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SpaceX launches fifth Falcon Heavy mission, carrying military satellites

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SpaceX launches fifth Falcon Heavy mission, carrying military satellites

SpaceX launched its fifth Falcon Heavy rocket mission, USSF-67, on Sunday from Florida s Kennedy Space Center.

The rocket made liftoff at 5:56 p.m. EST, with 5 million pounds of thrust.
The payload included two military satellite systems: The Continuous Broadcast Augmenting SATCOM and Long Duration Propulsive ESPA.

The first system is a geostationary relay satellite which enhances communication abilities to support U.S. security leaders. The second provides data to the U.S. Space Force and carries and directs smaller payloads for the program.

The payloads also include prototype systems used for secure space-to-ground communication.

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Sunday s Falcon Heavy launch was the second in the last three months following a three-year gap between the third and fourth missions.

“This is a complex mission and truly represents what Assured Access to Space is about and is why we re so enthusiastic about this upcoming launch…our second Falcon Heavy in just months,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said according to SatNews.

On Nov. 1, a rocket was launched for the USSF-44 mission, deploying two spacecrafts into orbit: the TETRA 1 microsatellite developed by Boeing subsidiary Millennium Space Systems for the U.S. military.

Four more Falcon Heavy launches are planned for this year. 

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Musk to discuss $5 billion xAI investment with Tesla board

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Musk to discuss $5 billion xAI investment with Tesla board

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Thursday he and the board of the electric vehicle company will discuss making a $5 billion investment in his artificial intelligence startup xAI, fueling concerns about a conflict of interest.

Musk, the world’s richest person, launched xAI last year in a bid to compete with Microsoft-backed OpenAI. That sparked concerns he may allocate some resources of the automaker to the AI company.

Many Musk fans have supported the idea: On Tuesday, Musk launched a poll asking users on social media platform X whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI.

More than two-thirds of nearly 1 million respondents voted in favor. It is not clear how many are Tesla investors.

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The poll came shortly after Tesla said its second-quarter automotive gross margin and profit fell short of Wall Street estimates on Tuesday as the company cut prices and offered incentives to boost sales. 

“Looks like the public is in favor. Will discuss with Tesla board,” Musk said in a post on X on Thursday.

During Tesla’s earning conference call on Tuesday, Musk said xAI would be “helpful in advancing full self-driving and in building up the new Tesla data center,” adding that there are opportunities to integrate xAI’s chatbot, Grok, with Tesla’s software.

Despite a frenzy of investment, most AI firms are still working out business models while spending heavily on technology.

“It’s hard to make a claim that this is in the best interest of their Tesla shareholder,” said Brent Goldfarb, a business school professor at the University of Maryland, who said it amounted to a transfer of Tesla wealth.

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“In AI in general, nobody is quite sure where the money is going to be made and who is going to pay for it. AI right now has all the signs of a bubble,” he said.

In 2018, Musk left OpenAI, which he co-founded because of a potential future conflict with Tesla, which is developing AI software for self-driving vehicles.

Musk said in April that xAI is hiring some engineers from Tesla to retain talent in the face of recruiting by Open AI.

Musk’s xAI raised $6 billion in a series B funding in May, fetching a post-money valuation of $24 billion. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital.

Musk has previously said he plans for a quarter of xAI to be owned by investors in X, which he bought for $44 billion. The social media firm’s value has plunged since then. Musk previously has faced criticism over potential conflicts of interest among the many companies he owns and runs.

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Some Tesla shareholders alleged the 2016, $2.6 billion acquisition of struggling rooftop solar company, SolarCity, founded by Musk and his cousins, amounted to a bailout.

Last year, however, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a ruling that Musk did not push the electric carmaker to overpay for SolarCity.

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JPMorgan launches in-house chatbot as AI-based research analyst, FT reports

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JPMorgan launches in-house chatbot as AI-based research analyst, FT reports

JPMorgan Chase has begun rolling out a generative artificial intelligence (AI) product, telling employees that its own version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT can do the work of a research analyst, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

The lender, the biggest in the United States, has given employees of its asset and wealth management division access to a large language model called LLM Suite, that helps them with writing, idea generation and summarising documents, the report said, citing an internal memo seen by FT. 

JPMorgan started introducing LLM Suite to pockets of the bank earlier this year and about 50,000 employees now have access to it, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter.

Rival U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley partnered with OpenAI and rolled out a GenAI powered chatbot last September, offering financial advisors quick access to all of Morgan Stanley’s intellectual capital.

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JPMorgan declined to comment on the report.

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Insured losses from CrowdStrike outage could reach $1.5 bln

Insured losses from CrowdStrike outage could reach $1.5 bln

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Insured losses from CrowdStrike outage could reach $1.5 bln

Global insured losses from last week’s massive IT outage are likely to range from $400 million to $1.5 billion, cyber analytics firm CyberCube said on Thursday.

A software bug in cyber security firm CrowdStrike’s quality-control system caused the software update that crashed computers globally, the U.S. firm said this week, as losses mount following disruption to services from aviation to banking.

The outage may be the single largest cyber insurance loss, CyberCube said in a statement.

It was “a major event for the cyber insurance market but does not come close to the destructive potential that leading insurers are holding capital against”, CyberCube said.

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Insurer Parametrix this week estimated insured losses from the outage of $540 million to $1.08 billion for Fortune 500 companies, excluding Microsoft, whose computer software was affected by the CrowdStrike bug.

The global insurance and reinsurance industry is likely to avoid any major financial impact from the outage, ratings agency Fitch said.

However, reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter said that insurers may face claims on directors and officers and property insurance as a result of the outage, in addition to cyber insurance claims. 

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