Business

Silicon Valley executives and global policymakers are scratching their heads at US President Donald Trump's latest crackdown on Anthropic, the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the powerful Claude models. Just days after the release of its most powerful upgrades — Claude Fable 5 and the even more powerful Mythos 5 — the Trump administration imposed strict export controls on Anthropic's tools on June 12. Washington cited national security risks from so-called jailbreaking — clever prompts that bypass AI safety rules — which the San Francisco-based tech giant said were minor, overblown and also present in rival AI platforms. Yet with the US Commerce Department effectively banning foreign nationals worldwide from using the models, including Anthropic's own staff, the firm had lit...

Outside the majestic Wittenbergplatz subway station in Berlin, activist Hedda tells people passing by that the majority of the superrich in Germany inherited their wealth. Striding back and forth in front of a massive banner accompanied by other protesters and a big polar bear in a pink cape, she cites an analysis that found only one in four billionaires is self-made in the country. "Which tax can the government use to fairly redistribute this excessive wealth generated by genetic lottery?" Hedda shouted. "Inheritance tax!" someone yelled back. The activists, who are part of a group that calls itself NoSuperReturn, cheer and someone hands the person a golden chocolate coin. It's a lively kickoff to a week of protests around SuperReturn, a private equity conference in the German capital...

The United States and Iran announced on Sunday that they had struck a preliminary agreement to end their war, raising hopes for an end to the energy crisis that has gripped countries worldwide since the conflict began. "Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!" President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post hailing the US-Iran agreement. The deal would reopen the Strait of Hormuz once both sides formally sign the accord on Friday. The narrow waterway is a crucial route for global energy trade, handling about a fifth of the world's oil and natural gas in normal times. Tehran has effectively shut shipping through the strait since the onset of the conflict on February 28, 2026, causing one of the largest global oil-supply disruptions in history.  At the time, many...

US President Donald Trump on Sunday hailed a framework agreement between the United States and Iran aimed at ending hostilities in the Gulf that have reduced commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to a trickle for more than three months. The deal, scheduled to be signed on Friday in Switzerland, reopens the strait to shipping without tolls, lifts the US naval blockade of Iranian ports and allows Tehran to resume oil exports under limited sanctions relief. The framework also extends the current ceasefire for at least 60 days while launching broader talks on Iran's nuclear program. Yet, unlike reopening a highway after a car wreck, restoring prewar oil, gas and container traffic through this vital chokepoint faces significant hurdles. Greek maritime risk management agency MARISKS wa...

SpaceX is at the center of attention on financial markets on Friday as the company makes its stock-market debut.    The Elon Musk-led rocket, satellite and artificial intelligence company raised as much as $75 billion (€65 billion) by selling nearly 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece, according to a statement the firm released on Thursday. That makes it the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history, breaking the previous record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019, when the oil giant went public and raised $26 billion. The listing instantly turns SpaceX into the seventh-biggest publicly traded US company, valuing it at a whopping $1.8 trillion. SpaceX wants to use the proceeds from the IPO to fund its ambitious projects such as installing AI data centers in space and missions to Mars.Da...

Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire on Friday after his SpaceX aerospace and artificial intelligence (AI) firm made its stock market debut on Friday. Shares pushed well past their opening price of $135 (roughly €117) in the hours after the initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq. The shares closed up just over 19% at around $161 at the end of their first day of trading, valuing SpaceX at around $2.1 trillion and giving Musk an estimated net worth of around $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes magazine. At one point shortly after 1 p.m. in New York (1700 GMT/UTC), the shares had been hovering around the $173 mark, a rise of almost 28% equating to a market capitalization of around $2.26 trillion for the Texas-based space and satellite company, before falling again slightly b...

Swiss voters will soon have the chance to have their say in a referendum on the Civilian Service Act, asking whether the number of people moving from the army to civilian service should be reduced, as well as on a far-right initiative to cap the population at 10 million dubbed the "No to 10 million" initiative. The question at the heart of the populist initiative, to be voted upon on June 14, is how many people should live in Switzerland. The far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP), which proposed it, wants to ensure that the permanent population does not exceed 10 million after 2050. A similar initiative by the SVP failed 12 years ago. Economic interests at stake The issue is not only about nationalism, psychology and xenophobia but also about economic interests. From an economic perspe...

It has all the ingredients of a Hollywood script: two ambitious tech nerds locked in a high-stakes battle for dominance in artificial intelligence (AI), complete with surprising plot twists. Take Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, who recently called on the AI industry to pause development, warning that humanity could lose control of the technology. What made the statement remarkable was its timing: just days earlier, his company had filed paperwork with the US securities regulator, the SEC, to launch an IPO — a first public sale of company shares on the stock market. Anthropic's move caught rival OpenAI off guard. ChatGPT's owner only announced its own plans to go public a week later. The timing looks well-chosen. Stock markets are buoyant, and AI is everywhere. Anthropic is currently val...

On Wednesday, German Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder arrived at Toyota's fuel cell factory in a German BMW iX5 Hydrogen, only to later depart in a Japanese Toyota Crown FCEV. The choice of cars was, of course, no coincidence, with both vehicles generating electricity from hydrogen in a fuel cell. Car makers BMW and Toyota are currently jointly developing the third generation of this drive technology. Three BMW employees have specifically moved to Japan to participate in the undertaking. Both companies are contributing components to help develop a more compact and efficient fuel cell. Once this stage is complete, BMW will manufacture this drive technology in an Austrian factory and Toyota will do the same at a Japanese production site. BMW plans to launch its first hydrogen series mo...

Germany's chemical sector stands as a core pillar of the nation's economy, ranking third after automotive and mechanical engineering. It generates hundreds of billions in annual revenue and directly employs about half a million people.   The industry, however, has been beset by crisis in recent years, weighed down by high energy costs, growing regulatory burdens, a persistently weak economy, and intense competition from abroad. Chemical production requires large amounts of energy, not just electricity but also heat, steam and pressure. So, when energy prices rise, it erodes firms' global competitiveness and profitability. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the resulting loss of cheap Russian gas, German chemical companies have faced some of the highest e...