The private space tourism era looked so very promising five years ago. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic had begun flying customersβreal people with zero space experienceβon suborbital missions. And at about the same time, private citizens were going to orbit for days at a time aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon.
But that was then. Consider the state of play today:
It has been 10 months since Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft flew its last mission in January. The program was subsequently "paused," but let's be real. Blue Origin has moved on. New Shepard's engineering teams are now supporting the New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lander programs.
SpaceX flew its final free-flyer mission on Dragon, Fram2, in April 2025. A handful of non-NASA missions bound for space stations remain on the spacecraft's manifest, but all are likely to carry at least one government astronaut. Then Dragon will be retired. There is no credible timeline for SpaceX's Starship to fly humans into space from Earth.
As for Virgin Galactic, the company flew its final suborbital mission on the VSS Unity spacecraft more than two years ago, in June 2024.
So we are now 10 months, and counting, without a space tourism mission in the United States.
Chris Jones, director of Seller Assistant at Amazon, left, and Eric Burns of Anthropicβs Applied AI team on stage at Amazon Accelerate in Seattle in September. Anthropicβs IPO filing shows Google getting a bigger share of the AI companyβs computing spending than Amazon, one of its largest investors. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Anthropicβs IPO filing reads like a ledger of whoβs getting paid in the AI boom. The Seattle regionβs tech giants are on the list, but they arenβt at the top.
The prospectus, filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, details more than $750 billion in computing deals, including firm commitments and estimated future spending, and offers clues about what its founders and biggest investors stand to gain ahead of the companyβs planned Nasdaq listing under the ticker ANT.
Amazon and Microsoft have invested billions in Anthropic and won high-profile spending commitments from the Claude maker. But both trail Google, chipmaker Broadcom and Elon Muskβs SpaceX in their shares of Anthropicβs planned spending on computing power, the filing shows.
Following the compute money: Googleβs chips are the biggest winner. Anthropic has lined up roughly $400 billion in computing capacity, mostly over the next seven years, based on Google-designed AI chips, known as tensor processing units or TPUs.
That total includes $114.5 billion to Google directly through July 2033, $161.2 billion in equipment leases with chipmaker Broadcom, and an estimated $125 billion to $150 billion in additional TPU capacity from 2028 to 2031.
Broadcomβs leases are the largest single arrangement in the filing. The five-year leases provide TPU-based hardware for data centers operated by other companies on Anthropicβs behalf.
Elon Muskβs SpaceX is next. Anthropic agreed to spend up to $120.5 billion through 2029 for computing capacity from SpaceXβs AI subsidiary, formerly known as xAI, which runs a rival AI lab.
The filing says payments will reach about $3.1 billion a month once all the capacity is delivered, which Anthropic expects in December. The agreements run into 2029, though either side can cancel on 90 daysβ notice after early 2027.
Amazon is still a big winner. Anthropic committed in April to spend at least $110 billion with Amazon Web Services over 10 years, through April 2036, and AWS Trainium is one of four chip families that Anthropic uses to train and run its models.
Anthropic has committed to spend at least $44.9 billion on Microsoftβs Azure cloud from November 2026 through May 2033, the filing shows. Thatβs up from the $30 billion Azure deal announced in November 2025. The deal has been amended twice since, most recently this month.
Claude is built into Microsoft 365, and former Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell joined Anthropicβs board in February.
Two smaller providers have deals in the same range as Microsoftβs. Anthropic agreed to spend up to about $44.6 billion with Nscale, a U.K.-based AI infrastructure company, and about $41.3 billion with GPU cloud provider Lambda, both for capacity powered by Nvidia chips, according to the filing.
Will Anthropic need it all? Most of the commitments canβt be canceled, and the deals with Microsoft, Google and Amazon require Anthropic to pay βregardless of actual usage,β according to the filing.
So far, the demand is there. Anthropicβs revenue hit $11.6 billion in the second quarter, up from $787 million a year earlier, and the company posted its first operating profit, $974 million. It still had a $66.3 billion net loss, mostly from accounting charges tied to its soaring valuation.
The company says it has βconsistently operated in a compute-constrained environment where customer demand exceeds available compute.β
Its compute commitments assume that demand keeps growing. Anthropic spent less than $2 billion a month on compute and infrastructure in the second quarter. The SpaceX deal alone is expected to cost about $3.1 billion a month at full capacity.
Paper fortunes: Amazonβs biggest payoff is its stake, which it valued at $190.4 billion as of June 30 in its quarterly SEC filing. That includes convertible notes with $6.2 billion in principal that Amazon valued at $97.9 billion. The notes would convert into stock, subject to a 12% ownership cap that Amazon can waive.
Amazon is scheduled to report third-quarter results Thursday, its first earnings report since Anthropicβs filing. The Seattle-based company has updated the value of its Anthropic holdings in each of its quarterly filings this year, so a new number could come this week.
Google put $10 billion into Anthropicβs latest funding round and can invest up to $20 billion more under a March financing deal. The filing doesnβt give ownership percentages for Amazon, Google or Microsoft. It says only that the three companies have each made βsignificant equity investmentsβ in Anthropic.
Anthropicβs seven co-founders hold roughly 230 million to 245 million shares each, worth about $14 billion apiece at the latest private funding price. The company also gave its own Public Benefit Fund about 847 million shares, or 5% of its fully diluted stock as of June 30, worth about $50 billion at that price.
Anthropic could begin formally marketing its IPO to investors as soon as the week of Nov. 9, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. It is aiming to go public the following week, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company expects the offering to match or beat the size of SpaceXβs IPO, according to Bloomberg. SpaceX raised $75 billion in June, the largest IPO on record.
Ukraine says Starlink service has been restored after days of disruption. The incident highlights why enterprises need tested, independent backup systems.
Ukraine says Starlink service has been restored after days of disruption. The incident highlights why enterprises need tested, independent backup systems.
Five days after the spectacle, made possible by compressed-gas thrusters developed by Muskβs SpaceX, he revealed the companies were exploring a merger that could accelerate his push into autonomous driving.
At stake is more than a technological race. Car groups, already grappling with growing Chinese competition, are seeking to move beyond a business model centered on vehicle sales towards one that also generates recurring revenues from software and AI-powered services.
T-Mobileβs new T-Mix plans let customers spend βPicksβ on perks or a new phone. (Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash)
T-Mobile is introducing new wireless plans that change how customers get perks and phone deals, giving them a set number of βPicksβ to spend on a new phone or an expanded menu of extras that they can swap out every 90 days.
The company says it will be the only carrier that lets customers choose which benefits come with their plan. Instead of fixed bundles of extras plus a discount on a new phone for each line, customers get a single allowance to spend on options ranging from Netflix and ESPN to Xbox Game Pass, Googleβs Gemini AI and Delta SkyMiles.
One catch is that phones and perks come out of the same pool of Picks, so a family that wants a new phone on every line may have little left to put toward extras.
Allan Samson, T-Mobileβs chief marketing officer, says Picks are βessentially a form of currency.β (T-Mobile Photo)
The plans, called T-Mix, will be available in November. Existing customers can switch or keep their current plans, said Allan Samson, T-Mobileβs chief marketing officer.
The move comes as T-Mobileβs customer growth slows and new rivals emerge, including SpaceX, a current T-Mobile partner that is reportedly planning a wireless service of its own. T-Mobileβs stock is down about 26% this year, including a drop of nearly 8% on Friday after a report on SpaceXβs wireless plans.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based company has relied for years on βUn-carrierβ moves β splashy changes that defy industry conventions β to capture consumer attention.
Samson described T-Mix as the latest of those moves, aimed at what the companyβs research identified as a top customer complaint: paying for extras they donβt use. Picks are βessentially a form of currency,β he said. βYou can use them for anything you want.β
A subscription hub: With the new plans, T-Mobile is adding a much larger menu of subscriptions in an attempt to turn its plans into a hub for streaming, music, gaming and AI services.
Along with longtime perks such as Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV, the new options include ESPNβs Unlimited streaming service, Xbox Game Pass, YouTube Premium, Apple Music and Googleβs Gemini AI subscriptions.
The company says people spend far more on subscriptions than they realize. In T-Mobileβs research, customers estimated spending about $90 a month, Samson said. A separate study by C+R Research puts average spending at $219.
A big part of the idea is to consolidate that spending and let customers move among services more freely, picking up a streaming service for a new show, for example, or adding satellite coverage for a summer trip, then dropping it afterward.
Customers can make those changes every 90 days in the T-Life app. T-Mobile texts them when a 10-day change window opens, and their choices roll over if they do nothing. T-Mobile handles the switch between services in its plans, although the fine print notes that customers may need to initially cancel existing subscriptions on their own to avoid paying twice.
T-Mobile buys subscriptions below retail prices through deals it negotiates with streaming services and other partners. That lets T-Mobile include the services in its plans for less than it would cost customers to subscribe on their own.
Phones vs. perks: For consumers, one trade-off for the newfound flexibility is that phones and perks now draw from the same finite supply.
Customers who hold on to their phones or choose less-expensive models can put that value toward streaming and other extras, but a family that wants a new phone on every line may not have enough Picks to cover them.
Whether consumers end up getting more or less for their money depends largely on how many lines they have and how often they buy new phones. Smaller accounts that keep their phones are likely to come out ahead. Larger families that upgrade every line may pay more and get less, because T-Mobile is also dropping its long-standing free third line.
Samson estimated that accounts with one or two lines will pay $5 to $10 a month less than on T-Mobileβs current plans, while a five-line account might pay $10 to $15 more. Across all of its customers, he said, pricing is roughly the same.
T-Mobile says a family of three on its Loaded plan, which costs $200 a month ($2,400 a year) with AutoPay before taxes and fees, gets more than $4,320 a year in plan features and benefits, based on its own valuation.
The math behind the Picks: Customers choose from three plans, with base prices for customers on AutoPay, before taxes and fees:
Standard: $55 a month for one line, with one Pick. Itβs the basic plan, with limits on high-priority data and video quality.
More: $75 a month, with two Picks, unlimited high-priority data and 4K video.
Loaded: $95 a month, with three Picks and the largest allowances for hotspot use and international data.
Adding lines adds Picks, and Picks apply to the whole account, so one Netflix subscription covers the family. Unused Picks donβt accumulate from one quarter to the next.
Most extras cost one or two Picks. Ad-free Netflix costs three, and ESPN Unlimited costs four. Phones cost Picks, too: two for an iPhone and three for an iPhone Pro, Samson said, tied up for the three-year payment plan. A four-line account on the More plan gets seven Picks, not enough for a new iPhone on every line.
T-Mobileβs three T-Mix plans, with prices, data allowances and what each perk costs in Picks. Click to enlarge. (T-Mobile Graphic)
No price guarantee: The terms say T-Mobile may change the benefits and the number of Picks each one requires at any time, with changes taking effect the following quarter. Customers who change a partner benefit outside a change window may have to pay a fee. Once a year, customers will also be asked to reselect their benefits.
The launch comes less than a week after New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a settlement with T-Mobile over its 2017 βPrice Guaranteeβ plans, which promised customers the carrier would βnever change the price you pay.β
T-Mobile raised prices on those plans by about $5 a line in 2024. It agreed to offer refunds and other options that the attorney generalβs office expects to provide more than $38 million in value, and to freeze prices for affected customers until at least 2029.
Asked about price protections, Samson said T-Mix plans donβt come with a guarantee. T-Mobile can control its network costs, he said, but not what partners such as Apple and Xbox charge, although it has multiyear deals in place.
βWe didnβt want to be disingenuous,β he said, adding that partner prices are set for the next couple of years but βI canβt tell you whatβs going to happen in 2030.β
The Un-carrier playbook: T-Mobile launched its Un-carrier campaign in 2013 by dropping two-year contracts. Samson said the company makes an Un-carrier move only when it sees a big customer pain point and believes it has something unique to offer.
T-Mobile has been testing T-Mix since Oct. 1 in 37 stores in Kansas City. Only about 70% of Picks were chosen in the store at the time of purchase, Samson said, in part because families wanted to go home and decide together, and some customers were saving Picks for phones coming out later.
Verizon lets customers add discounted streaming bundles to its plans for an extra monthly charge. Samson said the difference with T-Mix is that the benefits are included in the plan price.
Upholding the companyβs tradition of jabbing at rivals, he described one competitorβs approach as βnaked connectivity.β The other, he said, will βthrow you a nice phone and then leave you alone. And every now and then, thereβs a rate increase.β
The plans are also one of the first major consumer moves under CEO Srini Gopalan, who succeeded Mike Sievert in the role last November.
T-Mobileβs account growth has slowed this year. In the second quarter, it added a net 277,000 postpaid accounts (households and businesses that pay a monthly bill rather than prepaying for service). That was down 13% from 318,000 a year earlier.
The company reports third-quarter results Wednesday, two days after Verizon.
Samson, who joined Sprint in 2016 and stayed on after its 2020 merger with T-Mobile, became CMO earlier this year. He previously ran the companyβs broadband business and was CMO of T-Mobile for Business. He said T-Mix has been his pet project since taking his current role, starting with interviews with hundreds of consumers.
Samson said itβs too early to say how T-Mix will affect the business. βAsk me in six months once I have about six months under my wings nationwide,β he said, βand then weβll have some actuals to report.β
Ukraine has rejected Elon Muskβs claim that its military broke Starlinkβs terms of service by using the civilian satellite network for offensive drone strikes, with a presidential adviser saying that restrictions SpaceX placed on the service in February make such use physically impossible. Musk made the accusation on X on Oct. 24, the same day [β¦]
A new study found Grok's AI overwhelmingly recommends Republican candidates while OpenAI's GPT favors Democrats, with the two AI models disagreeing in more than 90% of nearly 500 election races.
Tesla and SpaceX have formed a special committee to explore a merger that would create the largest equity in the world by market cap. In this clip, Sean Hagan breaks down why the deal is a βno brainerβ on first principles: a combined company earns a higher index weighting and captures more passive flows than either firm alone. He connects it to the MSCI decision on Strategy and why passive flows matter for Bitcoin treasury companies. The hosts also ask whether the merger is a workaround for SpaceXβs S&P 500 inclusion.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
The U.S. Air Force has sent military-style cargo into space and back aboard a SpaceX Starfall capsule as it tests whether rockets could one day deliver supplies to troops anywhere on Earth within hours. The Air Force Research Laboratory flew its own cargo pods inside the capsule on a commercial rideshare launch from Cape Canaveral [β¦]
A Wall Street Journal report said SpaceX CEO Elon Musk ordered the Starlink throttling that blindsided Ukraine's air assault forcesΒ last week, despite Musk's claim that all decisions on the military version of Starlink are made by the US military and President Trump.
Trump denied ordering the restrictions. While Musk may have spoken to Trump and administration officials before the decision, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Musk made the final call. The decision came after both Musk and Trump criticized Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries.
"Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration," the WSJ wrote, citing unnamed US officials and people familiar with the matter. The report said that "Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network... rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless."
In its current iteration, SpaceX is largely a data company seeking to provide enormous amounts of compute for artificial intelligence. During an earnings call on Tuesday afternoon, company officials spent much of their time discussing ambitious plans to roll out up to 10 GW of compute in 2027βon the ground.
Gone are the days of aspirational talk about sending humans to Mars and settling the red planet. Now it is almost all about artificial intelligence and the data needed to support its expansion. However, the company's long-term ambitions to provide data services from space, initially with the Starlink Internet constellation and eventually through the "Starmind" data center constellation, still rely on an actual rocket.
That would be the Starship vehicle, and during the earnings call, SpaceX founder Elon Musk and the company's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, provided new performance targets for the vehicle.
Bitcoinβs rise comes as SpaceX reported surging revenue growth in its third quarter, and its owner, Elon Musk, talked of a potential SpaceX-Tesla merger.
SpaceX β which debuted in June on the Nasdaq in the biggest initial public offering ever β reported third-quarter revenue on Tuesday of $14.6 billion, up 161% from the previous year and smashing estimates.Β
Technology stocks rallied on the news. Bitcoin has in the past risen with risk assets and been correlated with the Nasdaq.Β
But this year, the OG cryptocurrency has moved with gold as the so-called debasement trade becomes hot again. The trade is when investors buy certain assets to hedge against currency being devalued.Β
The dollar slid in value in August after the U.S. Treasury Department said it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. Bitcoin had its best quarterly run in three years and third best August ever.Β Β Β
U.S. investors this week have piled back into spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, too. On Monday and Tuesday, the funds managed by BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and others received new investment of over $549 million, according to Coinglass data.Β
Bitcoinβs price is still over 30% below its all-time high of $126,080 β reached in October 2025 β but analysts are saying the cryptocurrency is now back in a bull market after spending most of this year in a bear.Β
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he would like to see the consolidation of his business empire by formally merging his two largest companies, SpaceX and Tesla.
"Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes," Musk said of a potential merger. He was speaking during a question-and-answer period as part of SpaceX's third-quarter earnings call. Musk said, ultimately, it not his decision. "But at the end of the day the shareholders have to be supportive of this."
Musk's talk of a merger comes after a busy year in which SpaceX already acquired Musk's artificial intelligence firm, xAI, in February. In June, SpaceX went public with the largest initial public offering on record.
Tesla demonstrated a flying Roadster prototype and revealed three versions. See which buyers can reserve, how they differ, and what to check before paying.
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