Elon’s AI goals: bold claims, missed deadlines

Chinese hackers breached the U.S. Treasury's major sanctions office

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Lucila Sarquis & Paula Echeverria
January 04, 2025

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2025 kicks off with high stakes and big shifts. Chinese hackers breached the U.S. Treasury’s sanctions office, spotlighting cybersecurity risks, while AI’s energy demands drive climate tech toward nuclear and fusion solutions.

Tesla stumbled as Cybertruck failed to lift sales, and delayed AI launches like Grok 3 hint at scaling limits. Meanwhile, Apple’s $95M Siri settlement highlights privacy battles, and Hindustan Unilever eyes a $350M deal for Minimalist, reshaping global markets.
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Six bullets of updates

  1. 💻 Chinese hackers breached the U.S. Treasury's major sanctions office, targeting employee workstations in December.

  2. 🚘 Tesla's Cybertruck launch failed to ignite 2024 sales, with deliveries

  3. Thomson Reuters acquires SafeSend for $600M, strengthening its tax automation portfolio; SafeSend is trusted by 70% of top U.S. firms.

  4. Apple settles a $95M lawsuit over Siri

    eavesdropping claims, with up to 150M iPhone users eligible for compensation.

  5. 👋 Nick Clegg resigns as Meta's Global Affairs head, succeeded by Joel Kaplan just three weeks before Trump’s term begins.

  6.  💸 Hindustan Unilever eyes Minimalist, a skincare startup, in a $350M deal, bolstering its $65B market cap in India.

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2025’s energy wars: can fusion and nuclear outshine renewables?

Source: Unsplash

As 2025 begins, climate tech faces a shifting landscape shaped by AI’s energy demands and uncertainty around the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Advanced nuclear energy is gaining traction, with streamlined regulations and smaller reactor designs driving interest, though renewables remain strong competitors. Fusion startups, inspired by recent breakthroughs, are securing funding to develop prototypes and aim for grid integration in the 2030s.

Hydrogen startups, reliant on IRA subsidies, face potential setbacks if those supports are cut, while geologic hydrogen offers a possible lifeline. With rising power demand and tighter funding conditions, the year ahead promises challenges and surprises, echoing past periods of resilience and innovation in the sector.

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These companies just raised money

  1. 🚀 Tacora Capital secures $268.7M for its second fund, delivering flexible venture debt solutions to capital-intensive startups.
    🌍 Electra raises $76.3M to tackle the steel industry's 7% carbon emissions with groundbreaking electrowinning tech.

  2. 🌍 KoBold Metals secures $537M to explore AI-discovered copper in Zambia, boosting its valuation to $2.96B. Investors are buzzing! 🎉

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Elon’s AI goals: bold claims, missed deadlines

Source: Unsplash

Delays in AI model launches are becoming a trend, with xAI’s Grok 3 as the latest example. Promised by Elon Musk for a late 2024 debut, the advanced AI model, designed to rival GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini, has yet to materialize. Musk’s ambitious claims about Grok 3’s capabilities and training scale have been tempered by hints of an intermediate model, Grok 2.5, and his admission that such timelines are aspirational. Other companies like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI have faced similar setbacks, suggesting broader challenges in scaling AI models effectively.

These delays highlight diminishing returns from traditional AI scaling methods, where more data and computing power no longer guarantee significant performance leaps. As companies explore alternative approaches, xAI’s smaller team and resource constraints may also play a role in Grok 3’s delay.

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How gig workers will ruin our retirement - Millennials decoded

The Gig Economy is going to break the world, and we millennials are first in line for this. There are two extreme and painfully different sides to this story. Take a Digital Nomad, for example. They probably do consult for various businesses, maybe as developers, UX designers, or marketers, and they are living the dream. Nomads are the poster child of the concept of the gig economy—a powerful poster to sell this concept of freedom to everyone else. But their reality for most gig workers doesn’t come close to this 🕶️ Subscribe for more!

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