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A Renfe train was left without air conditioning at 40ºC. 1,056 days later, an affected person has just collected her money

June 9, 2026 by usatoday24

How much would you fight for the refund of 31.90 euros? Macarena LE, a resident of a town in Teruel, is clear: three years, if necessary. And that is how long it has been behind Renfe for it to refund the price of a ticket between Zaragoza and Barcelona. The reason? The car’s air conditioning. Evident, due to the non-existent air conditioning of the car. What has happened? A Renfe user named Macarena LE, a member of Facua, has gotten the money back for a train ticket she took three years ago. The company had promised that it would do so with each and every one of the people who took that train, but the money never appeared in the user’s bank account. a little odyssey. Despite telling them that they would return the money to the passengers, the amount never arrived so after a few weeks, the affected person filed a claim, they explain in Facua. With no news about it after three months, he decided to put himself in the hands of the legal service of the consumer defense association. Once reaching this point, the association filed a new claim. To this complaint, Renfe responded that it gave the order to return the money but it still did not arrive. After another four months, Facua files a new complaint and Renfe assures him that it has tried to refund the money but that the procedure has been rejected on two occasions. At that moment, Renfe instructs Macarena LE to receive the money through a payment platform. This method also being impossible and the months accumulating, Facua sends a third claim to Renfe in which they simply ask it to deposit the money into the bank account of the affected person, attaching the document that proves its ownership. Three years after taking that train, the associate has ended up receiving her 31.90 euros. A trip… complicated. And, once seated, they assure in Facua that the conductor informed the passengers that the air conditioning was broken and that their travel money would be refunded in compensation for the inconvenience caused. But the journey between Zaragoza and Barcelona had an added problem: July 18 with departure at 3:52 p.m. and arrival at 5:20 p.m. That day maximum temperatures of 44 degrees were reported. Obviously, the heat must have been oppressive inside and the affected person claims that they had to drink water constantly to get through the trip in the best possible way. The expected quality. Due to the numerous claims filed by Facua, and beyond the fact that the money was not returned until three years later, Renfe never fought not to return the money. Instead they admitted that they would send the money back for “not having offered the service with the quality levels” expected. However, the fulfillment of the procedure itself does not seem to have had the expected quality either. And Facua pointed out to Renfe that they were failing to comply with article 21.3 of the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of November 16according to which: “Employers must respond to the claims received in the shortest possible time and, in any case, within a maximum period of one month from the presentation of the claim.”. When Facua presented this second claim in which this regulatory text was recalled, Renfe had not given a response or paid the corresponding money for four months. What if it happens to me? That Renfe has returned the money to a passenger sets a precedent but does not automatically lead the company to return the money in the event of an air conditioning breakdown. In its rules, Renfe states that the traveler has the right to receive compensation for the cancellation of the trip, for its interruption, for a lack or deficiency in the service provided on board or for delay, but it makes it clear that such compensation will not be carried out if: The reason is an extraordinary circumstance unrelated to railway operation, such as extreme weather events (a storm that leaves a train without heating in winter, for example) or natural disasters. Nor if the breakdown or problem was caused by the behavior of the traveler. Nor if it is the damage caused by a third party outside the railway company that causes the incident (people on the track, copper theft, sabotage… etc.) That is to say, the mere absence of air conditioning does not automatically imply that the passenger’s money will be returned. What has happened will have to be taken into account to decide whether the company is obliged to act in this way. Photo | Nelson Silva In Xataka | The Madrid Cercanías have become a nest of problems and delays: their solution is new “megatrains”

Money doesn’t buy happiness. But it does give a monstrous Bugatti television that folds itself

June 5, 2026 by usatoday24

A 137-inch television that, when you are not watching it, folds by itself and remains as a luxury decorative structure in your home. Yes, it is as crazy and absurd as it is real. Bugatti has presented to the world “his” first televisionone of the most spectacular on the planet. Of course, it needed a little help, so it relied on the work of C Seed, an Austrian display brand focused entirely on luxury. WTF. The chances of seeing the video of this television and not surprisingly, in my opinion, they are very low. In fact, the first thing I thought when I saw the video was that it was generated by AI. Mistake. The concept is “simple”: a television in 110 and 137 inch formats that folds in 45 seconds and remains as a very expensive decorative element in the home. Beyond the eccentricity, on a technological level it is truly amazing. Original design of the C SEED N1. Two of them can be configured in dozens of options. Bugatti version. Who is behind. The truth is that Bugatti did not invent this television, it was presented by the Austrian company C SEED in 2022 under the name N1, and it began to be sold to order in 2024. C SEED is a young company, founded in 2009 and with headquarters and production plant in Vienna. From the beginning, it focused on luxury televisions and solutions, both for mansions and superyachts, events, etc. It’s a small, absolutely niche company, so if you’ve never heard of it… you’re not alone. The bug. The Bugatti N1 is a complete redesign of the original N1, with materials and lines used in the Bugatti Tourbillona four-wheeled hypercar million of euros. And as for specs… 4K UHD resolution, HDR10+. Foldable microLED technology (five panels). Wisdom Audio self-deploying speaker system. Swivel system up to 180 degrees to the right and left. 1,000 nits brightness. 3m wide, 1.7 meters high, less than 10cm thick in its 137-inch version. 680 kilos for the 137-inch version. The five panels of the television unfolding. How is it possible. C SEED has not created a 137-inch folding panel, the TV is made up of a total of five microLED panels. This is one of the keys: it is not a typical panel with sub-panel hinges visible at a visible level, they are rigid and independent panels. The company has patented its own “Adaptive Joint Calibration” system, in other words, its electronic calibration system to align panel joints with millimeter precision in real time, making them indistinguishable to the eye. MicroLED technology is self-emissive, in which each LED is an individual, independent light emitter. This means that the system can precisely control the intensity, color and on-time of each pixel individually, including the pixels that are on the edge of each panel, next to the board. Go deeper. C Seed does not go into details about the manufacturing of the mechanism that rotates and hides the panel, although the documentation of the panel reveals some images of its interior. In them, we can perfectly appreciate the cavities that house the microLED modules, the screws and some of the joints of the system. In addition to this system, the audio system, signed Wisdom Audio, is especially striking. The speakers are hidden within one of the panel structures, and appear only when we need to play audio. The rest of the time they are hidden, to keep the design as clean as possible. I want one. The C SEED website only allows you to configure the television. Once we have done so, we submit the request and the company will contact us. Depending on the materials chosen, the customizations we want to make and the size, the price of the previous version was around $200,000, so add another few thousand for this Bugatti version. Image | C SEED In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs

“My account is in the red, I’m borrowing money, that’s how little money I have”

June 5, 2026 by usatoday24

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is 27 years old, more than 600 million followers and a company with a valuation close to $5 billion, according to Fortune. Despite all that, and as he himself recognized in a recent interview for The Wall Street Journalthe millionaire YouTuber assures that “I have negative money right now. I ask for a loan. Everyone who watches this video has more money than me in their bank account.” According to MrBeast, he doesn’t even have money to go to McDonald’s. It sounds like a joke considering that he spends several million dollars on each of his videos, but it’s not entirely. Having billions is not the same as having money. The first thing to understand is that Donaldson’s “net worth” is not a figure in his checking account. According to Celebrity Net Worth MrBeast’s fortune would be around $2.6 billion in 2026, but almost everything comes from him participation in Beast Industriesits business holding company. He has a little more than half of a company that is worth 5 billion on paper. But those are stocks, not cash. When someone says that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are the richest in the worldtalks about the value of his assets, among which are his shares in Tesla, SpaceX or Amazon. If they sold their entire stake at once, the price of those shares would collapse. That’s why they don’t sell. And that’s why they don’t need to do it either. pay their mansionsyour whims or your vacations. Why borrowing is cheaper than selling. Here comes what MrBeast does not tell in the interview, but what is truly important in this verbal shell game. Every time someone sells shares and makes a profit on them, they pay taxes on that difference. It is the so-called surplus value. In the US, this tax can reach 20% or more of the profit. If you have shares worth 100 million and you bought them for 10, selling them means a huge bill only in taxes. Therefore, millionaires only use this resource when they need to unlock that cash to make new investmentsnot for “your expenses.” The other option is to use those shares as collateral to request a loan. Borrowed money is not taxed, because it is not income: it is debt not an income. Banks offer their richest clients very low interest rates in exchange for having those shares as collateral. Dividends or the company’s own growth pay off the loan little by little. The debt is renewed from time to time, but the taxes on that money never arrive. “Buy, borrow, die”: the trick with its own name. This way of managing money it even has a name: buy, borrow, die (buy, borrow, die). You buy assets or found companies, you borrow money using those assets as collateral to live on without selling them, and when you die the heirs receive the shares valued at the price at that moment. The years of accumulated earnings They no longer count for the tax calculation. The US Senate has been trying to close this tax hole for years without much success. The trick of the symbolic salary of one dollar or the minimum allowed by law what some CEOs use it works the same. Steve Jobs did it. Larry Ellison too. These millionaires barely receive any salary income for their work but, in reality, the value of their shares increases every year and that money does not pass through the treasury until they sell them. The “I’m not that rich” story and what it’s for. The curious thing about the MrBeast case is not the financial strategy he uses, which is the same one that large fortunes have been using for decades. The curious thing is that he tells it in public as if it were a confession. “Everyone has more money than me in their account,” collected Fortune. In June 2025 he wrote in your X profile that he had asked his mother for money to pay for his wedding. He presents himself as someone with a 5 billion company who borrows money from his mother. These statements serve a very specific objective: to give him the appearance of a normal person who reinvests everything he earns and lives without luxuries and with just enough. This message works well when you have a young audience in front of you who can see themselves reflected, and it takes the focus off the real fact: that his shares in Beast Industries are worth more than 2.6 billion and give him access to cheap credit in any bank in the world that none of his followers could aspire to. What really measures the wealth of someone like that?. The truly useful figure that measures your wealth is not your bank balance or your salary. Actually, the basis of everything is your assets: how much of Beast Industries you own, how much does Feastables worthwhat generated the agreement with Amazon by Beast Games. His company had a turnover of close to 500 million in 2024 and expected to reach 900 million in 2025. With that in mind, Donaldson can live, travel and spend 250 million a year on production of his videos without touching his participation in Beast Industries. The bank is happy to lend you because you have the best possible guarantee: a company that is worth more every day. The fact that your checking account is in the red is a strategy, not a problem as it supposes for the rest of humanity that is left out of that 1.1% of ultra-rich. In Xataka | There is a formula so that saving at the end of the month is not an impossible mission: the 50-30-20 rule Image | Feastables

China is very clear about how to win the technology race over the rest of the world: with tons of public money

June 3, 2026 by usatoday24

China has insisted on be the first world power. This declaration of intentions can be as empty as every January 1st when I say that this year I will begin to wake up at six in the morning to go out for a run, or the opposite can happen: they put all the means at their disposal to achieve it. In the case of the Asian giant, what is happening is the second. The Five-Year Plan is the roadmap that the Government sets every five years and that indicates the direction they should follow both public institutions and private companies to achieve the country’s objective. And with a defined objective, there is only one pending issue: the question of financing. And, in the case of China, that translates into a government impulse that other countries do not have. A competition at two speeds OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is made up of 38 States, including North Americans, some South Americans, many Europeans, Australia and Japan.

“Having all the money in a checking account is one of the main mistakes”

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

We Spaniards like to know that we have our savings on hand, available for the month’s expenses, to deal with unforeseen events or simply to treat ourselves. Not long ago Triodos Bank made a study to find out where we keep our money and discovered that almost half of those surveyed (46%) keep their savings in checking accounts, far from the 28.9% who opt for savings accounts and 15.4% for term deposits. There are those who even concentrate everything in a single account in which payroll, direct debits and expenses are accumulated (without much order). Is that a good idea? Within easy reach. The Triodos Bank study or other similar ones, such as Financial Competencies Survey from the Bank of Spain, are interesting because they give us an idea of how we manage our savings. For example, they show that we are mostly inclined to keep money in checking accounts or even in cash, on hand for unforeseen events. Also that we are not given to risks. According to Triodos46% keep their money in a checking account that allows them to access it immediately, 28.9% use traditional savings accounts and 15.4% opt for fixed-term deposits. According to their calculations, the remaining 9.7% keep the money in cash, a more common option among young people between 18 and 25 years old. In general, almost all families in the country (more than 90%) have a bank account to make payments, ‘piggy banks’ in which the average balance a couple of years ago was around 8,000 euros. “It doesn’t make sense.” Elizabeth Wakefield, financial advisor, recently warned in the ‘It Makes Sense’ podcast about another scenario that goes one step further and can complicate the management of our money: having all our funds no longer only in checking accounts, but concentrated in a single bank deposit. That is, 100% of our savings remain in the same account which, in addition to generating low profitability, makes it difficult to control expenses. “Having all the money in a checking account is one of the main mistakes that many people make. Why? Because it is as if you had socks in your house with forks and tools like hammers. I mean, it doesn’t make sense. Why then do drawers and closets exist? To put things in their places,” reflect the expert in statements collected by The Salmon Blog. The key, he insists, is to have a simple banking structure that helps us manage our money. What to do then? Experts usually opt for maintaining several accounts (the number does not always coincide) that help us compartmentalize, control and even have a clearer idea of how much money comes in, how much goes out and what we spend it on. On the Wakefield podcast suggests have three accounts: a main one, to which the income arrives and in which the usual bills are direct deposited, such as rent, telephone, electricity… And a secondary account (“ideally paid”, apostille) that serves as a cushion to fall back on in the event of “unforeseen events or emergencies”, apart from ordinary expenses. For example, a car breakdown. The expert even recommends a third account for expenses that are not common, but not extraordinary either. To be more precise, the idea is to dedicate it to ‘periodizations’, expenses that we know will arrive in the medium or long term and for which (precisely for that reason) we can prepare. The clearest example that quotes Wakefield herself It’s the holidays. Are you traveling to Ibiza in September and want to spend 2,000 euros? Well until then, month by month, you put 100, 200 into that ‘piggy bank’… whatever you decide. Is it a universal standard? Not at all. In your corporate blogBBVA explains that “there is no ideal number of bank accounts” and remembers that it largely depends on each person’s lifestyle and financial objectives. In any case, it shares the benefits of having at least two: a deposit for regular expenses (both planned and those that arise) and another exclusive one for savings. What’s more, Luz Martín Manjón, BBVA advisor, recommends saving enough money in that second account to cover at least six months of expenses. The OCU advocate also for thinking about the money deposited in the checking account and that the amount does not exceed three months of salary. Audit expenses. Among other issues, compartmentalizing and controlling the money we have in each account helps us have a precise ‘photo’ of what we dedicate the funds to. If we stop having payroll, invoices… everything mixed in the same deposit, and we organize our income and exits, it will be easier for us to review them. “We haven’t just done an audit of our expenses,” insists Wakefield. With this clarity it will be easier for us, for example, to locate subscriptions for services that may no longer interest us. Are they all advantages? No. Accounts usually have minimum balance requirements if we want to receive interest, something that will be more difficult to achieve if we have the money divided into several deposits. The same goes for possible overdrafts. As remember from Washington Trust, also requires greater attention (and effort) when deciding how to distribute funds or movements. The positive part: Opening several accounts at the same time avoids the risk of running out of money in the event that one of them is blocked or we cannot use it, something that could happen, for example, if the card is blocked or lost. Another advantage that they usually point out experts is that, if you have six-digit savings, you must remember that in the euro zone the Deposit Guarantee Fund only covers up to 100,000 euros per owner. “If your savings exceed that amount in accounts and deposits, try to distribute them in several entities,” slide the OCU. Money calls money. Of course, savings don’t have to sit ‘still’ in a checking account either. Banks offer other financial products that help you get more out of them, such as investment … Read more

Computer companies didn’t make money on computers. What they are doing is making money thanks to AI servers

June 1, 2026 by usatoday24

On Friday, May 29, Dell shares they grew 39% suddenly. Since becoming a publicly traded company seven years ago, Dell has never had a rise like that. At first glance, this growth would seem strange, but the company has discovered that with stagnant PCs, the focus had to change. Nothing has gone wrong with that turn of the helm, but other traditional PC manufacturers have also taken advantage of the opportunity. The PC is dead, long live the server. In recent years the PC segment has been struggling with low margins and sales that have slowly been slowing down. Manufacturers were totally tied to that situation, but some have taken advantage of the opportunity that AI offered them. Dell and Lenovo rub their hands. Dell published its financial results and they were spectacular: 88% year-on-year growth thanks to the fact that its revenue in the server segment has risen 757%. Not only that, its guidance for this year has improved as well, further boosting confidence in the company’s near-term future. Lenovo also had a fantastic quarter: May was its best month on the stock market since 1999, doubling the value of your shares thanks again to that fever for hardware dedicated to AI. AI as a shield against inflation. The entire sector is experiencing a paradoxical situation: the cost of components such as DRAM memories or SSD units is absolutely shotbut companies are earning more than ever. Dell has tripled its net profit to $3.44 billion, allowing it to offset those costs through almost daily price increases. Lenovo has managed to maintain its margins because once again the market is willing to pay whatever it takes for servers and AI infrastructure. Beyond hyperscalers. One might think that to have resources in the age of AI it would be necessary to turn to hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google), but Dell and Lenovo have shown that their experience in servers has managed to offer an alternative for all types of clients. Jeff Clarke, chief operating officer at Dell, explained that the need for AI hardware is so enormous that this segment continues to break sales records. The PC is no longer the protagonist. Although Dell’s Client Solutions division—which includes its revenue from PC and laptop sales—grew a more than decent 17%, that figure pales in comparison to the 181% growth of its infrastructure division. Lenovo follows a similar line: its shares rose 22% last Friday after confirming that its AI revenues manage to offset the weakness of the traditional PC business. The focus changes. Something similar happens with HPE, the company that spun off from HP to focus on the business segment. Its server business hasn’t grown as much, but they already have contracted orders worth $5 billion and that guarantees a promising second quarter. Other consumer products makers are also migrating to AI infrastructure: Foxconn has absolute trust in which the demand for these components will continue to be exceptional in the coming months, and the same happens with Quanta Computer, which continues to see how its servers do not stop growing in importance in revenue for the company: They were already 80% of the total in the first quarter of 2026. Image | Dell In Xataka | For some people there is something much better than having a PC at home: having a server rack

Samsung has made a lot of money from the memory crisis and its employees wanted their cut. Result: bonus of $340,000

May 27, 2026 by usatoday24

Employees at Samsung’s chip division were in high gear. And it is logical: your company is becoming gold thanks to the rise of data centers for AI. The demand for memory chips is extraordinary and that has caused Samsung’s market capitalization to skyrocket over a billion dollars. The company, yes, was being very selfish, but the threat of a strike He has made her see reason. The bonus of the crisis. Samsung Electronics workers have ratified a multimillion-dollar compensation agreement. One that will see employees of the semiconductor division receive an average bonus estimated at 513 million won (about $340,000). Agreement in extremis. The vote was approved by 74% of members of the majority union, and was closed in extremisbecause there were 90 minutes left before an indefinite strike began that threatened to paralyze this giant’s supply chains. The risk was too high. This agreement avoids a scenario that would have been catastrophic for the AI industry. Samsung is the largest memory chip manufacturer in the worldand its modules power everything from mobile phones and electric vehicles to the GPUs used in AI data centers. Considering that the market is already stressed by the memory crisis and demand that far exceeds supply, adding this bottleneck would have had unforeseeable consequences. Only Saudi Aramco surpasses Samsung in estimated operating profits for 2026. Source: Bloomberg. Memory chips are pure gold. Samsung is on its way to close one of the most profitable years in its history, and its semiconductor division already indicated that its profits had multiplied by 48 in the first quarter of the year, an absolutely extraordinary figure. She is not the only one taking advantage of this phenomenon: SK Hynix and Micron They have broken the trillion-dollar market capitalization barrier for the first time. Some so much and others so little. Although the agreement has avoided a logistical disaster, it has also caused a very uncomfortable situation internally. The bonuses are linked to the financial performance of each business unit, which means that the 28,000 members of the chip division have benefited significantly, but the rest of the company has not. The differences are clear: Engineers in that division will receive bonuses of up to 600 million won ($400,000). They will share 40% of the total allocated as bonuses. Personnel in divisions such as home appliances or telephony will receive a testimonial bonus of just 6 million won ($4,000). They share 60% of the bonus, but there are many more in number, about 260,000 in total. The average salary of Samsung employees in 2025 was 158 million won (about $105,000) according to internal company information published in March. Unions divided. This asymmetry of 100 to 1 has caused great tensions to appear between departments, and this has also been noted in the negotiation and conversations in the union. While the majority bloc (which included the majority of workers in the semiconductor division) supported the agreement with more than 80% of the votes, the secondary union, which brings together employees from other divisions, rejected the document with only 21% of votes in favor. TM Roh takes action. The situation is so worrying that TM Roh, head of the device division, has sent an internal statement to try to calm things down. He has admitted that the results of the negotiation have left thousands of employees feeling “alienated, dispossessed and hurt by the company.” Top management has promised to monitor the conditions of each unit, but while Samsung has managed to control the chaos in its factories, it could have an even more disturbing problem on its hands. Image | Wikimedia Commons (Choi Kwang-mo), IntelUnsplash (Liam Briese) In Xataka | Samsung has just achieved a milestone that has not been recorded for eight years. The problem is that it is a mirage

American chipmakers keep making money there

May 27, 2026 by usatoday24

China is unequivocally the largest market in the world if we stick to the size of its industrial productionto the volume of your e-commerce already its export capacity. If you look at your adjusted gross domestic product purchasing power parity, also leads. However, if we stick to its nominal gross domestic product and domestic consumption per capita, USA is ahead. Be that as it may, depending on the metric we observe, the country led by Xi Jinping establishes itself as the first or second largest market. Its leadership in some sectors, such as financial services or software, is not entirely clear. And, for this reason, it can be argued. However, in the area of electric cars, steel production either semiconductorsChina leads with authority. In fact, its integrated circuit market is larger than that of the US, Taiwan, South Korea or Japan. And American companies are not at all immune to this reality. The report “Hurun Top 100 American Companies in China 2026”, which has been prepared by the Hurun Research Institute, defend that the income of twenty-six American semiconductor companies grew on average by 20% in China in 2025 despite the trade tensions between the US and China. Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD or Intel are some of them. In the current confrontation scenario It is surprising that China remains such an important market for American IC companies. The Chinese market continues to grow A note before we move forward: Hurun Research Institute is part of Hurun Inc., a media, data analytics and investment company founded in 1999 by British entrepreneur and analyst Rupert Hoogewerf. The report I told you about a few lines above follows the trajectory of 100 publicly traded US companies and pays close attention to their economic performance in China over the past year. Western Digital, Analog Devices and AMD have led this expansion Curiously, 26 of the 100 companies with the highest income from this Asian country belong to the semiconductor sector, which has been classified as strategic by both the US and China. And among the 10 with the highest revenue during 2025 are Qualcomm, Nvidia, Intel, Broadcom, Applied Materials and AMD. Another interesting fact: Western Digital, Analog Devices and AMD have led this expansion with an interannual growth rate of 43%, 34% and 24% respectively. The three occupy positions 33, 30 and 10 on Hurun’s list. Nvidia is not one of the American companies that has grown the most in China for a compelling reason: it is the most damaged company due to the export controls that the Donald Trump Administration has deployed. Be that as it may, Rupert Hoogewerf has pointed out in a statement that “the strong momentum in this report underscores the Chinese market’s robust demand for computing power for artificial intelligenceof high-end chips, and also the expansion of the semiconductor industrial chain.” Image | Intel More information | SCMP In Xataka | The chip of the future comes from Japan: it is 1,000 times faster than current semiconductors and does not heat up

a millionaire is looking for ideas because money has not given him happiness

May 25, 2026 by usatoday24

Some people think that the only thing you need to be happy is a checking account whose balance looks like a phone number. This is a fact confirmed by science. Others, on the other hand, cannot even use all the money in the world to achieve happiness. This is the case of Vinay Hiremath, a 34-year-old engineer of Indian origin living in the US who became a millionaire in a short time. but he doesn’t know what to do with his life to be happy. So he didn’t hesitate to make it public. from your personal page to see if anyone would give him ideas about what he could do with his life. “I know. It’s an absolutely otherworldly situation,” the millionaire wrote. Millionaire with all the time in the world Hiremath co-founded the startup Loom in 2015 alongside Shahed Khan and Joe Thomas. The company developed software that allowed screenshots and video capture in third-party applications. At its height, the pandemic meant that we all suddenly needed record meetings and taking screenshots of video calls, so the company’s valuation skyrocketed. In 2023, Atlassian purchased the company he had founded for $975 million, of which Hiremath would receive $60 million as a compensation salary package. for leaving the company. After formalizing the purchase, the young millionaire found himself with a fortune in your pocket and all the time in the world to spend it on things that made him happy. That was the first disappointment. “I have infinite freedom, but I don’t know what to do with it and, honestly, I’m not the most optimistic person about life,” Hiremath said on his blog. The first weeks were spent meeting with entrepreneurs and robotics experts in the hope of finding an exciting idea with which to get involved and help it grow as he had already done with his own company a few years ago. It was useless since none of the proposals inspired him. “I began to realize that what I really wanted was to look like Elon (Musk), and that is incredibly embarrassing. It hurts me to even write this,” the millionaire acknowledged. Since he didn’t know what to do with his money, thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to give a good part of his fortune to his parents so that they could retire earlier. He also tried to have fun traveling the worldand he did that accompanied by his girlfriend for six months. Unfortunately, that didn’t work either and, not only did it not make Hiremath’s life make sense, but he ended up breaking up with his girlfriend after “two years of unconditional love.” “We started arguing frequently and I knew it wasn’t her fault, it was mine.” It’s not what you have, it’s what you do After his romantic breakup, the millionaire understood that nothing he did would make him feel fulfilled if he did not first do an introspection exercise: he needed to “face himself completely.” Founding the company had made him feel fulfilled and, suddenly finding himself without a purposeleft him disoriented and without a vital goal to pursue. Hoping to find himself, he left Himalayan climbing without prior preparation and without any experience. On the verge of hypoxia lack of oxygendecided that his “inner self” was definitely not going to be in the peaks of the Himalayas, so he came to his senses and returned home, but not before climbing two of the peaks of that mountain range. “I completed the two summits I had planned and I realized again how important it is for me to do difficult things. It is the heart of my life and I don’t understand 100% why, but it probably has something to do with the fact that I didn’t have the best childhood,” said the millionaire in his writing. Upon returning home and telling his friends about the conclusions he had come to while hanging from a rappelling rope in the Himalayas, his friends joked that “I should work for Elon and Vivek at DOGE and help America get out of its current crisis and not pay its own debt. So I contacted some people and they accepted me.” For a month, the millionaire was talking to the army of candidates to be part of the new “extragovernmental” department“which created, with more pain than gloryElon Musk. “I learned about the power of urgency and having an undeniable mission. I didn’t read it somewhere, I experienced it.” However, the young millionaire also realized that That wasn’t going to be his battle.. “After four intense and intoxicating weeks, I canceled my plans to move to Washington and embark on a journey to save our government with some of the smartest people I have ever met. And I booked a one-way ticket to Hawaii,” Hiremath said. After a journey through the desert of the human condition, the engineer has “learned to accept that I am happy learning physics.” However, that was not going to be his destiny either. As a restless engineer, Hiremath has found a purpose. Recovering one of the thoughts that went viral from his blog, the young millionaire has managed to “lay the foundations of my basic principles and be able to start a company that manufactures things in the real world.” He has discovered a new passion developing sensors and automation for startup Specterwhich is responsible for implementing “physical intelligence” to control the security data in public and strategic facilities. In the end, happiness was in something as humble as a weld of tin in a silicon circuit. He who has more is not richerbut who needs it least. In Xataka | If the question is whether money brings happiness, a Harvard expert answers: it’s not having money, it’s what you do with it Image | Unsplash (Danka & Peter, Clark Tibbs) A version of this article was published in January 2025.

Anthropic is about to achieve something that seemed impossible for a large AI company: make money

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

In a data leak published by The Wall Street Journalthe artificial intelligence laboratory founded by the Amodei brothers has informed its investors that it will close the second quarter of 2026 with revenues 130% higher than those of the first quarter of the year. It is a colossal achievement that also achieves something unusual for these companies: they will have an operating profit of 559 million dollars. They earn more than they spend. According to these data, the company will reach $10.9 billion compared to $4.8 billion in the first quarter. Its quarterly growth rate already exceeds Zoom during the pandemic or those that Google and Facebook had before their stock market increases. It is quite a breath of fresh air for an industry accused of being a gigantic bubble. The rivals, fatal. While Anthropic gives the big surprise, the rest of the competitors are still in a good financial situation. For example, OpenAI confessed to its investors that does not expect to see benefits until 2030. It didn’t work out well for xAI either, which carries losses of 6.5 billion due to investments in data centers. How did they achieve it?. To achieve this milestone, Anthropic has differentiated its strategy from the beginning. It has focused mainly on companies that pay for the intensive use of its agentic tools (Claude Code) and its APIs (Claude Opus/Sonnet 4.7). It also uses chips from manufacturers such as Google and Amazon, and has managed to optimize its spending in the cloud. It is therefore more focused and it is more efficient than its rivals, and that has had a clear effect on its balance sheet. Mythos as reputational success. In recent months Anthropic has fought several political and media battles and seems to have emerged victorious from all of them. Have Pentagon attempt rejected By controlling how its AI models were used was a clear boost to that brand image. But also the launch of its Mythos model It has been especially striking because although it is not publicly accessible, it does not stop giving headlines that seem to confirm that what Anthropic said (“it is so good that we better not release it”) was true. But. Although the figures are promising, there are nuances in these estimates. Not being a public company, Anthropic uses accounting methods that benefit it in this forecast. For example, it includes as direct revenue the sales of its models through its partners, such as AWS or Google Cloud, something that OpenAI does not do. In addition, it excludes stock compensation for its employees and these results do not guarantee that this profitability will be maintained throughout the year. We will see more quarters in red. The profit achieved would be extraordinary for many companies, but it is pocket change for Anhtropic. The company recently committed to spending $15 billion in SpaceX computing capacity using Colossus clusters. At the moment everything indicates that these benefits will be temporary and the company will return to red numbers. And yet, its evolution is currently more positive than that of OpenAI, against which it has not stopped winning battles for some time. In Xataka | Nvidia’s financial results are simply dizzying. And it still hasn’t sold a single chip in China

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