world

Apparently, the oldest restaurant in the world is in Madrid

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Here’s a question for note: What do Tarantino, Hemingway, Tom Jones, Pérez Galdós, Charlton Heston and Nancy Reagan have in common? The answer is that all those celebrities enjoyed (or that’s what tradition says) of the stews served in one of the most special restaurants on the entire planet: Botin Housea food establishment famous for its barbecues located in the historic center of Madrid, five minutes from the Plaza Mayor. If the business is famous beyond the capital or Spain, however, it is not because of its vast list of illustrious clients, nor even for its baked suckling pig or lamb. What stands out is its age. The restaurant owners come back Its origins date back to 1725, which would make it the oldest in the world. This is how it appears certainly in the Guinness of records. The oldest? That’s how it is. The world is very big and above all it has many, many restaurants (in Spain close to 90,000), but if we ask the authors of the Guinness book no doubt Which is the oldest of all: Botín, a restaurant that traces its origins back to the beginning of the 18th century. This is how its owners defend it, they need that the business was founded in 1725, and so it is recognized the most famous record guide on the planet, the Guinness World Records. In fact, the place generates so much interest that in 2025, coinciding with its 300th anniversary, it starred in chronicles in media such as Smithsonian Magazine, The Times either Financial Timeswhose reporters took the opportunity to try their famous baked suckling pig and order a bottle of Rioja. And what is its story? The Guinness Book assures that the restaurant was set up in the 18th century by a French chef, Jean Botin, and his wife, originally from Asturias. Other versions they need that it was Jean’s nephew, Cándido Remis, who started the business (hence why he is known as ‘Botín’s Nephew’). What all versions agree on is that the origins of the business date back to 1725 and that the building it occupies, on Cuchilleros Street, is even earlier and can be dated to late 16th century. Another surprising fact is that, despite its astonishing longevity, the restaurant has only passed through the hands of two families: first that of its founder, then, already in the 1930s, that of the González family, who have run the restaurant since before the Civil War. How is it possible? The big question. No matter how good a restaurant is, no matter how much effort its owners put into it, or how appetizing their food is, it usually ends up declining over time. Changes in tastes, changes in cities, crises, pandemics, wars, generational changes… there are many rocks on which a family business like Casa Botín can run aground. If there is something exceptional about her, beyond her piglets, it is her great resilience and ability to adapt to changes. The authors of the Guinness Book themselves remember Until the 18th century, the inn could not sell meat or food. He only cooked the food that the guests brought. “There is a legend that it was feared that if taverns served meals, men would never return home to their wives,” remember in Smithsonian Magazine Floriana Gennari, anthropologist. Over time, towards the 19th century, the business began to be called a ‘restaurant’, emulating the culinary fashions of France and opting for a more select approach. “In fact they made cakes and sweets before focusing on pork and local meat,” duck Gennari. Is it really the oldest? Its owners so they claim. And this has been recognized by the Guiness World Record and international media that present it as such, including National Geographic, Forbes, cnn or Forbes, which included it in 2012 your selection of “10 classic restaurants to visit”. Now, the popular establishment on Cuchilleros Street is not the only one to claim that title. Without leaving the Community of Madrid we found another business, the Casa Pedro tavern, which hold that its origins can be traced back even further in time, to 1702. Even the international press has been echoed of the struggle between both establishments to be able to hang in their living room the certificate that distinguishes them as the oldest restaurant. Outside of Spain there are also businesses that they assure have a centuries-old history behind them, some even greater than Botín’s. And what are they? There are those who say that in Salzburg there is a place, the St. Peter Stifskulinariumwhich was founded in the 9th century. In Regensburg (Germany) there is another that dates back its history to the 12th century, the same century in which the museum supposedly opened its doors. Ma Yu Chingin Henan, China. In Japan we also find some restaurant which ensures that its history is well before that of Botín. Probably what few can compare with Botín (besides his suckling pig) is his history, rich in legends. It is said that Goya came to work at the premises washing dishes, Galdós organized gatherings there and the fire in his oven has never gone out, not even during the pandemic. Enough to have captivated figures like Hemingway, who mentions the restaurant in his work ‘Fiesta’. Images | Wikipedia 1 and 2 In Xataka | In Vigo the hoteliers have decided that it is enough to occupy tables to just have a coffee. Solution: minimum consumption

While the world looked at Iran, China has seized an island in the Pacific without a single shot. And now he is militarizing it

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For some time now, some countries have been capable of creating land where before there was only open sea, modifying entire maps in a matter of years. These transformations, visible even from space, have come to alter trade routes, ecosystems and regional balances without the need for major confrontations. Because sometimes, the most decisive changes do not begin with a conflict, but with a work that no one stops. A conquest without shooting. While international attention was completely absorbed by the crisis in the middle eastChina has executed a quiet but deeply strategic move in the South China Sea. They counted in Forbes which, without the need for direct military force, has transformed a tiny island, a reef barely visible on the map, into a new key piece of your network of maritime control, taking advantage of the global distraction and the lack of immediate reaction. The late response from countries like Vietnam and the initial silence of the international community have allowed this movement to advance practically without opposition, consolidating a fait accompli before the debate even began. From sandbank to strategic base in months. Through satellite images, the Telegraph explained that the pace of construction at Antelope Reef It revealed extraordinary industrial and logistical capacity, with dozens of dredgers working in coordination to create square kilometers of land in a matter of months. What was once a simple sandbank has now become an expanding platform with visible infrastructurefortified perimeters and enough space to house much more complex facilities. This speed not only demonstrates the ambition of the project, but also Beijing’s ability to alter the physical terrain of the conflict before other actors can react. The image on the left corresponds to December 19, 2025. The image on the right corresponds to February 17, 2026 Legality as a tool, not as a limit. China has accompanied this expansion with a parallel strategy based on reinterpreting international law and presenting construction as an internal issue, diluting the legal conflict in a narrative of civil development. The problem? That, under the framework of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, these constructions they do not grant new rights sovereigns, which places the project in a clearly controversial and diffuse area. Still, the combination of fait accompli and legal argument allows Beijing to move forward no need for confrontation directly, moving the conflict to the diplomatic and narrative terrain. Militarization without concealment. Unlike previous phases, where China denied the militarization of its artificial islands, the current development clearly points for military use from the beginning. The dimensions of the land allow the construction of landing strips capable to operate advanced fightersas well as the future installation of radars, missile systems and surveillance networks. In other words, more than a simple base, the enclave emerges as a node within a larger architecture that connects ports, maritime militias and intelligence capabilities, reinforcing control over one of the most strategic routes on the planet. A new balance under the sea. If you will, too, the result of this effort is a quiet but profound shift in the regional balance, one where each new island expands China’s capabilities. to monitor, deter and project power without resorting to open confrontations. From that perspective, these types of movements, cumulative and discrete, allow consolidate strategic advantages that only become evident when it’s too late to reverse them. Thus, while the world’s focus shifted towards other conflictsChina has continued to redefine the map of the Pacific in its favor, demonstrating that in modern geopolitics it is not always whoever shoots first who wins, but whoever builds without being interrupted. Image | Planet L. In Xataka | Satellite images have revealed something disturbing in China: where there were once villages, there are now unmistakable structures In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran.

CATL is the largest battery manufacturer in the world and has a new goal: electrify the entire sea

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CATL, the Chinese giant that dominates the global battery market for electric vehicles, it has become entrenched to move towards a new front: the electrification of maritime transport. It makes more sense than it seems, but it is still a great technical challenge. Although the company is not caught by surprise. Below these lines we tell you all the details. What you are already doing. The company, which controls 37% of the global market for batteries for electric cars and 22% of the energy storage market in electrical networks and data centers, has been working in the naval sector since 2017. It has so far deployed its battery systems on about 900 vessels, although mainly on small ships operating near the Chinese coast, in ports or on rivers. Its subsidiary dedicated specifically to powering ships already exists, and this year it plans to more than double the team’s staff, reaching around 500 people, according to confirmed Su Yi, the head of that division, told the Financial Times. Why now. As the media shares, the maritime sector is responsible for 3% of global carbon emissions, and the International Maritime Organization has set itself a goal halve those emissions by 2050. But there is another more recent catalyst that has made many companies reconsider: the recent escalation of war between the United States and Israel against Iran and the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The war in the Middle East has once again highlighted the fragility of energy supply chains and CATL has a good margin of maneuver there. According to counted To FT Neil Beveridge, an analyst at Bernstein specializing in energy in China, the long-term consequence of this type of situation will be an acceleration of the “global mega-migrant towards electrification.” CATL shares on the Shenzhen stock exchange have risen about 13% since the conflict with Iran broke out. The challenges. Electrifying boats is not like electrifying cars, up to this point I think we are all clear. But seriously, batteries have a much lower energy density than traditional fuels, making them impractical for long-distance ocean crossings. The middle shared the study by the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Navigation, in which they concluded that the most promising approach in the short term is hybrid: combining electric propulsion with combustion engines. Added to this are extra risks that come from the marine environment itself: greater exposure to humidity and salinity, much more difficult evacuation conditions in the event of a fire, and the need for more demanding maintenance than in any car. Replicate the truck business model. CATL does not want to limit itself to selling batteries, as it wants to build an entire infrastructure around it, just as share in FT. It already operates in China a network of battery exchange points for trucks on highways, and now intends to take that same model to the sea. The idea is that ship operators can change their batteries in port without having to charge them, which would also eliminate that cost from the ship’s acquisition price. The company is working with municipalities and ports to develop this ecosystem from scratch; Cities like Guangzhou, one of China’s major shipbuilding centers, already offer subsidies for electric-powered vessels, according to share the middle. A personal story. There is a rather curious detail in all this. And just as account FT, Robin Zeng, founder of CATL, studied marine engineering at university before switching to electronics. “Naval engineering was his original discipline and passion,” Su Yi explained to the outlet. It has its advantages, because over time this discipline could end up becoming the next great industrial transformation of your company. Financial muscle. CATL closed 2025 with a net profit of 72.2 billion yuan (about 10.4 billion dollars), 42% more than the previous year, driven mainly by demand for energy storage. From this position of financial strength, the company has the muscle to invest long-term in a sector where margins are still uncertain. We’ll see how the company ends up doing. Cover image | Wikipedia and Elias In Xataka | In 2022, Europe forced energy companies to swallow the cost of the gas crisis. Now she’s willing to do the same.

The largest naval project in German history since World War II is turning out to be a crazy disaster

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In Europe, large military programs often take more than a decade to be completed and, in many cases, end up costing several times more than initially anticipated. It is not uncommon for complex projects to accumulate thousands of technical requirements and go through multiple reviews before reaching production. In this context, some plans are born as emblems of modernization… and end up becoming examples of how difficult it is to bring them to fruition. From something historic to something unsustainable. He program F126 was born as the great symbol of German rearmament and largest naval project of the country since the Second World War, but over time it has become quite the opposite: an example of how an ambitious plan can derail to the point of collapse. Conceived as a latest generation frigateflexible and prepared for decades of service, the project has not only accumulated delays and cost overrunsbut has called into question Germany’s ability to execute large military programs at a time when it aspires to lead European defense. Technical errors and chaos. He told in an extensive report the financial times that the origin of the problem seems as modern as it is devastating: a failed bet on a new software design that was not ready for a project of this scale. What should have been an advanced tool ended up generating cascading errors, from cables incorrectly located on the plans to steel parts manufactured with incorrect shapes, forcing manual corrections and slowing down the entire production. The result was a system that was moving at just a fraction of its planned pace, with delays that pushed the initial delivery several years later than planned. A culture shock. It turns out that the problem was not just technical. Apparently, the media reported that the project was trapped in a deep shock between the Dutch shipyard’s way of working and the German contracting system, known for its extreme rigidity. Thousands of specifications detailed even the smallest elements, while approval processes were they dragged on for months within a complex bureaucracy that required paper documentation and rejected even plans in English. This combination made collaboration a slow, frustrating, and, in many cases, unproductive process. Skyrocketing costs and limit decisions. As the problems piled up, so did made the invoice: The project, initially valued in the billions, began to go off track with significant cost overruns and structural delays. As it is, Germany now faces critical decisions ranging from replacing the main contractor to accepting billions already invested. as irrecoverable losses. At the same time, faster but less ambitious alternative solutions are being studied, reflecting the extent to which the original project has lost credibility. Notice to sailors of rearmament. If you like, the case of the F126 goes beyond a simple industrial failure: it reveals the limits of European military cooperation even among closely integrated countries and raises questions about the continent’s ability to implement complex joint programs. In a context of increasing of defense spending and increasing strategic pressure, the project has become a clear warning: It is not enough to invest more, you also have to know how to manage better. Because otherwise, even the most important projects can end up being, as in this case, a costly and lengthy example of what not to do. Image | Give me In Xataka | Germany is experiencing a new “industrial miracle” that it already experienced 90 years ago: that of weapons In Xataka | Germany was a sleeping military giant: now it has been awakened and it is already surpassing the US in bullets produced per year

To survive the end of oil, China has resurrected an old German technology from World War II: turning coal into plastic

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While the world assumes that China’s energy transition is based exclusively on solar panels and electric vehicles — and, in part, it is, consolidating as the first great ‘electrostate’—, reality hides a much darker side. Faced with the outbreak of the Third Gulf War, Beijing has not even flinched. Beyond its immense strategic oil reserves, the secret of its resistance lies in an even more daring maneuver: the resurrection of German technology from World War II. An old German technology. Faced with the instability of oil imports, China has perfected the use of coal to produce petrochemical products. This synthesis technology (historically known as the process of fischer–Tropsch) was originally developed by Germany to sustain its military economy during World War II. Although it is widely known in the chemical industry, its main defect has always been the enormous pollution it generated. China has improved it. Far from settling for an outdated process, Chinese researchers have radically improved it. According to the state agency Xinhuaa team from Peking University has achieved a historic breakthrough by adding a minimal amount of methyl bromide (five parts per million) to the catalytic process. This surgically “turns off” the pathway that forms carbon dioxide as a byproduct, reducing these emissions from 30% to less than 1% and opening the door to near-green manufacturing to convert coal-derived synthesis gas (syngas) into olefins, the building blocks of plastics. At an industrial level, expansion is already a fact. As detailed South China Morning Postin Turpan prefecture (Xinjiang), construction has just begun on the world’s largest coal-to-ethylene glycol (a toxic compound used for plastics and antifreeze) project, with an astonishing capacity of 2.4 million tons per year. Even, as the magazine highlighted ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineeringresearch is being carried out on how to integrate this process (called PFTO) to chemically recycle tons of plastic waste, converting it into syngas and then back into light olefins. Did you see it coming? It is not the first time that China decides to take sides and prevent rather than cure. The Asian giant has decided to completely decouple its industry from maritime vulnerabilities and Western influence. “This is not China’s war, but Beijing began preparing for it years ago,” points out The New York Times. Everything accelerated during Donald Trump’s first term, prompting President Xi Jinping to demand complete “self-sufficiency” that would insulate China from any disruption to foreign supply chains. Time has proven them right. The war in Iran has brutally increased the price of crude oil, suffocating international petrochemical competitors that depend on black gold. In contrast, local Chinese coal has only gotten cheaper. According to Reutersthis has been a financial triumph: shares of companies such as Ningxia Baofeng Energy, which produces millions of tons of chemicals from coal, have risen 30% since the start of the conflict, while traditional Asian refiners such as Rongsheng Petrochemical have lost up to 27% of their stock market value. Furthermore, the Chinese media analyzed by Carbon Brief They insist on a unanimous nationalist message: in the face of a real emergency, coal is the only resource that the nation truly controls, acting as the great “ballast” guarantor of its national security. A change to other sectors. The change is undeniable. As revealed Bloombergthe country’s main coal miner, China Shenhua Energy, has cut its overall budget by 16%, but has almost doubled its investment in coal-to-chemical conversion, from 2.5 billion to 4.1 billion yuan by 2026. But at a devouring pace, as The New York Times provides information that measures the phenomenon: in 2020, China used 155 million tons of coal to manufacture chemicals; by 2024, the figure jumped to 276 million, and in 2025 it grew another 15%, single-handedly exceeding the total annual coal consumption of the entire United States. The research center CREATE confirms this trend in its reportconfirming that the use of coal in the chemical industry grew by 20% year-on-year only in the first half of 2025. Added to this is that, as the American media explains80% of Chinese nitrogen fertilizer (a third of the world’s supply) is already made with coal rather than oil or gas, allowing Beijing to keep its product at less than half the global market price. Behind it there is a very high cost. All this bold industrial maneuver has a severe climate cost that is already setting off international alarms. China’s draft 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) has set extremely cautious climate goals. As the experts explain CREATE and collect Financial Timesthe set goal of reducing carbon intensity by only 17% is “disappointing” and leaves room for the country’s emissions to continue growing between 3% and 6% in real terms over the next five years. This new government plan de facto reverses the international promise to “phase down” coal consumption, replacing it with a consumption “plateau” and explicitly protecting the large-scale expansion of the coal-based petrochemical industry. Only chemical projects already planned to be built between now and 2029 could increase China’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by an additional 2%. The forecasts are resounding. According to Bloomberg, By 2030, China’s chemical roadmap will massively stop using oil as a primary fuel (thanks to the adoption of its electric vehicles) and will take advantage of its modernized facilities to seek 85% self-sufficiency in all advanced materials and chemicals, displacing traditional giants. A feared crisis of overcapacity. The European ideas laboratory MERICS warns of collateral consequences: The Chinese domestic economy, with consumer confidence stagnant since the pandemic, has no way to absorb all this gigantic new production of materials and plastics. As a direct result, Chinese factories are forced to export their immense surpluses to the rest of the world at fire sale prices. This aggressive price war propelled China’s trade surplus to a stratospheric record of $1.2 trillion in 2025. According to the complaint MERICSthese massive exports are cannibalizing the industrial base of other nations; In the European Union alone, up to 500 manufacturing jobs are being lost daily due to the total … Read more

Chile has the lithium necessary to save the world from fossil fuels. The problem is that you are extracting it blindly

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The world desperately needs to move away from fossil fuels. To achieve this, electric vehicles and large renewable energy plants require a vital component for their batteries: lithium. This global emergency has set its eyes on one of the most inhospitable and fragile places on the planet, the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is home to about 25% of the world’s reserves of this mineral. But this “salvation” has a dark side. As deep research reveals published by MongabayChile is accelerating the blind exploitation of its salt flats. Under the institutional promise that this mineral will be the “new salary of Chile”—as It was defined by former president Gabriel Boric by promising wealth with strict environmental respect—the reality in the territory is diametrically opposite. The productive desire is crushing the socio-environmental knowledge that is required to avoid destroying the same nature that, ironically, the world is trying to save. The pact that seals the future. To capitalize on this demand, the Chilean State launched the National Lithium Strategy (ENL)seeking to consolidate the country as the undisputed leader of this market. In this context, an unprecedented mining agreement was forged. According to The Confusionthe state mining company Codelco and the private giant SQM sealed a historic pact to extract lithium in the Salar de Atacama until 2060 under a new joint venture: NovaAndino Lithium. With the aim of avoiding the local resistance that usually paralyzes these megaprojects, the agreement included an unprecedented governance model. This scheme promises the Atacama indigenous communities (the Lickanantay people) million dollars annually in profitsseats at dialogue tables and power of environmental oversight. A model that the industry celebrates as the standard for future “green mining”, but which in the territory has lit a fuse with unsuspected consequences. The disproportion of 33 to 1. Promises of environmental balance crumble when looking at the fiscal wallet. The figures are devastating: for every peso that the Chilean State invests to protect the fragile ecosystems of the salt flats, it allocates 33 to promoting productivity and mining technology. Through the Production Promotion Corporation (CORFO), the State has injected more than 166 million dollars in technological development for the industry. In dramatic contrast, the scientific investment to understand the impact of lithium on water, microorganisms and threatened species – such as Andean flamingos – is barely close to 5 million dollars. Yovisibility territorial. Added to this institutional blindness is territorial invisibility. As the media explains South Slope when documenting the scientific project LiOness Ringthe public eye has become obsessed with evaporation pools, ignoring the off-sites: the areas outside the salt flats. Transportation routes, port terminals and transit communities silently absorb equal or worse impacts under “the excuse of green development,” researchers warn. For the National History Prize winner, Lautaro Núñez, cited by the same media, the key is being lost in the debate: “The salt flats are Chile’s heritage.” Thirst in the desert. As millions flow into technology, the ecosystem depletes. Extracting lithium requires pumping and evaporating enormous amounts of ancient water. As detailed The Confusioncurrent operations consume up to 12,500 liters of industrial water for every ton of lithium, causing the salt flat to sink up to two centimeters per year. Faced with this threat, the injection of money has caused the greatest historical fracture of the Lickanantay people. The communities went from blocking routes in January 2024 to fighting each other for the millionaire loot, which could reach up to 150 million dollars annually for the region, according to data from the Chilean government. Social fracture. Rudecindo Espíndola, local farmer cited by The Confusionassures that participating in this agreement is a form of “participation justice” because, after 12,000 years of inhabiting the territory, they will finally have physical access to the plants to supervise the mining companies. However, others see the destruction of their social fabric. Sergio Cubillos, president of the Peine community, recognize the same publication that “the fact that today communities receive money is what has led to this division.” Sonia Ramos, a respected 83-year-old healer, is even more blunt. in his interview with Climate Home News: “We are land and water (…) but today there is fragmentation. Everything has become unbalanced.” For her, the mining megapact does not bring progress, but “death, the total destruction of the Salar.” So what’s going to happen? Seeking to justify its expansion until 2060, NovaAndino has promised to stop using fresh water and reinject at least 30% of the brine into the subsoil through new extraction technologies. However, this promise is being viewed with great skepticism. As microbiologist Cristina Dorador warnsthese reinjection technologies are not proven on a large scale and could alter the chemical composition of the desert. Continuing pumping until 2060, he says, could be the “coup de grace” for this vital ecosystem. The State as a facilitator, not as a protector. Politically, the course seems unchanged. The recently inaugurated far-right president, José Antonio Kast, has already promised to respect the contracts signed by the previous administration. The machinery will continue to operate. In statements to MongabayHernán Cáceres, director of the National Institute of Lithium and Salt Flats (INLiSa), justified the low state budget in environmental areas by arguing that this money is actually an “enabling expense.” That is, the State finances ecological studies and dialogue tables not necessarily to stop the impact, but to “pave the way” for mining companies, reducing the risks of social conflict and guaranteeing that companies can operate without resistance from indigenous peoples. Blindfold. While technological investments advance at record speed, legal protection, such as the recent creation of the Network of Protected Salt Flats, moves at a slow pace, trapped in bureaucracy and lack of funds. The history of lithium in Chile encapsulates the great contradiction of our time. In the quest to clean the air in the metropolises of the northern hemisphere, one of the oldest and most biodiverse corners of the global south is being squeezed and fractured. As the research concludes, the country today faces a monumental challenge: … Read more

be the first world power

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China has a very peculiar way of establishing its roadmap towards its great objective, which is none other than become the first world powerand here technological mastery is crucial. They do it through a very communist tradition: the five-year plans that they started. China already has its new plan for the period 2026-2030 and it is the most ambitious to date. The 15th five-year plan. China started this five-year plan in 1953, so this is the fifteenth. It was approved at the beginning of the month and it details the roadmap for the next five years. The main objective of the plan is to reinforce China’s comprehensive security in the face of extreme scenarios, ensuring economic, energy and military resilience while maintaining the ability to compete in advanced technology. The technologies of the future. With the ‘Made in China 2025’ planChina set out to lead in thirteen strategic technologies with quite good results. In its new plan, China establishes the priority strategic technologies for the next five years: Yes, but. China’s ambition is undeniable, but whether they are going to achieve all these objectives is another matter. They count in The Economist that, in the past, China has managed to lead in technologies that were already mature, such as renewable energy or electric vehicle batteries, but has had more difficulties in complex areas such as advanced chips. This new commitment includes many technologies far from the sectors where they already dominate and for which there are still many unknowns, both technical and commercial. Economic growth. It is another of the axes on which the plan is based, although for this they are given time until 2035. The government wants to increase the GDP per capita, which is currently at 14,000 dollars, to at least 20 or 30,000 dollars. To achieve this, they would need to grow between 4 and 8% annually over the next decade. The Chinese economy has started 2026 somewhat better, but it takes time in decelerationso it’s going to be complicated. China prepares for war. Perhaps it is the most overlooked part of the new plan, but the one that makes the most sense in such a turbulent geopolitical scenario. China wants to ensure that it is strong on all fronts, a kind of “whatever may happen.” To achieve this, they want to create strategic industrial zones in inland areas and ensure food and energy self-sufficiency. Furthermore, in the field of defense, they want to prepare for war scenarios with unmanned and intelligent weapons and reinforce border security. Image | Pycril In Xataka | You go to a music festival, a man marries you in two minutes: the idea in China to reverse the demographic crisis

the largest startup incubator in the world

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In recent years, NVIDIA has gone from being a company gaming hardware who was doing interesting things in the field of artificial intelligence to being, directly, the glue of the entire AI industry. And it has achieved this through graphic muscle, but also thanks to deep pockets and a very clear vision: to become the largest AI incubator in the world. Although, for some, there has been become an awkward partner. You can’t talk about AI without talking about NVIDIA, but along the way it has achieved something else: turning its main allies into rivals. NVentures. A few years ago, Jensen Huanghead of NVIDIA, realized something: the AI ​​had to be from NVIDIA or it wouldn’t belong to anyone. The CEO identified the need to become an investor, but also the technical support point for startups that were beginning to buy many of his chips for AI training. Years before, NVIDIA had Inception, a branch focused on non-financial support, but in 2022 it launched NVentures. It is the corporate venture capital arm of the company and was born at the dawn of the generative AI that we know today. In fact, it was launched a few months before ChatGPT public releasewhich was precisely the one that popularized the massive use of NVIDIA GPUs to train large-scale models. If with Inception more than 19,000 AI startups went through the advisory program (with training, cloud credits and discounts on massive GPU purchases, but without direct investment), with NVentures things also escalated quickly. From a direct investment in 2022 they passed to 30 in 2023, 54 in 2024 and 67 in 2025. Some are larger than others, but all are investments of tens of millions of dollars that have served to boost the current ecosystem in a kind of circular economy. Do you think I’m a bank? In this article of TechCruch investments are laid out perfectly and separated into “clubs.” There is the 100 million with companies like Ayar Labs, Hippocratic AI, Kore.ai or Runway that have received more than 100 million dollars. That of hundreds of millions with Cohere, Commonwealth Fusion, Perplexity, Lambda or Black Forest Labs as exponents. And then the billion dollar club. In that bag are the big names such as Cursor, xAI, the French Mistral, Reflection AI, Thinking Machines Lab, Figure AI or Scale AI. Also two uncomfortable partners: OpenAI and Anthropic. The relationship between OpenAI and NVIDIA has been long and symbiotic. Both have helped each other put themselves on the map of generative AI, but NVIDIA is going to cut off the tap. Recently, Huang himself commented that they will put 30 billion in OpenAI, or… and that the two mega-operations will probably be the last. The two companies are expected to go public later this year, so they will have to start fending for themselves. Business turnaround. That does not mean that NVIDIA is going to stop injecting money, it simply implies that they are going to allocate that money to be in more places at the same time. Instead of such large amounts, more financing for more “modest” companies in models, software, infrastructure, robotics, cloud and even autonomous driving and biotechnology to continue expanding the network of companies that scale on their platform. In fact, this investment in small companies that are beginning to grow is very lucrative. An example is the Reflection funding round. Of the 2 billion that the company raised, 800 million came from NVIDIA’s pockets, and much of that money, along with interest, will flow back into his pockets. NVIDIA is so important that the company points out that “when you talk to it, you are talking to NVIDIA.” That dependence on NVIDIA is what makes the company an uncomfortable partner because it has enormous power. Inference. But the other turn is not so much from NVIDIA as from the industry itself. These last few years we have focused on training. More and more powerful chips to power increasingly fat data centers in which increasingly capable models are trained. However, once trained, the model must be useful for something, and that is where inference comes into play. Because it is estimated that the big growth of the future of AI will not be so much training the next ChatGPT, but the ability to manage billions of AI requests cheaply and efficiently. This implies that there must be more specialized chips with different architectures than a classic training GPU. The analysts are already pointing that the speed at which the need for inference increases is faster than expected. From lovers to enemies. and there other companies come into play. On the one hand, classic rivals such as Huawei with equipment both for training and for inference. Also a AMD that is gaining contacts like Samsung to create training GPUs and inference CPUs. Intel, Amazon and Google also have their own chips. But NVIDIA’s biggest customers don’t want NVIDIA to dictate their future. OpenAI is working with Broadcom to develop its own chips that may be focused on that inference and both Tesla and xAI (now part of SpaceX) also They have taken the same path. The two companies have needed NVIDIA until now, but they do not want to depend on it for an inference where there may be more profit margin. Because the idea is to create chips that are very specialized in request management to lower the cost of AI as much as possible. China is an example of this. The country’s big technology companies and startups have focused on one thing: training specialized models and making inference so cheap that the user doesn’t mind paying. There is already someone point that 80% of the cost of AI in the short term will be inference, and solutions are needed. The ace in the hole. But if almost all allies have been preparing their deck for some time to stop depending on NVIDIA’s cards, NVIDIA has also been doing the math and keeping the ace up its sleeve. … Read more

The world trembles over Hormuz oil while ignoring what feeds 50% of the planet

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Geopolitics has a curious tendency to make us focus our attention on a specific point and not look at everything around us. With the scale of the tension in the Strait of Hormuzall eyes were on crude oil and the price of gasoline; However, experts warn that fertilizers are also in the spotlight. And the reality is that its collapse can cause a lack of food in our crops, since the vast majority depend on it. An invisible engine. Although the world seems to have forgotten about the fertilizers that arrive through the Strait of Hormuz, the reality is that we can affirm that humanity cannot exist without organic chemistry. And it is no wonder, because more than half of the food produced worldwide is available thanks to mineral fertilizers, as the IFDC points out. If we go further, the studies point out that nitrogen fertilizers Synthetics sustain the diet of almost half of the world’s population. And the worst of all is that, without this mineral contribution, global harvests will be directly reduced by half, so we are not talking about a product that improves performance marginally, but rather we are talking about the pillar of a food system that supports 8 billion people. A bottleneck. In this context of absolute dependence, the media focus is paradoxical. International attention and logistical surveillance focus almost exclusively on fossil fuels, ignoring the fact that fertilizers are a highly concentrated industry and closely linked to natural gas. But organizations like UNCTAD and media like EFE they have put figures to disaster by estimating that a third of global maritime fertilizer trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. This means that logistical interruptions in the Persian Gulf directly affect millions of tons of agricultural inputs, which for the UN It is undoubtedly a major impact on global food security. There are no reservations. In recent weeks we have seen how different governments have announced with great fanfare the release of thousands of barrels of oil in national reserves. A strategy that has been built in recent years to be able to cushion this type of geopolitical shocks, but with fertilizers there is no such thing. It has consequences. The analyzes of the experts point out in this case that the interruption of the fertilizer chain has a full impact on the field, since any interruption has a full impact on the bank. Here both the FAO and the World Bank They have been warning for months that the suspension of shipments from the Gulf can skyrocket food prices almost instantly, severely affecting countries that depend on food imports. But the problem is that right now there is a significant lack of infrastructure, since we are seeing that the sector is dominated by a few players such as Russia, China, India and the United States. This, added to the shortage of long-term storage networks, makes us think that the price of food may suffer a large increase in the coming weeks, as well as have a bad harvest of 2026. Measures to alleviate it. The Government of Spain recently approved a new text that, in addition to lower energy-related taxesalso opted to inject money into the primary sector. In this case, direct aid was offered to partially compensate for this increase in fertilizers with the aim of ensuring that the increase was not transferred entirely to the shopping basket. Images | James Baltz Jonathan Cooper In Xataka | You’ve probably never heard of urea. The missiles in Iran are destroying their production, and that will affect your food

150 years ago, Spain made a unique decision in the world. Ouigo and Iryo believe that Renfe uses it to get them out of the market

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They have no rolling stock. And the worst of all (for them) is that they are not going to have it. Ouigo, Iryo and a third rolling stock company have raised their voices before the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) to make it clear that the current system with two gauges of track reduces their competitiveness in our country compared to Renfe. And it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change in the short term. What has happened? The CNMC has published a document with the name “Report on technical barriers to the provision of railway services”. It sets out the challenges and interventions that Spain should carry out in the coming years. It specifies that the Spanish railway system has the obligation to improve interoperability with its neighboring countries, both to facilitate the flow of passengers and goods. But there is a drawback: the track widths. And this inconvenience has a very relevant economic impact. They complain. In the document the different postures are collected of those involved. And it states that “Ouigo, Iryo and a rolling stock manufacturer (which is not specified) warn that the uncertainty regarding the schedule and details of the Gauge Migration Plan, as well as the unification of the electrification system and the implementation of the ERTMS signaling system, makes decision-making on strategic investments difficult, and they ask that the Gauge Migration Plan be prepared and published as soon as possible.” In short: the two operators and the rolling stock manufacturer complain that Adif does not have a clear plan as to whether the Iberian high-speed track gauges are going to adapt to European standards, which move in standard gauge. The same happens with the unification of the electrification system and the definitive implementation of the ERTMS system. And they defend themselves. The position of Adif and Renfe is set out in the same document. Both companies “point out that incorporating gauge change technology in the rolling stock and infrastructure is less expensive and entails fewer interruptions in traffic than the migration of the infrastructure. On the other hand, both the AESF and the DG of the Railway Sector indicate that, in addition to Talgo, there is a second manufacturer of variable gauge rolling stock for high speed, CAF, although they admit that it is currently only approved to operate at 250 km/h.” In short: neither Renfe nor Adif They believe that adapting to the standard width is economically profitable given the high economic impact. The bottleneck. What Ouigo and Iryo defend is that the current situation and the commitment to trains with wide gauge technology leaves them behind. They have two reasons to maintain this. CAF can supply trains with this technology but they are only approved to travel at a maximum of 250 km/h. Talgo is the only company with this technology with approval to circulate up to 350 km/h. They are known as Talgo AVRIL but their production is committed to Renfe. And the results are not satisfactory either.. Beyond these two manufacturers, no one seems to want to get involved in the production of trains capable of changing tracks between standard and Iberian gauge. And the fact is that their production means meeting a demand that is still a niche or a rarity in the world railway system. Very juicy. The reluctance of Adif and Renfe is not strange either. For Adif it would mean a huge investment that has to be able to make profitable with the rest of the operators when the vast majority of current corridors in Spain already operate with standard gauge. For its part, Renfe does not want to let go of this trick either. Right now, the high speed to Galicia needs trains that are capable of moving between the Iberian gauge and the standard gauge if you do not want to transfer and the Spanish company is the only one that has the trains for this. The Galician corridor has also emerged as one of the most profitable. Travel has grown so much that it has made airlines retreat and now that they have to liberalize the line, maintaining the current situation guarantees that they will continue to be the only ones that will be able to offer this trip without transfers, which is a clear competitive advantage. Photo | Falk2 In Xataka | “Whoever wants to come, should invest”: Ouigo wanted to enter the Madrid-Galicia AVE but now sees it as impossible before 2030

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