| Jun 20, 2025 | | | | Happy Friday! Scale AI's top rival, Surge AI, hits more than $1 billion in sales. A SpaceX Starship rocket explodes during ground testing. Meta tried to buy Safe Superintelligence.
| | | Surge AI had more than $1 billion in sales last year, more than the revenue generated by its much talked-about competitor in data labelling, Scale AI. Last year, Scale AI had $870 million. There are other stark differences between the two startups: Surge is profitable, while Scale isn't. And while Scale has accumulated more than a billion dollars in venture capital, Surge doesn't have any investors. Surge's quiet dominance over Scale casts some doubt on Meta Platforms' recent decision to invest $14.3 billion for 49% of Scale, which may not be as competitive in the data labelling industry as it might've appeared. Data labelling companies are hired by AI developers like Google and OpenAI to teach their models the difference between good and bad content and grade what the models can produce. | | | A SpaceX Starship rocket exploded late Wednesday night while on a test stand in south Texas, sending a huge fireball and plume of smoke into the sky. On X, SpaceX said a "major anomaly" occurred with the rocket at 11 p.m. central time, but that it had established a safety perimeter around the rocket before the explosion and all of its personnel were safe. Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX, said in a post on X on Thursday morning that preliminary data suggested that a pressurized container for nitrogen at the top of the rocket had failed, which would be the first such issue with that part of the rocket's design. The explosion is the latest setback for Starship, SpaceX's latest and largest ever rocket, which is critical to the company's goals of traveling to the moon and eventually Mars. Parts of Starship disintegrated or exploded during several test launches of the rocket earlier this year. | | | Meta Platforms tried to acquire Safe Superintelligence, the AI startup launched by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter. Sutskever rebuffed Meta's offer and Mark Zuckerberg instead moved to recruit the startup's CEO and co-founder Daniel Gross, according to CNBC. The Information earlier reported that Meta was in advanced talks to hire Gross. Safe Superintelligence was founded in June last year by Sutskever, Gross and Daniel Levy, and is most recently valued at $32 billion. | | | Eutelsat Communications said it plans to raise € 1.35 Billion ($1.5 billion) in an investment round led by the French government as the company seeks to expand its satellite internet service and rival to Elon Musk's Starlink. In a statement, Eutelsat said that the fundraising round would increase the French government's stake in the company to just under 30%, more than doubling the country's interest in Eutelsat, Bloomberg reported. Eutelsat acquired its response to Starlink—OneWeb, which provides wireless internet service via low earth orbiting satellites—out of bankruptcy in 2023. France's investment comes as European countries are increasingly seeking to lessen their reliance on U.S. technology partners. Political tensions between Europe and the U.S. have intensified under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. And Elon Musk, whose rocket company SpaceX operates Starlink, has become a particularly polarizing business leader in Europe, where Musk has increasingly sought to influence political affairs. | | | President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order extending the deadline for TikTok to find a new majority owner for its U.S. operations, or shut down, by another 90 days until Sept. 17, 2025. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration will spend the next 90 days "working to ensure the deal is closed," according to the Associated Press. It's the third time Trump has delayed enforcement of the legislation, which was signed into law by the Biden Administration last year after passing through Congress with strong bi-partisan support. Trump, who credits TikTok for helping win last year's election, and Vice President J.D. Vance in April had proposed a deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. by selling roughly 50% of the U.S. business to new investors and licensing the TikTok algorithm from parent ByteDance. But any progress on the deal was scuttled by Trump's steep tariff hikes aimed at China. | | | Meta Platforms is in advanced talks to hire artificial intelligence investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross to help lead its AI efforts, The Information reported. Meta is also in discussion to partially buy out Friedman and Gross' venture capital fund, NFDG, which holds stakes in top AI startups and is worth billions of dollars on paper. If the talks are successful, Gross would leave Safe Superintelligence, which he co-founded with former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever last year. At Meta, Gross is expected to work mostly on AI products while Friedman's remit is expected to be broader. Both are expected to work closely with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, whose hiring by Meta was finalized last week in a $14.3 billion deal. As part of the talks, Meta is discussing buying out a substantial portion of NFDG's holdings and cashing out the fund's limited partners in the process. The social media giant will have minority stakes in the startups that NFDG has invested in, which could include Safe Superintelligence, but it will not get information about and control over these startups. | | | X CEO Linda Yaccarino told the Financial Times that users of the app would soon be able to make investments or trades on X. The move would expand owner Elon Musk's vision of making X an "everything app," and put it into direct competition with trading apps like Robinhood. X is already planning to launch a peer-to-peer payment feature called X Money with its first partner Visa. "You'll be able to come to X and be able to transact your whole financial life on the platform," Yaccarino told the newspaper while at the Cannes Lions advertising festival. She also said X was considering introducing an X credit or debit card. Musk recently merged X with his artificial intelligence startup xAI. The combined company is planning to allow employees to sell $300 million in shares at a price that would value it at $113 billion. | | | Telegram founder Pavel Durov says he will give away all his wealth to his kids—all 100 plus of them. Durov, who has an estimated $17.1 billion fortune, 40, has been a sperm donor for many years and has six children conceived naturally with three partners. None will have access to their inheritance until 2055. Durov isn't the only tech titan to talk openly about having his large family. Elon Musk has done so, too—becoming one of the loudest proponents in Silicon Valley of pronatalism, an effort to increase the world's birthrate and develop new fertility technology. | | | Microsoft is planning to cut thousands of jobs in the coming months, primarily in its sales organization, as the company aims to consolidate sales roles to reduce the number of salespeople customers interact with, according to two people familiar with the plans. The company is still determining the exact number of roles that will be cut and is aiming to finalize it by next month, when its next fiscal year begins, one of the people said. The eliminations follow an earlier round of layoffs at Microsoft in May that cut more than 6,000 roles, primarily in areas like engineering. The planned layoffs come months after Microsoft announced an internal reorganization of its sales teams that would consolidate various roles. Sales chief Judson Althoff told employees in April that the company would reduce the number of different salespeople customers interact with. For instance, customers of Azure previously interacted with different Microsoft salespeople responsible for selling product groups like "Core," "Data and AI," and "Innovation," but all of those roles will now be consolidated into a single Azure salesperson, according to a current employee with direct knowledge of the changes, which will go into effect next month. A Microsoft spokesperson did not provide a comment. | | | Waymo, Google's robotaxi company, said Wednesday it will begin mapping out New York City for the first time starting Thursday. People working for Waymo will manually drive five cars around the city, collecting data to create high definition maps of roads, buildings and signage that will later be used to launch commercial services in the area. The mapping operations will initially be limited to the daytime, and Waymo will focus on a section of Manhattan south of Central Park that extends to the Financial District. Waymo wants to use New York City to train the Waymo Driver to improve its performance in dense urban areas and snowy, rainy weather. Because of a New York state law that requires autonomous vehicles to have a safety driver behind the wheel, Waymo isn't able to offer commercial robotaxi services right now, though it says it's advocating to have the law changed. An eventual commercial roll-out will put it into direct competition with Uber, which controls 75% of the city's ride-hailing market, as well as Lyft. The stock of both companies dropped more than 4% after the Waymo announcement but recovered to end the day down less than 2%. | | | Popular articles By Kalley Huang and Cory Weinberg By Jon Victor and Kevin McLaughlin | | | | Opportunities Empower your teams to stay ahead of market trends with the most trusted tech journalism. Learn more Reach The Information's influential audience with your message. Connect with our team | | | | |
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