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Digital asset ETFs experienced heavy selling pressure last week as Bitcoin (BTC-USD) briefly dipped near $75K amid rising macro uncertainty and bond market stress.
From May 18 to May 22, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.26B in net outflows, according to
Political turmoil rattles emerging markets as election risks mount
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Notable healthcare headlines for the week: UnitedHealth, Boston Scientific, and Eli Lilly in focus
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Los Angeles voters will cast ballots in eight City Council district elections next week, including for two open seats where incumbents are leaving because of term limits.
The contests for the seats being vacated by Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Curren Price have drawn large fields of candidates, but the biggest spending has been in the Westside’s District 11, where incumbent Traci Park is facing challenger Faizah Malik, a public interest attorney and one of four council candidates backed by the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America.
Park has raised $1.3 million, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed Friday, while challenger Faizah Malik reported about $520,000 in contributions. In addition, more than $3 million has been spent in the race by so-called independent expenditure committees that spend money to elect or defeat candidates but which are barred from coordinating their activities with the campaigns.
The district includes Venice, Mar Vista, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, which was devastated by wildfire in January 2025.
Malik said Friday she is confident heading into the primary election, saying most of her donations are under $100 each, and that she hasn’t taken money from corporations.
Los Angeles City Council candidate Faizah Malik attends a canvassing event March 15 in Westchester.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
“This is what it means to be a grassroots candidate, and it is just more evidence that the people of CD11 believe in our vision for a Westside that is affordable for everyday people,” Malik said.
A Park campaign aide said Park’s haul is indicative of the councilmember’s record of getting results.
“But no one is taking anything for granted,” the aide said in a statement. “We’re working until the final vote is cast because this election will determine whether the Westside keeps moving forward or gets pulled backward into the same failed ideological politics Angelenos are exhausted by.”
Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park, center, with members of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City on May 12.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Park has emphasized her advocacy for fire recovery efforts, including pushing for permit fee waivers for residents wanting to rebuild. Malik has said Park has been too focused on single-family homeowners and said she would focus more energy on renters.
They have contrasting views on policing: Malik said she opposes expanding the size of the Los Angeles Police Department and instead supports shifting more resources to the city’s unarmed crisis response program. Park said the Police Department should have about 10,000 sworn officers, up from about 8,700 currently. She voted in favor of a 2023 LAPD contract that gave raises to officers and increased salaries to new hires.
They stand in contrast of each other on the Venice Dell housing development project, which would turn a city lot into 120 housing units for low-income and homeless people. Park opposed the completion and instead wants to turn it into a “mobility hub” and move the housing project to an adjacent lot. Malik, who represented the developer that filed a suit against the city claiming Park and others sought to kill the project, said the project was a motivating factor for her campaign.
Six candidates are vying to replace Councilman Curren Price, who hit the 12-year limit, in District 9. The district includes the Convention Center, USC and communities along the Harbor Freeway.
The candidates vary on key issues, including policing and housing. Estuardo Mazariegos, co-director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. He has called for reducing the LAPD budget and redirecting funds to other city departments.
Two other candidates — Jorge Hernandez Rosas, an educator, and Jose Ugarte, who previously worked for Price — said they support hiring more police officers. Another hopeful, Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, said he believes in keeping the LAPD at its current size.
Ugarte, Roldan, Rosas and Martha Sánchez, a therapist, all support enforcing Municipal Code 41.18, which bars homeless encampments near schools and daycare centers. Mazariegos and Jorge Nuño, an entrepreneur, say the code doesn’t solve homelessness and instead just moves people around.
Ugarte has raised the most in contributions of any candidate and has been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Party in the nonpartisan race.
District 3
Three candidates are competing for an open seat in District 3, where Councilmember Bob Blumenfield has termed out of office. The district encompasses Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, Reseda, Winnetka and Tarzana.
The candidates are Tim Gaspar, who founded an insurance company, Barri Worth Girvan, district director for Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona, a tech entrepreneur.
The three candidates are similarly positioned on public safety, backing Mayor Karen Bass’ long-term goal to increase the LAPD ranks to at least 9,500 officers. All three also support enforcing Municipal Code section 41.18.
Gaspar and Worth Girvan have both scored key endorsements. Gaspar is backed by Blumenfield, billionaire developer Rick Caruso and Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez, Tim McOsker and John Lee and billionaire developer Rick Caruso. Worth Girvan has endorsements from a long list of state Democratic lawmakers, the county Democratic Party, the Sierra Club and labor unions.
Gaspar leads in campaign contributions, followed by Worth Girvan. Celona, who has promised to resuscitate the city’s entertainment industry by fast-tracking film permits and cutting red tape, trails far behind.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez faces four challengers in District 1, which stretches from Highland Park on the northeast to University Park on the southwest. She is backed by the local Democratic Socialists of America, and her challengers claim the district has suffered under under her leadership, pointing to MacArthur Park as emblematic of the homelessness and drug addiction crisis plaguing the city.
Hernandez counters with a list of accomplishments, including helping secure a $6.3-million state grant to house homeless individuals near the Arroyo Seco riverbed and advocating for a citywide network of unarmed crisis response teams.
She faces challenges from Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles police commissioner and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Raul Claros, founder of California Rising; and Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide.
Hernandez’s campaign has also faced an onslaught of accusations of “dark money” spending. A group called Neighbors First has sent mail pieces critical of Hernandez and other leftist City Council candidates.
Incumbent Katy Yaroslavsky faces two challengers for her District 5 seat, both of whom oppose her stance on housing and public safety spending. The district includes some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, including Bel-Air, Westwood, Cheviot Hills and Hancock Park.
Challengers Henry Mantel, a tenants’ rights lawyer, and Morgan Oyler, an accountant, say Yaroslavsky hasn’t done enough to increase the district’s housing supply. Yaroslavsky, who holds a wide lead in fundraising, has said she supports increasing housing density near transit centers but cautioned against building more than the city can sustain.
Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who is also backed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter, faces three challengers in District 13, which includes Atwater Village, Glassell Park, Elysian Valley, Echo Park, Silver Lake and East Hollywood.
The list of challengers includes Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, Dylan Kendall, who runs Grow Hollywood, and Rich Sarian, vice president of strategic initiatives for downtown’s South Park Social District.
While Soto-Martínez supports expanding the city’s unarmed personnel program, Carlisle and Kendall would like to expand the police force. Sarian has said he supports the unarmed personnel program and wants to examine the LAPD’s current size and resources.
Incumbent Tim McOsker is facing off against community organizer Jordan River in District 15, which covers Harbor City, Harbor Gateway, San Pedro, Watts and Wilmington. McOsker has decades of experience in the political world, having worked in the mayor’s office, and the city attorney’s office before joining the City Council in 2022. Rivers, who is unemployed, is a member of the Green Party.
Monica Rodriguez is running unopposed for the District 7 seat in the northeast San Fernando Valley.
Times staff writers David Zahniser, Noah Goldberg and Sandra McDonald contributed to this report.
Joe Hendrickson/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Pabst Brewing Company confirmed this week that it is placing Schlitz Premium “on hiatus,” citing unsustainable economics. The brand’s volume had fallen so far that even the minimum production quantities required by the Anheuser-Busch (BUD) plant in Texas, which had
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa signed on Friday a revamped trade deal with Mexico as part of the EU’s efforts to expand its influence in Latin America, shortly after the Mercosur pact entered into force.
The deal was signed at an EU–Mexico summit in Mexico, with von der Leyen and Costa joined by the country’s President Claudia Sheinbaum, amid rising geopolitical tensions and shifting global alliances following the return of US president to the White House.
The economic partnership between the two medium-sized powers reflects efforts on both sides to reduce their dependence on the US — the EU’s and Mexico’s largest trading partner—and on China, for which Mexico has become a hub for electric vehicle production.
“The EU and Mexico are committed to a close strategic partnership,” von der Leyen said, adding: “Today’s modernised Agreements set out our shared vision of the future and will deliver many benefits for both sides.”
The EU–Mexico trade deal strengthens the EU’s diversification strategy by updating a 20-year-old agreement that had already eliminated tariff barriers on bilateral trade.
Under the new deal, the EU will access new markets for products, such as agri-food (pork, dairy, cereals, fruit and pasta), pharmaceuticals and machinery.
Mexico is the EU’s second-largest trading partner in Latin America and the EU is Mexico’s second-largest export market. Trade between both sides reached €86.8 billion in goods in 2025, alongside €29.7 billion in services in 2024.
The figures remain far smaller than Mexico’s trade with its neighbour, the US, which exceeded $900 billion in goods and services in 2024. But the deal comes as Mexico faces mounting pressure from a more protectionist White House.
For its part, the EU has been grappling with repeated tariff threats from Trump despite a trade deal clinched in 2025.
“At a time of growing global uncertainty, the EU and Mexico are choosing openness, partnership and ambition,” EU trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who was also in Mexico City, said. He pointed out that more than 43,000 European companies export to Mexico, while over 11,000 EU companies operate in the country.
On agriculture, the pact will open up new markets for Mexican products such as coffee, fruit, chocolate and agave syrup.
A total of 568 European and 26 Mexican geographical indications will also be protected, alongside the opening of public procurement markets, according to the Commission.
With this new deal, the EU also wants to signal its strengthened presence in Latin America, where China has expanded its influence.
“97% of the GDP of Latin America and the Caribbean will be covered by sophisticated preferential agreements with the European Union,” a senior EU official said, adding: “There is no other region in the world that has such a dense and connected network of agreements.”
The EU has already built new trade ties with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay through the Mercosur trade agreement, which provisionally entered into force on 1 May and liberalises trade flows between the EU and those countries.
However, its signing has faced strong opposition from EU farmers, who fear unfair competition from Latin American imports, and ratification was suspended after MEPs challenged the agreement before the EU Court of Justice.
Brussels argues the Mexico agreement should avoid the backlash faced by Mercosur because sensitive agricultural imports remain capped through tariff quotas.
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EU Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné called for EU businesses to diversify their suppliers on Friday as trade tensions with China ramp up.
The comments come as Beijing has made repeated threats towards the EU in recent weeks, while Brussels seeks to strengthen its legislation against its Asian rival.
Last year, China restricted exports of rare earths and chips, strategic for the EU’s green technologies, defence and automotive industries.
“Do not make 100% of your supplies in one country,” Séjourné told EU businesses after a meeting with the EU’s 27 trade ministers in Brussels. He added: “The global geopolitical situation shows that your ability to provide yourself abroad must also depend on other types of countries and also on European production.”
The European Commission has so far issued guidance to EU companies and Séjourné signalled that if they did not move, the EU executive would “perhaps have to move to the next step.”
Internally, the Commission is already working on a proposal to force car producers to source chips from multiple suppliers, Euronews has revealed.
Last year, a spat between the Dutch government and the Chinese chip company Nexperia, based in the Netherlands, caused shortages of chips for EU industries after Beijing blocked exports in retaliation.
EU Trade Chief Maroš Šefčovič told Euronews at the time that China was “weaponising” critical supplies for EU industry.
Brussels and Beijing have been at loggerheads since the EU presented several proposals restricting China’s access to the EU single market.
The so-called “Industrial Accelerator Act” aims to favour EU companies in public procurement and impose strict conditions on Chinese investments in the bloc. Meanwhile, a Cybersecurity Act could exclude Chinese telecoms companies from the EU market.
Beijing has directly threatened the EU with retaliation if it moves forward with those proposals. China repeated the threats after media reports about potential EU measures against cheap Chinese imports flooding the EU market.
An orientation debate is set to take place in Brussels between EU commissioners on 29 May to decide on the EU’s strategy as its trade deficit with China becomes more critical month after month.
From Spain to Cabo Verde, the EIB is building a blueprint for global maritime decarbonization.
When the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed off on an €80 million loan to Bilbao’s Port Authority in late 2024, most observers logged it as routine. It was anything but.
The facility bundled three priorities that now define the bank’s maritime strategy: capacity expansion, grid electrification, and renewable energy generation on port land. Over the past 18 months, operating through its core European window and EIB Global, the bank has deployed or committed well over €400 million in maritime financing, for the most active period of EIB maritime engagement in a generation.
The Bilbao loan and a subsequent package for Málaga form the European spine of the push. Bilbao’s €80 million facility finances breakwater expansion, the landside electricity grid, and renewable generation, positioning the port on the Atlantic Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) as a lower-carbon alternative to road freight. Málaga’s €50 million loan, signed in spring 2025, follows the same template on the Mediterranean Corridor: a new multi-purpose terminal, full shore-power electrification for docked vessels, and upgraded border and passenger facilities.
Both foreground onshore power supply (OPS)—enabling ships to cut auxiliary engines at berth—in anticipation of FuelEU Maritime, the EU regulation that mandates OPS at designated EU ports as of 2030.
The Cabo Verde Blue Economy Sustainable Ports Facility remains the EIB’s most ambitious external maritime bet in recent memory, however.
Assembled in layers over the past two years, the program combines €114 million in EIB loans with a €34 million EU investment grant for a total €148 million concessional package under the Global Gateway, the EU’s strategy to invest in sustainable infrastructure. The undertaking spans three of the four maritime hubs across the Cape Verde archipelago: Mindelo’s Porto Grande (new breakwater, expanded container and fisheries infrastructure), Palmeira on Sal (larger-vessel reception, improved fish-landing facilities), and Santo Antão’s Porto Novo (inter-island connectivity upgrades).
Solar energy systems across multiple ports aim to cut diesel dependency. The centerpiece of the project is the rehabilitation of CABNAVE, Cape Verde’s sole naval repair yard. The EIB intends to develop it into a regional maritime center of excellence: a goal with geopolitical resonance, given China’s longstanding interest in the facility.SUBHED
The series of deals comes fully into focus as an accompaniment to the regulatory revolution unfolding in parallel in the EU. FuelEU Maritime, in force since the beginning of last year, mandates progressive greenhouse-gas intensity cuts for ships above 5,000 gross tonnes calling at EU ports: 2% against a 2020 baseline now, rising to 6% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. Simultaneously, the EU Emissions Trading System covers shipping; companies must surrender allowances for 40% of verified emissions from 2024, 70% from 2025, and 100% from 2026.
This double pressure—a fuel-intensity standard alongside a carbon price—is the commercial incentive structure the EIB’s port electrification investments are designed to capitalize on. The bank is de-risking regulatory transitions for port authorities that might otherwise be delayed while awaiting final implementing rules. Additionally, bundling electrification, renewables, and capacity expansion into single loan instruments is more sophisticated than the EIB’s earlier methods of generating port loans, which were piecemeal and perceived as non-strategic.
But the EIB is not the only major backer of the energy transition, nor could it be.
Last year, the European Investment Fund approved infrastructure fund investments explicitly targeting shipping-sector decarbonization, signaling a move beyond pure debt into equity and quasi-equity instruments that aim to crowd in pension funds and insurers at a scale individual EIB loans cannot reach. The European Commission has estimated that the full maritime energy transition will require around €100 billion by 2035; the EIF’s fund route is considered the most plausible mechanism for mobilizing capital at that magnitude.
Yet gaps remain. The portfolio is still weighted heavily toward port-side infrastructure rather than the fleet itself; direct EIB financing for vessel retrofits and alternative-fuel newbuilds has yet to materialize at scale. OPS deployment across all TEN-T ports by 2030 is a larger task than two Spanish loans can address. And the geopolitical role the bank has assumed in Cape Verde raises questions about mandate and institutional capacity that extend beyond the mid-Atlantic.
The EIB’s maritime schemes of the past 18 months are not isolated transactions; they are the outline of a strategy. Whether the bank receives the resources and political backing to match the scale of the transition it’s trying to finance is an open question.
EASYJET will launch a loyalty program in 2027, to reward repeat bookers of both its flights and holidays.
Customers will be able to accrue points based on how much they’ve spent, which they’ll then be able to use for discounts on future bookings.
Follow The Sun’s award-winning travel team on Instagram and Tiktok for top holiday tips and inspiration @thesuntravel.
The airline said that it benefits from a “local customer base” with lots of “returning” flyers and essentially wants to reward them for it.
Not many details about the scheme have been announced, but talking to the Financial Times, easyJet CEO Kenton Jarvis said that it would have “broad appeal”.
He added: “Not only do we have commuters… but also people who book holidays accumulate value that they can redeem either on a flight or on holiday.”
Reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem that easyJet will be replacing its easyJet Plus scheme, which is already in place and designed for frequent flyers.
easyJet Plus is available for an annual fee of £249, where passengers benefit from ‘Plus’ bag drop, speedy boarding, inclusive allocated seating and fast track security – and other ‘exclusive benefits’.
Many other airlines operate loyalty schemes, and recently British Airways made a change to the way its tier points count towards silver or gold membership.
As of April 2026, members of the British Airways Club started earning points based on the money they spend with the airline, rather than based on distance they have flown.
For every £1 they spend, they will earn one tier point, which makes it tougher for flyers to earn the top status.
According to the Financial Times, Virgin Atlantic said more than 10,000 BA members had switched to its programme after offering to match the status of any customers booking a flight.
Earlier this year, easyJet announced it would be launching new routes from the UK – some of which are from Newcastle International Airport, its newest base which it opened in March.
In October, the airline will begin flights from Newcastle to Fuerteventura providing a winter sun escape to the Canary Island.
Anyone wanting to visit Reykjavik, Iceland, can travel from Newcastle from October 27 twice a week, on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
Deepfake fraud is becoming a persistent, multiyear corporate risk as synthetic voices circulate undetected.
Deepfake-enabled fraud, which began as novel technical exploits, is now a persistent operational risk with a multi-year shelf life within the corporate ecosystem. According to deepfake-detection provider Resemble.AI, deepfakes typically remain in circulation for three-and-a-half years.
Resemble.AI’s 2025 Deepfake Threat Report, published in March, references an incident in which a voice clone of a German energy company CEO remained in circulation for nearly six years, although it resulted in only a €243,000 loss in 2019.
Determining losses from such attacks is difficult; for the 41 documented incidents last year cited by the research, only $74.9 million in verified losses were reported, with a median per-incident loss of $243,000. However, the authors noted that 71% of victims did not report financial losses, suggesting a higher volume of hidden liabilities.
“What makes them so effective is that they enable both real-time impersonation and the creation of synthetic identities stitched together from real and fake data,” said Dominic Forrest, CTO of biometric security vendor Iproov. “These are extremely difficult to detect, and once trusted, they can be used to bypass controls and commit fraud.”
Detecting deepfakes is a growing concern; the authors of the Resemble.AI report estimate that deepfake-based fraud attacks on corporations reached 8.5 billion potential incidents, ranging from audio impersonations of executives to doctored or fake images. The most common targets, Forrest noted, are on account openings, payment authorization, credential reset, and high-value transactions.
Telling a deepfake from the genuine article has become an AI-on-AI battle, experts warn.
The generative AI models producing deepfakes improve continuously via scaling and data, while deepfake detectors rely on signals like artifacts and inconsistencies, which disappear as models improve, said Siwei Lyu, professor of Computer Science and Engineering and director of the Institute for AI and Data Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
“In practice, detectors lag by about six to 18 months on specific modalities,” he said. “But more importantly, they are chasing a moving target whose failure modes are actively being optimized away.”
Forrest suggests that firms move their identity verification from single checks to a multi-layered approach: “You need to confirm that a real person is physically present, not a deepfake, while also analyzing the digital environment for signs of compromise. No signal should be trusted in isolation.”
This article first appeared in the May edition of Global Finance Magazine.
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s grip on his party slipped on Thursday as anger boiled over among Senate Republicans about a growing list of issues.
In a striking display of defiance, GOP senators abruptly derailed plans to vote on legislation to fund Trump’s immigration crackdown amid deep disagreements over security funding for a White House ballroom and a $1.8-billion fund to pay people who claim to have been politically persecuted.
The discontent had been building for weeks. Many senators had grown frustrated over Trump’s decision to endorse candidates running against longtime Republican incumbents.
Others, worried about rising costs as a result from the war in Iran, had aired concerns ahead of the midterm elections. But the breaking point came when the Justice Department, with little warning, pushed to create what it termed the “anti-weaponization fund.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) acknowledged the concerns over the fund Thursday after a reportedly contentious private meeting about it between Senate Republicans and acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche. He also conceded midterm politics had added to the tension.
“It’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us,” Thune told reporters. “You can’t disconnect those things.”
A day earlier, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who lost his primary race on Saturday to a Trump-backed challenger, expressed strong disagreement with the creation of the fund, which would be controlled by appointees without congressional oversight.
“People are concerned about paying their mortgage or rent, affording groceries and paying for gas, not putting together a $1.8 billion fund for the president and his allies to pay whomever they wish with no legal precedent or accountability,” Cassidy wrote on X. “If there needs to be a settlement, the administration should bring it to Congress to decide.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also had harsh criticism for the fund.
“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick,” he said in a statement.
The discord was striking, partly because Republicans have largely steered clear of checking the president’s power, and Congress has been largely sidelined under the second Trump administration on the war in Iran and other issues.
“I don’t think the Republicans had any choice but to pull the plug until we come back in June, because they’re facing a bit of a mutiny within their conference,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told The Times, saying he had heard that the meeting between Blanche and Republicans “didn’t go well.”
As tension simmered on the background, Trump seemed unbothered by the group of Republicans’ public rebellion against his agenda. When asked whether he was losing control of the Senate, he said he didn’t know.
“I only do what is right,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
However, he expressed annoyance at lawmakers who would not support $1 billion in federal funding for security costs related to the ballroom project. He said the structure is being privately funded by him and other “great patriots.”
“We are making a gift to the United States,” Trump said. “This is being made as a gift from me and other people that are great patriots and spent a lot of money. We are building what will be the finest ballroom anywhere in the world.”
The $1 billion for security funding would be “very much a good expenditure,” he said. If Congress does not sign off on the money, Trump said the “White House won’t be a very secure place.”
Trump did not immediately comment on Thursday about the Senate’s delaying of the funding bill. The White House declined to comment on the matter.
Trump’s second-term actions have frequently tested the loyalty of Republican lawmakers, who have largely stayed in line. The settlement fund, with its ethical questions, appears to have crossed a line for some senators in a party that has traditionally opposed wasting taxpayer funds.
The money comes from the judgment fund, which is a Congress-approved ongoing appropriation that allows the Justice Department to settle cases and make payments.
Stephen Miller, a top aide to Trump, told reporters at the White House that the $1.8-billion settlement was “just a small measure of the justice” that many people are owed after being targeted by the federal government. Miller declined to say whether the White House was reaching out to senators to ease concerns about the fund.
Republicans in Congress decried the use of similar third-party settlements during the Obama administration, with House lawmakers repeatedly passing a bill aimed at stopping settlement slush funds, noted Molly Nixon, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Though the Trump administration’s plan is novel because the settlement money isn’t going to a third party, the general concept has been offensive to Republicans in the past; the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee termed it an abuse in 2017.
“If you’re taking a consistent view, you’d be at least equally as opposed to this settlement,” Nixon said of Republican lawmakers.
That could be driving some of the opposition now, along with concerns about who is going to get the money and whether it could be distributed to people who wouldn’t have been able to make a successful case before a court of law, Nixon said.
“The fund is going to plaintiffs who were victims of lawfare or weaponization. … Those are pretty ambiguous terms. They’re sort of in the eye of the beholder,” Nixon said. “It’s pretty easy to see how this could very easily become a quiet political claims process.”
Police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot have already filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the creation of the fund, arguing in part that it would compensate extremist convicted of committing violent crimes.
“The fund’s mere existence sends a clear and chilling message: those who enact violence in President Trump’s name will not just avoid punishment, they will be rewarded with riches,” the lawsuit says.
When Trump returned to office in January 2025, one of his first acts was pardoning or commuting the prison sentences of the 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the attack. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday did not rule out that settlement money could go to those rioters, saying the money would be given out on a “case-by-case basis.”
Thune told reporters on Thursday that the Justice Department would have to come up with some guardrails to ease concerns among senators.
“We need to get some clarity,” he said.
Though the number of Republicans angry with Trump is significant enough to make or break legislation, the caucus appeared far from falling apart.
Senate Republicans blocked an attempt by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on Thursday to pass a bill to prohibit federal funds from reaching Jan. 6 rioters, an attempt to prevent the fund from being used to compensate them.
“I’m encouraged hearing some of my Republican colleagues agreeing with me,” Padilla said on the Senate floor. “Let’s stand up for congressional oversight as a unified Senate.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) objected to Padilla’s bill, later writing on X: “PROUD to object today to Senator Padilla’s RIDICULOUS bill and stand up for ALL FREEDOM-LOVING AMERICANS.”
Schiff, who is working on an amendment that would target the fund, said other Republican colleagues he spoke to Wednesday evening were unhappy with the position Trump has put them in. He said Trump’s actions have helped underscore Democrats’ arguments against his party.
“All [it’s] doing is helping us make the case that the Republicans couldn’t care less about people’s cost of living … that there’s plenty of money for golden ballrooms for the president, there’s plenty of money for the president’s cronies, but there’s no money for the average family,” Schiff said.
Chemours falls as EPA's rollback of refrigerant rule raises oversupply concerns
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In a Venezuela whose infrastructure has been abandoned to the past, it is easy to forget that even here the famous phrase “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” still applies. In many ways it perfectly encapsulates the contradictions of Venezuelan society, a country where running water and electricity is far from a certainty and yet adoption of payment technologies and cryptocurrencies far outpaces that of developed countries. Whatever one thinks of the usefulness and value of these technologies, we can expect even more contradictions in the coming age of AI.
The future and AI will arrive in Venezuela, but to whose benefit? And for which purposes?
Before answering these questions I think it’s helpful to understand the technology which is AI through Jensen Huang’s analogy of a five layer cake, where Layer One is the top and Layer Five the bottom.
One – AI Applications (Claude Code, Copilot, ChatGPT, etc)
Two – AI Models (Claude-Opus, GPT5, Llama, etc)
Three – Cloud Data Center Infrastructure
Four – Chips and Computing Infrastructure
Five – Energy
Each layer of the cake requires the one below to stand. These are complicated supply chains that allow for the incredible technology that is modern generative AI.
In the case of Venezuela we can forget about having much to do with Layers Two and Four. These simply require too much know-how that the engineers and manufacturers in Venezuela do not have. We cannot compete with factories in Taiwan or China nor can we compete with computer and electrical engineers making millions of dollars a year in Silicon Valley. For a few decades at least.
Let’s look at how we can expect the other three to apply to Venezuela.
The first layer of the cake, even if these applications are not made in Venezuela (and most won’t be), they will not be difficult to deploy as these companies will offer (as they do now) software-as-a-service (SaaS) products whose infrastructure can run anywhere else in the world. The use of these tools requires little more than an internet connection and we can expect some level of widespread adoption, but likely not much in terms of cutting-edge innovation.
Because of the insatiable demand from AI companies for energy and places to put their datacenters where it’ll be the most profitable, Venezuela is attractive with its much lower-cost energy in relative terms.
Before discussing more of possible AI applications in Venezuela, let’s consider layers three (cloud datacenter infrastructure) and five (energy). These are where Venezuela is more relevant than may first meet the eye.
As you can see the entire cake relies on one base: energy. Energy and its cost is the main constraint for the entire supply chain of AI and the main reason why companies like Anthropic and OpenAI remain unprofitable despite tens of billions of dollars in revenue.
Venezuela is a potential powerhouse for energy production. Not only does it have incredibly high oil reserves but also impressive hydropower, and an extremely underdeveloped solar and wind industry.
In her bid to ask for international support, opposition leader María Corina Machado has framed Venezuela’s future as an energy hub for the Americas. Because of the insatiable demand from AI companies for energy and places to put their datacenters where it’ll be the most profitable, Venezuela is attractive with its much lower-cost energy in relative terms.
If only it had a functioning grid.
The focus on fixing this enormous issue during this stabilization phase of the American plan is no accident. The world, as has been the case since it first found oil, looks to Venezuela for the energy it can provide. One could see this negatively in that Venezuelans will have to compete with large multinational AI companies for energy, but the “stability” in the political environment that these companies require could incidentally be good for Venezuelans.
Stability of governance and respect of property rights is crucial for any company looking to make hypothetical data center or energy investments since this infrastructure takes multiple years to develop, if not decades. A return to true law and order and unassailable property rights would be an undeniable boon to the economy.
Local corporations will probably use AI-powered enterprise software as many others in the world. Though the Venezuelan entrepreneurial spirit keeps surprising, it seems likely that Venezuelan businesses will be not quite at the cutting edge but still positioned to take advantage of AI.
The area of most interest, or rather most concern, is how the government might use these tools. The Venezuelan government has laid out their first risk-based ethical code for AI, largely modeled after the EU’s AI Act. Whether or not this translates to law, remains to be seen, but they have spoken about their commitment to “humanist” AI which disavows use cases such as manipulation, mass surveillance and disinformation. These are great values to strive for, but the government’s respect for its own laws, let alone ethical codes, has been more than lacking.
AI gives tyrants around the world exactly what they want: an army of intelligent capable agents who can’t say no and don’t need to be fed or housed.
In its ability to perform thinking tasks with lightning speed in a parallelizable manner, AI is a technology which tyrants in years past must have wished they had access to. A virtual army of bureaucrats (which the Venezuelan State already has in human form) observing citizens and making small decisions, putting names on lists, logging personal connections, building political profiles as well as modeling how likely a person would be to vote a certain way or become an annoying political activist, thus saving intelligence agencies hundreds of thousands of man-hours a year. Relying less on actual humans to want to do the work of spying on their own people or even themselves.
AI agents can screen social media and the internet for any sign of online political coordination and connect that to their already centralized data systems, which could be used to target or deny access to benefits for anyone who the AI has decided is toxic to your agenda.
When you are unpopular and attempting to maintain control over a population, technology is your friend because you can leverage your human capital much further, to do what you need done without the need to grow your network of trusted people. AI gives tyrants around the world exactly what they want: an army of intelligent capable agents who can’t say no and don’t need to be fed or housed.
At the moment, Venezuela’s future hangs in the balance, leadership going forward is unclear but one thing is clear. It will not be more of the same. The only permanent thing in the world is change, and the future will arrive in Venezuela. The question is: how will it be distributed? Who will get the benefits?
As always, it will benefit those with power. The question is: who will have power?
Maduro and Saab in a public rally in 2024. (AFP)
Caracas, May 20, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Former Venezuelan Industry Minister Alex Saab appeared before a federal court in Miami on Monday and was formally charged with money laundering offenses.
The accusations are linked to alleged misappropriation of funds from Venezuelan government contracts, including the CLAP subsidized food program, which was created to support the country’s most vulnerable sectors.
Following his “deportation” from Caracas last Saturday, Saab — who was previously charged in the United States in 2021 but pardoned in 2023 by former President Joe Biden as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela — was also accused of conspiracy to conduct financial transactions through the US financial system, as well as concealing and disguising the origin of funds.
According to US Deputy Attorney General Andrew Tysen Duva, Saab “allegedly used US banks to launder hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from a Venezuelan food program and from profits generated through the illegal sale of Venezuelan oil.”
The former minister, who also served as a diplomatic envoy for the Nicolás Maduro government, is accused of “secretly using shell companies, fraudulent invoices, falsified shipping records and other fabricated documents.”
The Department of Justice stated that “from 2019 through at least January 2026, the conspiracy expanded as US economic sanctions crippled Venezuelan exports, especially oil.” If convicted, Saab faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. He will remain detained without bail, with the next hearing scheduled for June 24.
The Colombian-born businessman was previously arrested in mid-2020 during a refueling stop in Cape Verde at the behest of US authorities. Saab was headed to Iran to negotiate fuel and food imports at a time of acute shortages in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government launched a massive international PR and solidarity campaign to protest Saab’s arrest and later extradition to the US. Authorities established his release as a foreign policy priority, even temporarily suspending a dialogue process with US-backed opposition factions. Saab’s legal and public defense centered on his diplomatic immunity and his role in securing imports that circumvented US sanctions.
Upon his release, Saab was appointed industry minister in October 2024. He was removed from the post by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez in January, weeks after the US military strikes and kidnapping of Maduro.
Rumors that the former government envoy had been arrested by security forces began to circulate in February, with authorities neither confirming nor denying them. Following his handover to US agencies, Venezuelan high-ranking officials have sought to distance themselves from Saab.
Rodríguez defended Saab’s handover on Monday, arguing that it was an administrative measure justified by national interests.
“Any decision taken by the national government will be made in Venezuela’s interest (…) Alex Saab is a citizen of Colombian origin, he carried out functions in Venezuela, and these are matters between the United States of America and him,” she said in a televised broadcast, adding that the upcoming prosecution is an issue “between the US and Saab.”
For his part, National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez accused Saab of maintaining “ties” with “US agencies” since 2019. “We are only learning about this now (…) All of you will soon find out what kind of relationship Saab had and still has with those agencies,” he stated during a legislative session on Tuesday.
Rodríguez — who spent three years leading negotiations aimed at securing Saab’s release — insisted that he was following instructions and that it was “not his place” to investigate Saab’s background or whether he had committed any crimes.
At the same time, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello claimed that Saab had fraudulently obtained Venezuelan nationality back in 2004 and went on to “defraud” the country.
“He is not Venezuelan, he is a citizen of Colombian origin,” Cabello affirmed in a Monday press conference. “He always presented an illegal Venezuelan ID card that has no backing from the immigration services.”
The Venezuelan leaders’ statements sparked doubts and criticism on social media, with users publishing Supreme Court resolutions affirming Saab’s Venezuelan nationality and questioning how Saab’s migratory status was not vetted before his high-level appointments.
Saab’s second arrest and prosecution by the US Justice Department have reportedly coincided with the launch of a new probe against Maduro.
According to CBS News, US authorities worry that the case against the kidnapped president in New York is “weak” and ordered federal prosecutors in Florida to open a second criminal investigation against him. It is not presently known whether the goal is to tie the new probe to Saab, whom Washington has accused of serving as Maduro’s “financial operator.”
The latest investigation was reportedly opened in March and is being led by prosecutor Michael Berger, who specializes in international criminal cases. Several FBI and Homeland Security agents are likewise participating, along with the IRS’ criminal investigation division.
Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to charges including drug trafficking conspiracy. Their trial is set to resume on June 30.
Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.
The European Commission on Thursday cut its 2026 growth forecast for the European economy, as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East drives energy prices sharply higher.
The EU economy is now expected to grow by just 1.1% in 2026, down from the 1.4% projected in the Commission’s autumn forecast. The eurozone outlook was revised down further to 0.9%.
In its report, the Commission warned that disruption to global energy markets — caused by escalating tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s key oil and gas shipping routes — has significantly worsened Europe’s economic outlook.
“Before the end of February 2026, the EU economy was expected to continue expanding at a moderate pace, alongside a further decline in inflation,” the report said. “However, the outlook has changed substantially since the outbreak of the conflict.”
Inflation is also expected to rise sharply due to the disruption around Hormuz.
EU inflation is forecast to reach 3.1% this year — a full percentage point higher than previously expected — driven mainly by soaring energy costs after oil and gas prices surged amid fears of supply disruptions in the Gulf.
For EU officials, the shock recalls 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered Europe’s worst energy crisis in decades.
The Commission described the latest turmoil as “the second such shock in less than five years”, warning that Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels leaves it highly vulnerable whenever geopolitical tensions threaten global energy supplies.
Consumer confidence has already fallen to a 40-month low, according to the forecast, as households prepare for higher heating and fuel bills while businesses face rising operating costs and weaker demand.
Investment is also expected to slow as companies confront tighter financing conditions and growing uncertainty. Export growth is weakening as global demand softens.
Despite the deteriorating outlook, Brussels said the bloc is better prepared than during the Ukraine-related energy crisis, thanks to years of investment in renewable energy, lower gas consumption and efforts to diversify away from Russian supplies.
“The push towards supply diversification, decarbonisation and lower energy consumption has left the EU economy better placed to absorb today’s shock,” the Commission said.
However, EU officials acknowledged that risks remain heavily skewed to the downside.
The report warned that prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz or across wider Middle Eastern supply chains could drive energy prices even higher, derail the expected easing of inflation in 2027 and potentially stall Europe’s recovery altogether.
The Commission also cautioned that shortages of refined oil products, fertilisers and other industrial inputs could spread through global supply chains, increasing food and manufacturing costs across Europe.
Meanwhile, European governments are preparing for growing fiscal pressure. Public deficits across the EU are expected to widen as governments increase spending to protect households from rising energy bills while also boosting defence expenditure amid mounting geopolitical instability.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has recently urged the European Commission to relax fiscal rules for households and industries struggling with soaring energy costs, arguing that energy security should be treated with the same urgency as defence spending.
At the centre of Rome’s request is the EU’s national escape clause, adopted on 8 July, which allows member states temporary fiscal flexibility to increase defence spending under exceptional circumstances.
Meloni said Brussels had already shown a willingness to loosen budget rules in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine and growing concerns about Europe’s military preparedness. Italy is now seeking similar flexibility for emergency energy measures.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced plans on Wednesday for one of the biggest stock sales ever, by taking a space company public that is currently losing billions of dollars a year.
A filing shows that SpaceX lost $2.6 billion (€2.24bn) from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses continued at the start of this year.
The prospectus did not put a dollar figure on the amount Musk hopes to raise, but various reports have estimated it at around $75bn (€64.5bn). An offering of that size would easily surpass the current title holder, Saudi Aramco, the oil giant that went public seven years ago and raised $26bn (€22.4bn).
SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said the money will help finance projects to put people on the Moon and Mars, as part of its goal to make humans an interplanetary species in the face of existential threats that could wipe out civilisation.
“We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs,” the filing states.
The prospectus reads, in part, like a Hollywood-style vision of the future, detailing in one section that part of Musk’s compensation will be granted only if he maintains “a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.”
Short of that, the stock sale alone could make Musk — the founder and a major shareholder of SpaceX — the world’s first trillionaire. Forbes currently estimates his net worth at $839bn (€722bn), roughly equivalent to Poland’s annual GDP.
In addition to making reusable rockets to send astronauts into orbit, SpaceX has other businesses, some successful and others struggling, with plenty of question marks.
The document shows that Starlink, the world’s largest satellite communications company, is a major source of cash, generating $4.4bn (€3.8bn) in operating income last year. The business uses 10,000 satellites in low orbit to provide internet service to 10 million people in 150 countries and territories.
Among the struggling businesses are two Musk ventures recently acquired by SpaceX — his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, and his artificial intelligence firm xAI. Those purchases were criticised by some SpaceX investors as bailouts, as both are significant loss-makers.
The prospectus said its AI business lost $6.4bn (€5.5bn) from operations last year.
The original SpaceX business — building rockets and conducting launches — has benefited from major government contracts, raising questions that could come back to affect the company. Given Musk’s close ties to the Trump administration, government ethics lawyers and watchdogs have questioned whether he received preferential treatment in securing taxpayer-funded contracts, and whether that support will continue once Donald Trump leaves office.
SpaceX has won contracts worth $6bn (€5.2bn) from NASA, the Defence Department and other government agencies over the past five years, according to USAspending.gov. The company noted in its filing that one-fifth of its revenue last year came from the federal government.
Musk was the biggest donor to Trump’s presidential campaign and remains a major backer, despite a sometimes rocky relationship following his role in the government cost-cutting effort known as DOGE early last year.
Like many corporate CEOs, Musk’s compensation goes far beyond his annual salary, which was $54,080 (€46,538.5)in 2025 and has remained unchanged since 2019, according to the filing.
The prospectus says stock grants for him will be divided into 15 nearly equal tranches — 67 million shares each — and will vest only as the company reaches preset market capitalisation targets. In addition to the Mars colony milestone, SpaceX’s market value would need to reach $7.5 trillion (€6.45tr) for him to receive the full award.
He would receive additional stock awards if SpaceX succeeds in deploying giant data centres the size of football fields in space.
The document shows Musk will retain significant control over the business.
It states that he and certain other shareholders will receive shares in a special class of stock that gives them 10 votes per share. These shareholders will be able, among other things, to elect a majority of the company’s board of directors.
“This will limit or preclude your ability to influence corporate matters and the election of our directors,” SpaceX said in a warning to prospective investors.
SpaceX will be able to market the offering to investors — in what is known on Wall Street as a “roadshow” — 15 days after making its prospectus public. In this case, that would be 4 June.
Dilok Klaisataporn
Japan reported a trade surplus of JPY 301.9 billion in April 2026, compared to a deficit of JPY 149.5 billion in April 2025, significantly exceeding expectations for a JPY 29.7 billion deficit.
This surplus is the largest since November, with exports
Finance leaders shift from AI experimentation to measurable ROI across corporate operations.
We get it. Artificial intelligence is impressive. But how is it saving CFOs money?
Prithwijit Chaki has a take. As Global Leader for Finance Advisory at Genpact, a global professional services firm, Chaki helps chief financial officers harness AI and data to drive measurable business outcomes. With more than two decades of experience advising companies on finance strategy and large-scale transformation, he has seen firsthand how enterprises are rewiring their finance operations for an AI-first era.
That perspective takes on new dimensions with Genpact’s alliance with Google Cloud, announced earlier this month. The partnership translates AI ambition into production-ready operations.
Global Finance asked Chaki how that vision is taking shape and whether the conversation is no longer just about how AI can enhance productivity, but about bottom-line business value.
Global Finance: CFOs have spent the last two years experimenting with AI pilots. What’s different in 2026?
Prithwijit Chaki: CFOs are moving from AI experimentation to AI accountability. After years of pilots, the question is no longer whether AI can improve individual productivity, but whether those gains translate into enterprise value across the finance function: faster close cycles, better working capital, lower manual review burden, stronger controls, or measurable business outcomes.
According to a Genpact/HFS Research report, investment in agentic AI is expected to rise 38% over the next year. However, 67% of enterprises still rely on outdated productivity metrics that fail to capture the value of autonomous decision-making. That’s the gap CFOs are trying to close in 2026: cutting through the ‘sea of sameness’ in the AI market to determine which applications can deliver real, achievable value versus which are simply adding to the noise.
GF: How does agentic AI change day-to-day finance operations?
Chaki: Traditional automation follows basic rules, and generative AI can help an individual complete a task faster. Agentic AI goes even further. It operates inside finance workflows — deciding, acting, learning, and orchestrating work across processes with people still in the loop where needed. In practical terms, that could mean moving from someone using a copilot to draft a dunning letter faster to a more integrated workflow that identifies the right action, drafts the communication, routes exceptions, applies policy guardrails, and connects the work back to measurable enterprise value.
GF: What’s one example of cost savings or business impact that CFOs see from implementing agentic AI?
Chaki: A good example is a global supply chain and distribution company processing close to 3.5 million invoices a year. After a major merger, their finance team was dealing with disconnected ERP systems, heavy manual intervention, and slow exception resolution—the kind of last-mile complexity that generic automation can’t solve. Working with Genpact, they deployed our AI-powered Genpact AP Suite combined with our agentic operations model — 21 pretrained, domain-specific AI agents that autonomously route, prioritize, and resolve invoice exceptions, with human experts validating where needed.
GF: What were the results?
Chaki: Significant. Touchless invoice processing went from 7% to 65%. Invoice cycle times were nearly halved — from 18–29 days down to 9–14 days. On-time payment rates jumped from 60% to 95%. Data extraction accuracy improved from 40% to 92%. And the system identified approximately $350 million in duplicate invoices, while early-payment discounts captured grew from $35 million to $44 million — real dollars added to the bottom line.
This isn’t a pilot or a proof of concept. It’s agentic AI operating at scale inside a core finance workflow, delivering measurable cost savings, stronger cash flow, and a fundamentally better supplier experience. That’s the kind of outcome CFOs are looking for.
GF: Which finance function is currently seeing the fastest returns from AI deployment—and why?
Chaki: Accounts payable is one of the clearest areas where finance teams can see tangible value. The process has high volume and repeatable workflows, but it also has a clear ‘last mile’ problem. Invoices, approvals, exceptions, regulatory nuances, and fragmented systems still require heavy manual intervention. Generic AI can automate a large share of structured work. However, the final 20% requires domain-driven AI that understands real-world complexity, from vendor history and regional rules to exception patterns, approval chains, and master data issues. That is where agentic AI can move beyond simple extraction or automation. It can start resolving mismatches, escalating exceptions, improving first-pass yield, reducing manual touchpoints, and shortening cycle times.
GF: Through Genpact’s expanded work with Google Cloud, what are CFOs specifically asking for from hyperscalers right now? Is the conversation more about cost reduction or something else?
Chaki: The CFO conversation with hyperscalers has moved beyond ‘what’s the cheapest cloud?’ or ‘show me another AI demo.’ CFOs want production-ready finance operations that deliver real, measurable business outcomes. That’s what Genpact’s alliance with Google Cloud aims to address. By pairing Google’s AI infrastructure with Genpact’s finance expertise, CFOs can improve forecasting accuracy, strengthen cash flow, and scale AI within their existing cloud environments.
The goal is not just to reduce costs. It’s about boosting process efficiency and accuracy, freeing finance teams from manual work, improving decision-making, and giving CFOs a clearer path from AI investment to strategic value.
GF: Are there any guardrails that must be in place before agentic AI can be trusted within core financial workflows?
Chaki: Think of the guardrails for agentic AI as needing to scale alongside the technology itself. The more finance use cases it touches, the more important it becomes to build controls directly into the workflow. What we’re seeing today is the first wave of “agent-ification.” It operates on a machine-led, human-validated model, combining automation efficiency with expert oversight to ensure quality and compliance. Companies will build tools with that future standard in mind—where the guardrails and technology scale together—will be the ones who truly innovate what finance is capable of.
GF: Are there specific examples you can share of how you see AI augmenting finance teams?
Chaki: We’re already seeing AI reshape how finance teams spend their time. In accounts payable, for example, AI agents are handling invoice extraction, three-way matching, and exception routing. This work used to consume entire teams. In financial planning and analysis, AI is accelerating variance analysis, generating narrative commentary on actuals, and enabling rolling forecasts that would have been extremely time-consuming and practically impractical to run manually. When it comes to record-to-report, it’s compressing close cycles by automating reconciliations and surfacing anomalies before they become audit issues.
GF: Do you expect job cuts?
Chaki: The shift this creates is less about job cuts and more about role evolution. Finance teams won’t shrink overnight, but the composition will change. You’ll see fewer people doing repetitive transactional work and more people in roles that require judgment, such as interpreting AI-generated insights, managing agent workflows, overseeing controls, and partnering with the business on strategic decisions. The finance professional of the future looks more like a combination of business partner and orchestrator than a processor.
Over the next three to five years, as agentic AI matures and enterprise vendors begin offering subscription-based finance capabilities built on entire agentic libraries, the operating model will shift. Finance functions will become leaner, faster, and more insight-driven but the organizations that get there first will be the ones investing now in both technology and the talent to work alongside it.
An ambitious data center project stalls due to insufficient electrical capacity.
Kenya is positioning itself as Africa’s Silicon Savannah and its premier tech hub. Touting itself as a “full-package investment destination,” part of the strategy has been encouraging global tech giants to set up operations in the country.
Lately, however, the plan has run into a roadblock: electrical capacity.
Pull back to May 2024, when Microsoft Corp., in partnership with G42, an Emirati-based AI developer, unveiled plans to invest $1 billion in a data center in Kenya powered by geothermal energy.
Described as the single largest and broadest digital investment in the country’s history, the center would be the heartbeat of a digitally led economy in Kenya and the wider East Africa region, anchored in AI and cloud-computing services.
Two years later, the project has been abandoned on account of too little electricity to power the center.
According to G42, the facility was supposed to be located some 100 kilometers northwest of Nairobi, the epicenter of geothermal energy production. Initially, it would have required 100 megawatts of electricity to run, but when fully operational, 1 gigawatt.
For a country whose installed electricity capacity stands at only 3,840 MW (3.8 GW), and where national connectivity is approximately 76%, the realization was astounding.
“To switch on that one data center, we would need to shut off power for half the country,” said President William Ruto at a recent state event. “That’s when I knew there was a problem.” Kenya continues to lose high-value investments due to low electricity capacity, he conceded; to attract and secure investment, it needs at least 10 GW.
That leaves Kenya with no ongoing power generation projects or plans for more in the future.
The stalling of the data center is bad news for Microsoft. The tech giant saw East Africa as a ripe market for its Azure products and other cloud and AI-powered solutions for businesses and the public sector. A key focus was to help governments digitize operations and service delivery, starting with Kenya, which has indicated plans to move more of its services to the cloud. Another goal was to help startups, entrepreneurs, and organizations build a digital ecosystem offering critical solutions to key sectors of the economy.
Earnings Call Insights: NVIDIA (NVDA) Q1 fiscal 2027
“This was an extraordinary quarter, demand has gone parabolic. The reason is simple, agentic AI has arrived. AI can now do productive and valuable work. Tokens are now profitable, so model makers are in a race
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
Earnings Call Insights: Intuit (INTU) Q3 fiscal 2026
“We delivered strong overall results this quarter with Q3 revenue growing 10% as we made significant progress executing on our AI-driven expert platform strategy.” (CEO, President & Chairman Sasan Goodarzi)
Seeking Alpha’s Disclaimer: This article was automatically generated by an AI tool based on content available on the Seeking Alpha website, and has not been curated or reviewed by humans. Due to inherent limitations in using AI-based tools, the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of such articles cannot be guaranteed. This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or your financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.
