Category: 3. Business

From shopping to applying for jobs to getting advice, artificial intelligence is transforming the way people live. No matter if you see it as a positive or negative, it’s here to stay. AI presents several golden opportunities for Americans to improve their financial futures. Here are four ways AI can give you an edge.

Check Out: The ChatGPT Grocery Shopping Hack That Saves Retirees $100 or More per Month

Read Next: 6 Safe Accounts Proven To Grow Your Money Up To 13x Faster

Around the globe, more and more people are worrying that AI will affect their employment. Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart, agrees in part and believes AI will reshape every job he can think of. While he does admit Walmart will use more AI chatbots in areas like supply chain tracking and customer service, this doesn’t mean it will replace every employee.

McMillon believes workers who adapt to AI tools will be more productive and valuable to employers. Early reports indicate that companies that have replaced employees with AI have experienced problems, with frequent mistakes and inconsistencies from the tech. Learning how to pair AI with soft skills like communication and critical thinking can make you an asset to any company.

Find Out: I’m a Self-Made Millionaire: 6 Ways I Use ChatGPT To Make a Lot of Money

When it comes to budgeting, AI tools can handle many tedious tasks, such as filling in and categorizing your transactions. The AI can then provide insights showing where your money is going and how you can make better use of what you have. You can even enter your financial goals, such as building up an emergency fund or getting out of credit card debt, and AI can find the best strategy for you and keep you on track to reach them.

Financially successful people and experts alike agree that making wise investment decisions is the key to unlocking lasting wealth. In the past, you’d need time, patience and good instincts to think a few steps ahead of the market. Using AI can simplify the process and produce quick insights to aid in your decision-making. Advanced AI algorithms can quickly analyze data sets to forecast how markets will react to news and events in real time. It can also improve your portfolio management and automate trades.

One specific type of AI you can use to improve your investing strategy is robo-advisors. These ask you questions to understand your long-term goals, risk tolerance and timeline to aid your decision-making. While robo-advisors charge fees, unlike popular free AI chatbots, they can offer much better advice and cost much less than hiring a professional financial advisor.

One of the people briefed on the deal said that the share price under discussion is higher than $400 apiece, which would value SpaceX at between $750 billion and $800 billion, though the details could change. 

The company’s latest tender offer was discussed by its board of directors on Thursday at SpaceX’s Starbase hub in Texas. If confirmed, it would make SpaceX once again the world’s most valuable closely held company, vaulting past the previous record of $500 billion that ChatGPT owner OpenAI set in October. Play Video

Preliminary scenarios included per-share prices that would have pushed SpaceX’s value at roughly $560 billion or higher, the people said. The details of the deal could change before it closes, a third person said. 

A representative for SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The latest figure would be a substantial increase from the $212 a share set in July, when the company raised money and sold shares at a valuation of $400 billion.

The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, earlier reported that a deal would value SpaceX at $800 billion.

News of SpaceX’s valuation sent shares of EchoStar Corp., a satellite TV and wireless company, up as much as 18%. Last month, Echostar had agreed to sell spectrum licenses to SpaceX for $2.6 billion, adding to an earlier agreement to sell about $17 billion in wireless spectrum to Musk’s company.

Subscribe Now: The Business of Space newsletter covers NASA, key industry events and trends.

The world’s most prolific rocket launcher, SpaceX dominates the space industry with its Falcon 9 rocket that launches satellites and people to orbit.

SpaceX is also the industry leader in providing internet services from low-Earth orbit through Starlink, a system of more than 9,000 satellites that is far ahead of competitors including Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Leo.

SpaceX executives have repeatedly floated the idea of spinning off SpaceX’s Starlink business into a separate, publicly traded company — a concept President Gwynne Shotwell first suggested in 2020. 

However, Musk cast doubt on the prospect publicly over the years and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen said in 2024 that a Starlink IPO would be something that would take place more likely “in the years to come.”

The Information, citing people familiar with the discussions, separately reported on Friday that SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it is aiming for an initial public offering for the entire company in the second half of next year.

A so-called tender or secondary offering, through which employees and some early shareholders can sell shares, provides investors in closely held companies such as SpaceX a way to generate liquidity.

SpaceX is working to develop its new Starship vehicle, advertised as the most powerful rocket ever developed to loft huge numbers of Starlink satellites as well as carry cargo and people to moon and, eventually, Mars.

(Bloomberg) — The stock market crept higher, but stopped short of records Friday, as traders refrained from making big bets ahead of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cut decision next week. Treasuries notched their worst week since June.

The S&P 500 notched small gains and remains within a whisker of October’s all-time high. The Nasdaq 100 advanced 1% this week while the Russell 2000 gauge of smaller companies pulled back from Thursday’s closing record. Treasuries extended losses with the yield on the 10-year climbing roughly four basis points to 4.14%.

A dated reading of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge did little to shift Wall Street’s expectations of a rate cut on Wednesday with swaps bets pointing to further easing into 2026.

Subscribe to the Stock Movers Podcast on Apple, Spotify and other Podcast Platforms.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, a measure that excludes food and energy, rose 0.2% in September, inline with economists expectations for a third-straight 0.2% increase in the Fed’s favored core index. That would keep the year-over-year figure hovering a little below 3%, a sign that inflationary pressures are stable, yet sticky.

“Overall, the data was consistent with another 25 basis point Fed cut next week, but it doesn’t suggest any urgency for the Fed to accelerate the pace of cuts in 2026,” said BMO’s Ian Lyngen.

A December rate cut is a not given for every Fed watcher. BlackRock CIO of Global Fixed Income Rick Rieder told Bloomberg Television before the data that he is expecting some dissents and disagreement at the next meeting.

Meanwhile, sentiment toward technology stocks got a boost after Nvidia Corp. partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. reported strong sales. Moore Threads Technology Co., a leading Chinese AI chipmaker, jumped 425% in its Shanghai trading debut. Shares of Netflix Inc. slid after agreeing to a tie-up with Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.

In a sign that institutional appetite for the world’s largest cryptocurrency remains subdued, BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) recorded its longest streak of weekly withdrawals since debuting in January 2024.

Investors pulled more than $2.7 billion from the exchange-traded fund over the five weeks to Nov. 28, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With an additional $113 million of redemptions on Thursday, the ETF is now on pace for a sixth straight week of net outflows. A drop in Bitcoin deepened, falling below $90,000 on Friday.

What Bloomberg Strategists say…

There are two things stand in the way of a year-end rally — and both are on display today. One is the third downdraft in crypto prices in the last two weeks, which has sent Bitcoin back below $90,000. Such a pullback served to dampen risk sentiment on two previous occasions in November.

—Edward Harrison, Macro Strategist, Markets Live

For the full analysis, click here.

WTI crude steadied around $60 a barrel. Gold erased earlier gains.

Corporate News

SpaceX is preparing to sell insider shares in a transaction that would value Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite maker at a valuation higher than OpenAI’s record-setting $500 billion, people familiar with the matter said. SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to acquire DigitalBridge Group Inc., a private equity firm that invests in assets such as data centers, to take advantage of an AI-driven boom in digital infrastructure. Netflix Inc. agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. in a historic combination, joining the world’s dominant paid streaming service with one of Hollywood’s oldest and most revered studios. Moore Threads Technology Co., a leading Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker, soared as much as 502% in its Shanghai debut after raising 8 billion yuan ($1.13 billion) in an IPO. Nvidia Corp. would be barred from shipping advanced artificial intelligence chips to China under bipartisan legislation unveiled Thursday in a bid to codify existing US restrictions on exports of advanced semiconductors to the Chinese market. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% as of 4:03 p.m. New York time The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.4% The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2% The MSCI World Index was little changed Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2% The euro was little changed at $1.1645 The British pound was little changed at $1.3335 The Japanese yen fell 0.1% to 155.30 per dollar Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin fell 3% to $89,405.75 Ether fell 2.9% to $3,033.32 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced four basis points to 4.14% Germany’s 10-year yield advanced three basis points to 2.80% Britain’s 10-year yield advanced four basis points to 4.48% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.8% to $60.12 a barrel Spot gold fell 0.2% to $4,200.69 an ounce This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Andre Janse van Vuuren, Levin Stamm, Neil Campling and Sidhartha Shukla.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators on Friday fined X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the bloc’s digital regulations, in a move that risks rekindling tensions with Washington over free speech.

The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act, also known as the DSA.

It’s the first time that the EU has issued a so-called non-compliance decision since rolling out the DSA. The sweeping rulebook requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

READ MORE: France will investigate Musk’s Grok after AI chatbot posted Holocaust denial claims

The Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said it was punishing X because of three different breaches of the DSA’s transparency requirements. The decision could rile President Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital regulations, complained that Brussels was targeting U.S. tech companies and vowed to retaliate.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on his X account that the Commission’s fine was akin to an attack on the American people. Musk later agreed with Rubio’s sentiment.

“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Rubio wrote. “The days of censoring Americans online are over.”

Vice President JD Vance, posting on X ahead of the decision, accused the Commission of seeking to fine X “for not engaging in censorship.”

“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” he wrote.

Officials denied the rules were intended to muzzle Big Tech companies. The Commission is “not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdictions based on their color or their country of origin,” spokesman Thomas Regnier told a regular briefing in Brussels. “Absolutely not. This is based on a process, democratic process.”

X did not respond immediately to an email request for comment.

EU regulators had already outlined their accusations in mid-2024 when they released preliminary findings of their investigation into X.

Regulators said X’s blue checkmarks broke the rules because on “deceptive design practices” and could expose users to scams and manipulation.

Before Musk acquired X, when it was previously known as Twitter, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts, such as Beyonce, Pope Francis, writer Neil Gaiman and rapper Lil Nas X.

After he bought it in 2022, the site started issuing the badges to anyone who wanted to pay $8 per month.

That means X does not meaningfully verify who’s behind the account, “making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with,” the Commission said in its announcement.

X also fell short of the transparency requirements for its ad database, regulators said.

Platforms in the EU are required to provide a database of all the digital advertisements they have carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience, to help researches detect scams, fake ads and coordinated influence campaigns. But X’s database, the Commission said, is undermined by design features and access barriers such as “excessive delays in processing.”

Regulators also said X also puts up “unnecessary barriers” for researchers trying to access public data, which stymies research into systemic risks that European users face.

“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a prepared statement.

The Commission also wrapped up a separate DSA case Friday involving TikTok’s ad database after the video-sharing platform promised to make changes to ensure full transparency.

AP Writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

By Vivien Lou Chen

Instead of falling as Wall Street braces for another Fed rate cut next week, the 10-year Treasury yield rose 12 basis points for the week to almost 4.14%, the most since April

Recent U.S. economic data has bond-market participants uncertain about the Federal Reserve’s ability to cut interest rates next year.

In a bad sign for anyone looking for a reprieve from higher borrowing costs, longer-dated U.S. government debt sold off sharply this week.

The 10-year note and 30-year bond had their worst weekly performances since April and May on conflicting economic data that is sowing doubts about how much the Federal Reserve can cut interest rates in 2026.

Traders widely expect a quarter-point rate cut next week that will push the central bank’s main policy target down to between 3.5% and 3.75%. But they were less certain about next year and see a decent chance that the central bank won’t cut rates again through next March.

Benchmark yields are significant to households, businesses and governments because they influence the cost of borrowing on everything from mortgages, auto loans and credit cards to capital projects, while also affecting interest payments on the national debt.

On Friday, the 10-year Treasury yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y rose 12 basis points for the week to almost 4.14%, the most for any week since April, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The yield on the 30-year bond BX:TMUBMUSD30Y advanced by a similar amount to almost 4.8%, the biggest weekly increase since May. Yields move in the opposite direction to prices, so a rise in these rates is a reflection of the selloffs that took place in the underlying government maturities.

“Yields are heading back to the higher end of the range that we’ve seen since summer,” said Tom Nakamura, a currency strategist and co-head of fixed income at AGF Investments in Toronto, which had almost $43.6 billion (C$60.4 billion) in assets under management and fee-earning assets as of November.

“One of the things driving this is some of the economic data, like jobless claims and University of Michigan consumer sentiment, which are showing resilience and may curtail the Fed from easing much further,” he said.

Data released on Thursday showed initial jobless claims fell to a more than three-year low of 191,000 in the week that ended Nov. 29. On Friday, the University of Michigan’s consumer-sentiment reading inched up by 2.3 points to 53.3 for December, and the rate of U.S. inflation based on the personal consumption expenditures index for September remained stable.

On a more downbeat note, however, payroll processor ADP reported that privately run businesses eliminated 32,000 jobs in November, for the biggest decline since the spring of 2023.

Meanwhile, bond traders are keeping an eye on rising Japanese yields and the possibility of a rate hike by the Bank of Japan later this month. Concerns are that Japan’s bond-market developments, triggered by worries over economic-stimulus efforts under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, might lead to higher yields in the U.S.

Read: Investors are worrying about potential spillover from surging Japanese bond yields. Here’s a breakdown of what matters.

“Globally, we’re seeing some pressure on bonds from fiscal policy – for example, in Japan, with yields on Japanese government bonds rising because the country’s fiscal policy is seen as adding to inflation concerns,” Nakamura said via phone. “The market will tend to focus on fiscal concerns in waves. And as they get highlighted in one market, this tends to shine a light on others as well, particularly in countries where fiscal policy has been more stimulative, such as the U.S.”

On Friday, 1- through 30-year yields finished broadly higher. All three major U.S. stock indexes ended in the green, with the S&P 500 SPX and Nasdaq COMP each securing a fourth day of gains.

-Vivien Lou Chen

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

  (END) Dow Jones Newswires

  12-05-25 1626ET
Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

While many players headed to the beach for some much-needed rest and relaxation after the grueling season, Linda Noskova opted to go in a different direction with her time off.

The 21-year-old Czech headed to Zanzibar, Tanzania and spent an eye-opening week volunteering at a local school. Noskova experienced what life is like for the 300 students firsthand, living in a volunteer house with shared rooms and no air conditioning.

The trip offered a great deal of perspective, and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of Noskova’s life.

“Traveling to Zanzibar, Africa to volunteer was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life, and finally making that long-time dream happen felt both surreal and unforgettable,” the World No. 13 said. “I prepared myself for the cultural shock, but nothing could compare to being there in person — seeing how people live, understanding their challenges and feeling their warmth despite having so little.”

Noskova was touched and inspired by how kind and appreciative the students were, and is determined to continue providing opportunities for the community.

“Their kindness, their excitement and their resilience changed something in me,” Noskova said, “and supporting them now feels like the most natural thing to do. This trip opened my eyes in ways I didn’t expect, and it reminded me how fortunate we are — an experience I believe everyone should have at least once in their life.”

Noskova’s volunteer work comes on the heels of the season of her career. She made her debut in the Top 20 in October following her run to the final of the WTA 1000 event in Beijing, where she lost to Amanda Anisimova in three sets. Earlier in the year she made the final in Prague, and reached another final in her last tournament of the year, in Tokyo.

A bone regeneration device using bioactive materials pioneered by Querrey Simpson Institute for Regenerative Engineering at Northwestern University (QSI RENU) director Guillermo Ameer was recently used in its first surgical case, Acuitive Technologies Inc. announced. 

Called Citregraft, the technology is composed of the citrate-based polymers developed in the Ameer laboratory as well as bioactive glass. It is a highly porous, synthetic bone graft substitute that can be morselized to fit irregular defects. After placement in a bony void, Citregraft binds local growth factors and steadily releases citrate to support bone regeneration before resorbing and being replaced by the patient’s natural bone.

In its first surgical use, the sponge-like material repaired bone tissue that was harvested as part of an ACL reconstruction on the knee. The device received FDA clearance last November and is one of several products in Acuitive Technologies’ CITREGEN product line.

“Twenty years after the first report of citrate-based polymers we now see another major milestone: the use of our biomaterial technology to develop a citrate-based bioactive scaffold to regenerate bone tissue in patients,” said Ameer, the Daniel Hale Williams Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern Engineering and a professor of surgery in Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “This builds on the success and expands the impact our biomaterial technology and collaboration with Acuitive Technologies has made on medical devices that regenerate musculoskeletal tissues.

“I am very proud of our research team members, past and present, who have contributed to the development and applications of citrate-based biomaterials. I am humbled to see that the impact of our publications goes beyond academic research, being validated by industry, and now improving the lives of patients.”

Editor’s note: Intellectual property associated with the Citregraft is subject to an exclusive license between Northwestern and Vesseltek Biomedical. Pursuant to the terms of that license, Northwestern has financial interest in Vesseltek Biomedical. Vesseltek Biomedical sublicenses Northwestern intellectual property associated with Citregraft to Acuitive Technologies. Ameer has financial interest in Vesseltek Biomedical and serves on the scientific advisory board of Acuitive Technologies.