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We have been talking theoretically about data centers in space for months. A company already has a plan to set it up in 2027

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The Californian startup Aetherflux has announced which will launch its first data center satellite in the first quarter of 2027. It is the initial node of a constellation that the company has named “Galactic Brain”, designed to offer in-orbit computing capacity powered by continuous solar energy. The underlying promise. Aetherflux presents an alternative to the years of construction that terrestrial data centers require. According to Baiju Bhatt, company founder and co-founder of the financial firm Robinhood, “the race toward artificial general intelligence is fundamentally a race for computing power and, by extension, energy.” The company is committed to placing sunlight next to silicon and completely bypassing the electrical grid. How the project works. The Galactic Brain satellites will operate in low Earth orbit, taking advantage of solar radiation 24 hours a day, something impossible on land. Advanced thermal systems would eliminate the limitations faced by terrestrial data centers, which require large amounts of water and electricity for cooling. In addition, the constellation fits within Aetherflux’s initial plans: transmitting energy from space to Earth using infrared lasers. The competition is already underway. Aetherflux is not alone in this bet. Google presented in November your Suncatcher projecta plan to launch AI chips into space on solar-powered satellites. Jeff Bezos too expressed his optimism on large data centers operating in space in the next decade or two, a goal that Blue Origin has been working on for more than a year. SpaceX also works in use Starlink satellites for computing loads of AI. Musk himself wrote in The real obstacles. Although launch costs have decreased considerably, they remain prohibitive. According to recent estimateslaunching a kilogram with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy costs around $1,400. Google calculate that if these costs drop to about $200 per kilogram by 2030, as projected, the expense of establishing and operating space data centers would be comparable to that of terrestrial facilities. In addition, the chips will have to withstand more intense radiation and avoid collisions in an increasingly congested orbit. The urgency. Big tech is colliding with physical limits on Earth. From 2023, dozens of data center projects have been blocked or delayed in the United States due to local opposition over electricity consumption, water use and associated pollution. According to the consulting firm CBRElimitations in electricity generation have become the main inhibitor of data center growth around the world. The Aetherflux Calendar. The company, founded in 2024 and which has raised $60 million in financing, plans to first demonstrate the feasibility of transmitting space energy through a satellite that will launch in 2026. If all goes according to plan, the first Galactic Brain node will arrive in 2027. The company anticipates launching about 30 satellites at a time on a SpaceX Falcon 9 or equivalent, although if Starship becomes an option, they could orbit more than 100 data center satellites in a single launch. The long term strategy. Aetherflux hasn’t revealed pricing yet, but promise Multi-gigabit bandwidth with near-constant uptime. Their approach is to continually release new hardware and quickly integrate the latest architectures. Older systems would run lower priority tasks until the life of the high-end GPUs were exhausted, which under high utilization and radiation might not last more than a few years. Cover image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA In Xataka | OpenAI launches GPT-5.2 weeks after GPT-5.1: a maneuver that aims to cut ground on Google’s Gemini 3

BYD CEO is clear about why the company is losing steam in China

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Wang Chuanfu, president and CEO of BYD, has publicly acknowledged for the first time the reason behind the company’s sales decline in the Chinese market. During an extraordinary shareholders meeting held on December 5 in Shenzhen, the CEO bluntly admitted that the manufacturer has lost the technological advantage that differentiated it from the competition. According to local media, Wang said that they had lost that ‘wow factor’ in the domestic market, in reference to the impact that their innovations previously generated. The underlying problem. The local media China Securities Journal collected the statements of the head of BYD, who stated that the drop responds to two main factors. On the one hand, he admits that BYD’s technological advantage is no longer as pronounced as in previous years, which has reduced the surprise effect of its products in the market. On the other hand, the CEO acknowledged that unresolved practical problems persist, such as the slow charging speed of its vehicles in low temperature environments, a critical aspect for users in certain regions of China. The numbers confirm the trend. In November 2025, BYD sold 480,186 new energy vehiclesthe highest monthly figure of the year, but which represented a decrease of 5.25% compared to the same month in 2024. It is the third consecutive month of year-on-year decline. Domestic sales were particularly weak, at 348,300 units, a drop of 26.81% year-on-year. In contrast, exports exceeded 100,000 units per month for the first time, reaching 131,700an increase of 297% that has become the company’s main growth engine. We have already seen how they have broken into Europe. For BYD and the rest of the Chinese manufacturers, it is important to continue consolidating their foreign business for two main reasons: to continue feeding their factories and to increase their profit margins in the face of a China that seems to live in a constant price war. The competition tightens. Chinese manufacturers such as Geely, Changan and Chery They have intensified their offensive with efficient hybrid and more affordable electric models, eroding their market share. Furthermore, the homogenization of products in the industry has made it difficult for BYD to stand out like before. In September 2025, SAIC Motor even temporarily surpassed BYD in monthly sales, according to they counted from CarNewsChina. BYD’s response. Wang Chuanfu hinted that the company is preparing “heavy technologies” that will be announced soon, although it did not offer details. The CEO stressed that BYD’s strength lies in its team of approximately 120,000 engineers, who will be key to regaining technological leadership. The company plans to intensify its investment in electrification and smart technologies over the next two to three years. Self-criticism included. Wang also made an exercise in self-criticism by admitting that favorable market conditions in previous years generated a certain complacency in the areas of marketing and merchandising, as they point out from CnEVPost. And now what. BYD revised its global sales target for 2025 downward, from 5.5 million vehicles to approximately 4.6 million. Between January and November, the company accumulated 4,182 million units soldwhich represents 90.9% of the adjusted objective and a growth of 11.3% year-on-year. Figures that contrast with the spectacular expansion rates of previous years: 218% in 2021, 209% in 2022, 62% in 2023 and 41% in 2024. Stella Li, its vice president, already warned us during the Xataka Awards gala We will soon have very interesting news from the manufacturer. So we can only wait to see what the firm’s strategy will be to alleviate the effect of competition. In Xataka | The world’s rare earth reserves, laid out in this graph showing the brutal dominance of a single country

A Spanish company is at the center of the new A320 headache. Airbus must inspect hundreds of planes

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At the heart of the A320 program, a recent discovery has triggered a wave of attention aimed squarely at a Spanish aerostructures supplier. This is a quality problem in fuselage panels that Airbus has decided to address with a large-scale inspection campaign, at a time when every delivery counts. According to Airbusthe episode has not affected flight safety, but it has opened a new front for the European manufacturer and for part of its industrial chain, especially in Andalusia. The manufacturer has confirmed that the origin of the situation is in metal panels of the A320 front fuselage that have thicknesses outside the specified values. According to industrial presentations consulted by Reuters, in some cases pieces that are too thick or too thin have been detected, forcing each potentially affected aircraft to be inspected. Airbus insists that flight safety has not been compromised and that inspections will determine which planes need intervention. Impact on the fleet. Data shared with operators and cited by Reuters raises the number of aircraft that will undergo inspection to 628, a figure that reflects the industrial scope of the process. Among them there are devices already in service and others on the assembly line, including a group that was due to be delivered in 2025 according to industry sources. This volume forces plant tasks to be reorganized while Airbus prepares the specific procedures that airlines must follow depending on the status of each unit. The adjustment that Airbus communicated on December 3 makes it clear that the quality problem has fully hit its delivery expectations for 2025. The manufacturer now sets its objective at “around 790” commercial aircraft, a figure lower than the initial forecast of about 820 units, according to data provided to Reuters. The cut shows the direct effect of the technical reorganization triggered by the A320 inspections and marks a notable change in industrial planning for next year. Inspections and recent context. The manufacturer maintains that the process will allow it to precisely identify which aircraft need intervention, insisting that this quality problem does not affect flight performance. Reuters points out that the inspections are relatively quick, while The Air Current estimates that repairs could take between three and five weeks. All this occurs after the massive update applied to more than 6,000 Airbus aircraft, motivated by a software vulnerability triggered by episodes of intense solar radiation. Who is Sofitec? Founded in 1999 and based in the Andalusian aeronautical hub, Sofitec is dedicated to the design, manufacture and repair of metallic and composite aerostructures for international programs. Its evolution has been accompanied by investments in engineering, final processes and facility expansions, which has consolidated it as a relevant supplier for the A320 family. Bloomberg identifies the company as one of the suppliers of the fuselage panels that require inspection, which explains its presence at the center of this industrial episode. Union accusations. Bloomberg revealed that the UGT FICA Sevilla union has reported to Airbus the existence of alleged irregularities in several internal Sofitec processes. In a letter addressed to the CEO, the union claims that dates were falsified at certain stages of production and that expired paints and sealants were used, in addition to unauthorized repairs being carried out on carbon fiber parts. Airbus said it acted in accordance with its internal quality procedures but declined to comment on the specific allegations, while Sofitec did not respond to requests for comment. The episode leaves several unknowns open for the European manufacturer and its supply chain. Airbus now faces a technical reorganization that will coexist with its delivery commitments and the usual scrutiny of airlines and regulators. For Sofitec, the situation means being under unusual visibility and managing it while the inspection campaign progresses. The Andalusian aeronautical sector, which has been consolidating its international presence for years, is watching the process carefully, waiting for the reviews to definitively limit the scope of the problem. Images | Airbus | Sofitec In Xataka | SpaceX is known for its rockets. What is less known is its growing and striking fleet of aircraft

A company identified an employee on its payroll as “buzzed.” Justice has added some zeros to the joke

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A payroll can be much more than a payment document: in this case, it became judicial evidence and object of compensation for damage to honor. A company in the Basque Country included the word “Zumbada” to identify the employee as a beneficiary on two successive payrolls. It so happened that the employee’s ex-husband was also the co-owner of the company. A ruling from the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country has condemned the company to pay 10,000 euros in damages to the employee’s honor. A list for “Zumbada”. According to is detailed in the sentence issued by the Social Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country, the worker carried out administrative tasks in the company of her ex-husband, of whom he was in the middle of the judicial process of divorce and custody of their common son with a disability. In this context, the employee received two payrolls in which the word “Zumbada” appeared in the section intended to indicate the name of the beneficiary of the payroll. As it could not be otherwise, the employee filed a lawsuit against the company. As the employee herself stated in an intervention in the program “And now Sonsoles” hosted by Sonsoles Ónega on July 27, “There was a first trial for the crime of minor insults in which it was the other partner, Iñaki, who took responsibility for having made that transfer.” However, the employee resorted to court again when she understood that it was the company that had to respond for her work mistreatment, arguing that she suffered a workplace harassment for the humiliating work shown towards her on her payroll. It’s not harassment. In July, the Social Court handed down a ruling arguing that, however reprehensible, the company’s conduct did not constitute workplace harassmentconsidering it a sporadic act. The labor lawyer Juanma Lorente agreed with the court’s ruling and analyzed the case in a published video on his Instagram profile. “We are not talking about workplace harassment, but rather a breach by the company, and you can file a complaint against it. But it is not workplace harassment. They have to be repeated over time for approximately six months,” said the lawyer, indicating that the employee’s legal advice had not been correct. The TSJPV did not let it pass. Although in the first instance the Social Court dismissed the claim. The ruling was taken to the Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country, where on October 25 it revoked the first ruling, recognizing that the company had violated the employee’s right to honor by using the term “Zumbada” on its payroll. The ruling emphasizes that “the inclusion of derogatory terms in a list generates a detriment to the dignity of the worker and constitutes an act contrary to the fundamental principles of respect and honorability”, indicating that the offense occurred in a public context given that the document had to be processed by the employees of the financial institution, bypassing the area of ​​privacy. For this reason, the Court has sentenced the two partners of the company (one of them her ex-husband) to pay compensation of 10,000 euros for damage to the employee’s honor. History repeats itself. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that payroll processing has been used as a channel to inflict humiliating treatment on employees. In 2024, a baker included the concept “Nómina Abril Maricón” on the payroll of one of its employees, which led to a conviction and the seizure of his assets to face a compensatory compensation. In Xataka | An employee put the handbrake on the company van when he was the passenger. He was fired, but from his company Image | Wikimedia Commons (Zarateman), Unsplash (Resume Genius)

Sam Altman is trying to buy his own rocket company to compete with SpaceX. The key: data centers

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The rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk has just reached its highest point: space. And all so that OpenAI can deploy its own data centers in space. The news. As revealed by the Wall Street Journalthe CEO of OpenAI has been exploring the purchase of Stoke Space, a Seattle startup that develops reusable rockets, with the goal of building data centers in space. Although talks with Stoke Space cooled in the fall, the move confirms a trend we’ve been observing for months: Silicon Valley is outgrowing the Earth to fuel AI. Sam’s plan. According to the Journal’s sources, Sam Altman was not looking for a launch provider, but rather an investment that would ensure OpenAI majority control of Stoke Space. Stoke Space, founded in 2020 by former Blue Origin engineers, is developing a fully reusable rocket called ‘Nova’ to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9. So that. Altman maintains a tense rivalry with Elon Musk, so the logic of this move would be to reduce OpenAI’s dependence on Musk’s rockets in the event that it decided to deploy servers in space. But above that there is a purely energetic motivation. The computing demand for AI is so insatiable that the environmental consequences of keeping it on Earth will be unsustainable. In certain orbits, however, solar energy is available 24/7 and the vacuum of space offers an infinite heat sink to cool equipment without wasting water. The fever of space data centers. Altman is not alone in this race. What until recently seemed like an eccentricity has become a serious project for big technology companies: And what does Musk say? The irony of Altman pursuing his own rocket company is that the industry’s undisputed leader, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, already has the infrastructure in place. While his competitors design prototypes and seek financing, Musk has cut off the debate with his usual forcefulness: in the face of the discussion about the need to build new orbital data centers, He assured that there is no need to reinvent the wheel: “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites… SpaceX is going to do it.” Images | Brazilian Ministry of Communications | Village Global In Xataka | Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

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

Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing”

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Prediction markets are no longer a niche of the Internet and datanerds to become the new obsession of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are receiving multi-billion dollar valuations by repackaging traditional bets as sophisticated financial instruments. The image that defines the moment occurred recently in Manhattan, according to Bloomberg: the patriarch of the New York Stock Exchange (70 years old, impeccable suit) closing a multimillion-dollar deal with the founder of Polymarket (27 years old, t-shirt and plastic bottle). That meeting sealed the fate of the sector: betting is no longer a game, it is finance. Why is it important. We are facing a radical cultural and regulatory change. By redefining bets as “event contracts”, these platforms try to circumvent gambling legislation (which in Spain would control Consumption) to sneak into the traditional financial system, with the support of giants such as the owners of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The panoramic. Kalshi is already worth $10 billion and Polymarket is looking for $12 billion. They are not beach bars, as we said, the owner of the NYSE has invested there. The hockey league (NHL) and Donald Trump’s media company are already signing deals. It is the traditional financial system embracing chance. It is, above all, legitimation. Semantic reengineering. Polymarket’s true success is not technological, it is linguistic. They have eliminated the stigma of the gambler by changing the dictionary: It’s not a bet. It’s an “investment.” It is not a betting house. It’s a “exchange of contracts”. You are not a gambler. you are a trader which analyzes “market sentiment.” An example of the absurdity of some cases: people betting by Elon Musk entering the race to be president of the United States, oblivious to the fact that Musk was born in South Africa and therefore cannot become president, since the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners. That is to say: all those bets are money thrown away from minute one. How it works. Instead of betting 50 euros on Trump winning, you buy a “share” of that result that is worth 1 dollar if you are right. This allows the same person who would win or lose money at roulette to now win or lose it in an app with stock market charts. Although the savings fly the same, the user feels smarter and less guilty: he believes that he is operating in something more similar to the IBEX, not in a casino. What’s coming. There is a civil war brewing. The old guard of the game (the owners of traditional casinos) see this as unfair competition. Jay Snowden, CEO of Penn Entertainment (a casino and sports betting company), has already warned: This is a direct threat to your industry. Prediction markets and games of chance overlap. In conclusion. Polymarket has managed to sophisticate gambling addiction for a generation that believes itself too smart to play games of chance. They have created the perfect casino for those who despise casinos, allowing them to risk savings under the illusion of doing financial analysis. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion Featured image | Hush Naidoo Jade PhotographyMockuuups Studio

A US company sees reasons to try it in 2026

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The nuclear industry has been looking for years for the moment of SMRs, smaller, cheaper and more versatile fission reactors. A Californian startup called Deep Fission believes it has the key to getting them off the ground: bury them. 160 free atmospheres. Most of the world’s commercial reactors run on pressurized water. To do this, the water that cools the core must remain liquid at more than 300ºC, which requires an immense pressure, around 150 to 160 atmospheres. On the surface, this translates into steel vessels of enormous thickness and cost. The Deep Fission proposal harness the brute force of gravity to eliminate that problem. Placing the reactor a mile underground, inside a well filled with water, the column of liquid itself exerts a natural hydrostatic pressure of 160 atmospheres. There is no need for a complex pressure vessel: the reactor water is kept in a liquid state without wasting energy or exotic materials. There is another advantage. The second key point is the mineral environment. Instead of building reinforced concrete domes to contain radiation in the event of an accident, Deep Fission takes advantage of the environment. The solid rock at that depth acts as a natural and inexhaustible retaining wall. Petroleum engineering. What Deep Fission proposes is to use standard fuel (low-enriched uranium), but with fracking and oil drilling techniques, extracting heat as if it were geothermal. Its Gravity reactor is a 15 MW module narrow enough to fit into a drill hole about 76 centimeters in diameter. But the economic promise is immense: a cost of 50-70 dollars per MWh and an 80% reduction in civil works, which would be completed in months. There is a but. Although Deep Fission has already announced a portfolio of potential clients in Texas and Kansas, its design has an Achilles heel. At the same time that burying the reactor protects it from tornadoes, plane crashes or terrorism, it creates a logistical nightmare for its maintenance. In a normal plant, if a valve fails or a sensor breaks, technicians can access auxiliary areas by taking precautions. Here, everything would be 1.6 km deep. To refuel or repair a breakdown, the entire module would have to be hoisted to the surface using cables, as if it were a miniature submarine. Today there is no regulatory framework for “deep well reactors” anywhere in the world. Still, Deep Fission promises to have a pilot ready by July 2026.

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

The only photo you need to understand the scale of what Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ company, has just done

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In the absence of bananas, there is nothing like having five human operators in the photo to understand the scale of the New Glenn rocket, whose first stage is 57 meters high and seven meters in diameter. landed successfully on a barge in the Atlantic. SpaceX has company. So far, the club of companies capable of landing their orbital-class rockets so they can be reused had only one partner: SpaceX. For a decade now, Elon Musk’s company has single-handedly dominated the reuse game, landing and taking off again up to 500 times with the Falcon 9 thanks to a reliability that is now more than routine. What you see in this photo is the breaking of that monopoly. The first successful landing of the enormous New Glenn rocket, achieved on only its second flight, demonstrates that orbital reuse is no longer a matter of a single company. Although Blue Origin, founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, is far behind SpaceX, it has just taken a giant leap that Bezos summarized with a Latin expression: Gradatim Ferociter (“step by step, fiercely”). As large as graceful. Unlike the Falcon 9, which measures 70 meters and can put about 22 tons of cargo into low orbit, the New Glenn stands out with 98 meters in height and a planned capacity of 45 tons. If we had not seen SpaceX catch the Super Heavy (the first stage of Starship) three times with the arms of the launch tower, it would seem more unlikely to us that a rocket like the New Glenn would be able to land gracefully in the center of a barge in the Atlantic Ocean. And without getting covered in soot. There is another fundamental detail in the photo: the rocket fuselage is clean. Unlike the Falcon 9 boosters, which return covered in the characteristic black soot caused by kerosene combustion, the New Glenn appears almost pristine. The reason is that its seven powerful BE-4 engines use methane and liquid oxygen (a combination of cryogenic propellants known as methalox). This fuel is not only more efficient and cheaper, but it burns much cleaner, facilitating inspection and reconditioning tasks for the next flight. With this landing, the New Glenn has become the first methalox rocket to successfully recover a first stage from an orbital flight, ahead of the Zhuque 3 from the Chinese company Landspace (and with permission from Starship, which also uses methalox, but has never reached orbit). Things are coming. Blue Origin’s sweet moment begins now. In an interview with Ars Technicathe company’s CEO, Dave Limp, has confirmed that the aggressive 2026 goal is to complete between 12 and 24 missions. The company has announced a launch price of about $70 million, a figure almost identical to what SpaceX charges for a Falcon 9. But the New Glenn not only competes with the Falcon 9, but also threatens to burst the market by competing directly in the league of the Falcon Heavy, but with the advantage of a unique and fully reusable first stage. As for the rocket that has landed, its next payload will not be a probe or a satellite, but the Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar module, which the company plans to launch in the first quarter of 2026 to demonstrate to NASA They are ready for the moon race. Image | Jeff BezosBlue Origin In Xataka | Blue Origin now has a golden opportunity to overtake SpaceX on trips to the Moon. And he is taking advantage of it

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