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In 2014, Larry Page bought two private islands for $23 million. The problem is that they already had an owner and he won’t let them go.

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Buying a private island is not as easy as it seems. Especially if someone had already bought it before you. That is, broadly speaking, what the American justice system has been discussing for more than a decade, when Larry Page bought two of the five private islands that it has in the Virgin Islands area. The case has a little bit of everything: companies that negotiate in the shadows, a furious New York real estate developer and one of the co-founders of Google who, according to the documents that are coming to light in the trial, did everything possible so that no one knew that it was he who bought the island. Twelve years later, the dispute over ownership of the islands is still open, but the islands, meanwhile, remain in the hands of Larry Page. Two islands, two buyers. Great Hans Lollik and Little Hans Lollik are two small private islands in the archipelago of the US Virgin Islands. They are just over two kilometers from the north coast of the main island, Saint Thomas, and are located in a privileged enclave because they are surrounded by coral reefs and practically uninhabited, except for a few herds of invasive goats. In 2014, a company based in Palo Alto (California) appeared out of nowhere and bought the two islands that were for sale, closing a transaction worth $23 million, according to collected Business Insider. The problem is that a New York developer named James Eckel had been negotiating the purchase of the property for months. He had even offered 9 million dollars. The deal had not been closed, but he claimed to have a contract that gave him preference in the operation. When the Palo Alto company put its generous offer on the table, the seller chose 23 million and the developer was left hanging. That didn’t sit well with him. Trial for negotiating behind his back. From Eckel’s perspective, the seller (a company called Liberty Bankers Life Insurance Company) had committed to him in a sales contract, which he then ignored when a better offer appeared. So he went to court to claim ownership of the islands. What came next has been a decade of pilgrimage through the courts of Texas and the Virgin Islands. In 2019, a court of appeal of Texas ruled that Eckel was only entitled to compensation for economic damages, but not to ownership of the islands. But that didn’t close the case. The family office which manages Page’s estate and through which the purchase was made, sued Eckel’s company (called Great Hans LLC) to have the courts officially declare that the islands belong to him without any legal burden, so that the developer could not claim ownership again in the future. That process remains unresolved today, despite the fact that Page’s lawyers have been asking the judge to act for years. The opacity of fortunes. The most striking thing about the case is not only the dispute over the ownership of the islands. This is the time it took to find out who the real buyer of the properties was because they found themselves behind a thick corporate framework that protected his identity. The company that acquired the islands was Virgin Island Properties LLC, a limited liability company without a name behind it to reveal who put up the money with which the purchase was made. In fact, as as highlighted Business Insiderit took months of court proceedings and investigations for Eckel’s lawyers to reach Wayne Osborne, the man who manages the assets from Page since 2012. Osborne then confirmed that the purchase was for Page. In his statement he also explained that the islands had been acquired without the intention of building on them, and that the agent who negotiated the transaction (Gil Simon) did not reveal to the seller the identity of the actual buyer. It is a common practice in the operation of companies who manage large assets like that of the co-founder of Google: no document of the operation directly or indirectly mentioned Larry Page. The family office most discreet in the technological world. This trial has served as a window, albeit a very small one, to see how they work management structures of one of the family office most hermetic that exist…even for such a discreet area how is the one of the family office. The company that manages the 290.9 billion dollars of the second richest man in the world It’s called Koop and is based in Palo Alto. His philosophy is total opacity and to achieve it, employees sign confidentiality agreements before entering, LinkedIn profiles are deliberately vague and internal security is supervised by a former CIA agent, as revealed in a exclusive research of Business Insider in 2022. The entire society is organized so that Page does not appear in any of the documents of his own purchases. That is, keep the millionaire as far away as possible from his possessions, so that it is difficult to unravel the corporate network that is woven between the property and who really owns it. In fact, these companies do their job so well that when the judges in the Epstein case tried to locate Larry Page in 2023 to take a statement Regarding his role in the plot, a private investigation firm was unable to find a mailing address for him. It is not that Larry Page did not have a habitual residence, but that everything was designed so that he could not be linked to any real address. In Xataka | The most luxurious “hotel” in the world costs $70,000 a night because it’s not a hotel: it’s an LVMH private island Image | Flickr (Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)

If you thought that Renfe was taking… Germany is spending 100,000 million euros so that its trains arrive on time

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We complain a lot about Renfe (and a good part of those complaints, with reason). But although it may seem otherwise, Germany has been neglecting its railway network for decades at decadent levels. And just as they count According to the Financial Times, only six in ten long-distance trains arrive on time. However, the country already has a plan in mind, a plan that involves investing some 100,000 million euros in solving its punctuality problem. The problem. In 2000, 84% of German long-distance trains arrived on time. Today that figure has fallen to 60%. Already last year, an analysis The Financial Times placed Deutsche Bahn, the German public operator, below even the most late railway operators in the United Kingdom. Just like account The German Transport Minister, Patrick Schnieder, even warned in March that the situation threatened to erode public confidence in the institutions. In his own words, he assured that if the State is not capable of guaranteeing basic services, “democracy is harmed.” How we got here. According to the media, this deterioration has been the result of a series of poorly made decisions over two decades. In the early 2000s, the German government considered taking Deutsche Bahn public. The plan never materialized, but to improve the balance sheet for that hypothetical exit, network maintenance was cut. To this was added that between 2005 and 2010 the budget for railway infrastructure was, adjusted for inflation, 20% lower than in the mid-nineties, according to calculations from the FT itself. The icing on the cake came in 2009, when Germany constitutionalized the so-called “debt brake“, which forced the State to balance the accounts every year. This caused investment spending to systematically lose the battle against social spending. The current state of the network. Just like account According to the FT, 16% of the assets of the German railway network are classified as deficient or directly inadequate. There are bridges dating back to the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II and signal boxes installed in the 1960s that are still in service. In fact, according to DB InfraGo, the Deutsche Bahn division in charge of maintaining the network, 80% of all delays are directly caused by deterioration of the infrastructure. You have to open the tap. In 2025, Chancellor Friedrich Merz took advantage of a constitutional loophole to create a fund of 500 billion euros to renew the country’s infrastructure over the next twelve years. The railway is one of its top priorities since, of that total, Deutsche Bahn has committed 107 billion euros until 2029. However, Philipp Nagl, CEO of DB InfraGo, recognize to the FT that needs at least 130,000 million to cover the accumulated delay. And as he comments, every year, more assets reach the end of their useful life. How it is being executed. The strategy is being extremely drastic, closing entire sections of the network for months to rebuild them from scratch, instead of patching section by section. Furthermore, it is an atypical way of doing things at Deutsche Bahn, which historically had a tradition of keeping lines open while carrying out construction work. “With that method it would take forever,” explains Nagl to the FT. The number of active works on the network has grown by a third since 2024, to exceed 28,000 in 2026. The immediate consequence is more chaos in the short term. And the punctuality goal has been lowered to 70% and postponed until 2029. A real example. In one of the busiest corridors in the country, the one that connects Cologne with the Ruhr Valley, along which up to 280 trains circulate daily, the line has been closed since February. According to account In the middle, the 55,000 regular travelers must resort to more than 200 replacement buses, many of them stuck in traffic jams. In return, 81 kilometers of track, 50 detours and 12 stations are being renewed in five months. The person in charge of the project, Arno Jaeger, defined the medium as “a monumental task” with a budget of 800 million euros. To speed up the work, specialized heavy machinery is used. In fact, one of the machines, colloquially nicknamed Mamut, renews two kilometers of track per shift, four times faster than if they did it through the conventional method. It’s about operators. Beyond Deutsche Bahn, there are private competitors waiting for their chance. And just as account FT, FlixTrain, the railway arm of the Flix group, has reserved 2.4 billion euros to buy up to 65 high-speed trains that it wants to deploy from 2028. The Italian high-speed operator Italo has also announced its intention to enter Germany with an investment of up to 3.6 billion if it gains access to the network for several years. Both point to 2028 as a key year. Cover image | Deutsche Bahn In Xataka | The Spanish west has a forgotten train that it wants to recover. The problem: neither Madrid nor Europe are interested

China had not updated its EREV standards for nine years. Now that they sell a million a year, they are going to catch up

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The EREV (extended range electric vehicles, for its acronym in English), are beginning to have a lot of prominence in China. So much so, that in the country they have changed the regulations, publishing a complete review of their technical standard. This new revision, QC/T1086-2026, replaces a 2017 regulatory framework and will come into force on November 1. And it is that with more than 1 million units sold Every year in the country, the Chinese market begins to assimilate this type of vehicle that, outside of this region, is still relatively unknown to us. Why does it matter? The previous standard, in force since 2017, described the requirements in a mostly qualitative way, since the manufacturer defined its own specifications and the regulatory framework barely provided specific figures. Nine years later, the market has changed a lot. And according to industry data collected by CarNewsChinasales of EREVs in China exceeded one million units in 2024 and reached 1.2 million in 2025. So with those figures, it is logical to think that the regulations had to be revised. What the change consists of. Until now, the rules were somewhat vague, so this regulation aims to take a closer look at some EREV specifications and standardize them. An example is how much energy the gasoline engine delivers in each millisecond. And to give us an idea, now in the smallest generators (up to 67 HP), the maximum margin of error that will be allowed when delivering energy will be just 1.5 kW. For the most powerful engines, the deviation may not exceed 3%. That is, the motor must deliver energy to the battery more precisely and efficiently. According to CarNewsChinathe thresholds have been set based on real production data from manufacturers and suppliers, with the aim that all major manufacturers on the market can meet them without difficulty, but that lower-performance designs are left out of the standard. EMC and noise. One of the most relevant new features of the standard is the introduction of specific electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and noise and vibration (NVH) tests. The first extended range cars were basically standby generators that started when the battery was depleted. Today’s systems now have integrated energy management components that work in constant coordination with the battery, electric motors and vehicle control systems. This greater integration requires more demanding standards in electromagnetic interference and acoustic comfort. In fact, more recent models like the Aito M9which HIMA launched last May with up to 890 HP, or the IM Motors LS8 EREV, with 430 km of electric range, already reflect these changes, and are examples that have served to develop this new regulation. Durability for long term use. The standard also introduces two durability tests: a test of 750 hours with alternating load and another of 100,000 start-stop cycles. Both were developed with real-world usage data and damage equivalence models, and are designed to simulate approximately 300,000 kilometers of real-world driving, including urban conditions with frequent starts. Who is driving the market. The ecosystem of manufacturers that has driven this revision in the regulations includes both established brands and newer manufacturers. Li Auto, Seres, Deepal and Leapmotor have expanded their EREV offerings, while premium models such as the Aito M9 have helped position the technology in high-priced segments. Zeekr, Geely’s electric brandhas gone even further with the Zeekr 9X and 8X, since the former exceeded 50,000 accumulated deliveries in a few months after its launch and is scheduled to be exported to the Middle East, Central Asia and Europe during 2026. Cover image | HIMA In Xataka | This Aston Martin DB9 was sold for $57,000, but the craziest thing is not its price: it is the two flamethrowers it hides

“we will move more than a million passengers”

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Ryanair will reduce its activity in Zaragoza by 45% starting in November. At least, that is the threat that is on the table if Aena does not lower its airport taxes. But far from falling in traffic, Zaragoza has one goal: to reach a record number of travelers. And that’s how they intend to achieve it. The notice. Ryanair will cut its activity in Zaragoza by 45% if airport taxes remain as they are. And, of course, if the increase that Aena wants to apply starting next year is maintained, with an eye on the period 2027-2031. The movement is framed within the cut of 1.2 million places that the company has announced for the regional airports of our country in the next winter season. Asturias, Valladolid, Jerez, Tenerife North and Vigo will say goodbye to all the company’s activities, if the plan goes ahead. The data. So far this year, Zaragoza has recorded a drop in the number of passengers of 0.5% but its operations have skyrocketed, registering an increase of 16%. The data has some interesting figures: Passengers on domestic flights have barely fallen by 0.1% Passengers on international flights have fallen by 1.4% International operations have soared by 21% while national operations have grown by 7% Operations to move merchandise are the ones that increase the most. In total, the total cargo moved has increased by 22% so far this year. All this data is collected by Aena. and the answer. To Ryanair’s threats, the response from Zaragoza is clear: they want to continue growing. Last year, Zaragoza barely exceeded 700,000 passengers, with a growth of 1.9% compared to 2024. For next year, the goal is to reach one million passengers, an ambitious figure taking into account that Ryanair would reduce its activity by half. In words collected by The Newspaper of Aragon, The general director of Transport of the Government of Aragon, David Sánchez, assures that the current volume of passengers is very far from what was expected in a city like Zaragoza and that they intend to increase them with new international routes. And he emphasizes: “in the year 2027, Zaragoza Airport will handle more than a million travelers.” In that same newspaper, reference is made to the fact that the Aragon Government Council will soon present “the tender for a tourism promotion contract for the opening of new routes, both national and international” with the aim of increasing these flights. Where to? In Herald They explain that two legs support the project to multiply the number of travelers. The main objective would be a connection with Frankfurt, a key city in international air traffic. By passenger volume, It is the fifth in Europemany companies use it as a stopover for their connections with long-haul flights and it is located in the economic capital of the European Union. Also, a few weeks ago Wizz Air confirmed that it will connect Zaragoza with Milan starting in September through Malpensa airport. It will make three weekly flights and its 40,000 seats will replace Ryanair’s withdrawal from this connection (it flew to Bergamo, the usual route for low-cost operators) and which also offered 11,500 fewer seats for that same period. But above all, we want to continue increasing the workload in the transport of goods. Right now, Zaragoza is the second airport in Spain in this section and since The Aragon Newspaper They point out that continuing to grow is one of the great objectives for next year. Back to the rates. It remains to be seen, however, how the issue of airport taxes and Ryanair’s threats turns out. The Irish company assures that if the expected increase continues from next year, its activities at regional airports will be reduced and, with them, the routes it has available in Zaragoza. Aena wants to apply a 3.82% increase to current rates in the period 2027-2031. The airlines, however, want the current fee to be reduced by 4.9%. The CNMC defends a rate cut of 0.59%a figure very far from the airlines’ claims but halfway between both parties. For now, Ryanair has welcomed this proposal from the CNMC but it is not confirmed that Aena will listen to her when proposing to the Government its plan for the coming years. Photo | Pedro Sanz and Burak Sahin In Xataka | The new EU border system is leaving people without flights. Ryanair has a solution: close check-in early

The clothes of the future are made by bacteria. Jeff Bezos just invested 34 million to prove it

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Whoever is free of contradictions should cast the first stone, but Jeff Bezos plays in another league. On the one hand, he is the father and founder of a company that has made delivery logistics its watchword (Amazon), space tourism with Blue Origin or is behind AWS, one of the large cloud companies necessary for those resource-hungry data centers. On the other hand, Bezos also has his philanthropic side, which he develops in foundations such as his Bezos Earth Fundaimed at fighting climate change. Yes, the same man with the private jet and the megayacht. And he recently just invested 34 million dollars precisely in his “Bezos Fund for the Earth” to develop sustainable textiles new generation from bacteria, agricultural waste and other biological sources. The objective is to create materials that require less oil, are biodegradable and sooner or later are capable of replacing polyester, viscose or even cotton, a material of natural origin but whose production for textiles consumes a lot of water. The investment. These 34 million dollars are divided into four projects assigned to four top-level research entities: 11.5 million for Columbia University and the Fashion Institute of Technology to develop textile fibers made by bacteria that feed on agricultural waste. 10 million dollars for Berkeley, Stanford and Caltech to develop biodegradable fibers inspired by the spider web, but without the arthropod or using plastics. 11 million dollars for Clemson University to genetically modify cotton with the aim of improving its performance and so that it sprouts with the desired color. 1.5 million for the Cotton Foundation to restore the largest non-GMO cotton seed bank in the world. Why is it important. Because of fashion It is the second most polluting industry: is responsible for 8% of total carbon emissions and 20% of global wastewater and forecasts point to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 50% by 2030. And that’s just for production. Once we have used it, there is another problem inherent to synthetic textiles: microplastics. The European Environment Agency esteem that synthetic textiles represent between 16% and 35% of the microplastics that reach the oceans each year, with between 200,000 and 550,000 tons entering the marine environment annually. Context. The textile industry does not stop growing. In fact, in the last 20 years fiber production has almost doubled: from 58 million tons in 2000 to 116 in 2022 and with an estimate of reaching 147 million by 2030. Meanwhile, only 1% of the clothing produced is recycled to make new clothes, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The situation is so alarming that the UN Secretary General has already warned that fast fashion is accelerating an environmental catastrophe and the solutions involve either doubling the useful life (which leads to clothing lasting longer), something that according to experts could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 44 percent. The other option is to use a new generation of recycled and/or more sustainable textiles. In detail. Given that automation and advances in the textile industry have already been optimizing the production process, what Bezos and his team intend to do is solve the problem at the source, that is, change the base material by improving it. Thus, for cotton the objective is to integrate color, improve performance and resilience by tapping into the biology of the plant. In the case of bacterial fabrics, Columbia’s approach is to create a digital map to learn how cells make it in order to replicate it. Yes, but. The biggest challenge is the jump from the laboratory to the factory. Synthetic spider silk fibers have been promising a textile revolution for decades without having reached real industrial scale. There are already sustainable textile startups like Spiber o Circulose marketing alternatives to traditional fabrics, but its presence is testimonial. And 34 million dollars may be a fortune for most mortals, but it is pocket money to change an industry like the textile industry, valued at 1.3 trillion dollars and which employs more than 300 million people throughout the value chain, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In addition, sustainable fibers are usually more expensive, difficult to produce on a large scale and are only profitable for large brands if volume and quality are adequate. It takes something more to convince against fast fashion alternatives and amazingly cheap clothes like Shein. In Xataka | We already know why Jeff Bezos invests so much money in space: he believes that in 20 years millions of people will live there In Xataka | When Jeff Bezos asked his parents for $240,000 to found Amazon, they asked him only one thing: “What is the Internet?” Cover | Flickr and David Clode

Renfe has a contract of 4,000 million euros in its hands. And no Spanish company gives you the trains you are looking for

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Renfe is preparing to choose the lucky company that will supply at least 30 high-speed trains. It is the most expensive tender in the company’s history, with around 4,000 million euros at stake. It is also the litmus test to see if Spain once again positions itself as a leading country in high speed. The contract. 1,362 million euros insured and the possibility of reaching 1,777 million euros. That’s only with the purchase. Because if we take into account the cost of maintenance, a long-term contract is estimated at 4,000 million euros. This is the contest to which anyone can apply. As long as, of course, it is capable of delivering 30 high-speed trains and is open to the delivery of another ten units if the Spanish company so requests. It is one of the previous steps to launch a Madrid-Barcelona line in less than two hours. A comprehensive renewal of the line thanks to a Spanish invention and new trains capable of reaching top speeds of 350 km/h are essential. Quickie. In substance and form. Because in order to comply with the specifications of the Renfe contract it is essential that the trains can run at a maximum of 350 km/h as we say. Inside they will have to accommodate 450 passengers, have a space for transporting bicycles and a cafeteria car. But in addition, Renfe wants the chosen company to deliver at least five units in the first 40 months once the contract is signed. At the latest, the last unit of the fleet of 30 trains will have to be delivered before month 78. That is, the company will have to have everything ready in less than six and a half years and after three years Renfe has to begin to reap the first fruits. “Citizens would not understand”. That is the warning that José Ignacio Jainaga, president of Talgo, has issued in statements collected by The Mail. And the obligations included in the contract specifications leave this Spanish company in a very complicated position according to experts. In fact, Jainaga wanted to highlight the efficiency of its trains, which it considers are capable of offering an efficiency “35%” higher than rivals, but it has not talked about deadlines or being able to reach the aforementioned 350 km/h with its trains. Despite this, he considers that citizens “would not understand that the regulator, the operator, and ultimately the Government, do not consider Talgo’s solutions as the best adapted to the priorities of Spanish society.” CAF, another company specialized in the construction of trains, would also be outside the conditions required by the contract right now, they explain in The Basque Journal. The company has the approval for its trains to run at 300 km/h in Spain since 2020 (the most advanced reach 320 km/h top speed) but with such tight deadlines, CAF would be left out because it would not be able to develop a new platform in time. Without a trace of Spain. Both CAF and Talgo understand that with these conditions they will not be able to compete in a contest that is considered one of the most attractive in Europe. At the moment, it does not seem that either company can offer such fast trains within the planned times. CAF, as we say, does not have a platform capable of reaching this speed. Talgo, on the contrary, managed to reach 360 km/h with their Talgo Avril but they are limited in their approval to reach a maximum of 330 km/h. But, in addition, the relationship between Talgo and Renfe is not going through the best moment. The Avrils arrived with reliability problems that hit the ceiling with the fissures in Madrid-Barcelona. Renfe considers that, since they are under warranty, Talgo must fix them but this company says that the problem is generated by the infrastructure. In addition, Renfe sanctioned Talgo with more than 100 million for being late in delivering these trains. A punishment that Ignacio Jainaga, president of Talgo, claims to have been resolved although no further details have been given, stated in The Confidential. Beyond Spain. In the midst of these controversies, Óscar Puente, Minister of Transportation, did not hesitate to show interest in trains that are manufactured far from our borders. It makes sense because, according to the experts referenced in the previous media, only Hitachi or Siemens seem really well positioned to be able to compete for this project. Before the bidding rules were announced, Puente toured the factories of these companies. He appeared, for example, at the Siemens factory whose Velaro Novo Yes, it can operate at more than 350 km/h. Hitachi has the ETR 1000 that Trenitalia uses for Iryo and that reach a top speed of 400 km/h. But, also, Puente also traveled to China where he praised the CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles trains because they are capable of reaching the aforementioned 350 km/h but, above all, he praised their ability to deliver them in record time and at a much more competitive price. He came to point out that: “Chinese manufacturers deliver trains at half the price in a period of six months to two years, while the European industry offers them to you for 60 months. I am the politician who buys and I don’t have 60 months” However, this possibility has been put into more doubt because the European Commission is investigating this company because it considers that the Chinese State has doped it financially, which could leave it out of Renfe’s famous 4 billion euro contract. Photo | MaedaAkihiko In Xataka | “They deliver trains in six months at half the price”: Renfe needs new AVE and is clear that China will give them to them

paying 920 million a month to SpaceX

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Elon Musk created SpaceX for space exploration, reducing costs related to transportation and ultimately colonizing Mars, but what he has found is a vein on Earth: Google and SpaceX They just signed a lucrative agreement of infrastructure that puts Elon Musk’s space company at the center of the enterprise AI ecosystem. Among other things, because it is not the first agreement it has signed of this type: in May it already made same with Anthropic. Bottom line: Google is going to pay SpaceX almost a billion dollars a month to lend it computers. It may be a simplification, but it is not an exaggeration: SpaceX has tens of thousands of the most powerful graphics cards in the world in its data centers and Google urgently needs them so that its artificial intelligence continues to stand up in the AI ​​battle. 920 million dollars a month. That is the agreed price for the rental of part of its processing capacity, specifically 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, CPUs, memory and related components, from October 2026 to June 2029. That is, approximately $30 billion over the life of the contract. The rollout will be progressive, so until its entry into force in October, Google will pay a lower rate. To put the movement in perspective, Jensen Huang, revealed As of October 2025, the company had shipped a cumulative total of 4 million Hopper GPUs (H100 and H200) and 3 million Blackwell GPUs since its launch. The 110,000 GPUs in the Google and SpaceX contract are equivalent to what Nvidia ships globally in about a week at the current production rate. Why is it important. Because it is a reflection of the current state of the race for AI: Google is a company with plenty of financial and technological muscle. Without going any further, Google together with Amazon and Microsoft control more than 60% of the global cloud infrastructure market, according to data from Synergy Research (yes, with a 14% share in cloud infrastructure (IaaS/PaaS), it is the third in contention). And still it is not enough: TechCrunch collects the statements from a Google representative explaining that demand for Gemini Enterprise has even exceeded their expectations. For SpaceX, the impact is tremendous: the space launch company has managed to partially and on the fly convert itself into a cloud infrastructure provider. The agreement also comes at the perfect time: one week before its shares begin trading on the Nasdaq. Documentation provided to the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that Musk’s company intends to raise $75 billion at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion, the largest IPO in history. Context. As we mentioned in the intro, the agreement reached between SpaceX and Google is similar to the one reached with Anthropic at the end of May and by which the company led by Dario Amodei agreed to pay $1.25 billion per month until 2029 to rent all the available capacity of the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee. As a curiosity, this center was initially built by xAI, now integrated into SpaceX. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is investing ruthlessly. Already is committed more than 180 billion dollars to spend on technological infrastructure in 2026 alone and has announced an expansion of 80 billion more. The agreement with SpaceX is the bridge while it materializes. In detail. As with the agreement with SpaceX, there is a cancellation clause: if it fails to provide access to the number of GPUs committed by September 30, 2026 (just one day before the full deployment takes effect), Google can either accept the number provided with a reduction in that quota or cancel everything. Likewise, both SpaceX and Google can terminate the agreement simply with 90 days’ notice after December 31, 2026. Important: Google retains all intellectual property of its AI models, content and data even if they run on SpaceX servers. SpaceX puts in the machinery, but doesn’t have access to what’s inside. Yes, but. The cancellation clause puts a possibility on the table: that SpaceX cannot provide those 110,000 operational GPUs before September 30, 2026, something essential to close this lucrative agreement under the terms described. This agreement with Google and the previous one with Anthropic put an obvious conflict of interest on the table: SpaceX is an infrastructure provider for two of the big rivals of xAI and its Grok models, so Elon Musk finds himself in a curious situation: he is the one who decides which infrastructure he gives up and which one stays. We do not know which SpaceX data center will be for Google and Musk has already indicated, according to TechCrunchthat Colossus 2 is reserved for xAI. In Xataka | The most worrying sign for Google: its own AI engineers prefer to use Anthropic AI In Xataka | Who is really winning the AI ​​race, in a graph that puts Google in trouble Cover | dvids and Flickr

release 64 million mosquitoes

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Eliminating disease-carrying mosquitoes is not an easy mission nor can it be carried out improvisedly. And if not, tell Verily, the subsidiary of Alphabet (Google’s parent company), which has been trying since 2017 with his DebugProject. How are they doing it? With artificial intelligence, robots and, as incredible as it may sound, with many, many mosquitoes. Verily’s latest move has been formally request to the United States Environmental Protection Agency permission to release up to 64 million mosquitoes over the next two years in the states of California and Florida. 64 million mosquitoes in your area. Verily has asked the EPA for authorization to release up to 32 million male mosquitoes of the species Culex quinquefasciatus bacteria carriers Wolbachia pipientis for two years in Florida and California respectively at a rate of 16 million the first year and another 16 million the next. At the time of this writing the public comment period was about to close (June 5). From that moment, the EPA makes the decision whether to approve it or not or whether to put conditions on the test. The objective of this mosquito bombardment that works as a biological pesticide is to obtain the necessary field data to, with EPA permission, market this pest control solution. Why is it important. The Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito is an old and feared acquaintance: it is the species responsible for transmitting the parasites of the avian malariaviruses West Nileof the rift valley fever and of the St. Louis encephalitis. West Nile virus is the leading cause of mosquito-borne illness in the continental United States, causing an average of 2,000 cases of illness per year and about 120 deaths. according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On a global scale, the problem is greater: there is approximately 400 million cases of dengue per year and are estimated about 40,000 associated deaths. Finding a solution without chemical insecticides through biological control can be a true public health milestone with global impact. Context. There are compelling scientific reasons behind it: in Singapore, a clinical trial with more than 700,000 residents demonstrated that releases of mosquitoes with Wolbachia reduced the risk of dengue by more than 70%. Without going any further, the Debug Project free more than 10 million male mosquitoes per week in Singapore. In Fresno, California, between 7.5 and 14.4 million infected male mosquitoes were released between 2017 and 2018. The result was a reduction in the mosquito vector population of up to 93-95%. In detail. The mechanism behind this “biological pesticide” is relatively simple: only male (non-biting) mosquitoes that have been inoculated with Wolbachia are released. When they mate with wild females that do not have the same bacterial strain, the resulting eggs do not hatch. As several releases occur, the local population is reduced. And what does all this have to do with AI? Google uses artificial intelligence and automation to separate mosquitoes by sex, breed them and release them on a large scale and in a systematic way. Yes, but. All that glitters is not gold. The bacteria does not work with 100% reliability in all cases, as evidence this 2024 study where they concluded that between 6% and 75% of the eggs could produce live embryos under certain conditions. Come on, there is no guaranteed 100% sterility. On the other hand, in 2022 another study from the Verily/Debug team itself Google revealed that automated mosquito release systems were still in “prototype stages or very early versions.” In Xataka | We have spent years inventing everything to get rid of mosquitoes. Now we have a promising weapon: a laser that detects them and fries them In Xataka | Anti-mosquito repellents have been effective for 40 years. Now mosquitoes are learning to appreciate them Cover | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Karollyne Videira Hubert

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)

They learned cinema on YouTube, they have raised 300 million with their films and they have achieved something: defeating Star Wars

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Three horror movies. Budgets ranging from a ridiculous million dollars for one to ten million for another. Directors of 26, 34 and 20 years old trained on YouTube, not in schools for children of. So far in 2026, those three films have grossed more than $300 million in the North American market. Franchise cinema is not dead, of course, and we are going to prove it this year with the premiere of ‘Doomsday‘ (although, for once, surprises are no longer ruled out). But there are issues that seem to be changing in another sense. The ‘Backrooms’ explosion. Last weekend,’Backrooms‘ (directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons) collection 81.4 million dollars in North America and 118 million worldwide in its first weekend (and it does not arrive in countries like Spain until the end of June), with a budget of only ten million. It is the biggest premiere in the history of A24surpassing the previous record held by ‘Civil War‘by Alex Garland. Parsons also becomes the youngest director to top the US domestic box office, taking that record from Josh Trank, who was 27 years old when ‘Chronicle’ topped the charts in 2012. Unstoppable obsession. At the same time, ‘Obsession’ (by Curry Barker, 26 years old) added 26.4 million in its third weekend, 54% more than the previous week, starting from a budget of one million dollars. Its domestic total already exceeds 104 million. Meanwhile, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu‘, with a budget of 165 million, fell 69% compared to its opening week and was third on the list of box office receipts that week. We will see ‘Obsession’ this weekend in Spain. The precedent. January had already given the first sign. ‘Iron Lung’ (written, directed, starring and self-distributed by Mark Fischbach, Markiplier on YouTube, 34 years old), debuted with 17.8 million domestic dollars and reached 52 million at the global box office from a budget of three. Fischbach didn’t even go through a study: he self-financed and distributed the film himselfpocketing half of the world gross. Young audience. It is obvious where these collections come from: 86% of the opening audience for ‘Backrooms’ was under 35 years old, and 44% under 21. ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, not to get away from Disney’s setback with a financially similar debut the previous week, had a share of those under 25 years of age of 27%, although on paper, it should have attracted more viewers of that age (which corroborates that at this point ‘Star Wars’ is entirely a franchise for kids over forty.) These directors who came from YouTube did not summon a new audience, but rather the one they already brought from the internet. Warner Bros. Motion Pictures co-head Michael De Luca summed it up in a conference in which said that these directors “They are in dialogue with their audience from the first moment.” By the time movies like these hit theaters, he added, “they’ve already had a billion screenings.” Three directors, a common pattern. In 2022, Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute short film to YouTube titled ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’shot from his bedroom with the help of the 3D graphics software Blender. Over the next few years, episodes of the series They accumulated more than 197 million views. Curry Barker, on the other hand, came from the sketch comedy channel ‘That’s a Bad Idea’ which currently has over 700 million cumulative views across platforms. In 2024 he filmed ‘Milk & Serial’, a found footage horror with $800 budget, almost all of it spent on the camera. He spent a year trying to get mainstream distribution without success. He uploaded it for free to YouTube and accumulated 1.6 million views. Mark Fischbach, for his part, has been on YouTube since 2012. He had experimented with the film format in two of his own productions for YouTube (‘A Heist with Markiplier’ and ‘In Space with Markiplier’) before adapting ‘Iron Lung’, David Szymanski’s indie horror video game published in 2022. Why the terror. American terror has exceeded 800 million dollars worldwide so far this year, and these three films directed by YouTube creators account for a third of that figure. But… why this devotion to the genre, which goes hand in hand with the good state of health that enjoy in recent years? Horror operates well with low budgets, and the young audience that grew up with creepypasta and found footages on YouTube has a particular relationship with that aesthetic space. Testing ground. The video clips of the nineties were the laboratory where authors such as David Fincher or Michel Gondry developed their visual grammar before jumping into cinema. Now, YouTube serves as a testing ground for the new generation of filmmakers. That’s why studios and agents now scour YouTube for new names. Now what. Barker has already filmed his next film, a horror comedy titled ‘Anything but Ghosts’, and A24 has hired him for a remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. Parsons wants to expand the ‘Backrooms’ universe, possibly in television format. Fischbach, for his part, has already made it clear that he would like to collaborate with a large studio on future projects, without giving up creative control. It is possibly the one with the most traditional discovery profile in the underground and jump to the big leagues. For now, ‘Backrooms’ could end its box office career between $140 and $160 million in the United States alone, which would make the film one of the biggest hits of the year. Not bad for an idea that started as just another meme on 4chan. In Xataka | Cinema can only survive by competing in the “experience” market. That’s why Madrid already has its 70 mm projector

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