Millionaires

Elon Musk is going to turn 4,000 workers into millionaires and himself into a billionaire thanks to one thing: SpaceX

by

Trevor Hise was 22 years old when he graduated and, as is often the case, his parents begged him to accept a stable, well-paying position at General Electric. However, led by the passion of youth and curiosity, he preferred to dedicate the next 12 years of his professional career to the madness of launch rockets into space and catch them in flight again on their return to earth. The company was called SpaceX and Hise no longer works there. However, as how did he count The New York TimesHise has discovered that the Space The story of this former employee of Elon Musk could seem like one of those caroms that life sometimes gives. But, broadly speaking, it is the story of thousands of people who are going to wake up tomorrow with a fortune in your stock portfolio after Space X’s IPO. The largest IPO in history. Friday, June 12, 2026 has been marked in red on the calendars of thousands of investors for months: SpaceX debuts on the Nasdaq under the symbol SPCX. The company’s maneuvers in the months prior to its listing on the stock market make its figures be the most ambitious ever recorded in a stock market IPO: a fixed price of $135 per share and 555.6 million securities placed to raise $75 billion. It is almost three times higher than the previous record held Saudi Aramco since 2019. The expectation it has raised is no wonder, since the company founded by Elon Musk stands on three of the legs with the greatest growth projection: artificial intelligence with xAI integrationspace race as the main activity of Space X and communications deployment via satellite with Starlink. The total valuation of the company before its IPO reaches 1.77 trillion dollarsa figure that places it above JPMorgan, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta and Tesla itself. Only six S&P 500 companies are valued above Space NVIDIA in the lead with 5.2 billion. More than 4,000 people about to become millionaires. According to published Fortunemore than 4,400 Space X employees and former employees will become millionaires thanks to the company’s stock market debut. Of that group, some 400 employees and managers will earn more than $100 million or more from the operation. The fact of turning its employees into millionaires is another of the peculiarities of this IPO since, as Andrew Benson, executive director of the platform, recognized Hill.com investments to the American media, “you usually only see founders become billionaires.” The company included participations in the compensation packages of welders, cooks and facility technicians who agreed to collect part of their salary on paper. It was a risky bet on their part because those shares could have remained a dead letter, but trust in the company will bring them a juicy reward. Gavin Petit joined in 2012 as a launch engineer with a salary of $80,000 and received shares valued at $13.80 each at the time. The engineer agreed to collect his bonuses in more shares year after year, something considered risky in a company whose rockets were still failing. Now more than 50,000 shares, which are equivalent to about 6.75 million dollars. Those who endured Among the great beneficiaries of this Initial Public Offering is Gwynne Shotwellpresident and chief operating officer of SpaceX. She was employee number 11 when she joined the company in 2002, leaving a stable job to bet on a startup that then had everything to prove. The board accumulates almost 12.6 million shares, according to the documents presented before the SEC, which at IPO price represents a fortune of about 1.7 billion dollars. Shotwell herself recognized to CNBC that for years it was not clear that they would go public: “Now seems like the right time.” As and as you remember Expansionthe IPO will also generously reward those investors who have provided financial support to the company since its inception, as is the case with Peter Thiel o Luke Nosek, co-founders of PayPal and members of the group known as “PayPal Mafia“. The first billionaire in history. According to official data According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk owns approximately 42% of SpaceX shares. That’s about 4.8 billion shares, plus hundreds of millions of additional stock options. At the IPO price, that stake alone is around $688 billion. Adding that figure to his stake in Tesla and the rest of his businesses, Forbes esteem and his fortune at $982.3 billion before the stock market debut, which leaves him just a breath away from crossing $1 trillion, a milestone that no one has reached before. To gauge the magnitude of this figure, his personal fortune already exceeds the capitalization of ExxonMobil and rivals that of Berkshire Hathaway. Although, as Musk himself has pointed out on more than one occasion, almost all of that money They are stocks, not cash.. A number on a screen that goes up and down according to the market. In Xataka | The who’s who of SpaceX’s competitors: which other companies are making a big splash in space Image | Flickr (Gage Skidmore), SpaceX

A bank convinced people in a poor town in the US to spend their savings. Now it’s full of millionaires

by

Stories of lucky breaks and millionaires there are manybut they almost always have a common denominator: we speak in singular. That is why what happened in a small town in Florida whose families were going through serious difficulties to get ahead is so special. Even today, the enclave continues to seem like a nondescript and inhospitable town. But don’t be fooled, a large number of millionaires still live there among the people. And all thanks to Coca-Cola. Quincy and the banker. This is the name of the town in one of the most fascinating stories of the United States economy. There, in the midst of the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s and with part of the census in serious difficulties, a figure appears who was going to change everyone’s lives. Your name: Pat Munroean astute banker, a businessman who focused on a key detail to convince all citizens. No matter how impoverished they were in Quincy or how dire the financial situation of the families, the man observed that almost religiously, people spent every penny on a nice ice-cold glass of Coca-Cola. What if that devotion turned it into a stroke of luck? Coca-Cola in a bag. The sugar giant It went public in 1919 at $40 a share.but a conflict with the sugar industry and its bottlers caused a 50% drop shortly after, when it reached $19 per share. Put another way, there was a time in history when Coca-Cola was trading for less than cash in the bank and its stock was extremely cheap. And among others, Munroe was at the right time. The bargain of the century. What did he do? Invest. The man began to acquire Coca-Cola shares as if there were no tomorrow. However, he did not do it alone. He encouraged all his acquaintances and friends of acquaintances in town to buy a stake in the company. Focusing on bottom line profits and brand power, Pat Munroe kept buying and buying. And as he did so he kept telling everyone in Quincy who would listen to him to buy too. He took advantage of the trust and respect the community had for him and went on a crusade to get anyone who could to get on the Coca-Cola train. Loans for shares. The man was so sure of his success that every time a person went to his bank to ask for a loan, encouraged him to accept another in exchange for shares. Farmers, shopkeepers, teachers: absolutely anyone who could spend money was tempted by Munroe. For the banker, the fact that Coca-Cola shares were at $19 each was an opportunity that no one in the city should escape. That is why he never tired of urging people to buy and, almost as important, to remain firm in the decision regardless of the market fluctuations that occurred in the short term. The ball Finally, the banker’s observations turned out to be a historic success. Quincy, an eminently agricultural city, not only stayed afloat in difficult times thanks to Coca-Cola dividends, brought a wealth that is still studied in universities. In fact, the enclave became the richest city per capita in the entire United States for a time, and dozens of its inhabitants were nicknamed “the secret Coca-Cola millionaires.” People who trusted Munroe’s good eye and invested all their money (and what they didn’t have), and who amassed enormous fortunes with those first shares, which they then passed down from generation to generation, turning them into the eponymous Coca-Cola millionaires, ones who, effectively, established entire dynasties of financial prosperity that transcended generations. How much are we talking about? It is difficult to speak in total terms, but to give us an idea of ​​the money, in 2013 it was made a study evaluating what happened in Quincy. The results showed that a single share with reinvested dividends was worth $10,000,000. $270,000 in pre-tax cash dividends would be sent to the owner by sending a check for approximately $67,500 in March, June, September and November of each year. Thus, if the great-grandmother and the great-grandfather on duty had acquired a round lot of 100 shares for between $1,900 and $4,000, depending on the purchase price, they would have more than a billion dollars, excluding the effects of estate taxes. By the way, the current value is considerably higher, since the stock has more than doubled its price since then and the quarterly dividend now exceeds $0.53 per share. Money for crisis. That investment has been a lifesaver every time a tough time approaches. When the local economy was supported by coca and the crisis arrived, tail dividends. In fact, these assets have supported the city through every recession since. When crops failed, it was Coca-Cola money that kept people employed. When the national economy collapsed, it was Coca-Cola’s cash that allowed people to stay in their homes. When times were good and Coca-Cola was cheap, they bought more shares. Quincy today. It is a unique story, because it is unusual. Every family that amassed a fortune then passed it on to their children and grandchildren, in some cases through direct donations and in others through the use of trust funds. Even the bank where it all started has a Coca-Cola on display and, according to data from the early 2010s, a staggering 65% of trust assets under management were still invested in Coca-Cola stock. Quincy’s appearance today is not much different from the Great Depression era. It remains a quiet and eminently agricultural city with a population around to 7,000 inhabitants. But don’t let your eyes fool you, some of the grandchildren whose families built an empire, that of the secret Coca-Cola millionaires, still walk through those streets. A version of this article was published in July 2025 Image | PXHere, Ebyabe, PXHere In Xataka | Jeff Bezos asked his parents for their life savings to found Amazon. They only asked him one question: “What is the Internet? In Xataka | Madrid may … Read more

There is a new wave of startups creating new AI millionaires

by

The rise of AI has generated a new hypermillionaire saga who are breaking all limits of wealth to date. All you have to do is go through the list of 10 of the greatest fortunes in the world of Forbes to discover that eight of these great assets arise from this technology. However, this was only what Bloomberg called “the first wave”, in which the founders of the great generalist AI models such as OpenAI have risen. Anthropic either deepseek. Now is the time for specialized AI agents and their founders they are also getting rich. The 19 new barons of AI. As and as I pointed out BloombergAmerican AI startups have created 19 new billionaires in the last year with a combined fortune estimated at about $59.3 billion. These 19 new millionaires join the 41 founders who, thanks to the success of their AI models they had already become millionaires in the “first wave.” However, what is striking about this increase is not only the number, but the profiles of who are behind these million-dollar startups: a poet, three scholarship recipients from the Peter Thiel program without a university degree or a self-taught immigrant. AI agents are the new oil. Reflection AI It is one of the most obvious cases of this new wave of AI millionaires. The startup is dedicated to creating agents capable of programming, debugging and understanding code almost independently. This new market It has turned its founders into millionaires. It is estimated that Ioannis Antonoglou and Misha Laskin have achieved a fortune valued at around $4 billion each. However, the company did not emerge from nowhere, Antonoglou was part of the team that developed AlphaGo, from the revolutionary Google DeepMind model that achieved beat humans at Go. An AI wants to be your lawyer and your doctor. Without leaving aside AI agents, Harvey is another success story in this segment, allowing the automation of legal research, the drafting of legal documents and the review of contracts with AI. Founded by lawyer Winston Weinberg and AI researcher Gabe Pereyra while they shared a flat, its AI agent Harvey, named after the protagonist of the popular lawyer series Suits, has become one of the most used in companies and law firms. Each of its founders is the owner of an estimated fortune of 1.6 billion. In the healthcare field, OpenEvidence has followed a similar path. Its founder, Daniel Nadler, already sold the financial analysis platform Kensho to S&P Global in 2018 for $550 million. With OpenEvidence, it applied the same logic to the medical sector: its AI assistant has accumulated more than 100 million consultations and the company has almost quadrupled its valuation in six months to reach 12 billion, raising Nadler’s assets to 7.2 billion dollars at the beginning of 2026. The Thiel Fellows: from recruitment to labeling. Mercor is another example that was difficult to imagine just a few years ago. Their three foundersBrendan Foody, Adarsh ​​Hiremath and Surya Midha, met at a high school debate. The three classmates left the university to join the Thiel Scholarshipthe PayPal co-founder’s program that pays $250,000 to young people to leave their studies and start a company. Initially it was a recruiting platform, but they switched to data labeling providers for OpenAI and Anthropic, hiring doctors, engineers and scriptwriters to train AI models specialized in these areas. As a result of this change, Mercor went from earning 100 million in 2025 to 1,000 million at the beginning of 2026, with a valuation of 10 billion. That leaves each of the founders with an estimated fortune of $1.9 billion. The ecosystem versus the giants. Vercel is another example of how the startups that are succeeding in this second wave of unicorns emerged from AI. We are no longer talking about AI models, but about the infrastructure that allows deploying applications generated with AI. Its founder, Guillermo Rauchimmigrant Argentinian and self-taught who learned English by reading software manuals to learn how to program, turned a tool for developers into a very profitable platform that has given him an estimated fortune of more than 1.9 billion dollars In Xataka | We already know who has won the AI ​​race: the OpenAI employees who sold their shares Image | Brendan Foody

The trial against Sam Altman seemed like a duel between two millionaires. It has ended up uncovering the ins and outs of OpenAI

by

Three weeks of testimonies, 78 messages between Sam Altman and Mira Murati during the night they were going to kill him as CEOemails where Greg Brockman wrote in his personal diary how nice it would be to “earn billions” and Satya Nadella describing the OpenAI board as ““amateur city”. This Thursday the final arguments of the Musk vs. Altman trial were held in a federal court in Oakland. The lawsuit asked for 150,000 million in damages and the dismissal of Altman. What has been left for the public has not so much to do with the verdict. Why is it important. OpenAI is, despite its name, one of the most secretive companies in Silicon Valley. Its internal functioning, until now, was known through highly selected profiles in The New Yorker or specific leaks. The trial has forced the company to publish emails, text messages, personal diaries and depositions that depict an organization very different from the one that sells its official communication. A company plagued by power struggles, mutual suspicions between founders and a board that in 2023 could not explain why it fired its own CEO. behind the scenes. The most illuminating episode occurred not on the stand, but in a chain of late-night messages between Altman and Murati during “The Blip“, the weekend of November 2023 in which the board removed the CEO. At 2:30 a.m. Monday morning, Altman was asking his then-CTO if things were going well or badly. “This is going in a very bad direction. Sam, this is very serious,” Murati responded. Minutes later, Altman offered to leave to avoid lawsuits. Murati replied that the council already had a replacement: “uncle random of Twitch”, in reference to Emmett Shear. That same day, Murati signed the first of the letters from employees asking for Altman’s return. The contrast. What Murati’s deposition leaked is that she herself had fed the board with complaints about Altman before the firing. Helen Toner, a former councillor, testified that Murati and co-founder Ilya Sutskever had conveyed to the council a pattern of behavior about Altman’s honesty. Sutskever wrote a 52-page memorandum. On the stand, Sutskever himself confirmed writing to the board that Altman “demonstrates a consistent pattern of lying, undermining his executives, and pitting them against each other.” Murati, in his deposition, maintained his criticisms but framed them as “purely managerial.” Go deeper. The term that the Microsoft leadership used to describe what they saw in those days was said by Satya Nadella from the stand: ‘amateur city. The CEO of Microsoft, the main investor in OpenAI with more than 13 billion contributed, said that he never received a concrete explanation of why Altman was fired. “I was very concerned that employees would leave en masse,” he said. Nadella offered Altman a position at Microsoft with an open invitation to the entire OpenAI team. Altman admitted at trial that he was on the verge of accepting: “I would have made a lot of money and had a much easier life at Microsoft.” He ended up coming back to OpenAI with some new advice. The outgoing board’s accusation was that Altman “had not been consistently candid” with them. The money trail. The trial has also exposed Altman’s web of personal interests in companies that do business with OpenAI. While under interrogation, Altman acknowledged stakes worth more than $2 billion in companies such as Helion Energy, Cerebras –just went public–, Reddit or Stripe. His third of Helion (from which he has just left as president) is valued at 1,650 million. OpenAI has signed a framework agreement with Helion for future energy supplies. Forbes has recalculated his assets at more than 4,000 million after these revelations. Brockman, who according to Musk “did not invest a cent”, now appears with a stake valued at 30 billion. Yes, but. None of this changes the legal background. The jury must decide on two specific civil claims: breach of fiduciary trust and unjust enrichment. Musk’s lawyer, Steven Molo, has tried to turn this into a trial about Altman’s credibility. In his closing arguments he put an unflattering photo of the CEO on screen and asked the jury to imagine a bridge over a ravine “built on Sam Altman’s version of the truth.” And now what. OpenAI has been preparing for a long time an IPO that could value it at close to a billion dollars. Musk, meanwhile, flew to China with Trump despite the judicial warning that he could be called to testify again. Regardless of the ruling, the reputational damage has already been done. The narrative that OpenAI has tried to project for years (that of being an idealistic laboratory guided by the mission of benefiting humanity) now coexists with another version documented in a judicial process: that of a company where the co-founder sends messages to the CEO at two in the morning to tell him that it is finished and a few hours later she signs the letter asking for her return. A company where the president wrote in his diary that “it would be nice to earn billions.” And where the reference investor, seeing the chaos from the outside, called ‘amateur city to its governing bodies. The jury’s verdict will come next week. What can no longer be archived are the documents. In Xataka | There is a thing called “Ornn price index”, it is out of control and it is bad news for everyone Featured image | Xataka

In 1962, someone donated shares in a company to the elderly in his town. The company was Nokia and today they live like millionaires

by

There are stories that seem taken from a Hollywood script. That of Onni Nurmi, a young Finnish entrepreneur, has a name, surname, date and even a street named after him. The story of our protagonist It has all the elements for a script worthy of an Oscar: a man who was born in misery, fell into debt with his neighbors, crossed the Atlantic to settle his outstanding accounts and returned to his country. Decades after he died, he has become the greatest benefactor of his people. All this, for having donated to the nursing home in his town the shares of a rubber company that did not attract anyone’s attention. A Nurmi always pays his debts Onni Nurmi was born in 1885 in Savijoki, a small town within the municipality of Pukkila, in Finland, a town of just under 1,700 inhabitants. Nurmi grew up in a humble home marked by the hardships of being raised by a single mother who worked in the fields and ran a small canning store in the town. When she died unexpectedly at age 49, Onni was only 13 years old and had no future in Pukkila, so he moved to Helsinki. In 1912, he returned to Pukkila and resumed the family business by opening a store. However, his business did not work out. The following year, indebted to dozens of neighborstook a ship to America and spent 15 years working as a game warden in Minnesota. When he returned in 1928, he went door to door paying off every outstanding debt owed to Pukkila residents, some of them incurred a decade earlier. He didn’t do it because no one demanded it. Onni was simply that type of person. Onni Nurmi. Source: Kylä Savijoki Helsinki’s most unlikely investor With his debts paid off, Onni moved back to Helsinki, where he worked as a property manager and led an orderly, quiet life. He never married or had children. At some point he discovered investments in the stock market and, without financial training and with the only help of his intuition, he decided to buy shares of a small company that manufactured paper, rubber, rubber tires and boots which had its headquarters in the city that gave it its name: Nokia. In 1959 he wrote his will and decided to leave all the shares of that company that manufactured wellies to the municipality of Pukkila, with two conditions: They should never be sold and his donation was to be used solely for the well-being of the town’s elders. Onni Nurmi died in 1962 at the age of 77. The 780 shares he donated to the town where he had lived most of his life were then worth about $30,000, the equivalent of about $320,000 today. His gesture was undoubtedly generous, but not extraordinary…yet. The Buffett Effect: Let Time Do Its Work The clause preventing the sale of the shares seemed a problem at first. If the town had been able to cash in on the stock portfolio at any time, it would have obtained funds to improve the nursing home. However, the will was blunt on that point: shares had to be keptand they could only use dividends that these actions will generate over time. However, what seemed like a limitation to local authorities eventually became the best investment decision anyone in Pukkila could have made. The will was forcing them to apply a technique that for more than six decades has become a millionaire to Warren Buffett: leave let time do its work. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Nokia left rubber boots behind to become the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, position he held between 1998 and 2012. The original 780 shares that Nurmi had donated multiplied by a thousand due to its growth in the stock market and the overwhelming sales domain of their phones. At the height of the technology boom, Pukkila’s portfolio was valued at around 90 million dollarsmaking their Pukkila retirees the most prosperous in Finland, at least on paper. What do we do with so much money? The prosperity of the actions opened a new debate among the residents of Pukkila. They were sitting on a fortune and doing nothing to profit from it. In 1997, the city council proposed selling part of the shares to diversify the portfolio and reduce the risk of a hypothetical fall of Nokia. Not everyone agreed. A section of the town argued that selling the shares was against Nurmi’s will. Another sector even proposed that the benefits be used so that residents would not pay municipal taxes for 12 years. Given the disagreement, the debate reached the courts and lasted for several years. Ironically, the “Buffett effect” came into play again, and the judicial paralysis was the best possible news for the people’s coffers: while the issue of the sale of shares was being settled in court, Nokia shares did not stop increase its value. The courts finally approved an agreement by which the municipality could sell a part of the portfolio and diversify its funds, always respecting the original will of the will to support the town’s elders. as main beneficiaries of those actions. With that money the Onni Wellness Centeropened in 2008. The building stands on Onnintie Street (which in Finnish literally means Happiness Street) and includes sheltered housing, spaces for people with memory disorders, a health center, pharmacy, swimming pool, gym, library, cafeteria and a Japanese garden. All this in a municipality of less than 2,000 inhabitants. Onni Nurmi never imagined the magnitude of his donation decades after his death, but in some ways, he more than repaid the patience his neighbors had in waiting decades to pay off their debt. In Xataka | Giving money away wasn’t enough: Warren Buffett turned Christmas into an investing masterclass for his family Image | Unsplash (Pawel Czerwinski, Joe Zlomek, MW), Kylä Savijoki.

While Artemis II searches for a way to return to the Moon, there are those who have already become millionaires selling lunar plots

by

There are sellers so skilled that they are capable of selling the Moon to anyone. It is not in a figurative sense. As NASA works to put astronauts back on the lunar surface with Artemis IIAmerican Dennis Hope has been building a fortune for more than forty years by putting a price on each hectare of the satellite and sending property titles by mail. And the most striking thing is that no one has stopped him from doing so. Hope came into this business in 1980, when she was going through a divorce and had her account in the red after more than a year of unemployment. As he related in an interview with Vice magazine, he thought he could make some money if he had some property, he looked out the window and it occurred to him that there would be a lot available on the Moon. What came next was not just a hunch: it was a million-dollar operation based on a very particular reading of international law. The legal vacuum that made it possible. His first step was to go to the library and look for the Outer Space Treaty 1967. What he found was a door ajar: the article 2 of that treaty establishes that the Moon and other celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, use or occupation, or by any other means. The treaty placed limits on the appropriation of lunar territories to countries, but did not say anything explicit about the ownership of individuals. Hope submitted a formal claim of ownership over the Moon, the other eight planets and their moons to the United Nations, explaining his intention to parcel out those spaces and sell the properties to private buyers. In his letter he added that if they had any legal problem, they should let him know. Nobody answered him. So Hope interpreted this administrative silence as an absence of legal opposition, and from there he started his business. According to counted your son to ABCsix million people have already purchased land outside of Earth. An intergalactic business with luxury clientele. Since then, Hope has sold plots not only of the Moon, but also of Mars, Venus and Mercury. In an interview to the BBCHope claimed that he sold an average of 1,500 properties a day and explained that the way to choose the lots was by closing his eyes and pointing with his index finger at a point on the lunar map. “It’s not very scientific, but it’s fun,” he told the British media. It is estimated that he has earned about 12 million dollars with this business, which he claims is the only one he has had since 1995. Among his clients are former US presidents such as Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Hollywood stars and greats. hotel chains like Hilton and Marriott. The space race reopens the debate. What for decades seemed like a picturesque anecdote has returned to the debate table in light of the reactivation of space programs to the moon. Artemis II has become the first manned mission to leave Earth’s orbit since the Apollo program in 1972, and its objective is to prepare the ground for future missions to the lunar south pole and even Mars. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits the appropriation of territories on the Moon or other planets, but does not explicitly prohibit extracting their resources, which has generated a legal gray area that was revealed in the 2023 ratification of this treaty, which also covers Hope’s real estate business. For Kai-Uwe Schrogl, president of the International Space Law Institute, the situation is clear: “There are no legal loopholes. There are only willfully erroneous interpretations of the treaty,” declared to D.W.. Is the Moon for everyone? As and as he explained Juan Manuel de Faramiñán, emeritus professor at the University of Jaén and co-director of the AstroÁndalus Chair of aerospace and astronomical studies at National Geographicin 2020 NASA issued the Artemis Agreementsa document in which the US establishes a set of practical principles to guide cooperation in space exploration between nations. “It must be considered that the signatory States of the Artemis Agreements are not signatories of the Moon Agreement. I must say, and it is a personal opinion, that the Artemis Agreements have become a shortcut to avoid the idea of ​​the common heritage of humanity and open the spigot so that both States and companies can access the resources of the Moon in accordance with their own interests,” stated Faramiñán. Old treaties for a new space race. The current legal framework on the ownership of the Moon was born in the middle of the Cold War and was designed for a world of two superpowers. Today there are large private companies with the capacity to reach the Moon without support from the States, new state interests and the discovery of natural resources. like water ice detected on the lunar surface, which could be key for long-duration missions. He Moon Treaty of 1979which attempted to regulate the exploitation of these resources by establishing that they would be the common heritage of humanity, was never ratified by any of the current great space powers. The result is a system of rules designed for another century, with loopholes that have allowed an individual to sell lunar hectares for decades without legal consequences. Xataka | The “hidden” side of the Moon has been a mystery for decades: China already has a chemical map to shed light Image | POTPexels (Nicholas Thomas)

Millionaires are fleeing the Middle East. And their unexpected destination is a small Swiss canton called Zug.

by

In 2011, during the Arab Spring, several European private banks detected an unusual phenomenon: Within days, high-net-worth clients began transferring large sums from the Middle East into accounts in Switzerland without prior notice. It wasn’t the first time something like this happened, but it was one of the fastest. That left a clear lesson in the financial sector: when stability falters, money does not wait to understand what happens, it simply moves. War moves money. we have been counting. The war in the Middle East is not only altering military and energy balances, it is also causing a silent movement but massive capital. What were previously fiscal decisions or lifestyle They have become urgent security decisions, where the priority is no longer optimizing profits, but protecting assets. In this context, an idea begins to prevail: billionaires do not wait for the situation to get worse, they go aheadand that movement is redrawing the global map of wealth in real time. Dubai is no longer an unquestionable refuge. For years, Dubai was the natural destination for international fortunes seeking stability, tax benefits and a secure environment in a complex region. However, the conflict with Iran has introduced a variable that previously seemed controlled: the direct risk. That perception has been enough for activate discrete outputs but constant numbers of businessmen, executives and large assets who are now looking for more predictable alternatives outside the gulf. This is not a collapse, but a change in mentality: when security is no longer absolute, attractiveness quickly erodes. Aerial view of Zug And, suddenly, Zug. In this displacement, the place that is attracting attention is not a great global capital, but a small swiss canton of just 135,000 inhabitants: Zug. Traditionally known for its role in commodities trading and, more recently, in crypto ecosystemhas become the first destination that many of these capitals look to. Reasons? counted the financial times that both wealth managers and bankers agree that demand has grown significantly since the beginning of the conflict, to the point that for many clients the request is direct and automatic: move there. The call effect. This growing flow is having immediate consequences in an already limited market, especially when it comes to housing. Demand has rapidly outstripped supply, generating intense competition for any property available and lines even for modest rentals. Added to this are administrative barriers that make entry difficult, especially for those who do not belong to the European Union, forcing residence to be linked to employment, investment or specific tax agreements. Zug attractsbut it does not absorb without friction. Switzerland reinforces its role in the geopolitics of money. What is happening in Zug is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather part of a broader dynamic in which Switzerland consolidates again as a refuge in times of uncertainty. Its political stability, its legal framework and its financial tradition make it a almost automatic destiny when overall risk increases. In fact, other cantons like Lugano have begun to capture part of this growing demand, expanding the phenomenon and confirming that the movement has only just begun. A map of wealth that changes with each conflict. In short, the result is a progressive movement of money from risk areas to safe enclaves, where each crisis acts as a catalyst. The war in the Middle East is accelerating this process and leaving one conclusion abundantly clear: global fortunes are no longer driven only by opportunity, but for threats. And in that new balance, places so small and discreet like Zug They can become, almost without noise, the great beneficiaries of an increasingly unstable world. Image | Schulerst , IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, LohriPR In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran. In Xataka | Commercial aviation is based on very old aircraft. The Iran war is going to make it even worse

The latest whim of millionaires is to build a luxury superyacht around a living tree

by

I will not deny that they die on me even plastic plants, but there are people who have a gift with plants. Others, however, are capable of buying a 73-meter superyacht built around a treely keep him alive as he crosses the seven seas with every luxury imaginable. He Virtuosity It is the second ship of the 74 Steel series from the Italian shipyard Sanlorenzo. Its construction and design took more than four years to materialize. For the first 18 months, the owner and the Sanlorenzo team held weekly calls before design even began. It’s not that there was any doubt: it’s that when someone decides that their new ship will revolve around a living tree, details matter and a lot. The tree that wanted to be a sailor The vegetal protagonist of Virtuosity It is a Ficus Nitida, also known as Indian laurel, planted on the main deck of a luxury superyacht with a modern and elegant design. It is worth noting that the tree in question was not added when the yacht was already built, but was selected before the first structural block of the ship was assembled, and the entire yacht was built around it. So that the plant receives sunlight in its lower parts, two side skylights were installed at ground level and its trunk rises across two decks to let its leaves breathe while looking out over the sea from one of its exterior decks. The tree occupies about 16 square meters in the center of the yacht’s main salon. The tree passes through two covers “With this yacht we decided to rethink the onboard architecture from its very foundations,” explained Tommaso Vincenzi, CEO of Sanlorenzo, to Superyatchtimes. “From the integration of living nature to the transformation of technical volumes into experiential environments, each decision is based on a clear architectural vision,” he added. Details that go beyond luxury As if having a five-meter-high tree on the deck might not be enough, the Virtuosity It also hides one more peculiarity below the waterline: an aquarium so big like the sea On the lower decks we find a 35 m2 wellness area. This room is located right on the waterline of the yacht, allowing guests to observe marine life directly from their seats through a large glass surface of the hull. Without a doubt a quite sophisticated way to see fish without even having to get wet. This wellness area also includes a hammam, sauna and massage room. The master suite of Virtuosity It occupies its own deck with 40 m2 and has a bed facing forward with a dressing room and bathroom while on the main deck there is a second VIP suite and two more cabins for guests. At the owner’s request, a reflecting pool was installed in front of that suite, designed so that the water reflects the sky and sunlight, far from the concept of a conventional pool. A cinema lounge aft and a sensory shower forward complete what the manufacturer describes as a private apartment within the ship itself. By day, the stern of the Virtuosity It functions as a relaxation area with direct access to the water and water toys. At night, and also at the express request of the owner, the beach club is transformed into a nightclub with a permanently installed DJ booth. That someone included a fixed nightclub on their list of requirements for a superyacht says a lot about how this owner understands the vacation at sea. This beach club has been redesigned and is 40% larger than that of the first 74 Steel delivered in 2025. In addition, a glass-bottom pool was installed on this deck that acts as a 28-square-meter skylight to illuminate the lower deck. The triple-height main deck features an exposed wine cellar and a spiral staircase in dark lacquered aluminum, as well as an elevator. A helipad and sports deck are located at the bow of the ship. With 73 meters in length and 13.1 meters in beam (width), the Virtuosity It can accommodate up to 12 guests in 6 cabins and a crew of up to 24 people. Its propulsion system is diesel-electric, with six 700 HP Volvo D13-700 engines and 425 ekW alternators, the same technical package as the first 74 Steel, the Silver Fox. With 180,000 liters of fuel on board, it reaches a range of 6,000 nautical miles at 11 knots and a maximum speed of 15 knots. Power and luxury for the only superyacht where you can boast of having taken a nap under the shade of a tree in the middle of the ocean. In Xataka | The Emir of Dubai bought a 500 million superyacht but discovered that it had a serious problem: there was no mobile coverage inside Image | Sanlorenzo

sending personalized Ferraris to millionaires in the Middle East

by

When the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iranthe Strait of Hormuz was closed to commercial traffic and the skies of the Persian Gulf They became a high-risk area. Freighters transporting luxury cars to Dubai, Riyadh or Doha encountered a Strait of Hormuz blocked and no alternative route plan. Any customer in that situation has little room for maneuver other than resigning themselves to waiting for their shipment like someone waiting for an Amazon courier, but a type of client who does not resign easily: he who has enough money to open your own delivery route. While hundreds of Lamborghinis, Bentleys and Ferraris were immobilized in intermediate ports due to the maritime blockade, their future owners found the most million-dollar solution possible: paying for “first class” flights so that their supercars They will arrive by plane. Cars blocked in the middle of the conflict. When the Strait of Hormuz was closed to commercial traffic, large cargo ships were unable to reach their destinations in Persian Gulf ports. One of the most striking cases was the one documented Reuters of a shipment with more than 500 cars that were blocked at sea. 50 of those cars They were luxury models of brands such as Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Ferrari and had to be provisionally unloaded at the port of Hambantota (Sri Lanka) pending resolution of their fate. The same problem affected Porsche and Audi, whose managers in the Volkswagen group they warned that the war would directly hit their sales in the region. OK to what was published by BloombergFerrari suspended shipments to the Persian Gulf for weeks. A wall between brands and millionaires. Faced with the blockade, each manufacturer adopted a different strategy, although they could not prevent some of the luxury cars that were already on the route from being trapped in nearby ports. Bentley chose to exhaust the inventory that dealers in the region already had to meet pre-conflict orders, avoiding shipments of new units. Ferrari, on the other hand, opted for a combination of longer and more complex alternative routes: more than 4,000 luxury vehicles bound for Dubai had to be diverted to Lamu Island port as an alternative entry point. Meanwhile, some millionaires impatient to drive the cars for which they have been waiting for no less than two years, did not want to wait a single minute longer and paid the extra cost of shipping with air transport to receive their cars as soon as possible. A decision that turned out to be more expensive than expected. The price of millionaire impatience. Air transport was already an import route that existed before the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, but it tripled the cost of shipping. With the war blocking the only access route, that difference shot up to five times more. The average cost of transporting a kilogram of air cargo from Europe to the Middle East has increased by two-thirds since the start of the conflict, reaching $2.96 per kilogram of cargo. as he collected he Financial Times. Some routes recorded increases of up to 100% in rates, with an additional fuel surcharge of between 0.3 and 0.4 euros per kilo transported. Ian Arroyo, director of strategy at Freightos, a logistics information service, pointed out that there were only two options for assuming this price increase: “It all depends on whether manufacturers are reducing their own profit margin due to their relationship with the customer, or if the customer has offered to pay for the transportation on their own.” What is clear is that the final bill for the car was going to rise considerably. Money was not going to be a problem in this case. Ferrari does not lose a single order. In statements to Gulf NewsGiorgio Turri, Ferrari’s general director for the Middle East, assured that the brand had managed to overcome logistics problems without canceling any orders in the area. “We are not experiencing cancellations. (A Ferrari) is not a need, it is a dream. You don’t make decisions based on the mood of the day. Dreams are never a short-term decision.” The data proves him right. Between 30 and 40% of the Italian brand’s new supercar deliveries in the region go to customers who have never owned a Ferrari before. The Middle East is not the largest market in the world in unit volume, but it is one of the most profitable for the “Il Cavallino” brand. Customization and accessories account for a fifth of Ferrari’s revenue, and the region’s wealthy customers don’t just buy the car: they turn it into a unique piece doubling the car bill with customizations . To understand the dimension of the business that was at stake, it is enough to know a fact that Turri pointed out, “our clients in the Middle East are between five and seven years old. younger than the world average.” That for Ferrari is not a simple anecdote, it is decades of guaranteed sales if customers are satisfied, whether there is war or not. In Xataka | In Dubai they don’t know what to do with so many abandoned luxury supercars: the less shiny side of getting rich Image | freepik

The massive flight of investors and millionaires suggests that he has achieved it

by

For years, Dubai has been the promised land for millionaires from all over the planet who saw the United Arab Emirates as a idyllic place to live without paying taxes. The Iranian attacks with missiles and drones on different infrastructures in Dubai in recent weeks have changed that perception and the financial elite, especially Asian millionaires, are putting their feet (and fortunes) on the run. The city that seduced more than 81,000 millionaires Since 2014, it is now facing an unprecedented flight of capital and talent. The prestige that took decades to build is being tested in a matter of days. ​Explosions in the heart of the city. The last few weeks have left us images that few would have imagined in February. The Fairmont The Palm hotel, located in one of the artificial islands off the coast of Dubai, was hit for an explosion. Days later the remains of an Iranian drone demolished set fire to the iconic Burj Al Arab, the international airport has suffered damage from drone attacks and the american consulate has been the target of another drone attack. The city that boasted of being the safest in the world, in a matter of weeks, has become a scene of war. “The US-Israel war against Iran is undermining that crucial sense of security in Dubai. Dubai’s economic model relies on expatriate residents providing talent, muscle and investment capital. Stability and security are needed to attract skilled foreigners.”, assured to CNBC Jim Krane, researcher at the Baker Institute at Rice University. ​Asian money in retreat. However, the most visible impact is being felt among Asian investors, who had become one of the pillars of Dubai’s financial growth. According to data by Henley & Partners, Dubai is currently home to 237 centimillionaires (people with wealth of $100 million or more) and at least 20 billionaires Asia accounted for 47% of all multinational companies attracted to Dubai International Chamber in 2025, and around a quarter of the more than 2,270 foundations created in the Emirates have Asian ownership, according to data from the consulting firm BSA Law. Bloomberg published that the United Arab Emirates had attracted some 700 billion dollars from millionaires around the world, especially Asians. Singapore and Hong Kong, new chosen destinations. Grace Tang, CEO of Phillip Private Equity, pointed out to Reuters that between 10 and 20 of their customers, mostly Asian, are asking about how transfer your assets to Singapore to protect the value of its assets. Hong Kong also emerges as an alternative. For his part, Felix Lai, from the consulting firm JMS Group, counted to Bloomberg who had organized a private jet flight to transport 15 clients from Oman to Hong Kong at a cost of approximately $300,000. “They didn’t even care about the price,” Lai explained. “They just wanted to leave.” An advisor in Singapore who declined to be identified added that more than half of his 13 clients in the Emirates are seriously considering moving their assets: “Flying back and forth will be complicated even if the conflict ends tomorrow. It’s about trust.” Dubai’s economic model faces its biggest test. Dubai does not depend as directly on the oil industry as its neighbors, but its economy is based on its ability to attract expatriates, your investments and his talent. At the beginning of the year, the Dubai International Finance Center housed 1,289 entities linked to family offices (61% more than the previous year), and the 120 main families in the center jointly managed more than 1.2 billion dollars, according to CNBC. Although stock markets around the world have felt the earthquake resulting from the attacks in an area of ​​strategic resources for trade and energy, the impact of the conflict with Iran has been much more severe and direct for the Gulf markets. The Dubai Stock Exchange (DFM) has fallen more than 16.6% since the start of the war between the US and Israel against Iran. Fitch Ratings had already predicted before the war a real estate correction of up to 15% in 2025 and 2026. Everything indicates that they have fallen short the worst estimates of the financial consequences. Passing panic or structural change? Not all actors in the sector believe that this will lead to a permanent mass flight. Dhruba Jyoti Sengupta, CEO of Wrise Private Middle East in Dubai, pointed out to Reuters that his firm had not observed “serious conversations about capital flight” as its clients remain confident in the country’s long-term resilience. ​Nirbhay Handa, CEO of migration agency for millionaires Multipolitanpointed in Bloomberg “If uncertainty lasts a few weeks, some companies may pause their expansion, but stability will likely return quickly to Dubai as the situation improves.” What does seem clear is that the city will have to rebuild something much more difficult to build than its skyscrapers for millionaires: trust of those who chose it as a home for their money. In Xataka | A company wants to build a €4 billion megacasino in Dubai. The problem is that Dubai prohibits gambling Image | Unsplash (Wael Hneini)

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.