records

retatrutide destroys all weight loss records

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The pharmacological race against obesity continues to advance with the aim of finding a drug that allows weight loss in a simple way, and among the examples that we have on the table right now, Ozempic stands out. But now science is advancing a new active ingredient that in the first studies points to a average weight loss of 30.3% in 104 weeksa threshold that has never been crossed with other treatments and that can set a great precedent. The essay. The protagonist of this story is the retatrutida, and it promises to set a great precedent after this essay published by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. To understand the clinical magnitude of the finding, we must go to the basis of the study of the trial called TRIUMPH-1which has been specifically designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of retatrutide in adults who are obese or overweight. In addition, it has also analyzed the effect on patients who have associated diseases. How has it been achieved? Overcome the barrier that other very important treatments such as Ozempic or wegovy It is something that attracts a lot of attention, and the key to retatrutide lies in the mechanism of action. And while semaglutide (active ingredient in Ozempic) is an agonist of a single receptor, which It is GLP-1retatrutide acts as a triple agonist. That is, the molecule is capable of coupling to three hormonal receptors: GLP-1, GIP and glucagon. This triple pathway not only slows gastric emptying, suppresses appetite and improves insulin secretion, but direct stimulation of the glucagon receptor appears to increase basal energy expenditure. The latter is vital because, in addition to drastically reducing intake, it pushes the metabolism to burn more energy at rest. And this is the key. A predictable escalation. This is something that could already be seen that was going to arrive at some point, since previous medical literature already talked about the effects that this triple agonist could have. For example, in phase 2 of the trial, retatrutide had already demonstrated average weight loss 24.2% at 48 weeks with the maximum dose of 12 mg. But the key has come with the extension of the follow-up time up to 104 weeks, which has been the missing piece of the puzzle to verify if the therapeutic effect stagnated or if the patient continued to lose body mass with prolonged use. You have to be cautious. In an accelerated and highly competitive sector of pharmacology focused on obesity, it is necessary to know that this figure of 30.3% comes directly from the pharmaceutical company itself and not from a scientific source that has had a review behind it. Although the design of the trial is perfectly planned and the history of the clinical program provides a solid basis, there is still the publication of the definitive scientific article to analyze the “small print” and what logically does not want to be disseminated from a commercial perspective. It will be at that moment where key points can be revealed, such as, for example, the safety of this molecule and the exact metabolic impact. Images | freepik In Xataka | Ozempic’s great challenge is the rebound effect. Science already has two promising solutions to avoid it

Spain has broken records in youth employment. The bad news is that one in three unemployed people is already over 50 years old

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Unemployment in Spain has been chaining months of good news. In April, the number of unemployed fell to 2,357,044 people, falling below 2.4 million for the first time since June 2008. The story, seen from afar, is that of a labor market that has finally left its worst unemployment figures behind. However, that story has a blind spot. When the data is broken down by age, the initial optimism gives way to reality: the labor market is improving, yes, but not for everyone equally. The workers over 45 years they continue to fall behind, and the latest data of the State Public Employment Service (SEPE) confirm it. Senior unemployment is close to 60% of the total. Of the slightly less than 2.35 million unemployed counted in April 2026 in Spain, 1,376,550 unemployed were 45 years old. This represents 58.4% of all registered unemployment. In other words, six out of ten unemployed They are over 45 years old. The bad news doesn’t end there. Within this group of people over 45, one in three unemployed people is already over 50 years old. To put into perspective what that percentage implies, we must compare it with what happened in the same month among those under 25 years of age. Youth unemployment has improved its percentages with a drop of 10.2%, with 19,284 fewer young people on the SEPE lists. If we return to the data for those over 45 years of age, we find that only 19,990 people in this age group they found a job, but in this case the decrease has only meant a drop of 1.43%. That is, given the progressive aging of the active population in Spain, those over 45 years of age are the largest group, so although the number of people who have found employment are very similar, the weight as a whole is very different. Less unemployed, but more chronic unemployment. At the end of the first quarter of 2026, the segment of those over 55 years of age was close to 4.93 million employed people. This represents 22% of all workers in the country, with 242,500 more people than a year before. These are figures that reflect that, on the one hand, the active population is increasingly older and, on the other hand, he is retiring later and remains in the labor market for longer. The second bad news for those over 45 years of age is that those who lose their job at that age have enormous difficulties in recovering it. In March 2026, those under 25 years of age signed 308,094 contracts, compared to the 367,204 signed by the group over 45, which doubles the percentage of the active population in number. That leaves us with one conclusion: senior hiring is proportionally tiny. He Labor Market Report for People over 45 years of age 2026 prepared by the SEPE, indicates that this group will exceed 11 million employed during 2025, more than 50% of the total number of workers. Even so, this massive presence in existing employment does not translate into the same rate of access to new opportunities. This is an indicator that the barriers to the reintegration of those over 45 into the labor market continue to be insurmountable. once you lose your job. Proof of this is that 53% of the 755,500 unemployed people over 50 have been looking for a job for more than a year without finding it. Youth unemployment breaks its own record. The scenario for those under 25 years of age is diametrically opposite. unemployment among those under 25 years of age It closed April 2026 at 24.53% with a total of 169,693 people, the lowest figure in the entire SEPE historical series. In year-on-year terms, it represents a drop of 14.2% compared to April of last year, when there were 197,674 young people unemployed. A decade ago, in 2015, the youth unemployment rate in Spain stood at 44.4%. This sustained decline has no equivalent in any other age group, which makes youth employment one of the great successes of the Spanish labor market in recent years. In aging it is a determining factor. As the data show, age defines large differences in the impact of unemployment between the different segments of the active population, but this differentiation also means that unemployment punishes some communities more than others, with a special impact on emptied Spainwhere young people have moved to the large industrial hubs. By province, Zamora stands out strikingly because more than 62% of its unemployed are over 45 years old. Pontevedra and La Coruña also present very aging unemployment structures. In Xataka | There is a man who has been working for the same company for 85 years. And he has no plans to retire. Image | Unsplash (Hasan Mrad)

While the international pork sector collapses, Spain breaks records

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The Spanish pig industry closed 2025 with a historical record and, a priori, that cannot be. Because, finally, we are talking about 5.27 million tons of meat just when the European pig has been in recession for four years. 6% year-on-year growth just as African swine fever reappears after 31 years of absence. To give us an idea: Spain already invoices 24.2% of all pork in the EU and is the third world producer behind the US and China. How is it possible? The question is timely. After all, the sector is growing against the tide. Not only because of the plague, nor because of the conflicts between Europe and China; but because the collapse in prices and the general retreat would have advised taking a more conservative line. However, the explanation is simpler than it seems: what is sold as an industrial success hides a history of extreme foreign dependence, health fragility and an environmental problem that the country refuses to solve. But let’s go in parts. December 16, 2025, China increased its final tariffs on European pork from 4.9% to 19.8% for five years. It is true that Iberian ham and sausages were left out and that for many Spanish companies the average tariff was 9.8%, but the blow was forceful. Above all, because (although apparently all this was part of the electric car wars) the problem is structural: China imports less and less because it produces more and more. To this we must add that a little earlier, on November 28, 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture had confirmed the first two positives for African swine fever in wild boars, unleashing a problem that made headlines for weeks (and has still not been resolved). And from this storm that threatened to break everything, the only thing that has reached the consumer is that pork is the animal protein that has become the least expensive during 2025. Because? Well, because the crisis has been metabolized, driving the concentration of the sector: today, the ten largest companies market today 65% of national meat (compared to 52% ten years ago). We have lost 32% of small farms; but the big ones have more and more power. Something that also explains why the country is about to a very serious European sanction for not complying with the nitrates directive. In the end the question is not “how is it possible that the most efficient and best armored sector in Europe is simultaneously on the verge of a collapse of margins and with major water pollution problems?”; The point is that Spain produces more pigs than ever precisely for those reasons. Image | Amber Kipp In Xataka | The gap between what pork costs on farms and in supermarkets does not stop growing. The ranchers have said enough

Meta employees have not known for weeks if they are going to be fired. Meanwhile, the company records everything they do on the computer

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Meta is one of the companies that is betting the most on AI. Zuckerberg’s company is investing massively in the development of new data centers and critical AI technologies. And in the midst of this transformation, your employees find themselves vulnerable to mass layoffs, surveillance, and pressure to embrace the technology that could replace them. What exactly is happening. Meta has told its employees in the United States that it will record what they type on their keyboard, how they move their mouse, where they click, and what appears on their screen. The tool, internally called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), runs in the background on corporate computers and also takes periodic screenshots, according to counted Reuters, which had access to the internal memos. The company’s stated objective is to train its AI models so that they learn to perform everyday tasks on a computer in the same way that their employees do. Reaction. When the company announced the measure, hundreds of workers responded on internal channels, mainly asking how they could disable tracking. Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer at Meta, affirms That option does not exist on business laptops. However, that has not calmed the reaction of its employees. And it is that according to account In the New York Times, one employee even wrote to him directly: “Your insensitivity to the concerns of your own workers is troubling.” And all while they don’t know if they are going to be fired. Two days after announcing the tracking system, Meta confirmed which will lay off approximately 8,000 people on May 20, which represents around 10% of its global workforce. According to NYTwho spoke with several of his employees, many workers have been in a state of uncertainty for weeks. Some admit to being looking for work elsewhere. Others directly try to give signals that they want to be included in the layoffs to collect compensation. “It’s tremendously demoralizing,” wrote one of the users in an internal message to which the media had access. What Meta says. The company insists that the data collected is not used to evaluate employee performance or for any purpose other than training AI models. “If we are building agents to help people complete everyday tasks on computers, our models need real examples of how people use them,” explained a company spokesperson told the BBC. Meta also states that there are safeguards to protect sensitive content, although without specifying which ones. What employees say. The story is different from within. A worker who preferred not to be identified described the situation is described as “very dystopian”: knowing that every small action you perform on the computer is being recorded, just when the company is announcing layoffs, generates a feeling that is difficult to ignore. Another former employee said that it is “the last way they shove AI down your throat.” Legislation. In the United States there is no federal law that limits this type of workplace surveillance, as long as employees are informed of it, according to explained told Reuters Ifeoma Ajunwa, a law professor at Yale University. The situation is radically different in Europe, since Valerio De Stefano, a professor at the University of York specialized in labor law and technology, counted to the same means that this practice would probably violate the General Data Protection Regulation European. In countries like Italy, tracking productivity through electronic means is outright prohibited; In Germany, courts only allow keystroke recording in exceptional circumstances, such as suspicion of a serious crime. In Spain it would also be a very difficult measure to justify, and would directly clash with the RGPD. AI, at the center of everything. Beyond monitoring, Meta has been reorganizing its internal structure around artificial intelligence for months. It has organized mandatory training weeks for employees to learn how to use AI agents, introduced internal dashboards that measure consumption of tokens (the minimum unit of AI that measures its consumption) to foster competition between workers, and is creating a new generic professional profile called AI builder that replaces more specialized roles. And now what. May 20 is the date proposed by Meta to announce another wave of mass layoffs. Until then, thousands of the company’s employees live with the uncertainty of whether they will remain with the company, while also tracking their activity. Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, admitted during a call with investors that the company “really doesn’t know what the optimal size of the company will be in the future.” A phrase that is probably not reassuring for those who expect news on May 20. Cover image | Compagnons and Goal In Xataka | The Musk-Altman trial is giving the spectacle it promised: a soap opera of dirty laundry in which no one comes out well

After the hottest April since there are records, AEMET already foresees the following change: days of “winter atmosphere”

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After an unprecedented April in Spain (with temperatures more than three degrees above the average of the last 40 years), the Atlantic has decided to complicate our lives. In the coming days, a deep storm will move from the area around Iceland towards our coordinates, causing a sharp thermal drop between Saturday, May 9 and Monday, May 11. Are we facing a “cold wave” in May? No, nothing like that. We are not even facing something exceptional. Maritime polar air advections are a common pattern in Spanish springs. The strange thing is not the arrival of cold, the strange thing is how warm the air we have right now is. That is to say, we are going to notice the thermal dropYeah; but more because the temperatures are abnormally high (and we have become accustomed to them) than because the storm is colder than usual. It’s not her, it’s us. And here is the problem. As far as we know, climate change does not increase the frequency of polar irruptions in May, but it does increase their potential damage by advancing flowering, budding and fruit set. The paradox arises that exactly the same cold as any previous year can generate enormous destruction. What can we expect? Wednesday 6: The DANA that has been giving us problems so far this week is on its way to reintegrating into general circulation and is moving towards France. Thursday 7 – Friday 8: Here a new cold storm comes into action that will hit the west of Portugal, causing some days that are “very warm for the season”, according to AEMET. Friday the 8th: An associated Atlantic front will advance towards the Peninsula and we will begin to see its effects in the form of storms throughout the north. The accumulated ones will not be very large, but they will not be anecdotal either. Saturday 9 – Sunday 10: The party starts here. The storm will fully reach the Peninsula and, after a warm Thursday and Friday, the temperature drop will be abrupt. Tiempo.com talks about a thermal drop between 8 and 10 degrees. Starting Monday the 11th: With the available data, it seems reasonable to expect the cold environment to last a few more days. However, it is early to say. What AEMET says. The Agency It doesn’t say ‘polar’ at any point.but its characterization is very clear: speaks of the episode as a change from “high temperatures for the season” to “winter atmosphere” in a matter of 24-48 hours. It is very difficult to overcome the very strange month of January that we are experiencing, but 2026 is willing to try. Image | BenBaso In Xataka | The current that warms Europe will weaken by 51% before the end of the century. And Spain, according to experts, is already beginning to notice

China has broken records by expanding its wind and solar capacity. Now going all out with pumped hydroelectric storage

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In December 2020, Xi Jinping, the president of China, announced that the country he leads would reach 1,200 GW of installed wind and solar capacity by 2030. He was wrong. China reached this figure in July 2024and, therefore, no less than six years before the deadline set by the Government. At the end of 2025, the accumulated capacity of these two energy sources exceeded 1,840 GW, making them those responsible for 47.3% of China’s electrical capacity. That was the first time wind and solar energy They surpassed coal and gas in the Chinese electricity mix. However, the rapid expansion of these renewable energy sources has placed China in a scenario in which it is crucial to find a way to integrate them efficiently into the country’s energy system. Wind and solar energy have an intermittent nature, so it is essential to develop large-scale storage infrastructure and a network that is capable of managing the peaks and valleys of supply in an automated way. Pumping is the most efficient way to store energy on a large scale To solve this challenge, China has launched a strategy that proposes transforming energy storage into a national priority. One of the solutions it is deploying is installing large battery systems at a record pace. In 2025 its battery storage capacity grew by 75% compared to 2024. However, in this area its biggest bet is pumped hydroelectric storage. At the moment China has more pumping projects underway than all the other countries in the world combined. Their plan is to use excess solar and wind energy to pump water into elevated reservoirs and release it when electricity is needed. Pumped hydroelectric plants fit very well in mountainous countries because they allow you to take advantage of uneven terrain to move large masses of water between two reservoirs or deposits at different heights. China currently has more pumping projects underway than all other countries in the world combined. The excess energy can be used to pump water from the lower reservoir to the upper one using a hydraulic pump, and to recover that energy it is only necessary to let it fall back into the lower reservoir from the upper one so that it drives a hydraulic turbine. Pumped hydroelectricity has been used for more than a century, but it remains a very attractive technology. In fact, it is currently one of the energy storage systems more efficient large scale. The largest facility of its kind in Europe it is the pumped hydroelectric plant of the Cortes–La Muela complex (La Muela I + La Muela II), on the Júcar river (Valencia). If we stick to pumped hydro storage, China aims to add about 100 GW in five years compared to the current 59 GW. If it achieves its purpose, this technology will become the basis of its long-term storage system in this country. Still, the Government has also committed to more rapidly expanding battery storage. At the end of 2025 the accumulated capacity reached 136 GWwhich multiplies by 40 the level proposed by the previous five-year plan. Lithium-ion batteries clearly dominate this market, but China is investigating alternative technologiessuch as sodium-ion batteries, compressed air batteries, flywheels or gravitational storage. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Volt Insight Xataka | China dominates the world of renewable energy, but it has an Achilles heel: it depends on the West more than it admits

heat records in Spain have doubled

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Every summer in Spain seems to bring with it the same refrain and we repeat several times “this is the hottest day I can remember.” And although sometimes memory deceives us, statistics and mathematics have confirmed that It is not a subjective sensationbut breaking the thermometer year after year has become normal. And it is more common in some specific regions of our country, such as has collected El Confidencial in an interview with the researchers. The data. This has been determined by a team of researchers from the University of Zaragoza who has analyzed data from the State Meteorological Agency between 1960 and 2021. What they were able to observe is that the frequency of breaking a high temperature record has multiplied by two due to global warming. The interpretation. In the published article by these researchers, they are not limited only to counting hot days in a specific time range, but they developed a mathematical tool first level to have very reliable conclusions. And, instead of looking at weather stations in isolation, the team has created a Bayesian model using MCMC (Monte Carlo Markov Chains) methods. This means that they designed an algorithm that is capable of understanding how temperatures are related in space throughout the entire Spanish geography and in time during the period of more than sixty years that they have analyzed. An advantage. This system allowed them to filter out the statistical noise that exists when we interpret these data in a raw manner. In this way, they have processed data from more than 40 locations in mainland Spain and have found out not only how many records have been broken, but how many would have been broken if climate change did not exist. The result is that today we see twice as many records as would be expected in a stable climate. High heat areas. The spatio-temporal model has not only produced a national average, but has also made it possible to map extreme heat with astonishing precision, pointing out that the impact of climate change is more pronounced in specific areas of Spain. In this way, if we look at Spain in general, the frequency of thermal records in the last decade is almost double what is normal. But if we specify much moreareas such as the Northern Meseta, in the area of ​​Madrid and part of Castilla y León, and especially during the summer, have tripled the record data in their historical series, which is well above the national average. A prize model. The great work done by this group has not gone unnoticed, but has managed to win different awards, such as the award for the best applied contribution in statistics. But beyond recognition, the researchers have left a “gift” to the scientific community by leaving the model completely open in R. This means that climatologists and data analysts around the world can download their code and apply it to predict and model the breaking of thermal records in other regions of the planet. Images | Immo Wegmann In Xataka | Long periods of drought are going to become more and more normal. It’s time to get used to them

Spain has broken employment records. It has also broken a record of workers who need two payrolls

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The Spanish labor market closed 2025 with a record that no one would want to celebrate: never before have so many people needed to juggle two jobs at the same time. While the data highlighted in bold reveals record in memberships and a unemployment downthere is a figure that tells another equally revealing story about how the reality of employment in Spain is changing. Low salaries and the imposition of part-time work hours are the main triggers for the need to have several jobs to make ends meet. The data collected by a study of Randstad reveals that the number of employed people with more than one job In Spain they have already exceeded 630,000, which is a historic figure. The highest number ever recorded. At the end of 2025, a total of 632,800 employed people in Spain had a secondary job (or several), which is 50,000 more people than last year. In it last data Collected by the INE in 2022, the number of multi-employed people stood at 520,500 people. That of 2025 is the highest figure and represents an increase of 8.6% in just twelve months. The phenomenon continues to be a minority in relative terms since it affects around 2.8% of the total number of employed people, but its growth reveals that something is happening in the labor market. However, this growth is also included in the logic of growth of the labor market: there are more employees with jobs, so the probability that these employees have more than one job also increases. Precariousness is one of the keys. One of the keys to understanding this increase is not so much to look at the number of people with more than one job, but rather at the number of people with part-time work. According to EPA data From the last quarter of 2024, full-time employment decreased by 115,600 people, while part-time employment increased by 191,800. This information is relevant because a worker who wants to work full-time will look for a way to combine two (or more) part-time jobs to complete (or exceed) the time and salary that he or she would obtain with a full-time job. More women, but just barely. Although the difference is small, women slightly outnumber men in moonlighting. According to INE data corresponding to the end of 2025, a total of 317,200 women had more than one job, which is equivalent to 3% of the total number of employed women, compared to 315,400 men, which represented 2.6% of the total number of men. Once again, we find ourselves in a scenario in which, due to the need to reconcile childcare and precariousness, women are more likely to occupy positions with part-time hours. According to official dataIn 2025, part-time contracts for women increased by 62,311. A few hours in hospitality. The sector where the majority of those who chain two jobs are concentrated is the services sector, which brings together 87.5% of all multi-employed workers in the country. As and how I collected Investedof the more than 632,000 workers with double occupation, some 553,300 carried out their activity in this hospitality sector and services. The industrial and productive sectors reduce the presence of multi-employment workers due to the high demand for full-time labor that is registered in them. Thus, Industry recognizes 40,700 employees with more than one job, Construction 21,600 multiple employees and Agriculture 17,000. ​What’s coming in 2026. Randstad Research’s forecasts for this year indicate that Spain will reach an annual average employed population of 22.64 million people, which would represent a growth of 1.9% compared to 2025. The unemployment rate, according to these estimates, will continue to decline and will reach an annual average of 9.8%. However, 2026 presents a complicated economic scenario in which inflation can reduce purchasing power of families, which will predictably contribute to multiple employment in Spain continuing to rise, setting new records. In Xataka | A 22-year-old engineer combined two full-time jobs. His secret: do the minimum so that they don’t give him more work Image | Unsplash (Valentine)

The first four places have records below 8 and that has never happened

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The best score in the history of one of the most difficult exams in the country has been obtained by a 41-year-old doctor with an academic record of 6.7. That phrase explains in a simple way why MIR 2026 has become in a detective movie. While the MIR Spain Association (AME) has requested an audit to the Ministry and there is anonymous testimony that accuses the applicant of copying, the interested party he denies it and offers himself to any verification. It’s morbid. It’s juicy. But it is much more than that. A statistical anomaly… According to the AME, the Ministry’s history shows that there is an abnormal pattern. In 2025the best position with a record of 6.75 was 1458. In 2024, it was 1374. This year, that position is 1. We have to go to 2021 to find something that high and it fell below position 200. But the anomalies do not stop there. According to the AME, the first four positions have records below 8 and no, it is not normal. Something strange had been seen at MIR 2025, but now the situation has become generalized. That is to say, the problem goes beyond whether number 1’s colleagues believe that she has copied or not. …which shows a systemic problem. And, although the Ministry has not yet commented on the matter, the truth is that the problems are piling up. He MIR 2026 is already accumulating delays in the admitted listserrors in academic scales, several resignations from the expert committeeetc, etc, etc. However, the “most difficult exam in Spain” has had problems for years. And it’s not even a Spanish problem. Last year, Argentina found a 33.6% increase in the highest grades with no apparent correlation with previous academic records. 141 applicants were forced to take the exam again and, although none of them achieved their previous scorethere were about 20 that were reported by the Ministry. The interesting thing about all this is the questions that remain open. Because if widespread fraud is demonstrated, this is not about a suspicious person, it is about an entire evaluation system that has entered into crisis; that must be reinvented from the roots. Can we examine today in the same way as before? Image | Duonguyen In Xataka | Artificial intelligences are close to beating doctors in the most difficult thing: understanding patients

SpaceX is not only breaking records in space

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The Bloomberg Millionaires Index has moved its figures on great fortunes with a fact that is difficult to ignore: Elon Musk has become the first millionaire to exceed $600,000 million in estimated assets. According to he Bloomberg Billionaires IndexMusk’s fortune now amounts to about $638 billion, an unprecedented figure that places him in a completely new league within technological capitalism. The leap has been neither minor nor gradual. In a few weeks, the estimate of his assets has skyrocketed by more than $205 billion, driven, above all, by the expectation generated around the SpaceX IPO. SpaceX: Musk’s new gem. With a Tesla that seeks its place to define itself between an automotive or robotics company, the main engine of Musk’s fortune has moved towards the aerospace industry. SpaceX, majority controlled by Musk, has been one of the most valuable private companies in the world for years. The information about a possible IPO have revived investor appetite and valuations have skyrocketed internal of the company taking it up to 800,000 million dollars. With this, the valuation of Musk’s fortune has also increased. Bloomberg estimates that the company is already worth several hundred billion dollars, and Musk owns around 42% of capital, in addition to reinforced voting rights. Tesla, xAI and the rest of the Musk ecosystem. Although SpaceX makes headlines, It is not the only asset that supports Musk’s fortune. Tesla continues to be the other major pillar and, despite moving in a more complex context for the electric car and increasing pressure from Chinese manufacturers, the company maintains a stock market capitalization that is progressively recovering from reputational disaster What did the participation of its CEO in the cuts that DOGE carried out at the beginning of the year. Added to this are other less visible but relevant participations: xAI, the artificial intelligence company promoted by Musk, is consolidating itself as a business ecosystem highly concentrated in its figure, which amplifies any market movement, both up and down. Fortunes are not exact figures, but estimates. It is worth, however, putting the numbers about Musk’s fortune in context. Great fortunes are not balances in a checking account, but estimates based on the combined value of each millionaire’s business interests, properties and financial assets. And those estimates They vary depending on who calculates them and with what methodology. This is where the differences between indices appear. While the Bloomberg Index locates Musk’s fortune around $638 billion, Forbes offers a figure substantially lower: about 509,000 million. The gap is explained by several factors, including how SpaceX is valued. In other words, neither figure is “correct” in absolute terms. Both are reasonable approximations to an extremely complex heritage, but they serve to determine trends and a comparative value between great fortunes. One step closer to the first billion. Beyond the specific figure, this new record reinforces an idea that has been circulating for some time: Elon Musk is one of the clearest candidates to become the first billionaire in historythat is, being the first person to accumulate a fortune of one million million dollars. Yes SpaceX completes its IPO With the valuations that are being used today and Tesla manages to sustain its weight in the market, the jump to the billion is no longer an extravagant hypothesis and has become a plausible scenario in the near future. Musk’s milestone not only redefines the ranking of the richest in the world. It also underlines the extent to which economic concentration is occurring around a single person or company. In Xataka | Carnegie built libraries, Gates sold them on CD-ROM, Musk locked them in an AI: the history of knowledge control Image | SpaceXFlickr (Gage Skidmore)

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