of NVIDIA chips to China. The Chinese government responded by requiring companies to buy “at home.” And that’s how Cambricon went from dying business to national champion. Between the lines. The case shows the difference between competing in a free market and thriving in a protected one. Cambricon has not beaten NVIDIA in technology: its chip Siyuan 590 is several years behind A100. But in a market sealed by government decree, it doesn’t need to be better, just available. The company has accumulated inventory of 2.76 billion yuan ($380 million), something that would be worrying in any sector. But with NVIDIA chips locked, that stocks It has become bargaining power. Some customers pay up to 30% extra for immediate delivery. Yes, but. The question that divides analysts is how long it will last. “Cammbricon’s explosive growth is primarily due to a very low base, and its current valuation may be inflated without sustained political support,” explains Shen Meng, director of investment bank Chanson & Co. Cambricon’s chip works well for inference (when an AI model makes predictions), but it lacks scalability for model training, the most computationally intensive phase. NVIDIA not only sells chips, it sells a complete ecosystem with CUDA which is “extraordinarily difficult to replicate quickly”, according to Sunny Cheungresearcher at the Jamestown Foundation. The contrast. Cambricon has a market capitalization of 558 billion yuan (about $68 billion), 60% less than that of Intel. But it generates just 1.6% of Intel’s revenue. Investors are not buying fundamentals, they are buying national hope. The alarm signal. Cambricon herself has tried to cool the frenzy. In August, with its stock soaring more than 130% in a month, it issued an official warning: its trading price had “deviated markedly” from its fundamentals and investors “could face substantial risks.” When a company warns that its valuation no longer makes much sense, it is worth listening. What does this say about technological warfare?. The Cambricon case shows that US technological sanctions are not holding back China, but rather reorganizing its industry. They are creating a new class of state-aligned tech elites, years after the Chinese government crushed its private giants. The US government has cut off China’s access to advanced chips, but in exchange has given away captive markets to companies like Cambricon. The result is a Chinese semiconductor industry that is weaker technically but more dependent on the government. It’s not the free market that chooses the winners, it’s political favor. The big question. What happens when protectionism is no longer enough? Cambricon achieved its first quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2024, four years after going public. It’s not bad either. But its growth depends on the government tap remaining open and Chinese companies having no alternative. If US restrictions are eased or if domestic competitors like Huawei gain traction, the party could end quickly. Chen Tianshi has built a fortune of 22.5 billion on political arena. The history of technology suggests that these types of foundations do not usually last decades. Featured image | Cambricon In Xataka | China was no longer supposed to be able to get its hands on NVIDIA’s most advanced chips. Until he found a shortcut in Indonesia

NVIDIA will invest $1 billion to continue advancing AI. The surprising thing is that it will do it in NOKIA

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Nokia stopped being in the general public’s conversations years ago. For many people, Nokia is a memory of those rugged phones from decades past. That is why it has attracted so much attention that NVIDIA, the most powerful company right now in the world of artificial intelligence, announce that it is going to invest 1 billion dollars in Nokia and that the two companies are preparing a strategic alliance around mobile networks and artificial intelligence. The immediate question is obvious: what has NVIDIA seen in Nokia to put that money there. The company in which NVIDIA has invested It is the usual Nokiathe Finnish telecommunications parent company that survived the mobile era. Its headquarters are in Espoovery close to Helsinki, and today its business focuses on the development of network infrastructures, software and advanced connectivity solutions. It is the company that provides operators around the world with technology that makes mobile networks and the expansion of the 5G. From 3210 to 5G towers. There was a time when Nokia dominated the mobile market with terminals that marked an era. The 3210, recently re-released as a single phoneor the first camera phones are part of collective memory. However, the emergence of smartphones completely changed the landscape. In 2014, Nokia said goodbye to that stage by selling its device business to Microsoft.. Since then, the mobile phones with its name belong to HMD Global, while Nokia Corporation, as we say, concentrates on network technology. The movement that no one expected. NVIDIA and Nokia have announced a strategic alliance that combines money and innovation. The American technology company will invest $1 billion in Nokia, an operation that will be carried out by subscribing new shares at a price of $6.01 per share. This is not a purchase, but rather a capital increase. In exchange, both companies will work together to develop mobile networks based on artificial intelligence, a step that prepares them for the jump to 6G. NVIDIA’s investment does not consist of purchasing shares on the market, but rather subscribing to new shares issued directly by Nokia. In total, more than 160 million titles will be created, in an operation that will expand the company’s capital. There is no change of control and the planned participation is 2.9%. The deal is subject to customary approvals before closing, but projects an interesting long-term alliance between both companies. A bet with 6G destiny. The agreement is not limited to money. With this investment, NVIDIA and Nokia are teaming up to develop a new generation of mobile networks based on artificial intelligence. The objective is for operators to be able to offer faster, more efficient services adapted to the growth in data traffic generated by AI. Dell Technologies, which provides servers, and T-Mobile US, which will test the first AI-RAN networks with a view to the jump to 6G, also participate in this roadmap. Behind the acronym AI-RAN lies the great bet of this alliance: applying artificial intelligence to the network that links our mobile phones with the antennas. This is what is known as AI-RAN. These networks learn from traffic, adjust themselves and make better use of available energy and spectrum. Omdia estimates that this segment will move more than 200 billion dollars between now and 2030. It is a technical leap, but above all a way to prepare the ground for 6G. Why Nokia is back on the scene. For Nokia, the agreement represents a capital injection and strategic validation. The company reinforces its roadmap towards new generation networks and consolidates its position in a market where it competes with giants such as Ericsson and Huawei. In addition to financing, it gains visibility: NVIDIA’s support boosts its image as a leading technological partner in the era of artificial intelligence. On the stock market, the announcement has already caused a strong rise in its shares. What NVIDIA earns (and it is not little). For NVIDIA, this alliance expands its reach beyond data centers. Getting into the network infrastructure means bringing artificial intelligence to the edge, where the data is generated. With Nokia technology, you can integrate your platform into antennas, base stations and optical systems, delivering AI capabilities directly from the network. It’s a way to extend your dominance in accelerated computing into new territory: telecommunications. The first to try it will be far from Europe. None of this will be immediately noticeable, but it will lay the foundation for the connectivity of the future. AI-RAN networks promise faster, more stable and more efficient connections, which is essential for new services that depend on artificial intelligence. From augmented reality glasses to drones or connected cars, everything aims to operate with lower latency and greater reliability. The first tests, promoted by T-Mobile US, will be carried out in the United States. Images | NVIDIA | BoliviaIntelligent In Xataka | Elon Musk already bought Twitter to control the narrative. His Grokipedia is another symptom of that obsession

The US has seized $15 billion in bitcoin. This is how the terrifying “pig slaughter” crypto scam works

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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has confiscated about 15 billion dollars in the form of bitcoin. This fortune was in the hands of an alleged fraudster named Chen Zhi who supervised a gigantic crypto scam. One that sadly is becoming more and more frequent and is now known as the “pig slaughter” or the “pig fattening.” The name is a no-brainer. what has happened. We are facing the largest asset seizure in the history of the DoJ. The action focuses on the founder and president of an international conglomerate called Prince Holding Group based in Cambodia. Chen Zhi, 38, also known as “Vincent,” has been charged with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering. The scam used has many peculiarities. The “pig slaughter”. In English they use the name “pig butchering” for this type of crypto scam, and here we could translate it as “pig slaughter” or “pig fattening.” The process that scammers follow to deceive their victims is as follows: Search and contact: Scammers contact victims (the “pigs”) through social media, dating apps, or direct messages. To do this, they use fake and attractive profiles. Fattening (trust building): for weeks a personal, friendly or romantic relationship is builtand the scammer gains the trust of the victim. This scammer usually presents himself as a successful person with “secret” knowledge in the world of investments. You invest, you will earn a lot of money: once trust is gained, the scammer presents the victim with a “guaranteed” and very lucrative investment opportunity, usually in cryptocurrencies. And indeed, it seems that you win: after a small investment and to reinforce hope and confidence, the scammer allows the victim to withdraw a small profit. The victim becomes even more confident. Invest more, this works– With the victim now encouraged, he is persuaded to invest much larger amounts, often emptying his savings or even taking out loans The slaughter: When the scammer determines that the victim has invested all they can, they execute the fraud. It blocks the victim’s withdrawal of funds and denies access to that account. Excuses (taxes, verification fees) are made to try to request even more money Disappearance: The scammer cuts off all communication, the fraudulent platform disappears and the victim’s money has been stolen and laundered by the criminal network. A multinational scam. According to prosecutors in the case, Prince Group operates in more than 30 countries and secretly grew to become “one of the largest transnational criminal organizations in Asia.” The company presented itself as a legitimate real estate development and financial services company. Dumb with studies. Although it may seem incredible, this scam manages to deceive people with advanced training. Grace Yuen of Gaso—an international anti-scam organization— explained on BBC that this type of fraud affects all types of profiles, even those that we would think would be somewhat more protected: “About 80% or more of the victims have university degrees and a large percentage of them have a master’s or doctorate. They are victims of all branches: from nurses and lawyers to computer scientists or telecommunications engineers. They are all highly educated people, usually between the ages of 24 and the end of 40. Although now we are also seeing older victims.” human trafficking. The organization allegedly operated forced labor camps in Cambodia. According to the indictment, Prince Group operated at least 10 complexes of this type in which hundreds of people were forced to work under threat of violence executing this scam with victims from all over the world. Two of the facilities were equipped with 1,250 mobile phones that controlled 76,000 accounts on a popular social media platform. Bribes. According to the investigation, Zhi and his network of managers managed to use their political influence in several countries to protect their criminal network. Thus, they are accused of paying bribes to public officials to prevent law enforcement from dismantling these operations. The stolen money was laundered through online gambling or cryptocurrency mining platforms, as well as spent on trips on private jets or yachts and also on works of art. On the run. The accusation of the DoJ has been added to that of the US Department of the Treasury. Said organism has imposed sanctions against Zhi and more than 100 associated individuals and entities. Chen Zhi, of Chinese origin, has become a fugitive, and faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted and arrested. Image | Kanchanara In Xataka | The founder of WhatsApp spared no expense when decorating his mansions and yachts with very expensive furniture. Most were fake.

There is a mystery customer spending 10 billion on Broadcom chips. Nobody knows who he is and that should worry us

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Charlie Kawwas, president of semiconductors at Broadcom, confirmed yesterday that OpenAI is not the mysterious client who signed up to pay $10 billion in custom chips. In September the existence of that enigmatic client became known and there was unanimity assuming that it would be OpenAI. But it turns out it’s not OpenAI. “I would love to receive a purchase order for 10 billion from my good friend Greg,” Kawwas said. referring to Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI. “He hasn’t given it to me yet.” Why is it important. During the Cold War, nuclear installations could be counted from satellites. In the AI ​​race, someone may be building the computational equivalent of a nuclear arsenal and we have no way of knowing. AI chips are the new strategic weapons. And unlike enriched uranium, they travel discreetly in commercial containers. An entity with $10 billion to spend on custom semiconductors is building AI capability on a beastly scale. The candidates. The analysis rules out the usual suspects: Meta and Google They are already known Broadcom customers. amazon has its own chip strategy with AWS. Microsoft invest through your partner-friend-enemy OpenAI. More disturbing options remain: Gulf sovereign wealth funds with technological ambitions. Government entities Americans (NSA, classified projects). Chinese actors operating through intermediaries. Apple preparing a major play in AI. This last option would be the canary in the mine to anticipate Apple’s total immersion in AI, but the parakeet Gurman has not anticipated anything, so it sounds like a very remote option. The money trail. Broadcom does not announce the arrival of these types of customers by chance. In September, CEO Hock Tan mentioned this $10 billion order because it completely changed the company’s revenue projections for 2025. Broadcom shares are up more than 53% so far this year. And in 2024 they will already double their value. The market always values ​​these secret contracts even if it does not know who signs the check. In perspective. Opacity in AI infrastructure investments has become the norm. Companies treat their component strategies as classified information. OpenAI just announced 33 gigawatts of computing capacity between agreements with NVIDIA, AMD and Broadcom. One gigawatt can cost $50 billion. The figures are stratospheric, but at least we know who signs them. The alarm signal. When $10 billion in critical technology changes hands without identification, we have a problem because computational training capacity, in the age of AI, is geopolitical power. This case is also a message about the immediate future: the next technological revolution may be developing outside of any public scrutiny. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | Broadcom is the other NVIDIA: it enters the select group of billion dollars and does not stop growing thanks to AI

Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion

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The story of Shayne Coplan and Polymarket is one of those striking cases that you like to see in the past. And the founder of this company practically started from bankruptcy in a makeshift bathroom as an office to close a $2 billion investment on the New York Stock Exchange. Now, the prediction markets platform that he founded in 2020 has just reached a valuation of $8 billion after the agreement with Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), owner of the NYSE. The takeoff. Coplan’s situation in 2020 was not exactly an example of the American dream. Just like shared a while ago In a publication in X, he was seen working from a bathroom converted into an office, with hardly any money and alone in charge of the project. Five years later, its platform has become the largest prediction market in the world, where users bet on the results of real events, from elections to sports or culture. Wall Street’s bet. ICE has announced an investment of up to $2 billion in cash in Polymarket, valuing the company at approximately $8 billion before the capital injection. The agreement turns ICE into a global distributor from Polymarket data, which will provide sentiment indicators on topics relevant to financial markets. Additionally, both companies will collaborate on tokenization initiatives that combine traditional financial markets with blockchain technology. How the model works. Polymarket allows users to express their opinions by buying and selling shares on possible event outcomes. Each operation is executed peer-to-peer using smart contracts. Markets grow with the number of participants, and prices reflect the perceived probability of each outcome occurring. The platform gained notoriety for the accuracy of their predictions during the 2024 US presidential electionwhere he managed billions in bets. roller coaster. Polymarket’s trajectory has not been linear. In 2022, federal regulators forced the platform to block US users after an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company operated from abroad for three years. This year, Polymarket bought QCEXa CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange, to return to the US market. The operation came weeks after prosecutors closed an investigation into whether the company had allowed access to American users despite the ban. Return at the perfect time. The changing regulatory climate under the Trump administration has favored emerging sectors such as event contracts and cryptocurrencies. Polymarket received an undisclosed investment in August from 1789 Capital, a firm endorsed by Donald Trump Jr., who later joined the company’s advisory board. What’s coming now. Jeffrey Sprecher, CEO of ICE, admits proudly that the investment combines an institution founded in 1792 (the NYSE), with a company that “is revolutionizing decentralized finance.” For Coplan, the agreement marks the entry of prediction markets into the traditional financial system. It remains to be seen whether these markets can maintain their growth and become truly useful tools for institutional investors. For now, ICE has bet heavily on the response being positive. Cover image | Shayne Coplan and Matthew Reeves (BFA) In Xataka | There is a worrying symptom in the technological economy: Silicon Valley prefers to buy itself rather than invest in the future

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