Tootfinder

Just tell him no and to F-OFF.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-aircraft-carriers-steam-catapults-ffa9f3ce102ecd5d6126db03e901a56f

Monitoring Analytics: PJM's recent electricity auction is expected to add $6.3B to customers' bills in 13 states and DC through 2029 due to data center demands (Ivan Penn/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/busines

Data Centers to Add Billions in Power Costs in 13 States
A power auction conducted by a giant grid operator is expected to add $6.3 billion in additional charges to consumers and businesses because of electricity needs of data centers.

The AI buildout could require so much borrowing that Wall Street’s bond market may not be able to finance it,
creating a roughly $1 trillion gap that could be filled by private credit, Apollo’s chief economist said Friday.
Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, wrote Friday that AI-related borrowing accounts for more than 40% of new long-term, investment-grade corporate debt,
and that Apollo estimates the
“AI ecosystem” could support more than $2 trillion in debt.

AI Buildout Faces $1 Trillion Financing Gap, Analyst Says
The world’s largest companies have pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to match growing demand for AI.

CoreWeave says it is targeting insurers' "unlimited" capital, as the AI cloud provider seeks cheaper ways to fund the tens of billions it is spending on chips (Ryan McMorrow/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/4ffa1853-0e2c-424f-b941-88c6bcac5765

"Revealed: how companies ‘secretly’ use billions of litres of public water in drought-hit England"
#England #Drought #Water

Revealed: how companies ‘secretly’ use billions of litres of public water in drought-hit England
Exclusive: As millions of people face hosepipe bans, many companies are not required to report, let alone cut, use of public supply

Climate bills are coming in now, big time: Rhine shipping cut in two as ships coming from Rotterdam can't get any further than Duisburg or Cologne anymore, instead of being able to reach Switzerland or even further via the Danube. Billions of damage for German industry.
https://nos.nl/l/2626584

Sources: Tokyo-based memory maker Kioxia is considering raising $10B through a 2027 US ADR listing as it seeks liquidity after billions in share buybacks (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-14/kioxia-is-s…

Trump Orders Navy to Restore Old Technology in Aircraft Carriers, Costing Billions (Marcus Weisgerber/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/trump-orders-navy-to-restore-old-technology-in-aircraft-carriers-costing-billions-0055ec1b?st=Rgfcck&reflink=article_copyURL_share
http://www.memeorandum.com/260813/p93#a260813p93

Daniel Ek's Neko Health, which offers AI-based full-body scans, raised $700M co-led by Lightspeed and O.G. Venture Partners, sources say at a ~$7B valuation (Bernhard Warner/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/business/dealbook/neko-health-…

Tech Investors and Longevity Influencers Back Neko Health’s Mega Round
The health tech start-up co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek is worth billions more after a new $700 million funding round.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has poured $102 million into a political nonprofit bankrolling ballot measures that could block California’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires.
Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on assets of California billionaires,
raising tens of billions for healthcare, education and food aid,
-- but competing measures 41 and 42 could override it.
The November showdown over taxing the ultra-rich has drawn national figures, powerful unions…

Google's Sergey Brin spent $102 million fighting California wealth tax
Brin has been pouring money into Building a Better California, a group that's backing two measures that could nullify a proposed billionaire tax.

The Milky Way Flipped its Disk Billions of Years Ago - Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-milky-way-flipped-its-disk-billions-of-years-ago

We’ve passed 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. 2.4°C is now unstoppable. Recent projections show we’re on track to reach 3.0°C by 2050, a level of heat that puts billions of lives at risk from un-liveable heat, agricultural collapse, social upheaval, and war. https://4billiondead.org/

4 Billion Dead - There are no words
Join the next public call We’ve passed +1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. +2.4°C is now unstoppable. The image above is from the Planetary Solvency report by the Institute and Faculty of…

Billions of people could be left behind by AI because it doesn’t understand them, Gates Foundation warns | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/ai-poverty-inequality-gates-foundation-b3049925.html

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Michigan,
embraced Donald Trump’s suggestion that the two represent
“VERY DIFFERENT” versions of the US,
-- pledging to fight inequality while the president is “making billions of dollars off of you”.
In a Saturday night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump shared an image of himself and the first lady, Melania Trump, beside a photo of El-Sayed, who is Muslim, and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, wearing a hijab.

Abdul El-Sayed embraces Trump claim he represents ‘very different’ America
Michigan nominee, who spoke to Obama after primary win, vows to fight inequality as president ‘makes billions off you’

CEOs alarmed that spending billions to replace trained humans with expensive statistical autocomplete isn't making them money. Film at 11!
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ceos-ai-returns

Majority of CEOs Alarmed as AI Delivers No Financial Returns
A survey found that more than half of CEO respondents said "their companies aren’t yet seeing a financial return from investments in AI."

“[You] don’t need superintelligence to create a super amount of harm. The combination of unpredictable, non-normative output from unrestricted LLMs and powerful digital tools will inevitably create issues.”
https://calnewport.com/anthropic-just-threatened-to-kill-billions-of-people-this-is-not-okay/

OpenAI has "committed" to spending 100s of billions but hasn't actually borrowed any money.
It's Oracle that's carrying all the debt for Open AI - $160 Billion - borrowing against 30yrs of future Oracle licensing.
▶️ The First AI Domino to Fall?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=…

Palantir Technologies,
one of the world’s most influential — and controversial — surveillance tech companies,
🔸enjoyed an effective tax rate of just 1.4% globally last year
🔸while paying no US federal income tax
despite recording substantial profits, an analysis released on Wednesday revealed.
The study, Who Pays for the Surveillance State?, was written by the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR)
in partnership with th…

Palantir: Surveillance State Profiteer Making Billions in Profits, But With an Effective US Tax Rate of... Zero | Common Dreams
"The likes of Palantir need to stump up what's due," said one expert. "Tech giants raking off billions in profit can’t be free to pay what they please."

Data Centers to Add Billions in Power Costs in 13 States (Ivan Penn/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/business/energy-environment/pjm-electricity-prices-data-centers.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260714/p168#a260714p168

Sources: the FTC and 20 state AGs plan to sue Amazon for allegedly making tens of billions over seven years by manipulating ad prices on its retail platform (Dave Michaels/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ftc-to-file-lawsu…

Sources: a16z told investors Thinking Machines Lab is in talks to raise $5B-$6B led by Accel at a $40B pre-money valuation; Nvidia is expected to invest ~$2.5B (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/thinking-…

Thinking Machines Lab In Talks to Raise Billions at Roughly $40 Billion Valuation
Thinking Machines Lab, the AI developer led by ex-OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, is in talks to raise at least $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion before the investment, according to a person with knowledge of the fundraise. Existing investor Accel is in talks to lead ...

Not surprising but worrying, it increases the chance of a hard financial crash of the AI bubble. Which will not only hurt tech companies.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-hide-debt-off-balance-sheet

AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt
AI companies are pouring tens of billions of dollars into enormous data centers. They're being built on top of a mountain of hidden debt.

Two-thirds of the world’s population will soon have to contend with too little water or poor quality water https://www.earth.com/environment/water-pollution-could-leave-billions-without-enough-clean-water/

Two-thirds of the world’s population will soon have to contend with too little water or poor quality water
Water quality may worsen water scarcity, leaving billions without enough suitable water for homes, farms, factories and power.

https://rs.bot/5Q9bjK

'Robert Jenrick said: “It’s frankly outrageous that Burnham is considering scrapping the triple lock when we’re wasting tens of billions of pounds on nonsense. Instead he should slash the benefits bill, foreign aid and net zero subsidies."'
He really is nasty.
What Prime Minister Andy Burnham will say today in key Labour Party conference speech amid triple lock rumours - Manchester Evening News

What Prime Minister Andy Burnham will say today in key Labour Party conference speech amid triple lock rumours
He's due to announce a new publicly-owned 'Great British Grid' in a bid to bring UK energy costs down

Reducing the immigrant labor pool,
imposing tariffs on imports,
and the Iran War
are costing consumers billions in higher out-of-pocket costs.
Trump’s problem now is all three of his major second-term policies are raising prices across a range of commodities, but especially housing, food, and gas.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump, his supporters, and the national punditry invoked that term to indict President Biden’s economic policies.
Although…

Trumpflation is here
He broke it, he bought it.

#AI

In the fall of 1965,
after the Voting Rights Act passed,
the coalition of black, socialist, and progressive leaders who had come together to organize 1963’s March on Washington
joined together again to create an ambitious policy document
with no less a goal than ending poverty in the United States
without cost to taxpayers.
First released in 1966,
it proposed using strong economic growth to provide a federal jobs guarantee,
universal health ca…

“A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” Annotated
“A Freedom Budget for All Americans” proposed spending billions of federal dollars to provide jobs and basic welfare to all citizens.

Is the chasm between the billions tech is spending on data centers and its scant AI earnings a bet on a shiny future? Or is it a convenient mask for an even less popular agenda?
I run the numbers https://jonippolito.substack.com/p/what-if-data-centers-arent-really…

Sources: the NSA told lawmakers it is spending billions this year to test AI models; proposals for a US AI regulatory body estimated costs of $20M-$40M per year (Jeff Stein/The Washington Sun)
https://www.washingtonsun.com/technology/classi…

Classified Estimates Show the NSA Is Paying Billions to Test AI Models
The price tag is significantly higher than previously known.

Had no idea that St-Thomas was so important for rail connections back in the days in Canada.
Also had no idea there was a rail museum there either, which is a shame
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/st-thomas-ontario-passenger-rail-…

OpenAI has bad news for anybody who thought AI companies were about to unlock trillions of dollars in profits:
it ain’t happening anytime soon.
Some red-hot reporting from the Financial Times just revealed that OpenAI’s annualized revenue
— an estimated guess at a company’s income for the year
— is roughly $20 billion lower than anybody had previously expected,
including, it seems, OpenAI itself.
Because OpenAI is a private company,
it’s important t…

AI Bubble Teetering on the Brink as OpenAI Admits to Massive Financial Failure
It turns out that AI demand is significantly lower than expected, as OpenAI shaves $20 billion off its revenue expectations for 2026.

"It took five weeks, billions of dollars and all the top soccer talent in the world, but FIFA finally managed it. It turned the biggest sports event in the world into a bad awards show."

Curious how this will develop.
I think Schwarz Digits is on a great course, business-wise.
My hope is now for interesting custom processors to develop as part of its expansion.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-richest-man-big-tech-schwarz-digits/a-7789372…

Germany's richest man takes on Big Tech
Supermarket billionaire Dieter Schwarz is investing billions in his cloud company, Schwarz Digits, to rival Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

India plans to invest up to $25B in its nascent deep tech industry, as it looks to catch up with the US and China, after investing $11.6B over the past decade (Priyanka Salve/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/india-investment-billions-tech-ai-us-china.html…

India readies $25 billion for Deep Tech investment as U.S. and China race ahead
In a bid to cut its reliance on foreign tech, India tries to catch up with China and the U.S. by readying an investment of $25 billion in Deep Tech startups.

@… @… Billions

Dutch Ministry of Defence has many billions to spend now, and buys 3D metal printers in... China. Dutch industry is shocked.
https://www.bnr.nl/nieuws/internationaal/10610717/nederlandse-industrie-geschokt-door-aankoop…

"It is the triumph of the speculative sci-fi scenario over human solidarity: why fix the world we inhabit when we can spend billions preventing a robot uprising that exists only in the imagination? By trying to steer policy debates toward distant catastrophic scenarios [...] the industry diverts attention from regulating the systems already causing harm: algorithmic bias in hiring, facial recognition’s racial disparities, platform amplification of extremism."

Over 10 US states have rolled back tech giants' tax breaks, which top $1B/year in some states, as many others propose similar bills amid a data center backlash (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

A YouTube legal issues breakdown featuring attorney & creator Devin Stone of "LegalEagle" with Jon Youshaei.
(And fighting copyright issues with Claimfighter.io.)
▶️ The YouTuber Who Sued for Billions (LegalEagle Interview)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3zuoGDO_LXo

For decades, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL,
has supported  human rights in some of the most oppressive countries in the world.
Now, our reporting found,  it’s planning to direct funds to controversial groups supporting right-wing causes in Europe and elsewhere. 
Our full story lays out some of the groups the government has considered funding, which includea British free-speech organization that has fought against bans on “gay conversion ther…

What Is the Trump Administration Doing With Foreign Aid Money?
The billions of dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent. One proposal from the Trump administration suggested funding research on crime against Afrikaners in South Africa.

Source: FIFA plans to open media rights bidding for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups but faces headwinds, like media companies locking in billions for other sports (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/fifa-ra

Chasing Side Deals, Flexing Influence:
Corey Lewandowski’s Power Moves at DHS
Kristi Noem’s close adviser effectively controlled billions in spending at Homeland Security.
Lewandowski denies seeking business or playing any role in the agency’s contracts
https:…

How Billions in Iranian Money Passes Through U.S. Banks (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/how-billions-in-iranian-money-passes-through-u-s-banks-69106989?st=UufHkk&reflink=article_copyURL_share
http://www.memeorandum.com/260906/p22#a260906p22

Dutch farmer, protesting against environmental measures to reduce nitrogen pollution, amid crashing biodiversity:
"The big problem in the Netherlands is that there's too much nature. They spend billions on that bloody nature, and it serves no purpose."

Boer Bert Hoorn (33) denkt dat mensen de boerentrekkers en omgekeerde vlaggen nog lang niet zat zijn
Met honderden tractoren trokken boeren woensdag langs twaalf gemeentehuizen in Drenthe als politieke actie tegen de stikstofplannen van het kabinet. Kunnen zij nog op veel steun van de burgers rekenen?

Trump Has Granted $6B in Contracts to Arms Makers His Sons Have Invested In
Military contractors with investments from Donald Trump’s sons
have raked in billions of dollars in government deals and contracts since June 2025,
when their venture capital company first obtained a major stake in military technology company Anduril,
new reporting finds.
Last year, 1789 Capital,
of which Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, invested $2.5 billion into Anduril

Trump Has Granted $6B in Contracts to Arms Makers His Sons Have Invested In
Trump has previously said that his children have “inside information” about government actions.

“Connor Riley Moucka of Kitchener, Ontario pleaded guilty today to a widespread computer hacking conspiracy that resulted in the compromise of over 165 victim organizations, the theft of billions of sensitive customer records and the extortion of numerous victims.”
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/canadian-man-pleads-guilty-hacking-us-cloud-storage-provider-and-extorting-its-customers

"#Spain manages to win a #WorldCup during FIFA’s cash-counting award show"
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/soc

Spain manages to win a World Cup during FIFA’s cash-counting award show
The battle for sport’s soul played out in front of – and made – billions

Sources: Anthropic's stock match of employee charity gifts hit $660M in the six months through March, likely to reach billions post-IPO, diluting shareholders (Cory Weinberg/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/anthropics-big-charity-…

Anthropic’s Big Charity Bill for Shareholders
When Anthropic shared financial figures recently with prospective investors in its planned initial public offering, it included a surprising glimpse of the enormous riches about to hit nonprofits and philanthropies—and the cost to shareholders. The company reported a non-cash expense of more ...

Federal agencies relied heavily on keyword searches when terminating grants held by UC researchers, court documents revealed.
While the searched terms varied across agencies, they focused on initiatives facing significant conservative opposition, such as DEI and green energy.
The UC researchers allege the grant terminations violated their First Amendment rights by targeting their work based on viewpoint and subject matter
and have asked the federal judge overseeing the cas…

Inside the federal keyword lists that canceled billions in research funding
In court documents, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and others shared which words they used to target grants.

"Fossil-fuel firms in line for billions in benefits after answering Trump’s donation call"
#US #USA #America #FossilFuels

Fossil-fuel firms in line for billions in benefits after answering Trump’s donation call
Senators’ report says taxpayers face higher bills after ‘bargain’ between president and major polluters

An interview with Rachel Accurso, whose Ms Rachel YouTube channel has 21M followers, on conservative pushback over her LGBTQ and Gaza stances, and more (Sophie McBain/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/sep/20/ms-rache…

Ms Rachel, the controversial queen of toddler TV: ‘My goal isn’t to be the most liked. It’s to help kids and speak the truth’
Her catchy videos have racked up billions of views, but Rachel Accurso’s statements on everything from Gaza to LGBTQ rights have caused a stir. She talks about screen time, song fatigue and speculation she might enter politics

If you have spent a night in a US hospital in the past 20 years, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)) was working on your behalf whether you knew it or not.
It built the patient-experience surveys Medicare uses to help set what hospitals are paid.
The quality indicators regulators rely on to spot a hospital that is harming people are its work.
With the defense department, it produced the team-communication training now standard in operating rooms and em…

Trump is laying waste to the agency that keeps hospital patients safe
Few have heard of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, but it has saved tens of thousands of lives and billions of dollars

"In a frightening sign of just how much trust has been lost between the United States and its erstwhile allies, billions of dollars of gold reserves are being repatriated or otherwise moved out of Trump's reach"
Trump triggers "frightening sign" as billions in gold flee New York vaults: expert - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-gold-reserves/

If the Trump family can keep the money it has accumulated this term,
the next generation of Trumps will be far richer than Donald Trump ever was until his 80th year.
Americans traditionally let bygones be bygones after a president leaves office,
on the theory that ex-presidents rarely cause much trouble.
But money is power in politics, and dirty money needs power to protect itself from the law.
As much as Americans may wish to forget the Trumps and their corr…

What Might Happen to Trump’s Ill-Gotten Gains
He’s made billions of dollars off the Oval Office. The White House is a piggy bank for the Trumps.

Americans are not accustomed to learning lessons about democracy from Nigeria, Peru, or the Philippines.
That disregard may soon change.
Those countries offer examples of what it looks like to reclaim stolen or swindled wealth from fallen authoritarian rulers.
Done right, this work can deliver justice and strengthen democratic institutions for the long run.
But cleaning up after a corrupt regime also comes with serious challenges and hazards.
The Trump presi…

What Might Happen to Trump’s Ill-Gotten Gains
He’s made billions of dollars off the Oval Office. The White House is a piggy bank for the Trumps.

Sources: the FTC and 20 state AGs plan to sue Amazon for allegedly making tens of billions over seven years by manipulating ad prices on its retail platform (Dave Michaels/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ftc-to-file-lawsuit-…

Wealthy Republicans on the west coast
received an emailed invitation in July
to an upcoming fundraiser titled
“Keep the Senate”.
The email, obtained by the Guardian, described the event as a
“private roundtable and dinner with the National Republican Senatorial Committee”
where donors can pledge $50,000 for seats at the head table,
and mingle with legislative heavy hitters from Capitol Hill
including the Senator majority leader, John Thune, an…

Exclusive: Emails reveal Palmer Luckey’s political fundraising as his company wins sole-source contracts
Co-founder of defense firm Anduril has donated $5.9m to Republicans and bundled more, while reaping billions in Pentagon contracts

Sources: Meta is aggressively claiming a tax credit for AI data center build-outs by classifying facilities as experimental and writing off Nvidia chip supplies (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/meta-ai-data-centers-taxes.html…

How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes
Meta is exploiting a lucrative tax break intended to support research and experimentation. Its own accountants say the gambit is risky.

For decades, the federal government has funneled big-ticket grants to local communities to help them take on ambitious construction projects to expand public transit.
The grants, sometimes in the billions of dollars,
have funded new railroad tracks, train stations and roads rebuilt for modern bus service.
Today, they’re funding extensions of the Second Avenue Subway in New York and the Red Line in Chicago, as well as the Gateway Tunnel under the Hudson River and bus infras…

Congress Budgeted Billions for Big Transit Projects. Trump Isn’t Spending It.
“It’s hard to look at the last year and see anything other than a deliberate slowdown of these grants.”

Permit hurdles push up costs for AI data centers; Oracle pivoted from gas turbines to costlier fuel cells for its Project Jupiter in NM, costing billions more (Ann Davis Vaughan/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ex

Exclusive: Oracle Data Centers Face Multibillion-Dollar Cost Surprises
Building an AI supercampus increasingly means paying more than you bargained for. Oracle’s attempt to salvage a proposed $165 billion project on the rocks in New Mexico is a recent example.The cloud provider earlier this year was planning to spend billions of dollars to build its own natural-gas ...

Just finished "Amazona" by Canizales (indirect trigger warning: rape). An excellent fictional graphic novel about the displacement of indigenous people from the Amazon in Columbia. I especially liked the dedication: "Dedicated to those who have had to flee, leaving their lives behind. May the light in their hearts never fade. May it light new paths, so its brightness can blind the greedy. Early on the refugees, hosted in a city, comment that they now need money, when before if they had a need they could just take what they needed from the jungle. The book doesn't make this point, but communities like that have been living that way for tens of thousands of years, and I have hope that those ways of life will continue, at least where not yet destroyed, for tens of thousands more years, if not millions or billions of years. I am myself not a primitivist, despite being an anarchist, but I think there are nevertheless a plethora of important perspectives to be seen if one pays attention to indigenous groups around the world.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

FOR YEARS, North Korea’s stealthy hackers and scam IT workers have infiltrated companies,
stealing corporate secrets and plundering billions in cryptocurrency to help fund the totalitarian regime and its weapons programs.
Now, a security researcher who has spent almost two years inside the systems belonging to a group of those North Korean hackers is raising the alarm on just how effective and far reaching the targeting of individual employees and contractors has been in breachi…

A Security Pro Hacked North Korean Hackers. He Found They’d Breached Hundreds of Networks Worldwide
For nearly two years, researcher Vangelis Stykas has maintained access to North Korean hackers’ servers. His work shows they pulled off intrusions in a shocking number of systems across the globe.

"Billions in rare earth elements may be hiding in America’s coal ash"
#US #USA #America #Ash

Billions in rare earth elements may be hiding in America’s coal ash
Scientists are looking to diatoms, sea sponges, and plants for a cleaner way to recover rare earth elements and other valuable minerals hidden inside coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings. The bio-inspired approach could turn massive industrial waste piles into useful materials while reducing energy use, harsh chemicals, and reliance on new mining.

"the story was that it’d go back to the Venezuelan people, whom Trump pretends to care about very much. But last week, the Financial Times reported that after six months and two devastating earthquakes, the money is still nowhere to be found."
Trump Confirms He’s Hoarding Billions From Venezuelan Oil | The New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/post/213566/trump-hoarding-billions-venezuelan-oil

Sources: OpenRouter has discussed a potential sale to a bigger tech company that could value it at billions of dollars, a premium to its $1.3B valuation in May (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/startup-openroute…

Startup OpenRouter Fields Multi-Billion-Dollar Takeover Interest
OpenRouter, which helps app developers access hundreds of AI models, has discussed a potential sale to a bigger tech company that could value the startup at billions of dollars, a steep premium to its $1.3 billion valuation, people familiar with the matter said. The discussions reflect a swell ...

As Gov. Josh Shapiro, once a data center champion, calls them "predatory" and imposes guardrails, some in struggling western Pennsylvania welcome the projects (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.co…

Pennsylvania’s A.I. Gold Rush Meets Second Thoughts
Amid a backlash, Gov. Josh Shapiro is pumping the brakes on enormous data centers. But in a region scarred by the collapse of the steel industry, some welcome billions in construction.

Sources and filings: Situational Awareness lacked an investment risk team; after the sell-off, the SEC sent subpoenas to major banks about trades they financed (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/…

Troubles at Situational Awareness Point to Record Stock Market Leverage
A meltdown at Situational Awareness, an A.I.-focused investment firm, is raising tough questions about the Wall Street banks that lent billions to the upstart firm.

Trump says he has made 'Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks' in stream of AI posts (Sawdah Bhaimiya/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/07/trump-truth-social-ai-images-posting-spree.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260907/p9#a260907p9

Andy Burnham Ditches Digital ID Plan,
Saying Billions Will Go To Cost-Of-Living Priorities Instead
Incoming UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham prioritises cost-of-living support over Starmer's controversial digital ID plan.
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/andy-burnham-scr

Andy Burnham Ditches Digital ID Plan, Saying Billions Will Go To Cost-Of-Living Priorities Instead
Andy Burnham plans to scrap Starmer's digital ID plan upon becoming UK Prime Minister, redirecting resources to address cost-of-living issues and support local economies.

The company behind the Trump meme coin has launched a competition giving participants an opportunity to attend “the most exclusive dinner in the world”
— all they have to do is buy a digital token with no inherent value that has lost investors billions of dollars while further enriching the president.
The Washington Sun reported Thursday that winners of the competition, held by CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC,
“will be chosen based on a formula that seems designed in …

'Brazenly Corrupt': Firm Behind Trump Meme Coin Plans 'Most Exclusive Dinner' for Top Buyers | Common Dreams
"The most exclusive dinner in the world with the most corrupt president in American history," said one congressional Democrat.

“I do this for our Country, not myself. I’ve made Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks, and many other type Holdings, for the U.S.A., not myself, and all I do is get criticized by the Radical Left Dumocrats,”
Trump makes bonkers admission on stock trading amid defensive rant: ‘I’ve made billions’ - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2677825589/

How Meta founded FAIR in 2013, fell behind as it was distracted by the metaverse, and is spending an unprecedented amount of money trying to catch up (Harry McCracken/Fast Company)
https://www.fastcompany.com/91587899/mark-zuckerberg-meta-ai-personal-s…

Mark Zuckerberg is buying Meta a seat at the AI table. Does he know what to do with it?
After the metaverse bust, Zuckerberg is spending billions to reinvent Meta as an AI giant. First, he’ll have to translate his vision of “personal superintelligence” into products people actually want.

The story behind Trump’s personal intervention in Coast Guard ships provides new insights into how his administration has cut corners and flouted rules in pursuit of projects that suit his personal desires,
regardless of whether they fit any broader strategic rationale
https://www.

Trump’s Fixation on Arctic Ships Led to Billions in No-Bid Contracts
The president decided to buy 11 polar icebreakers after a game of golf with Finland’s president. Experts say it’s far from clear the United States needs so many.

The Justice Department’s updated position stunned industry stakeholders.
The Department of Justice spent years favoring copyright owners.
That changed Wednesday.
With the Trump administration filing in support of OpenAI amid its legal fight with The New York Times,
the administration departed from the status quo position of Washington politicians
— one that had long cast its lot closer to the entertainment industry in matters of copyright legalities
— to …

‘Darn Unusual’ DOJ Filing Has the Trump Administration on Different Path
The administration's support for OpenAI in its legal fight against The New York Times departed from historic norms and could save AI companies billions of dollars.

Filing: Nvidia says it has $18B committed to equity investments for the rest of the fiscal year and held $47.9B in private companies as of late July (Geoff Weiss/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/nvidia-q2-2027-earnings-bets-bi…

Nvidia bets big on AI with $18 billion investment spree planned
Nvidia invests billions in AI, with $18 billion committed to invest in AI model makers and infrastructure the rest of the fiscal year.

Trump threatens to double tariffs on South Korea if they do not pay for Alaska natural gas pipeline
As he left the White House for a campaign rally in Alabama on Friday, Donald Trump was asked by a reporter if he had “jumped the gun”
by announcing on Wednesday that South Korea had agreed to pay for a $54bn natural gas pipeline in Alaska,
only for a Korean official to contradict him on Thursday, saying that Korea had only agreed to “initiate a review” of the possible investm…

Trump threatens to double tariffs on South Korea if they do not pay for Alaska natural gas pipeline – US politics live
President has claimed pipeline project was part of a deal made last year to lower tariffs on imports from South Korea in return for billions of dollars of investments in the US

#GiftLink "The government watchdog found that billions of dollars in DOGE’s public tally could not be verified and that some claimed cuts never happened."
Elon Musk’s DOGE made big errors in claims of government savings, GAO finds - The Washington Post
https://wapo.st/3TGeMAy

White House to Redirect Billions in Research Funds Toward AI, Away From Colleges (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/white-house-to-redirect-billions-in-research-funds-toward-ai-away-from-colleges-942dacb8
http://www.memeorandum.com/260721/p164#a260721p164

Five US tech giants
— Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle
— are hiding an estimated $1.65 trillion in debt that doesn’t appear on balance sheets.
That’s even more than the $1.35 trillion in debt the five companies officially reported in their financial data for the most recent quarter.
Meta alone has amassed around $420 billion in off-balance-sheet debt, according to Nikkei,
highlighting how precarious the AI industry’s steep investment in AI has beco…

AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt
AI companies are pouring tens of billions of dollars into enormous data centers. They're being built on top of a mountain of hidden debt.

The Pentagon, sinking billions into Iran war, is quickly running short on cash - The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/07/21/pentagon-sinking-billions-into-iran-is-quickly-running-short-cash/

Kalshi and Polymarket bets on the FIFA World Cup final top $5.69B; Dune Analytics says total wagers on the platforms surpassed $50B for the first time in June (Lauren McCarthy/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/18/business/world-cup-kalshi-polymarket…

World Cup Final Drives Billions in Bets on Kalshi and Polymarket
The soccer tournament has helped propel the prediction markets to new user records, creating what may be the largest gambling event in history.

The Nepalese government has requested
“specific and specialised assistance” from neighbouring countries
to aid search and rescue efforts.
This includes assistance with opening tunnels where people are trapped,
technologies that can help locate people alive in affected areas,
rapid forensic and DNA analysis,
and mortuary facilities for the proper storage of bodies, Nepal’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement.
It added: “An 11-member specia…

Nepal-Tibet floods: Nepal calls for technical support for rescue efforts as number of missing rises to nearly 3,000 – latest updates
Nepali government says India and China are sending expert tunnel rescue teams, as minister estimates cost of rebuilding could be billions of dollars

Memo: the White House OSTP plans to redirect federal research funding from universities to individual scientists and AI use, reshaping ~$200B in annual spending (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

"June heatwave cost UK economy over £1bn, study finds"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Heatwave #Climate

June heatwave cost UK economy over £1bn, study finds
Last month's scorching temperatures cost the UK £1.15bn in lost productivity, a study has found, with the heatwave also having cost Europe billions in lost farming revenue.

VC funding in physical AI companies totaled $47.4B across 521 deals in H1, up 80% from H1 2025, and more than the $41.9B invested from 2022 to 2024 (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/physical-ai-funding-startups…

VCs Pour Billions Into Physical AI As The Next Wave Of AI Investing Takes Shape
In the first half of 2026, global venture funding in the physical AI space totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals, per Crunchbase data. That’s up dramatically — almost 4x — compared to the second half of 2025 when startups in the sector raised $12 billion across 470 deals.

Africa's Richest Man Aliko Dangote Gives $12B to Charity
https://www.theroot.com/africa-s-richest-man-to-give-billions-in-massive-handov-2000118615

The fossil fuel industry secured an estimated $190bn in tax breaks and subsidies over the next decade
after responding to Donald Trump’s pre-election call for major campaign donations,
leaving American taxpayers to shoulder higher bills and public health costs associated with pollution, according to a new report.
Released on Thursday by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, ranking member of the Senate environment and public works committee,
and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Sc…

Fossil-fuel firms in line for billions in benefits after answering Trump’s donation call
Senators’ report says taxpayers face higher bills after ‘bargain’ between president and major polluters

At India's Semicon, Narendra Modi launches a charm offensive for global investors, drawing pledges from Applied Materials and Lam for billions in investment (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

A team of researchers led by Democracy Now!’s Juan Gonzšlez
at the University of Illinois Chicago
recently released an in-depth study
on how, through a program called
"Tax Increment Financing" (TIF),
Chicago has spent some $16 billion
in property taxes it collected over the past 40 years
to fund downtown development.
The money was supposed to be used to eliminate urban blight.
”TIF funding has actually exacerbated economic ine…

“Who Paid, Who Gained”: Juan González on How Chicago Funded Real Estate Instead of Social Services
A team of researchers led by Democracy Now!’s Juan González at the University of Illinois Chicago recently released an in-depth study on how, through a program called Tax Increment Financing (TIF), Chicago has spent some $16 billion in property taxes it collected over the past 40 years to fund downtown development. The money was supposed to be used to eliminate urban blight. ”TIF funding has actually exacerbated economic inequities throughout the city, pouring more than half of the billion…

Google Cloud is deploying context-creating AI agents within its tools to automate tasks handled by forward-deployed engineers; Google is hiring hundreds of FDEs (Kevin McLaughlin/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-says-a…

Google Says Its AI Can Do the Work of Forward Deployed Engineers
Following the playbook Palantir pioneered, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to hire so-called forward deployed engineers to get newfangled AI to work in enterprises.Then there’s Google, which says AI can automate some of what these FDEs do.While Google ...

Sources: SpaceX is in talks with the DOD about providing the agency with access to data-center capacity worth billions of dollars for running AI models (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/spacex-in-talk

Good.
"Rosemary Jenks, co-founder of the Immigration Accountability Project: "I think the numbers aren't as good as they want them to be. That's really the only conclusion we can get to."
"We just gave billions and billions of dollars to ICE, and we're happy for that, we supported that, and we want to cheerlead for ICE ... but we need the numbers in order to do that," she complained."
'Confused, angry and frustrated' MAGA supporters fed up with Trump's DHS - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/maga-dhs-frustration/

How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/technology/meta-ai-data-centers-taxes.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260930/p24#a260930p24

Trump threatened Canada with additional tariffs over wildfire smoke:
“This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence,
costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.”
Trump’s rhetoric was presaged by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) introducing a bill to sanction Canadian officials found “responsible” for the fires,
revoke their visas and express a sense of Cong…

GOP Senator Calls For Stripping Visas From Canadian Officials Because Of Wildfires
“We will not tolerate this incompetence,” vowed Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, who may not understand how climate change works.

'Beyond the pale': Pentagon caught trying to raid billions from disease research - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/hegseth-pentagon-2677817913/

Trump Has Made Billions in Office. Will His Party Pay Politically? (Jess Bidgood/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/us/politics/trump-personal-wealth.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260729/p153#a260729p153

It was a plan House G.O.P. leaders hoped would satisfy everyone in their party:
With a special budget bill, they would bypass Democratic opposition and provide tens of billions for the Iran war while imposing new election restrictions Trump has demanded.
Instead, a day after the leaders released the plan, which hews closely to a spending request the White House sent to Capitol Hill last month,
it became clear it is a product that no one really likes.
The measure, whic…

Republican Rifts Deepen Over $95 Billion Budget Plan for Iran War and SAVE Act
A House panel approved the measure. But Republicans are divided over its size, cost and policy provisions, and many are concerned about the timing before the midterm elections.

US states risk billions in welfare funding under new DOJ immigration policy | The Jerusalem Post
https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-907386

Canadians' travel pullback costs U.S. tourism billions (Rebecca Falconer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/07/28/canada-us-tourism-losses-canadian-travel
http://www.memeorandum.com/260727/p159#a260727p159