dollars

In 2004, 15 driverless cars competed in the desert for a million dollars. None of them ended, but they changed the industry forever

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On March 13, 2004, at dawn, fifteen vehicles left Barstow, California, heading for the Mojave Desert. They did not have a driver. Their mission was to travel more than 200 kilometers of hostile terrain to Primm, Nevada, without anyone at the wheel or remote control in between. The first to do it would win a million dollars. No one got it. Objective: operate without a driver. The DARPA Grand Challenge It was a competition organized by the United States Advanced Defense Projects Agency, the same organization that once laid the foundations for the Internet. Congress had set a goal that, by 2015, one-third of military ground vehicles could operate without drivers, thereby reducing the risk to soldiers on resupply and transportation missions in war zones. To accelerate that research, DARPA decided to open the door to anyone, whether they were universities, hobbyists, or independent engineers. It was enough to present a vehicle capable of driving itself. In detail. Twenty-one candidates passed the previous qualifying tests, held at the California Speedway circuit, and fifteen vehicles arrived at the starting line of the desert. There was everything from SUVs, to pickup trucks, and even modified motorcycles with computers, radar, cameras, and GPS receivers to “see” the terrain and decide for themselves how to navigate it. The route, about 228 kilometers, was not revealed until two hours before departure, precisely to check that the systems were capable of interpreting the environment in real time and not memorizing a route in advance. ORAn almost comical disaster. one of the cars it capsized as soon as it started and had to withdraw before the official start. Two others did not even start the test. Three hours into the race, out of a limit of ten, only four vehicles were still running. The rest fell due to mechanical failures, blocked brakes, broken axles or navigation systems that lost direction. According to collect the specialized magazine IEEE Spectrum, the image offered by the exit was “the most diverse collection of vehicles gathered in one place since the filming of Mad Max 2.” Who went further. The vehicle that advanced the most It was Sandstorm.a 1986 Humvee modified by Carnegie Mellon University’s Red Team. It traveled 11.9 kilometers before getting stranded on a slope in the terrain after exiting a horseshoe curve, according to the university itself. The impact broke front axles and burst wheels, and fuel began to spill from the tank. Its manager, robotics professor William “Red” Whittaker, acknowledged that the car arrived “injured” to the test, as it had overturned during a test the previous week and the team barely had time to fully repair it. Shortly after, another of the vehicles, nicknamed DAD (Digital Auto Drive), became immobilized. and it caught fire before those responsible for the event deactivated it remotely. No team exceeded 12 kilometers of a route that was supposed to exceed 200. It wasn’t entirely a failure.. Although the million dollars remained without an owner, DARPA considered that the experiment had fulfilled its real function: to demonstrate that there was a community of engineers, students and programmers willing to solve a problem that until then seemed like something out of science fiction. The day after the disaster in the desert, the agency announced that it would repeat the test a year and a half later, this time with two million dollars. And the revenge arrived. On October 8, 2005, in a new edition on a 212-kilometer route, five vehicles completed the route for the first time in history. The winner was Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg by the Stanford University team led by German engineer Sebastian Thrun, who crossed the finish line in 6 hours and 53 minutes. Sandstorm itself, now repaired, came second. The real impact came later. That race through the desert ended up being the seed of the autonomous car industry as we know it today. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin They came in disguise to witness the 2005 test and, shortly after, Thrun was hired to lead Google X, the company’s experimental projects laboratory. There, along with other DARPA test veterans such as Anthony Levandowski, Chris Urmson and Mike Montemerlo, Thrun launched in 2009 the secret project that would eventually become Waymo, today one of the main autonomous car companies in the world. Stanley itself, the 2005 winning car, is currently preserved in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. And now what. Two decades after that first failed test in the desert, driverless cars They are already circulating through the streets from cities like San Francisco, Phoenix or Shanghai, and companies like Waymo or Tesla are committed to autonomous taxis becoming commonplace. In Spain we will briefly see some doing tests this year in Madrid. Although the really curious thing was that, a test in which most of the cars made fools of themselves, ended up being the real starting point of a technology that today moves billions of dollars. Cover image | Lemonodor In Xataka | China has an amazing 10-kilometer underwater tunnel and 200,000 LED lights with one goal: to keep you from falling asleep

there are already 265,000 million dollars for 2 nm

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TSMC is going to invest an additional $100 billion in the US to build at least four more factories and several advanced packaging plants in Arizona. It CC Wei announcedthe president and CEO of this company, during the second quarter results conference held in Taipei (Taiwan). The new facilities they will produce chips at the 2nm node and later generationsand confirm a rumor that was already circulating in February. TSMC’s total commitment in the US now amounts to $265 billion. However, the company has not offered a specific construction schedule. And, according to Wei, the pace of the works will depend directly on the evolution of market demand, not on a commitment with a date fixed in advance. The announcement also comes accompanied by another historic quarter for TSMC, with a net profit of $22.35 billion between April and June (77.4% more year-on-year), its fifth consecutive quarterly record. The figures and background of this bet Equipping and building a state-of-the-art 2nm semiconductor fab with capacity for about 20,000 wafers per month costs between $25 billion and $35 billion. With this reference, the 100,000 million announced fit with the four minimum plants that Wei mentioned. The most revealing data, however, is provided by Bloomberg: The expansion would bring TSMC’s US footprint to 10 factories and two advanced packaging plants, about half of the final 12-factory plan announced in April. TSMC’s revenue has grown by 36% between April and June and its gross margin has reached 67.7%, also a record figure This scenario invites us to stop at the packaging, probably the most relevant part of the ad. CoWoS capability, and not wafer production itself, remains the real bottleneck for manufacturing accelerators for artificial intelligence (AI). Count on advanced packaging in Arizona would give TSMC’s American customers, for the first time, a complete supply chain within the country, from wafer processing to the packaged and ready-to-assemble chip. TSMC’s revenue has grown 36% between April and June and its gross margin has reached 67.7%, also a record figure. This company now forecasts revenue of between $44.6 billion and $45.8 billion for the third quarter, and has raised its annual growth forecast to slightly above 40%. Another note: the capex of 2026 will rise to between 60,000 and 64,000 million dollars, compared to the 52,000 and 56,000 million dollars initially budgeted. Be that as it may, this announcement cannot be separated from the trade agreement between the US and Taiwan, which reduced tariffs on Taiwanese products to 15% in exchange for 250 billion dollars in Taiwanese investment in the US. As can be expected, the execution of the plan in Phoenix will continue to be conditioned by the availability of labor, water and visas, three of the great challenges that TSMC is facing in Arizona. Image | TSMC More information | Reuters | Bloomberg In Xataka | The war in Iran and the Chinese veto redraw the world map of helium for semiconductors

Disney faces losing more than 100 million dollars with Moana because it has not been able to read the signs of an announced failure

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Unlike another similar film with comparable results, ‘Snow White’, ‘Moana’ has neither a controversial actress, nor a cultural war behind it, nor a disastrous trailer to blame for a gross of just $95 million in its world premiere. Against a budget of 250to which we must add marketing expenses that could reach 145 million additional. We are facing one of the Disney’s biggest box office blows in recent times, and one that can put in check one of the company’s most profitable strategies. What there is to lose. With those numbers on the table, it is projected that Disney could lose between 100 and 125 million dollars in the theatrical exploitation of ‘Moana’, and that is assuming it manages to gross 250 million worldwide before closing its run in theaters. Not exactly a small disaster for a company that has just experienced a big disappointment with the weak collections for ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’. It looked good. The fact is that ‘Moana’ started with very flattering expectations for the company: A- in CinemaScore, between 90% and 91% of the public in Rotten Tomatoes which has finally dropped to 89%, a 63% “definitive” recommendation according to PostTrak… Critics, on the other hand, have sunk it with just 31% on Rotten Tomatoes for considering it, basically, a shot-by-shot carbon copy of the 2016 animated version. It is one of the most pronounced gaps between critics and the public of the summer, but it is not a completely unusual phenomenon. Who is to blame then? The success of ‘Moana’ and other problems. As we told a few days ago, the original animated film of ‘Moana’ is the most watched movie in the history of Disney+with more than 1.5 billion hours played. ‘Moana 2’, released in November 2024 after being converted from a series planned for streaming, broke the Thanksgiving premiere record with 225 million in five days and ended up surpassing 1 billion worldwide. And there may be a reason for the failure: families had seen ‘Vaiana 2’ less than two years ago and were certain that this version, clearly derivative, would soon arrive on Disney+ (and it could have been worse: when Disney announced ‘Vaiana 2’, it delayed the release of this live-action version by a year so that there would be at least two years between the two). In addition, the premiere occurred on a particularly competitive weekend: Disney itself had ‘Toy Story 5’ in theaters, and there was also ‘Minions & Monsters’. Competition everywhere: Disney’s own streaming offering, traditional rivals and a sequel that was still fresh. Little time. Some media point because nostalgia is the real driving force behind Disney’s most profitable remakes, and Moana arrived too early to activate it. ‘Lilo & Stitch’ It raised more than 1,000 million with a hiatus of more than twenty years compared to the 2002 original, but ‘Moana’ has tried to repeat the formula with only a decade in between and a recent sequel competing for the same audience. Disney opted for a property that did not yet need a relaunch and that the public did not demand with such urgency. In Xataka | The failure of ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ is something more worrying for Disney: what the hell is it doing with Star Wars

Instagram and Facebook are “addictive” by design. And Meta faces a fine of 12 billion dollars

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The European Commission has concludedpreliminarily, that Meta violates the Digital Services Act (DSA) due to the “addictive” design of Instagram and Facebook. The organization and Meta have been arguing for years over a multitude of aspects related to the security and privacy of their social networks but, this time, the move could be very expensive for Mark Zuckerberg’s company, as it could be forced to redesign both applications and face a fine of up to $12 billion. por that. The conclusion of the European Commission comes after an investigation of more than two years which, if confirmed, would force Meta to change the internal functioning of two of the most used social networks on the planet. And it comes at a time when regulatory pressure on big technology companies for the protection of minors it doesn’t stop growingboth in Europe and in the United States. In detail. According to has explained The European Commission itself in an official statement, Meta “did not adequately assess the risks of its addictive design for the physical and mental well-being of users, including minors and vulnerable adults.” The European organization points directly to several specific functions: Personalized recommendations. Autoplay (automatic playback of content). The infinite scroll. Push notifications. Brussels maintains that these tools push the user to continue viewing content almost unconsciously, which the institution itself describes as going into “autopilot mode.” It also ensures that Meta ignored available data on the time that minors spend on Instagram and Facebook at night, as well as the role that formats such as reels or stories could play in excessive or compulsive use of the applications. Between the lines. What is striking is not only that Brussels points out the design of the apps, but also questions the tools that Meta already offers to limit their use. The Commission states that screen time controls, even those enabled by default for teenagers, “can be easily dismissed” and do not truly reduce use of the service. Regarding parental control, consider that it only works if parents have technical knowledge and dedicate time and effort to configure it, something that, according to the organization itself, limits its real effectiveness. Nor does he consider the mental health warnings that Meta offers in its “safety center” as sufficient. With these arguments, the Commission proposes that Meta should introduce specific design changes: deactivate functions such as autoplay and infinite scroll by default, incorporate effective screen pauses and adjust its recommendation system so that it depends less on keeping the user engaged, according to the institution’s own statement. How much money is at stake. If the conclusion is confirmed, Meta could be fined up to 6% of its annual worldwide turnover. Taking 2025 revenues as a reference, close to $201 billion, the penalty could be close to $12 billion. That can make goal. It should be noted that these are still preliminary conclusions and that there is still no firm sanction. Meta has the right to defend himself, review the documentation in the file and respond in writing before Brussels adopts a final decision. In parallel, the case will be consulted to the European Committee for Digital Services. The context does not play in favor of Meta. This research It has been open since May 2024and it has not been the only one. In parallel, the company faces another European investigation into its age verification systems for children under 13 years of age, whose preliminary conclusions were published in April, as detailed by the Commission itself. In addition, Brussels is preparing a report, scheduled for next Monday, on a possible ban on the use of social networks for minors under 16 years of age throughout the community bloc, according to they count from The Verge. Pressure also comes from the United States. In August, Meta will sit on trial over whether its applications are intentionally addictive, in a case in which several states are jointly demanding compensation that could reach $1.4 trillion. depending on the medium. And it would not be the first judicial defeat, since in March, a Los Angeles jury already declared Instagram and YouTube responsible for damaging the mental health of a 20-year-old girl, in a case that forced the companies to pay 6 million dollars jointly, according to share from Bloomberg. QEU says the Comywentn. “Protecting the physical and mental health of Europeans must be a priority for social media platforms,” ​​he said. declared Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Virkkunen added that the Digital Services Law “offers a clear framework to hold platforms accountable for the addictive design of their services and their effects”, and assured that Brussels is “fully committed” to enforcing European regulations. What Meta says. A spokesperson for the technology giant declared to the BBC that the company did not agree with the conclusions, “which do not properly take into account the important measures we have taken to protect teenagers.” “We share the European Commission’s commitment to providing adolescents with safe and positive online experiences, and we will continue to engage constructively with them,” it continued. And now what. The case enters a phase of allegations that may be prolonged. This is not the first time that the DSA has resulted in sanctions, since the norm itself has already been used to fine X 120 million eurosand with 200 million euros to the Chinese e-commerce giant Temu. We’ll see what happens with Meta. Cover image | Guillaume Perigois and Goal In Xataka | Anyone can tag you on Instagram to generate AI deepfakes with your photos. It’s Meta being Meta

South Korea has a plan to dominate in memory chips and robotics. One of a billion dollars

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South Korea has put on the table a megaproject for the AI ​​era. This is an initiative made up of three public-private projects spread across semiconductors, data centers and the promising industry of “physical AI”, that is, robots and autonomous systems. The advertisement seeks something very specific: that the country does not depend only on selling memory, but on manufacturing other physical products that it anticipates will be consumed massively. Memory chips rule. The largest item of this ambitious plan is, as we all expected, the one destined for the country’s semiconductor industry. Samsung and SK Hynix have committed to investing $585 billion in new manufacturing plants in the southeast of the country, in addition to strengthening factory construction in the Seoul region. They want to double the production of DRAM memories in five years. The future belongs to data centers. The second large part of this plan corresponds to the data centers that are precisely going to take advantage of a large part of those memory chips. SK Group, CS Group and Naver will invest $357 billion to build large-scale AI data centers in areas until now far from the country’s technology centers. According to the Ministry of Science, the final ambition is to achieve a combined capacity of 18.4 GW by 2035, which would make South Korea one of the world’s great AI “nodes.” Robotics, of course. More surprising is the third leg of the plan: the South Korean government has declared that “physical AI” is a “national strategic industry.” These systems, which allow robots or autonomous vehicles to interact with the real world, also want to be part of the future of the country’s technology industry. In three years they want to create a foundational AI model with the philosophy of “models of the world“—the same in which Yan LeCun or Fei-Fei Li work—. Hyundai has its own plan. The South Korean auto industry giant has set aside $5.8 billion to create a robot manufacturing plant and data center. It’s no coincidence: Hyundai is in fact the parent company of Boston Dynamics since 20221, and is already using its local supply chain to help the American company increase production of its Atlas humanoid robot. The goal: build 30,000 units per year in 2028. Humanoid robots in factories. South Korea wants to commercialize humanoid robots in several key industries before 2028, and to achieve this it wants to train the people who will work with them. The joint plan includes a section that talks about training 10,000 new “AI robotics specialists” in the next five years. But. The announcement coincides with an important internal debate: there are political proposals that seek distribute part of the extraordinary profits of the chip manufacturers, and the unions already see the imminent threat of robotics that will replace positions in all types of assembly chains. The opposition to the South Korean government has also criticized the location of these new production centers, which according to them respond more to a political calculation than to a good industrial strategy. In Xataka | Samsung had been the absolute king of technology in South Korea for decades: SK Hynix has just surpassed it

Two friends sold their company for 1.5 billion dollars and bought it back for 450 million: today it is worth 150 billion

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Buying low and selling high is one of the maxims of any financial operation if you want do well in life. It’s the advice likely followed by two immigrant friends from Asia who met playing basketball in Los Angeles. The story of these two friends is one of the most bizarre and fortunate in the technological business field, since they managed to sell their company for 1.5 billion, and then buy it back for 450 million and turn it into an empire of 150,000 million dollars. Its history is that of one of the best-known RAM and storage device companies since the late 80s: Kingston Technology. Two immigrants and the worst Monday in history John Tu came to Los Angeles from China in the 1970s. David Sun took the same route, but from Taiwan. They were both engineers and were looking for their big break in California. By the whims of fate, they both ended up playing basketball on the same basketball court in Los Angeles in the 80s. Everything else arose from that friendship. His first business was Camintonn, a memory-related components company used by personal computers that were beginning to make the leap from laboratories and electronics hobby clubs to offices and homes, driven by promising young people like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. After a few years of success and growth, Tu and Sun sold Camintonn in 1986 to AST Research for six million dollars. With that money in their pockets, the future seemed like a bed of roses for the two friends, but their joy was short-lived. The feared Black Monday The October 1987 crash on Wall Street caused a good part of his savings to disappear in one fell swoop. They were left with almost nothing. However, instead of looking for work in a company in the flourishing technology market of the time, they began their adventure as entrepreneurs again. “I told him: ‘You make something and I’ll sell it, like last time,’” Tu said. in an interview for Fortune. John Tu and David Sun, co-founders of Kingston Technology That same year they founded Kensington, a company with a name that seemed elegant and sophisticated, but another company had beaten them to it and registered it. So as they were fans of the folk group The Kingston Triothey chose to rename their company Kingston Technology and launched it in a garage in Fountain Valley, California. How much does current technology owe to California garages! From being born in a garage to being worth 1.5 billion To the contrary to Samsung or other brands, Kingston did not manufacture its own memory chips, but rather bought components from large manufacturers and turned them into products that people use: memory modules for computers, pen drives, flash cards, SSD disks. It was a model without great aspirations, but it worked with a precision that few could match. In fact, it is the same business model that it maintains today. By August 1996, the company was already valued at more than $1.8 billion, and SoftBank acquired 80% of Kingston for $1.5 billion. Masayoshi Son’s Japanese giant was then in the midst of a technological buying spree and Kingston was exactly the type of company it was looking for: profitable, well-positioned and growing. That is, with the acquisition of Softbank, Tu and Sun continued to be a decisive part of the company’s operations thanks to the 10% of the company that each one retained, and they also pocketed 700 million dollars each. Yes, I was not wrong: 700 million for each one, because the founders distributed 100 million dollars in extraordinary bonuses for your employees as a sample of thanks for your work. The deal was perfect because both employees and founders had put a lot of money in their pockets, but they continued working in the same position and with the same conditions as up to that date. What a bargain! …but there was still room for further improvement. Sell ​​high, buy low Three years later, in 1999, SoftBank came knocking on Kingston’s door again. The dotcom bubble was at its highest moment and Masayoshi Son wanted to recover liquidity to invest in the effervescent internet companies. Kingston was still a good business, but it was not the type of hypervolatile asset that Softbank was looking for at that time, so it offered them to recover the same 80% that it had bought from them for 1.5 billion. However, the new price was very different: $450 million. We guess holding back their laughter, Sun and Tu said yes. Obviously. In fact, they were even generous to Softbank. Just like you counted to Fortunein 1996 SoftBank had paid part of the purchase with a promissory note of 300 million that it had to pay in two years, but the investment bank did not fulfill its part and was late in that payment. Faced with such a breach, the founders could have recovered the company by contract in 1998. But they did not do so. They forgave their debt. “SoftBank was shocked,” Tu said. When Masayoshi Son wanted to sell Kingston, his first option was to sell it to them because it was his way of returning the favor they had done a year before. Thus, starting in 1999, Sun and Tu once again owned 100% of Kingston: 50% for each one. According to ForbesKingston Technology had a turnover of about $14.4 billion a year and ranked 28th on the list of the largest private companies in the United States. Its value is estimated at 150,000 million thanks to the memory shortage. A peculiarity of the company is that, despite being one of the most consolidated technology companies, it is still not listed on the stock market. No funds. Without external investors. Just the two friends who met on a court in Los Angeles almost fifty years ago and had two strokes of luck in their career that allowed them to become millionaires without losing control of the company they founded. … Read more

SpaceX wants to reach a capitalization of 1.75 trillion dollars. Analysts are clear that it is worth less than half

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SpaceX’s is the first of the record-breaking IPOs that are expected this year: it will take place on June 12, 2026 under the symbol SPCX. This operation promises to be the most important public offering of shares in history, and the company has already indicated that its objective is to obtain funds worth $75 billion to achieve an astronomical valuation of 1.75 billion euros. But how SpaceX is valued is one thing, and how analysts value it is quite another. Overrated. The financial analysis firm Morningstar has carried out an analysis of SpaceX’s financial accounts and have reached a striking conclusion: “We believe the company has been significantly overvalued and investors will have the opportunity to buy the shares at more attractive levels after the IPO.” Or what is the same: they advise not participating in that initial IPO, and waiting because they anticipate that the stock will fall in the first days on Wall Street. It’s only worth half. In these conclusions, Morningstar establishes that the valuation discounting SpaceX’s cash flow is $780 billion. That represents 48% than the valuation of the private market, which is 1.5 trillion dollars, and 44.5% less than the valuation attributed to the company itself, which amounts to 1.75 trillion dollars. Is it really more promising than Nvidia? Dan Coatsworh is one of the main analysts at the firm AJ Bell, and he commented on CNBC how that theoretical internal valuation of $1.75 trillion would mean that the value of SpaceX (P/E, Price to Earnings ratio) is 67 times its sales, two times more than, for example, happens at Nvidiathe most valuable company on the planet today. Beware of xAI. One of SpaceX’s theoretical strengths is its artificial intelligence division, xAIbut analysts explain that in reality its theoretical advantage is “undetermined”, and in fact they pose it as “a material threat of value destruction” for the parent company, SpaceX. Morningstar believes that the AI ​​division is worth $170 billion, and that what really matters is something else. The Starlink engine. SpaceX’s real argument for going public and its real strength is not the reusable Falcon 9 rockets, but the profitability of Starlink. The company’s satellite constellation has achieved sustained cash flow in recent months, and its global customer base is growing at an enviable pace. It is undoubtedly SpaceX’s great recurring revenue generation machine. Morningstar values ​​it at $611 billion. The double class trick. SpaceX plans to sell shares at a fixed price of $135 per share, but they will only list 3% of the total shares. In addition, Elon Musk will continue to maintain tight control of the vote with 85% of the total through a dual-class share system. Class A shares, those that go public, allow the right to one vote per share. Class B shares go to the founder and the first key investors. They are not sold on the open market, and each one usually gives 10, 20 or more votes. Institutional dependency. The value of the company, however, is supported by the contracts it has with the US government. Specifically with NASA and with the Department of Defensewhich depend entirely on SpaceX systems for their critical missions. That not only guarantees long-term income, but is a compelling argument to attract more conservative investment funds. Either you believe Elon, or you don’t. We are facing an operation that will test Elon Musk’s real power over the markets. Although SpaceX is an extraordinary company, it is overvalued due to its founder’s habit of selling hype. The tactic of coming out as an indivisible package (Starlink + xAI + Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Elon Musk knows that TSMC is overwhelmed: Terafab is his idea to completely change the global chip industry

He showered them with 500 million dollars

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Larry Ellison He is known for being a co-founder of Oracle, a close consultant on AI in the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology of Donald Trump’s second term and the second largest fortune in the world, according to the list of millionaires of Forbes. The millionaire invested hundreds of millions of dollars in a technological agriculture project on Lanai, his private island in Hawaii, as published The Wall Street Journal. His idea was to revolutionize the way they produce food through an innovative and sustainable approach, combining advanced technology with methods of modern hydroponic farming. To carry out the project, Ellison created the company Sensei Ag, which promised to develop an innovative vegetable growing model that would multiply the food production in the future. However, this ambitious plan has not developed as Ellison expected and has become another example of the technological challenges that agriculture faces. Lanai, Ellison’s Paradise In 2012, Larry Ellison bought 98% of the island of Lanai, in Hawaii, for just under 300 million dollars. Their intention, in addition to turning it into their vacation retreat, was to transform it into a sustainability laboratory. One of its key projects was the development of vertical farming by Sensei Ag, which aimed to produce fresh and healthy food using less land area and natural resources. According to WSJEllison allocated an initial investment of 500 million dollars with the objective of building six greenhouses equipped with high technology and design a smart irrigation system that optimize water use. “Greenhouse structures were optimized for tulips in Holland in the 17th century and have not undergone major improvements since then,” said David Agus, a friend of Ellison and one of the founders of Sensei Ag. Sensei Ag built greenhouses and equipped them with advanced sensors, artificial intelligence and climate control systems. These greenhouses had to ensure the conditions conducive to producing fruits, vegetables and other high-quality foods, reducing the environmental impact. Furthermore, the Oracle founder planned to use renewable energy to power these facilities to create a complete sustainable model, so that it could be deployed in other parts of the world. The island did not make it easy for them. If something can fail, it will fail In the 1920s, Lanai became a huge estate dedicated to pineapple cultivationto the point of producing 75% of the world’s supply of this fruit. This intensive cultivation and chemical agents used To accelerate ripening, they wreaked havoc on the fields, which reduced the productivity of the island’s soil. The island’s climate also posed problems as the Israeli engineers who built the greenhouses did not take into account either the island’s humidity or its gusts of wind. Therefore, the coverage of 12 million dollars from the greenhouses flew through the airshooting up the repair cost to $50 million. Elon Musk, a personal friend of Larry Ellison, was in charge of provide solar panels that would feed greenhouse technology. However, again the strong winds They constantly dirty the panels that were left unusable. As pointed out in the article The Wall Street Journalon many occasions they had to obtain electricity by connecting diesel generators. In addition to failing roofs, solar, and land, Sensei Ag employees had to deal with an unexpected problem: Wifi coverage failures. It may seem like a lesser evil, but in a high-tech greenhouse where there are hundreds of sensors that regulate light, temperature, humidity or ventilation, having Wi-Fi makes the difference between a successful harvest or a failure. 500 million dollars worth of cherry tomatoes Although the Sensei Ag plans were very ambitious, the project faced the same profitability dilemmas that farmers suffer in any corner of the planet. “The vision was very big, but then it slowly became diluted as we faced the realities of implementation on Lanai,” said En Young, former general manager of the Lanai facility. The operating costs of advanced facilities and the maintenance of the greenhouses were too high compared to the income generated from the sale of food. And Sensei became the largest producer of different types of lettuce and cherry tomato from Hawaii. Its founding goal of “feeding the world” has been an absolute failure. Now, the project will focus on the development of agricultural management software, using its greenhouses as a testing laboratory, with the aim of selling the necessary software and hardware in the form of a package that other farms can franchise. In addition, it has begun operations in southern California to implement robotic cultivation systems to automate the care of the plantations, and acquired 11 hectares south of Austin (Texas) and the former headquarters of the robotic farming company Iron Ox. The investment amounts to 40 million dollars with which it intends to expand its market beyond Hawaii. For Lanai, the partial closure of the Sensei Ag project raised questions about Ellison’s long-term plans for the island. Some residents criticized that their agricultural resources were used for technological experiments rather than to help the island’s supply of provisions, which must import between 80% and 90% of the products it consumes. In Xataka | The dead end of the traditional olive tree: the price of the hectare of olive grove falls in Jaén while the rest of the land skyrockets Image |Sensei Ag, Unsplash (David Holifield), Flickr (Oracle PR)

35 billion dollars to build the largest airport in the world

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95,192,160 passengers. This is the number of travelers who registered at Dubai International Airport (DXB) in 2025, according to data from Airports Council International (ACI). A figure that elevated it to second place in the world for passenger traffic, only behind Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States. This last location has been repeating for three years asThe busiest airport in the world and last year it moved 10 million more passengers than Dubai, breaking the barrier of 106 million passengers in a single year. A figure that, year after year, Dubai wants to reduce to become the airport with the highest passenger traffic in the world. And it has a $35 billion plan to achieve it. An airport like no one ever conceived As we said, so far Dubai has remained below 100 million passengers per year. However, the ambition is to break this barrier in just two years. Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, assured Time Out that they aspired to break this ceiling soon and that by 2031 they want to reach 113 million passengers. These figures would predictably make them the busiest airport in the world but it has a problem: the current Dubai International Airport (DXB) and remodeling it would cost as much money who, directly, prefer to get a new one. At least that is what they maintain from the Emirate. And in 2010 the Al Maktoum International Airporta space that until now has operated at half throttle and is a ridiculous size compared to its Dubai brother. But in 2024 an expansion was approved to position it as the largest airport in the world with the capacity to handle 260 million passengers in a single year. That is, almost the same passengers as the three busiest airports in the world right now: adding Haneda in Tokyo (third in the world) to those mentioned in Atlanta and Dubai. According to the voices that have defended the project, the problem is that the current airport is so large that maintenance work drives up costs and, they say, it is cheaper to build a gigantic expansion of the current Al Maktoum International Airport than to renovate the famous Dubai International Airport. For this, it has been planned to invest 35,000 million euros to make the current Al Maktoum International Airport the center of the Dubai World Central (DWC), the most ambitious mobility hub in the world. This space has been planned as a megacity with residential spaces, hotels, golf courses… and, above all, the largest airport in the world built by man in its history. Specifically, has been projected that the renovation of the new airport costs $34.85 billion. This figure reflects the ambitions to multiply the size of the DBX by five, building five 4.5 kilometer long landing strips separated by 800 meters. It will have four main concourses and more than 400 doors to operate flights. The intention is that, operationally, the new airport will be operating at higher performance by the end of the decade to make the complete move from the current DBX to the renovated Al Maktoum International Airport in 2032. That year they hope to manage the traffic of 150 million passengers in one year. That is, about 44 million more passengers than the current Atlanta airport, the busiest in the world, handles. These passengers will be distributed across three terminals. The intention is that one of them is dedicated solely to the operations of the Emirates Group and another to international flights. The third will concentrate low-cost flights. In addition, a parking lot with 100,000 spaces is planned for workers only. The intention is to build a high-speed train between both airspaces but to transfer the bulk of the operations to the new construction. Of course, its surroundings and all its services are not expected to be built until 2050. By then, Dubai intends to be able to operate flights with the capacity to move up to 260 million passengers. That is, it should be able to manage half the population of the European Union in a single year. To consolidate this mega-move, the Dubai airport is already working with new biometric recognition and baggage management systems using artificial intelligence as a test before the airlines arrive at the new space. Obviously, the intention is scale operations to mitigate the risk of collapse. Consolidation as the largest mobility hub in the world is not only understood with commercial flights. Dubai wants this new space to be the best place in the world for landing flights. Airbus A380the largest passenger plane in the world, but also the best place to carry out your maintenance and repair work. Likewise, it wants to consolidate itself as a key place for the transportation of goods and have restricted space for the landing and takeoff of private flights to which it will be offered all kinds of luxuries with a huge range of auxiliary services such as the aforementioned hotels, shopping centers and leisure spaces. Photo | DWC and Adam Khan In Xataka | European airlines are taking advantage of the Iran crisis to accelerate something old: making your trip even more complicated.

40 million dollars in gold bars

by

Sometimes an investigation leaves an image so powerful that it threatens to cover up the most important detail. In this case, the image is that of FBI agents entering a house in Virginia and finding more than 300 one-kilo gold bars (about $40 million), along with about $2 million in cash and about 35 luxury watches. The immediate question is obvious: what was all that doing there? The answer, for now, is not in the formal accusation. According to NPRDavid J. Rush faces, for now, a much more limited charge: alleged theft of public money for military leave payments allegedly obtained through false statements. It all started within the CIA itself. According to a joint statement from the CIA and FBI, an internal investigation by the agency identified possible legal violations and led its director, John Ratcliffe, to refer the matter to the FBI. The search of Rush’s home occurred on May 18 and the arrest came on the 19th. The key to the case. The discovery suggests a huge cause, but the accusation presented so far is much more limited. The New York Times points out that Rush is only accused of having inflated his academic credentials and collecting tens of thousands of dollars in military leave payments. He also falsely claimed that he was still in the Navy Reserve after being discharged. And here is the curious part: these assets are part of the investigation, but they are not yet the formal core of the accusation. An important piece. NPR describes him as a former CIA employee at the Senior Executive Service level, a category associated with high-ranking positions within the federal Administration. We are not talking, therefore, about a minor name within the story that the sources draw. We are talking about someone located at a level that does not go unnoticed. The unexplained hole. The big question is not only how those goods ended up in a private home, but why they had been requested in the first place. Rush began demanding foreign currency and tens of millions of dollars in bullion, arguing that it was needed for labor issues. The CIA later searched a storage space associated with it and only located some of the cash. Added to this is that the agency had not yet found records that justified the need to handle such an extraordinary sum. A resume in question. The FBI also looks back, long before the funding requests and registration in Virginia. The man would have included studies at Clemson University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in several CIA applications, in addition to military merits that are now under suspicion. The two universities, according to the affidavit cited by US Public Radio, found no records that he had attended class. Something similar occurs with his profile as a supposed pilot: the documents reviewed would not support that he had passed evaluations or that he had a license. The case. Rush remains in the custody of the US Marshals Service after his bail request was rejected, and has yet to make a formal statement. Court records cited indicate that he waived a preliminary hearing and that the detention hearing was postponed until June 5. At the moment, one question still has no public answer: whether the gold was requested for an operation, for an internal project or for another purpose that we do not yet know. Images | Xataka with Grok In Xataka | Against all odds, Madrid has committed itself to building the largest Ferris wheel on the planet: 260 m high and worth 300 million euros

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