Category: News and Views

SpaceX reportedly planning 2026 IPO with $1.5T valuation target | TechCrunch

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SpaceX reportedly planning 2026 IPO with $1.5T valuation target SpaceX is planning to go public in mid-to-late 2026 and is looking to raise $30 billion at a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, according to a new report from Bloomberg News citing multiple unidentified sources.

That would make it the largest IPO of all time, edging out Saudi Aramco’s public listing in 2019, which brought in $29 billion. It would also be a bit of a reversal for SpaceX, which previously considered spinning off its Starlink division for an IPO, while keeping the main company private.

Bloomberg’s report comes just a few days after The Information was first to report that Elon Musk’s space company was targeting a late 2026 IPO.

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He Spent $3K to Start a Side Hustle That’s Eyeing $1M Revenue | Entrepreneur

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When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?

In May 2022, I launched Confusion Snacks to bring global flavors to everyday snacking using clean, guilt-free ingredients.

It didn’t begin with the intention of starting a business. It began as a way for me to stay connected to my Indian-American identity.

Growing up, I lived at the intersection of two cultures, constantly learning how to carry forward my immigrant roots while adapting to American life. Many times, those identities felt like opposites. One side of me was devouring my mom’s homemade meals and dancing to Bollywood hits; the other side was crushing a bag of Hot Cheetos while singing Justin Bieber in the shower.

I loved both sides, but never fully felt “at home.” Eventually, I embraced the truth: I’m both Indian and American. And I wanted to create something that celebrated that duality instead of forcing a choice between them.

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Dads Started a Business for Kids Making $100M+ This Year | Entrepreneur

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When Darren Litt’s daughters were little, he asked their pediatrician for tips to keep them healthy. The doctor recommended a daily multivitamin, but when Litt ordered the brand on Amazon, the product that arrived gave him pause: The gummy vitamins were stuck together in their plastic tub with a layer of sugar on the bottom.

“ I thought, If I won’t give this to my own kids, why would anybody?” Litt recalls. “So I asked friends, ‘Is this what you give your kids?’ And almost everyone said the same thing: ‘Yeah, kids like the taste, but we’re not sure it’s good for them.’”

One of those friends was Litt’s former co-worker Adam Gillman; he had the same impression, and a light bulb went off: What if they built a “smarter version” of the type of multivitamin they wanted for their own children? “ No sugar, no gummy junk, just what kids actually need,” Litt says.

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Pixel Watch updates its ‘always on’ display for media controls and timers | Mashable

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Google’s Pixel watches are rolling out an improved always-on display.

Tech site 9to5Google spotted that with Wear OS 6, the Pixel Watch has added always-on capabilities for media controls (such as controlling your music) as well as the timer app. Previously, these sorts of tools would blur after a certain amount of time. Now, they remain on the screen, with the display having been slightly changed from its previous iteration.

That could mark a major improvement for people who use their watch to, say, time a workout or track what they’re cooking. Mashable named the Google Pixel Watch 4 the best Android smartwatch of 2025 — so it’s an improvement on an already good product. Tech Editor Timothy Beck Werth wrote it was “elegant enough to wear to the office, but comfortable and smart enough to monitor workouts.” Senior reporter Christianna Silva, meanwhile, wrote in their review that the “Pixel Watch 4 is a true runners’ watch, and it’s gorgeous too.”

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Airbus finds another issue affecting its best-selling A320 passenger planes | CNN Business

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Airbus has identified an issue affecting “a limited number” of metal panels in its A320 passenger planes, a spokesperson for the company said Monday, just days after warning of another technical problem in its aircraft.

The plane manufacturer is inspecting all aircraft that are potentially impacted by what it calls a “supplier quality issue,” but expects that only some of them will require further action to be taken, the spokesperson told CNN.

“The source of the (metal panels) issue has been identified, contained, and all newly produced panels conform to all requirements,” the spokesperson said, noting that the number of planes in service affected by the problem is “very limited.”

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An extra solar system planet once orbited next to Earth — and it may be the reason we have a moon | Live Science

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The catastrophic collision that forged the moon, and marked one of the most consequential events in Earth’s early history, may have been triggered not by a distant interloper, but by a sibling world that grew up right next door, according to a new study.

About 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-size world slammed into the young Earth with such tremendous force that it melted huge swaths of our planet’s mantle and blasted a disk of molten debris into orbit. That wreckage eventually clumped together to form the moon we know today. Scientists have long favored this “giant impact” origin story, but where the long-lost world, nicknamed Theia, came from and what it was made of remain a mystery.

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Labor Department cancels full October jobs report over shutdown | Fast Company

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The Labor Department said Wednesday that it will not be releasing a full jobs report for October because the 43-day federal government shutdown meant it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate and some other key numbers.

Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data—most importantly, the number of jobs that employers created last month—along with the full November jobs report, now due a couple of weeks late on December 16.

The department’s “employment situation” report usually comes out on the first Friday of the month. But the government shutdown disrupted data collection and delayed the release of the reports. For example, the September jobs report, now coming out Thursday, was originally due October 3.

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Starbucks to sell majority stake in China business | BBC News

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Starbucks says it is selling a 60% stake in its business in China as part of a $4bn (£3.04bn) deal with investment firm Boyu Capital.

Under the agreement, the world’s biggest coffee chain will have a 40% stake in the Chinese retail operation and retain ownership of the Starbucks brand there.

Starbucks entered China in 1999 and the country is now its second-largest market outside the US, but has struggled in recent years with the rise of homegrown brands like Luckin Coffee.

The business will continue to be headquartered in Shanghai and will own and operate 8,000 outlets in the Chinese market, with plans to grow to as many as 20,000 locations, the firm said on Monday.

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Trump administration will tap emergency fund to pay partial food stamp benefits | BBC News

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US President Donald Trump’s administration has said it will provide reduced food aid to more than 42 million Americans, as the government shutdown this week heads towards becoming the longest ever with no resolution in sight.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a court filing that Americans who receive food assistance will get half their normal monthly allotment, after the government dipped into emergency funding.

Judges had given the Trump administration until Monday to provide a plan for how it would pay out Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also known as food stamps.

Funding for the programme has been in limbo due to the more-than-month-long shutdown.

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YouTube announces ‘voluntary exit program’ for US staff | TechCrunch

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YouTube announces ‘voluntary exit program’ for US staff

YouTube is conducting a “voluntary exit program” with severance for U.S.-based employees, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday. The news was first reported by Sources.

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan told employees about the program via an internal memo on Wednesday.

The memo also announced that the Google-owned company was reorganizing its product teams into three separate organizations that all report directly to Mohan. The “Subscription Products” team will focus on YouTube’s subscription products across YouTube Music & Premium and OTT.

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