Elon's Empire Strikes Back. At Him.

Hey,

Spotted: Elon Musk is having a very bad week, SpaceX is sliding back toward its IPO price, xAI is illegally polluting Black communities with unpermitted gas turbines, and Apple is dragging OpenAI to court over snitches.

Meanwhile Singapore is quietly becoming the chip capital of Asia, Trump is using a senator’s death to push his crypto agenda, and OpenAI and Anthropic are lurking in the background filing their own IPO paperwork.

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• Taiwan’s Second Largest Chipmaker Kicks Off Mass Production in Singapore

UMC has kicked off mass production of silicon photonics wafers in Singapore to meet AI data centre demand, with Citi forecasting a 13% Q2 sales jump as Taiwan's chipmakers increasingly use Singapore as their regional manufacturing base.

• SpaceX Shares Slide for Second Consecutive Day, Closing In on IPO Price

SpaceX shares have fallen nearly 9% since their $150 debut, sliding toward the $135 IPO price just weeks after Musk briefly became the world's first trillionaire, as post-IPO euphoria fades and OpenAI and Anthropic quietly file their own prospectuses in the background.

• Apple Takes OpenAI to Court Over Alleged Trade Secret Theft by Former Employees

Two former Apple engineers allegedly emailed themselves confidential information before jumping ship to OpenAI, handing the company an illegal head start in its consumer hardware push.

• Trump Pushes Congress to Pass Crypto Clarity Act in Honor of Lindsey Graham

A landmark crypto regulation bill that would establish the first wide ranging legal framework for digital assets in the US, backed by the White House and industry giants like Coinbase and Circle, though Graham's passing ironically narrows the Republican Senate majority needed to get it over the line.

• Musk's Unpermitted xAI Power Plant Disproportionately Pollutes Black Communities

xAI illegally installed dozens of unpermitted natural gas turbines to power its Colossus 2 data centre, with the resulting pollution falling disproportionately on nearby Black communities already facing elevated respiratory health risks.

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I am the beginning of eternity, the end of time and space.

What am I?

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📚 What We’re Reading:

• IBM warns AI boom is squeezing software budgets, triggers sector rout

• The Chatbot That Foretold Why People Share Secrets With ChatGPT

And the answer is…… 🥁🥁🥁🥁

The letter “E”

Goodbye, see you next week.

Haystack