Economy
Fresh off IPO, SpaceX to buy AI coding platform Cursor for $60B
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, fresh off its record-breaking IPO, told U.S. securities regulators on Tuesday that it would acquire Anysphere, the firm behind artificial intelligence coding startup Cursor, at a valuation of $60 billion.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), SpaceX said the all-stock deal was expected to close in the third quarter of this year and that Cursor would become a wholly owned subsidiary.
The two companies had announced a partnership in April that included a clause for Cursor to be potentially bought by SpaceX at the $60 billion figure.
Cursor, founded in 2022 and based in San Francisco, specializes in AI for creating software code, particularly for business uses.
Combining Cursor’s software and product expertise with SpaceX’s “Colossus” AI training supercomputer will enable the company “to build the world’s most useful models,” the companies said in April when announcing their partnership.
The acquisition comes after SpaceX on Friday finally went public, raising a record-breaking $86 billion in its IPO.
A two-day surge in the company’s share price saw SpaceX close trading on Monday at a valuation above $2.5 trillion, placing it among the six largest companies in the world, ahead of Broadcom, Saudi Aramco and Tesla and just behind Amazon.
Co-founded in 2002 by Musk, the world’s first trillionaire, SpaceX has since expanded into a major satellite operator and folded in his artificial intelligence company, xAI, which includes the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Türkiye’s current account posted a smaller-than-expected deficit of $4.19 billion (TL 200.18 billion) in June, remaining below market expectations of around $5 billion, according to official data released by the Turkish central bank on Thursday.
Commenting on the data, Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek said that the deficit is expected to remain “at sustainable levels,” despite pressures related to energy and commodity prices.
The current account excluding gold and energy recorded a surplus of $1.46 billion during the month, the data from the Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) showed.
The goods balance posted a deficit of $8.53 billion, while the services balance registered a net surplus of $6.85 billion.
Net revenues from travel services totaled $4.86 billion, while transportation services generated a surplus of $2.6 billion.
On an annualized basis, the current account deficit stood at $38.9 billion as of June. The 12-month goods deficit reached $76.5 billion, while services recorded a net surplus of $63.7 billion.
Primary and secondary income balances posted annualized deficits of $24.2 billion and $2 billion, respectively.
Portfolio investments attract $2.54 billion
Direct investments recorded a net outflow of $899 million in June, as non-residents invested a net $210 million in Türkiye while residents’ assets abroad increased by $1.11 billion.
Residents purchased $248 million worth of real estate abroad, while non-residents made net property purchases of $297 million in Türkiye.
Portfolio investments registered a net inflow of $2.54 billion during the month.
Non-residents made net purchases of $2.92 billion in equities and investment funds and $1.19 billion in government domestic debt securities.
Banks borrowed a net $3.5 billion through loans from abroad, while other sectors recorded net borrowing of $1.8 billion.
Non-resident banks’ deposits at domestic banks decreased by $3.89 billion, including declines of $2.17 billion in Turkish lira accounts and $1.72 billion in foreign currency accounts.
Current account gap expected at 2.3% of GDP
Şimşek, in a statement shared on X, said the current account deficit was expected “to equal approximately 2.3% of gross domestic product (GDP) as of the second quarter.”
Despite pressure from elevated energy and other commodity prices, the deficit is expected to remain at sustainable levels, the minister said.
He described strong access to external financing as an important indication of the confidence built during the government’s economic program.
External debt rollover ratios over the past year reached 161% for the banking sector and 246% for the real sector, he said.
He also noted that the government would “continue implementing productivity- and transformation-focused policies to make improvements in the current account permanent.”
Australian authorities said on Thursday they would provide AU$2.5 billion ($1.76 billion) to help keep the Tomago aluminum smelter of the global giant Rio Tinto running beyond 2028 as it transitions to renewable generation.
The deal would support 3 gigawatts (GW) of new generation for the smelter, with the financial package to be jointly funded by the federal and New South Wales state governments, a government statement said.
The deal includes a new power purchase agreement intended to provide “reliable, internationally competitive” electricity, 100% renewable from 2033, which Rio Tinto said will cut the plant’s direct and indirect carbon emissions by a quarter.
Rio Tinto warned in October that Tomago could be forced to close if it failed to secure commercially viable power beyond 2028.
Tomago will invest at least AU$1.1 billion in the facility as part of the deal, including AU$100 million to drive further decarbonisation activities at the smelter.
“It means Australia keeps a critical piece of sovereign manufacturing capability, while helping Tomago Aluminium continue competitively producing the aluminum needed for the global energy transition,” Rio Tinto Aluminium & Lithium Chief Executive Jerome Pecresse said.
Like several other Australian smelters struggling with high energy costs during the transition to renewables, Tomago was built last century to take advantage of abundant cheap coal-fired power.
Tomago Aluminium will enter a 10-year power deal running from 2029 to 2038 once its current contract, supplied by AGL Energy with coal-fired power, expires at the end of 2028.
The latest lifeline adds to more than AU$5 billion pledged by the federal and state governments to help Rio Tinto’s Boyne smelter, Glencore’s Mt Isa copper smelter, two smelters owned by Trafigura’s Nyrstar and the Whyalla steelworks.
Tomago is likely to take power from government-owned Snowy Hydro from 2028, local media reported. Snowy had no immediate comment.
The federal government announced in December it was seeking to secure long-term, fixed-price energy supply for the smelter, which employs more than 1,000 full-time staff and 200 contractors.
Tomago Aluminium is an independently managed joint venture majority-owned by Rio Tinto, alongside Gove Aluminium Finance and Norsk Hydro.
Maintaining a low-key profile does not really relate to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Yet that is the strategy the American president says he now favors in the war against Iran, and he is betting on economic pressure over diplomacy or new strikes.
“We are low-keying it,” Trump told Axios by phone on Sunday.
“We’re only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”
The billionaire has since repeated that he is keeping the option of striking Tehran on the table, but prefers to stress the economic damage inflicted on the country through economic sanctions.
“Iran is broke, totally broke and they’re not paying their soldiers,” Trump said Monday in the Oval Office.
He has repeatedly claimed, most recently in a Truth Social post on Wednesday, that the country is experiencing inflation of over 300%.
He also claimed there is no urgency to act because the U.S. has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the oil trade that has become the geopolitical flashpoint of the conflict.
‘Terrible shape’
In reality, Tehran is locking down the strategic passage while Washington is imposing its own blockade on Iranian ports.
“Iran is in terrible shape economically. It can’t ship oil at any meaningful level. And it still labors under sanctions and still can’t access its overseas assets,” said Michael O’Hanlon, an expert from the Brookings Institution think tank.
“The question is, do its leaders really care? I think they care some, but not a lot.”
The mercurial American president has, for the moment, muted both his threats of apocalyptic strikes and promises of imminent diplomatic breakthroughs – messages that have been in constant rotation since he launched the war with Israel more than five months ago.
At the end of July, Washington announced new measures targeting Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the Iranian military.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that Trump’s advisors have shown him data on the impact of American sanctions, which he is now reportedly considering tightening while he also mulls imposing new strictures.
That could be a tactical shift for an American president who, until recently, was threatening to unleash the most devastating strikes since World War II against Iran.
Chess match
The shift may also indicate the limited military options left available to the U.S., where the press has reported that American munitions stockpiles have been heavily depleted.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei called the fresh push for sanctions a “retreat,” noting the country has withstood U.S. sanctions for decades.
“Whenever Washington proves itself incapable of pursuing diplomacy, it retreats into sanctions; and whenever those sanctions fail to produce results, it simply increases the dose,” Baqaei said in an X post this week.
“The real risk is that American politicians, clinging to this habit, will instead strangle their own remaining chances of a less humiliating exit from a crisis of their own making.”
What remains to be seen is whether notoriously impatient Trump, who prefers the spectacle of combat sports like MMA and flashy “deals,” will be able to stay true to the long-term strategy of economic pressure.
In his interview with Axios, Trump compared the conflict with Iran to a game of chess.
“Iranians have shown they are professional chess players,” Baqaei told reporters in response to the comment.
Türkiye will scrap a special consumption tax (ÖTV) on diesel until the end of this month, according to a presidential decree published in the country’s Official Gazette on Thursday.
According to the decree, on Sept. 1 the diesel tax will be reinstated, rising incrementally by TL 3 ($0.0628) each month until it reaches TL 13.9006 per liter on Jan. 1, the same level as before the removal.
The price was set at TL 6 per liter between Oct. 1-31, and TL 9 per liter between Nov. 1-30.
The price will be TL 12 per liter during the last month of the year and will rise again to TL 13.9006 per liter after Jan. 1, 2027, according to the decree.
The decree also removes diesel from Türkiye’s sliding-scale tax adjustment system, implemented to limit the impact of rising oil prices following the outbreak of the U.S.-Israel-Iran war.
However, the decree said gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) will remain in the sliding-scale system until Oct. 1, when the system is set to be abolished.
Global energy prices have been fluctuating heavily in the past couple of weeks amid concerns that U.S.-Iran talks for ending the conflict have stalled.
Norway’s $2.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, reported Wednesday a record profit of 1.75 trillion Norwegian crowns ($184.3 billion) for the first half of the year, supported by strong performance in technology shares.
Investing the Norwegian state’s revenues from oil and gas production, the fund owns on average 1.5% of all listed companies globally, making it the world’s largest single investor.
“The result is driven by good returns in the equity market, particularly from Asian technology stocks,” CEO Nicolai Tangen said in a statement accompanying the half-year results.
The fund’s first-half return beat a previous record of 1.5 trillion crowns set in the first six months of 2023, and corresponded roughly in size to the full-year nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of a nation such as Uzbekistan, a country of around 39 million people, a Reuters comparison showed.
Concentration of chips
Still, the fund’s management has repeatedly warned that future wars and economic depression could wipe out much of its holdings.
Tangen on Wednesday said the top 10 companies in its portfolio now represent 20% of the fund’s value, with most of those firms in the tech industry, raising the concentration risk associated with its index-based investment strategy.
“It’s chips, chips, chips, chips, chips … we’ve never seen such concentration before,” Tangen said.
Any change to this strategy would have to come from Norway’s parliament, a process that normally takes years. The fund late on Tuesday announced for the first time that it held a 0.05% stake in Elon Musk’s SpaceX worth $1.22 billion as of June 30, in an updated list of its holdings.
That stake was modest when compared with its other tech holdings.
It held a 1.28% stake worth $62 billion in Nvidia, a 1.24% stake worth $52 billion in Apple, a 1.17% stake worth $50 billion in Alphabet, a 1.27% stake worth $35 billion in Microsoft and a 1.7% stake worth $34 billion in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, fund data showed.
Overall, the fund is invested in around 7,100 companies globally. It also invests in bonds, property and renewable projects.
SpaceX shares rallied sharply in the wake of its record-breaking IPO in late June, then pulled back sharply as investors questioned whether a lofty valuation of 77 times expected revenue could be justified.
Turkish Airlines (THY) completed the longest nonstop flight in its history on Tuesday, flying Italian football giants Juventus directly from Australia’s Perth to Turin in a 16-hour, 27-minute charter operation.
The airline’s Boeing 777-300ER covered approximately 13,800 kilometers (8,575 miles) on the direct flight, according to flight tracking platform Flightradar24.
The special charter was arranged after Juventus concluded its pre-season tour of Australia, including the “Derby d’Italia” exhibition match against Inter Milan.
Before transporting the team, the aircraft operated a positioning flight from Istanbul to Perth under flight number TK3700, a journey lasting approximately 14 hours and 30 minutes.
Executives recently said THY plans to expand its nonstop long-haul network by deploying ultra-long-range aircraft from late 2027, enabling direct flights to destinations in Australia and South America.
The carrier says it serves more countries than any other airline through its scheduled network.
Under its 2033 strategy, Turkish Airlines plans a major fleet replacement and expansion to around 800 aircraft. It has orders in place for nearly 420 aircraft, including Airbus and Boeing jets, with negotiations continuing for an additional 100 Boeing planes.
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