Source: PitchBook, Ali Javaheri
Photo: For space exploration, AI would need to be able to handle unpredictable scenarios. (Glenn Harvey)

Space tech startups raised $11.3 billion across 244 VC deals in H1 2026, already surpassing the $10.1 billion invested during all of 2025. The milestone reflects bigger checks rather than a surge in dealmaking. The median deal size more than doubled to $14.5 million, while venture-growth and late-stage rounds captured 87.4% of total investment. Commercial launch, satellites, geospatial intelligence, and space infrastructure led activity, including major rounds for ICEYE, Stoke Space, ispace, True Anomaly, and Impulse Space.

PitchBook’s 2026 Vertical Snapshot: Space Tech examines a sector moving beyond technology validation and toward procurement, production, and financing at scale. Government and defense demand is supporting factory expansion and the emergence of new prime contractors. Europe reached a record 21.1% of VC investment, public listings reopened an exit path, and strategic acquisitions such as Rocket Lab’s roughly $8 billion deal for Iridium Communications put scarce assets like spectrum and customer access in focus. The next test is whether contracted demand can translate into repeatable delivery and durable revenue.

Space tech startups raised $11.5 billion across 245 VC deals in H1 2026, already above the $10.1 billion invested across all of 2025. Bigger checks drove the gain: The median deal size more than doubled to $14.6 million, and late-stage and venture-growth rounds captured 87.6% of total investment.

https://pitchbook.com/news/reports/2026-vertical-snapshot-space-tech

Source: Retail Dive, Kaarin Moore
Photo: A fashion display at a Walmart Supercenter in Cypress, Texas. The retailer has been expanding its apparel assortment. (Courtesy of Walmart)

Scenario will launch in all stores across five departments, representing one of the broadest category footprints in Walmart Fashion.

Dive Brief:

Walmart has expanded its private label portfolio with the introduction of the “modern bohemian brand” Scenario, the company said in an email to Retail Dive.

Scenario will launch in all Walmart stores with 280 styles across five departments, including apparel, shoes, jewelry, handbags and accessories.

Most of the Scenario assortment is priced under $25.

Dive Insight:

Walmart is once again adding to its in-house fashion offer.

The retailer needed a new private label that could represent the evolving style of its consumers and believed a modern bohemian aesthetic would fill that need.

“Customer research showed nearly one in five women identified boho as one of their top style preferences, while none of our existing private brands were perceived as serving that aesthetic,” the company said in a statement.

The company tested the boho style within its other private label, Time and Tru — which drives $2 billion in sales annually — to gauge customer interest. The positive results led directly to the spinoff of the new Scenario brand, which stresses feminine details and offers pieces that are designed to mix and match.

Walmart has been expanding and updating its fashion strategy. The retailer released the trend-forward private brand Scoop in 2019. Two years later, the retailer announced that fashion designer Brandon Maxwell would be the creative director for the brand, along with Free Assembly, another private label.

Shoppers of those labels are now spending nearly twice per order than the average Walmart fashion customer, per the company.

“We’re seeing strength in fashion,” David Guggina, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. said on a recent second quarter earnings call with analysts. “In fashion, I’m really excited about some of our private brands, Scoop, Free Assembly. We’re seeing triple-digit comps in those areas.”

In the second quarter, Walmart Inc. revenue grew nearly 6% year over year to $188 billion. Transactions and average ticket grew about 1% for its U.S. business compared to the year-ago quarter, with e-commerce sales growing 24%.

https://www.retaildive.com/news/walmart-new-private-label-scenerio

Source: Business Insider, James Rodriguez
Photo: Pacific Press/Getty; Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI

Rich New Yorkers trying to dodge Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new tax on second homes are slamming into a harsh reality
Photo collage featuring Mayor Mamdani and a condo building

Among New York City’s wealthiest homeowners, the stages of grief over the city’s hotly contested “pied-à-terre tax” go something like this: First, anger at the chaotic rollout. Then denial, as they pepper lawyers and tax advisors with various versions of “How can they do this?” Bargaining follows, as they hunt for loopholes or long-forgotten documents to plead their cases.

Some can afford to jump straight to the final stage: acceptance. The uber-elite may brush off the new tax, levied on second homes worth at least $5 million, as merely another line item tacked onto their vast portfolios. For most others, however, coming to terms with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new policy will be more of a journey.

“People do not like hearing the word ‘tax,'” Steven Cohen, a longtime luxury real estate agent, tells me.

Those hoping to sidestep the extra bill are running into a big problem: The new tax leaves little daylight for the kinds of workarounds that rich, absentee property owners are floating to their trusted advisors.

“People are trying to get a little creative,” says David Fitzhenry, a local real estate attorney who advises high-net-worth clients. “But the way the statute is written, there’s not a lot of room for creativity.”

Add in the fact that New York City bureaucrats are famously aggressive in chasing down residents whose travel schedules could expose them to the city’s steep income tax, and you’re looking at a bunch of crestfallen millionaires and billionaires.

“I have one client who said, ‘Well, they don’t know that I live in Florida,'” recalls Fitzhenry. “I said, ‘Where do you file your tax returns?’ He says, ‘In Florida.'”

Fitzhenry chuckles. “That’s a tough sell.”

Attorneys and accountants have been fielding concerned calls from wealthy homeowners since mid-April, when Mamdani strode in front of the ultra-luxe condo tower at 220 Central Park South — the site of a $238 million penthouse owned by hedge fund tycoon (and noted Miami resident) Ken Griffin — and reiterated his pledge to “tax the rich.” Wringing more dollars from the cushy, largely empty crash pads that dot the five boroughs has long been a point of fascination among those who believe the wealthy should contribute a few more coins to the city’s coffers. Previous stabs at a second-home tax, most notably in 2019, gained some traction but ultimately fizzled. This time, though, Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul had the juice: In May, the state legislature passed an annual “pied-à-terre tax” on pricey New York City properties whose owners don’t use them as their primary residence.

For the first couple of years, the tax will apply to one-, two-, and three-family homes worth more than $5 million, as well as condos and co-ops valued by the city at more than $1 million. One important detail: The city has a formula for valuing condos and co-ops that estimates how much income they could generate as rentals and then uses that number to calculate a total dollar figure. These wonky city valuations typically amount to a fraction of the true market value, meaning that a condo valued by the city at $1 million could very well fetch five times that amount in a sale.

For such high-dollar domiciles, even a modest tax can yield a hefty haul. Griffin, for instance, could shell out an extra $1.3 million to $1.4 million next year for his three New York City holdings, my Business Insider colleagues calculated. The mayor’s office has said it expects the tax to bring in about $500 million annually.

The rollout this summer spurred another round of angst and recrimination. First, the city began sending ominous letters to thousands of homeowners, warning that they may be subject to the additional bill. Then came an easily searchable list of more than 900,000 New York City properties, along with their owners and valuations. Though the list merely cobbled together already publicly available data, it did make it easier for anyone to ogle their neighbors’ homes, and it stoked plenty of outrage among those caught up in its swirl — including many New York residents who won’t actually be on the hook for the tax.

“They’re really angry,” Andrew Jagoda, a real estate attorney, says of some of his clients. “Less sometimes about the tax, though there’s certainly that, but about how the city went about doing it and how embarrassed they are.”

A lawsuit filed in early August by three New York City homeowners briefly halted the process, but the city quickly appealed, and the rollout continues as the case works its way through the courts (a formal hearing is scheduled for later this month). Notably, the lawsuit doesn’t challenge the underlying statute, and the dozen advisors I spoke with say they’re telling clients to proceed as if the city will eventually collect its due. “Clients should be prepared for the worst here,” Fitzhenry tells me.

The private-jet-setting crowd is used to playing a game of cat and mouse with cities and states eager to claim their fair share of income. The rich meticulously track their time spent in various locations to make sure they don’t hit the number of days that could put them on the hook for, say, New York taxes, while on the other side, government employees pore over cellphone records and credit card statements to see if they can make a case to the contrary. This battle can lead globetrotters to embrace some goofy yet indispensable tricks of the trade: installing phone apps that warn when they’re approaching resident status, for example, or strategically planning trips so they spend as little time as possible physically present in New York to stay under the 184-day threshold. “Every day counts,” says Marisa Friedrich, a New York-based tax advisor. “Even if you’re arriving super late on a Monday, you fly in at 11 p.m. — you just created a day for yourself in New York.”

Rich property owners who have spent years deftly steering clear of New York income taxes now find themselves in the crosshairs of a different type of levy. Even longtime New Yorkers may get hit with the pied-à-terre surcharge. As the name would suggest, you only get one primary residence, which means that you could live full-time in the city and still face the extra bill if you own multiple properties about town — a fact that has come as a shock to some proud (and wealthy) residents.

“There is a lot of confusion and anger and surprise all built into one for each of these taxpayers,” Friedrich tells me. “I don’t think anyone that I’ve spoken to can say that they’re happy about it.”

There’s a simple way for property owners to dodge the tax in the future: fill the apartment. If an immediate family member is living in the home, or if it’s leased to a tenant who treats it as their primary residence, then there is no extra bill. If the place is owned by an LLC and the majority stakeholder lives there, it’s also in the clear. There’s a similar exemption for a home owned through a trust, another common arrangement, if it’s occupied by the trust’s sole beneficiary.

So let’s say you live in Florida but keep a plush Manhattan penthouse valued by the city at $5.3 million (I know, but stick with me here). If you’re looking to wriggle out of the additional levy — in this case, more than $340,000 on top of your regular property-tax bill — you’ve got a handful of options. You could have one of your adult children relocate there, or invite your sister to move in. You could rent the place out to a fellow high-flyer willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars a month in rent. If you want to merely save a few bucks, you could protest your property’s valuation and see if the city will knock down its assessment. Maybe you ditch Florida in favor of the Big Apple, though that would likely come with a bigger tax hit, since you’d be subjecting yourself to New York income taxes. Or, of course, you could sell. And that’s… sort of it.

“There’s not going to be a whole bunch of clever ideas on how to beat it,” Fitzhenry tells me.

A bogus lease spun up simply to avoid the tax likely won’t pass muster with the city — it has to be an “arm’s length” deal, which means you can’t have your friend say they live there and charge them $1 a month. In a similar vein, your cousin can’t step in and save the day by moving in — immediate family members only. And you can imagine why none of the viable options would sound all that appetizing to someone with enough in their bank account to have a penthouse to their name.

“You have to keep in mind, most of these people are not mom-and-pop,” Jagoda tells me. They’re not paying off a mortgage and raising kids in that home like most Americans — they just want a nice place in the city where they can come and go as they please. “You’re talking about very wealthy people who have a variety of assets worth far more than this,” Jagoda adds. Ellen Sykes, a longtime real estate agent, offers a similar assessment of her clients, many of whom own homes in the $4 million to $8 million range. “They’re not pleased. They’re going to try and find a workaround,” Sykes tells me. “But they can afford it, so they’re not terrified.”

Among the roughly 17,000 who received letters warning they could be on the hook for the tax, many are arguing that the property in question is, in fact, their primary residence. Once the city flags a home as a potential candidate for the pied-à-terre tax, the burden is on the owner to prove otherwise. Jagoda says he has a few clients who are rifling through filing cabinets, searching for decades-old documents that outline the ownership structure and can prove the property qualifies for an exemption. Those who find themselves in this camp are “pissed off,” Jagoda tells me. “They have to do this because the way the city set it up, you’re guilty until proven innocent.”

One thing these lawyers, accountants, and real estate agents aren’t buying into: the threatened New York City exodus. The rich may talk a big game about pulling up stakes when their tax bills swell, but there’s a lot to keep them owning — and spending — in the city. “It’s similar to during COVID when they said, ‘Oh, everyone’s leaving,'” Cohen, the real estate agent, tells me. “Everyone didn’t leave.” The exceptions, he notes, are those who might have already had one foot out the door. So far, he says, only one of his clients is selling due to the tax. Even then, they’d already been talking about offloading the property, which they’d used only a handful of times in roughly eight years.

“They can well afford it, but they also don’t want to be wasting money, either,” Cohen tells me.

For purposes of this year’s tax bill, most of this is a moot point — the city is making determinations based on a property’s status as of January 5, 2026. Any maneuvers to avoid the tax will, at best, apply to the following year’s bill. And while the options for property owners to sidestep the tax may be limited, plenty still find themselves in weird gray areas: Say they’ve been renovating their primary residence for the past year and living elsewhere, or are stuck sorting out the details of particularly complicated estate planning, like a house owned by an LLC that is then held by a trust. Those types of multi-tiered structures may not work under a strict reading of the rules, Max Biedermann, a New York-based lawyer, tells me, leaving some owners to appeal to reason rather than to law. Co-ops present another thorny situation: While the city may calculate the additional tax for individual units, the entire building gets hit with the extra bill. It’s up to the co-op’s board to then collect from individual pied-à-terre owners.

“All these other people are getting hit with shrapnel,” says Eric Wohl, an attorney who specializes in advising co-op boards.

While there’s still plenty of mess to sort out — and thousands of property owners still fuming at the new mayor — it appears that the new tax will be fairly successful in carrying out the mission laid out by Mamdani in the shadow of Ken Griffin’s penthouse back in April.

“Yes, it’s totally a nuisance,” Jagoda concedes. “But it’s easier than fighting City Hall.”

James Rodriguez is a correspondent on Business Insider’s Discourse team.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mamdani-pied-a-terre-tax-rich-new-york-homeowner-loopholes

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ Staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: ChatGPT

There are moments in American political life when the consequences of bad judgment become so glaring that they demand a simple vocabulary. In this case, the categories are Dumbest, Dumber, and Dumb.

Dumbest is Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada.

Canada is not some distant adversary that can be bullied without consequences. It is one of America’s closest allies, neighbors, and largest trading partners. A trade war with Canada risks raising costs for American consumers and businesses, disrupting supply chains, and damaging relationships that generations of American and Canadian leaders worked to build. Whatever political slogan may accompany such policies, economic nationalism does not magically make the costs disappear. American workers, farmers, manufacturers, and families can end up paying the bill.

If the goal of trade policy is to strengthen America, picking an unnecessary fight with a friendly neighbor is a remarkably self-defeating way to do it.

Dumber are the members of Congress who have tolerated—or failed to meaningfully confront—the use of the presidency for personal enrichment while Washington’s civic character is being transformed to suit one man’s tastes.

The presidency is supposed to be a public trust, not a personal business opportunity. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to provide oversight when presidential power, private interests, and public resources appear to collide. When lawmakers look the other way, they don’t merely surrender their own authority; they weaken the principle that no president should be above scrutiny.

And then there is Washington, D.C., a city whose monumental architecture was designed to express something larger than the personality of whoever happens to occupy the White House.

The gaudy application of faux-gold aesthetics to major presidential spaces may be defended as taste or personal preference, but it raises a broader question: Who owns the visual character of the people’s capital—the president, or the people? Washington’s neoclassical architecture was deliberately restrained, monumental, and civic. Turning public spaces into showcases of personal grandeur risks confusing the dignity of the office with the vanity of its occupant.

A republic should not look like a palace.

Dumb are the Americans who put a convicted felon and, in their view, a failed former president back into the Oval Office.

That judgment is ultimately a political one, and voters are entitled to make it. But democracy does not make consequences disappear. Elections reveal what a nation is willing to tolerate, reward, or forgive. When voters return a deeply polarizing and legally convicted politician to the presidency, they send a message not only about the candidate but about the standards they are willing to apply to political leadership.

The uncomfortable truth is that none of this happens in isolation. Presidents can abuse power when Congress declines to restrain them. Politicians can pursue destructive policies when voters reward them. And public institutions can be diminished when citizens become more invested in winning political battles than in preserving the norms that make democratic government work.

So perhaps the real hierarchy is even simpler:

Dumbest: a trade war with a close ally that risks hurting Americans.

Dumber: politicians who permit presidential power and public institutions to become vehicles for personal enrichment and personal grandeur.

Dumb: voters who knowingly return a convicted felon and widely criticized former president to the highest office in the land.

But the most dangerous form of dumb is complacency, the belief that none of it matters. It matters. A republic is sustained not merely by laws, but by judgment, restraint, accountability, and citizens willing to demand all four from their leaders.

When those qualities disappear, the gold may get brighter. Democracy gets darker.

Welcome to The Weekly Spill—Silicon Bay Partners’ regularly scheduled download of thoughts, takes, and the occasional side-eye at the world as it actually is (not just as it’s pitched in a deck). Each week, we sift through the noise across current events, politics, startups, and financial markets to bring you what matters—and what’s just pretending to.

We aim to keep things light, even when the topics aren’t. That means a bit of satire where it’s earned, a bit of skepticism where it’s called for, and a commitment to staying grounded in facts even when opinions sneak in through the side door. We won’t always be non-judgmental—but we will always try to be clear-eyed.

Think of this as your informed, occasionally irreverent briefing for the week ahead. Read it for insight, stay for perspective, and feel free to disagree—that’s o.k. too. Fair warning: Sometimes we spill more than once a week!

Sorry, Nancy Reagan & Mr. T, Someone Wasn’t Listening To Your ‘Say No’ Campaign

Some cities are now saying yes to drugs. Their policies that gave
addicts clean needles and places to use drugs were intended to reduce harm. Instead, they created a “zombie apocalypse.”

In downtown Seattle an open-air drug market stretches along the intersection of 12th and Jackson: On one visit the author of this article notes that about 250 people, were smoking fentanyl or bent over in the thrall of the drug, tilting as if in mid-fall. Three women were passed out on the sidewalk, he says. Young boys, schoolbags on their backs, stood on a far corner and watched.

It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, No It’s Amazon

Remember those delivery drones Jeff Bezos promised were coming, way back in 2013?

Don’t count them out yet. Amazon announced plans Wednesday to significantly ramp up its Prime Air drone delivery service, aiming for airborne deliveries in nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of this year. The drones can transport virtually any item weighing five pounds or less that can fit in a shoebox-sized container, with free delivery for Prime members who spend $50 or more.

To be sure, the drones are still constrained by various issues: They can’t fly beyond a roughly seven mile radius, limiting their reach, and they operate primarily in suburban locations in order to avoid tall buildings and other tricky obstacles.

First Class? No Better.

From $80,000 scavenger hunts to emergency private jets, a new breed of travel agent will organize anything—provided you can afford it.

Travel agents were supposed to be extinct. Instead, they’ve been reborn as fixers for the super-rich—retrieving forgotten jewelry, staging $80,000 scavenger hunts, chartering emergency jets, and ensuring that “No” is never the final answer.

Is The Grass Really Greener?

Startup PennPoa is using Poa annua, a type of grass long considered a weed, to seed luxury golf courses. Its founder David Huff, a plant science professor at Penn State, developed a strain that delivers a dense, mowable putting surface, in 8-12 weeks compared to the 50 years it would take in the wild. The company is off to a good start: Demand is already outpacing supply, and the 2026 harvest has nearly sold out.

Source: PitchBook, Madeline Shi
Photo: Jenna O’Malley/PitchBook News

PE is racing to integrate AI. Boston-based Ethos Capital may have taken it further than anyone.

Talk of AI adoption is pervasive in PE, but would you trust the technology enough to let it manage your own firm? Ethos Capital is testing these limits.

The Boston-based PE firm spent around five years building Private Equity Transformation Research Agent—or Petra—an AI assistant trained on more than 50,000 data sources, including decks outlining every deal the firm has taken or passed on, as well as public information ranging from regulatory filings to news and video.

Today, Petra is woven into nearly every aspect of Ethos’ business, from filtering pitch decks, running initial diligence, monitoring portfolio companies to managing investor relationships. Ethos even uses AI to track its own employees’ work, according to Fadi Chehadé, co-founder and managing partner at the $7 billion investment firm.

Launched by Chehadé and Erik Brooks, two Abry Partners alumni, in 2019, Ethos targets middle-market companies with an enterprise value of $200 million to $2 billion, focusing on supply chain and logistics, insurance and financial services and digital platforms.

The firm manages a $512 million closed-end fund, co-investment capital and a multi-billion-dollar continuation fund recently raised to house Identity Digital, a portfolio company it backed in 2021. The CV has brought in new commitments from big-name managers, including Accel-KKR, TPG, Neuberger Berman, CVC Capital Partners and Coller Capital.

Ethos’ AI tool runs the first pass on every pitch that crosses the deal team’s desk, scoring a target against a set of preferred metrics, identifying strengths and risks, conducting market analysis and rating the management team. What once took two to four weeks is now compressed to about half an hour, Chehadé said.

Petra also has visibility into the firm’s inner workings. It produces a digital footprint of every employee, which helps managing partners like Chehadé to stay on top of what they are doing. It sees every piece of correspondence: every email, every calendar invite and every Slack message and directs the information to the people it determines need it.

“When I log into Petra, it knows me, and it talks to me,” Chehadé said. “If I ask it what’s happening on a deal, it reads every email, every calendar invite and every note in the entire company and comes back to me with a digest based on who I am.”

When asked how his employees take to Petra monitoring their work, Chehadé disputed the phrasing. He said that while the AI system captures work outputs produced by every user, it only shares the data based on “carefully designed rules that reflect privacy issues and access rights.”

“Petra is not designed to track individuals’ work; rather, work product”, such as analysis, notes and models, he wrote in an email. PitchBook did not speak with the firm’s employees.

A longtime technology entrepreneur, Chehadé said the tool empowers a deal team composed of only a handful of investment professionals. This small crew reviews 130 to 140 companies a year and moves a dozen to in-depth due diligence.

With the AI system, Ethos has also cut its reliance on outside advisers to some degree. Chehadé said he used Petra to run preliminary research on a target’s legal risks in minutes, and the tool addressed an estimated 90% of his questions. The same task would have gone to an associate at an outside counsel and taken weeks. He still uses lawyers today, Chehadé said, but he comes to them with sharper questions.

The idea of running a PE firm on AI was widely endorsed by others spoken to for this piece. The most avid think the technology’s expansion is inevitable, and that service providers across the M&A industry may see AI take over parts of their work and reshape fee structures from hourly-based billing toward outcome-based compensation.

“The cost of due diligence should go way down,” said Nishat Mehta, chief executive at Lexitas, a legal tech provider backed by Apax Partners. “If you give me a deal room and throw 10,000 pages of documents there, today I may pay an outside party to review all those documents and surface a set of questions and concerns that I need to pay attention to. AI can probably start to do a decent amount of that work.”

Still, few believe AI will fully replace humans in the PE, and no one said they’d trust an AI-made decision outright, though their perceptions of how that collaboration should play out and what they think AI should be trusted to do vary.

Nitin Gupta, the co-chief investment officer at small- and mid-cap PE investment firm Flexstone Partners, takes the PE industry’s enthusiasm for AI adoption “with a grain of salt,” questioning how far down the chain this implementation actually reaches.

He noticed that GPs are using AI to analyze data, drive efficiencies, inform better decision-making and embed it in portfolio companies for value creation. But he values human judgment built on experience much more highly. AI, he said, can produce “hallucination effects,” making decisions based on a few words in a document.

“It’s not always just an automatic, quantitative decision,” Gupta said. “It’s also your gut feel for the company, for the management team, and the value-add your operating partners are bringing to the table. There are a lot of subjective, qualitative factors that go into decision-making.”

Flexstone oversees separately managed accounts for institutional investors, investing in middle-market PE funds of up to $2 billion.

Kyle Griswold at FTV Capital, a technology-focused growth equity firm, holds a similar view.

He said AI is good at digesting data and screening for potential targets, but his team still hunts for new business the old fashioned way.

“We can tell when we feel like we’re getting AI spam,” he said. “We do a ton of hopping on planes and picking up the phone and going to conferences. None of that can be replicated.”

AI can produce faster, deeper market research, but the proprietary information that comes through private conversations with competitors and customers cannot be replicated, Griswold said. He wants his deal team to understand accounting and finance, and know how to model a business themselves, even when a tool could do it faster.

Ethos’ Chehadé made clear that Petra isn’t replacing the human judgment and effort his team brings to a deal.

“I can’t trust machines to make these calls because they will make them based on logic but not based on conscience,” he said. “We overdo it when we say AI is replacing human bankers, advisers or lawyers; we might be replacing some of their functions.”

He said Petra may draft an email to approach a target business, but he requires a human to review and polish that message, and nothing goes out until the person presses send.

Chehadé expects that within the next decade, society will shift from a human-led world to a hybrid one, where machines and humans divide responsibilities.

“In an investment environment, it is important, when we design these things, to make sure humans are ultimately in control,” he stressed.

https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/meet-petra-the-ai-that-runs-a-pe-firm

Source: Los Angeles Times, Queenie Wong
Photo: A person walks their dog at Crissy Field in front of a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The size of New York’s tech talent workforce surpassed the Bay Area for the first time as tech companies lay off workers, a report from CBRE shows. (Jeff Chiu/Associated Press)

The San Francisco Bay Area, epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, is home to a massive number of tech workers employed by some of the world’s most valuable companies, from Apple to Nvidia.

But for the first time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Area as the home of the largest “tech talent workforce,” a report by real estate and investment firm CBRE shows. The firm has published the annual report for 13 years.

Last year, the New York Metro Area’s tech talent workforce reached 394,300, surpassing the Bay Area’s 375,730, according to the report. Fueled by mass layoffs, the Bay Area’s tech talent workforce dropped by 6% from 2022 to 2025. New York’s tech talent workforce, on the other hand, grew by more than 8% during that period.

Tech talent workers include highly skilled workers in more than 20 technology-oriented jobs, employed in industries such as healthcare, financial services, government and more, according to CBRE.

The growth of New York’s tech talent highlights how tech workers are spilling into other industries and cities as Silicon Valley companies lay off workers. Companies including Meta, Block and Amazon continue to cut workers as they focus more on AI investments.

“The Bay Area is likely to remain … the central location for the AI industry and for innovation. But as we’ve seen during past cycles, as it tends to grow, that spreads out to all the key markets,” Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, said during a news conference Tuesday.

New York has gained tech workers in the financial services sector, which was an early adopter of artificial intelligence, said Lauren Crowley Corrinet, vice chairman of CBRE’s Consulting Group in New York. Meanwhile, AI startups have popped up in the Midtown South neighborhood and other areas.

New York has a transit-rich environment, making it an attractive place for companies to purchase new office space and workers to live in.

“The size of the market, just the sheer scale of it, really does support both the early stage growth, but also that ability to just scale fast,” she said.

In California, some cities grew their tech talent workforce. Sacramento’s tech talent workforce grew more than 8% from 2022 to 2025, reaching 42,970.

Los Angeles and Orange County’s tech workforce totaled 227,350 last year, up by less than 1% compared to 2022. Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Dallas-Forth Worth all had more tech talent.

CBRE looked at other factors beyond the size of a metro area’s tech talent workforce, such as average salary, rental prices and tech graduates, to rank the markets on a scorecard. The Bay Area still is at the top while New York is fourth. Los Angeles is ranked No. 18.

The drop in tech talent in the Bay Area comes as workers grow more worried that AI could lead to fewer jobs.

Roughly 71% of adults think AI will lead to fewer jobs in the United States over the next two decades, up from 64% in 2024, according to a survey released by the Pew Research Center on Tuesday.

While tech executives such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have an optimistic outlook on the future of AI, they’ve also acknowledged that company sizes could shrink. But AI also could create new jobs.

The U.S. high-tech industry still is filling AI-related roles including data scientists and hardware engineers, according to CBRE. It remains to be seen whether hiring will outpace cuts, though CBRE executives also appeared optimistic.

“My expectation is that these jobs are going to continue to grow as companies, not only tech companies, start to figure out how they’re going to implement AI into their businesses,” Yasukochi said.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-08-20/san-francisco-bay-area-dethroned-as-largest-tech-talent-market

Source: TechCrunch, Lauren Forristal
Photo: Amazon Commerce

Amazon announced Wednesday a major expansion of Amazon Prime Air, its drone delivery service, with plans to reach nearly 500 U.S. cities by the end of 2026. This marks a significant milestone as it expands the service’s footprint by roughly 6x its current reach.

Prime Air will soon launch in 11 locations: Tolleson, Arizona; Ruskin, Florida; Kansas City, Kansas; Papillion, Nebraska; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Hazel Park and Pontiac, Michigan; and Richmond, San Antonio, Richardson, and Waco, Texas.

The return to Tolleson is particularly notable given a drone accident that occurred there last year. In October 2025, two drones collided with the boom of a crane. Amazon’s drones have also previously drawn scrutiny following incidents, including clipping an internet cable and crashing into a garden and an apartment building.

This is likely why Amazon reiterated its focus on safety as part of the announcement. The company highlighted Prime Air’s “industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system,” which is designed to continuously monitor the airspace and surroundings of each drone. The drones also rely on onboard cameras and sensors for navigation, obstacle detection, and delivery. Plus, Amazon said the drones are designed to operate in real-world conditions, including light rain and a range of temperatures.

Additionally, Prime Air operates under Federal Aviation Administration Part 135 certification, the same regulatory framework used by commercial air carriers.

“Customers already turn to Amazon for fast Same- and Next-Day Delivery, and Prime Air provides them an even speedier option when they need it, with deliveries in as fast as 30 minutes,” David Carbon, vice president of Amazon Prime Air, said in a statement, adding that the service has “already delivered hundreds of thousands of packages to customers by drone this year.”

The service currently operates across seven states, including Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, and Texas. Amazon says launches in Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, and New York are also coming soon.

Prime members receive free ultrafast drone delivery on eligible orders of $50 or more. For Prime members placing eligible orders under $50, the delivery fee is $2.99. Non-Prime customers pay a $4.99 delivery fee. Nearly all items 5 pounds or less can be delivered by drone.

Amazon’s push comes as other major companies continue building their own drone delivery networks. Walmart and Google parent Alphabet’s Wing have been expanding a competing drone delivery operation, which the companies have described as the largest drone delivery network in the U.S. In June, the companies added seven new markets, including Phoenix, Philadelphia, and the Bay Area.

Lauren Forristal

Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/19/amazons-prime-air-is-taking-off-in-nearly-500-u-s-cities

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: Havana, Cuba © Pedro Szekely

For all the debate over Donald Trump’s policy toward Cuba, there is a simple question that should not be lost: Americans themselves do not want to live under a government in which one leader has unchecked power over their lives. The United States is a democracy precisely because presidents are supposed to be temporary public servants, constrained by elections, courts, Congress, laws and the Constitution. And the latest public-opinion numbers make clear that Trump does not enjoy anything resembling universal support. A Pew Research Center survey in July found that just 34% of Americans approved of his job performance, while 64% disapproved; 42% of voters said their midterm vote was primarily a vote against Trump, compared with only 22% who described it as a vote for him. A newer Reuters/Ipsos poll put his approval even lower, at 33%.

If millions of Americans believe they should have the right to choose their own leaders—and to reject a president they do not want—then we should recognize that Cubans deserve that same fundamental right. The answer to Cuba’s authoritarian government cannot simply be to make ordinary Cubans suffer until they submit to a political outcome determined in Washington. Cubans should be free to determine their own future, just as Americans insist on determining ours. We can condemn repression in Havana, demand democratic reforms and support the Cuban people without treating Cuba as a possession to be controlled. The principle ought to be universal: no American wants to be ruled by Donald Trump against their will, and no Cuban should be expected to accept being ruled by anyone against theirs.

The relationship between the United States and Cuba has always been complicated by history, ideology, security concerns and the legacy of the Cold War. But in 2026, the relationship has entered a particularly dangerous phase. President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically intensified economic pressure on Havana, while simultaneously raising questions about how far Washington is prepared to go to force political change on the island.

The consequences for ordinary Cubans have been severe. At the same time, it would be misleading to attribute Cuba’s crisis entirely to American policy: decades of economic mismanagement, centralized state control, corruption, inadequate investment and the Cuban government’s own restrictions have contributed substantially to the island’s problems. The important question is therefore not whether one side is solely responsible, but how much Trump’s policies have worsened an already fragile situation—and what the administration hopes to accomplish by doing so.

The squeeze on Cuba

The Trump administration has pursued what officials describe as a campaign of maximum economic pressure. The measures have included tighter sanctions and restrictions on Cuba’s access to petroleum. In June, Washington imposed additional sanctions on Cuba’s state-owned oil company, CUPET. Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that the company was connected to Cuba’s security apparatus and that some of its assets represented property unlawfully expropriated from Americans after the Cuban Revolution.

The timing is crucial. Cuba is heavily dependent on imported fuel. As access to petroleum has deteriorated, the country’s electrical grid has suffered increasingly severe failures. By August, some Cubans were experiencing blackouts lasting more than 20 hours a day, with consequences for transportation, food production, tourism, businesses and hospitals. Reuters reported that the country’s economic and political crisis had been intensified by the U.S. oil embargo and increased sanctions.

That does not mean that Washington created Cuba’s dysfunctional electrical system. It didn’t. Cuban authorities have spent decades failing to modernize infrastructure and diversify energy supplies. Experts quoted by WLRN concluded that both factors are contributing: Cuban mismanagement is a major underlying problem, while U.S. restrictions on fuel imports have pushed an already vulnerable system toward collapse.

That distinction matters. A government can be responsible for creating a crisis while a foreign government can make that crisis dramatically worse.

Why is Trump doing this?

The stated objective is political change.

Trump and Rubio have made clear that they do not regard the current Cuban government as a legitimate partner with which Washington should simply coexist. Instead, the administration wants to increase the pressure until Cuba’s leadership changes its behavior—or ultimately changes altogether.

That strategy reflects a longstanding American argument that Cuba’s communist government is authoritarian, hostile to U.S. interests and closely connected to America’s geopolitical rivals. The administration has also emphasized Cuba’s relationships with countries such as Russia and China.

There is another factor: domestic American politics.

Cuba has extraordinary symbolic importance in Florida, where Cuban-American voters have historically played an important role in Republican politics. Rubio himself is the son of Cuban immigrants and has spent years advocating a hard line toward Havana. His personal history and political philosophy help explain why Cuba has become such a prominent foreign-policy issue for the administration.

The administration’s calculation appears to be that economic pain can weaken the Cuban government and create conditions for political transformation. Rubio said in August that Washington was in no hurry and intended to continue increasing pressure.

The difficulty is that economic warfare does not necessarily produce democratic reform. It can instead make ordinary people poorer while giving an authoritarian government an external enemy to blame.

Who actually pays the price?

The Cuban government is the intended target. But much of the immediate cost is borne by people who have little or no control over Cuban policy.

Fuel shortages affect ambulances, public transportation, electricity generation, agriculture and food distribution. Businesses cannot operate normally. Hospitals struggle when electricity and transportation become unreliable. And families already coping with shortages face another obstacle to simply getting through the day.

This creates a fundamental moral and strategic question:

If the objective is to remove or transform Cuba’s government, how much suffering among ordinary Cubans is an acceptable price for achieving that objective?

Supporters of the Trump strategy would answer that the Cuban leadership has been given decades to reform and has repeatedly refused. They argue that easing pressure without obtaining political concessions would simply allow the government to survive.

Critics respond that the policy risks punishing the population without achieving regime change—and that a humanitarian crisis can actually strengthen the government’s political narrative.

The evidence so far provides reason for caution. Cuba is experiencing extraordinary hardship, but the government has not simply collapsed. Instead, negotiations have continued alongside the pressure, and Havana has undertaken some market-oriented reforms.

Cuba and the larger question: Is America becoming more expansionist?

Cuba cannot be viewed entirely in isolation from the administration’s broader foreign-policy rhetoric.

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring or controlling territory that currently belongs to other countries or territories.

Greenland

Greenland has been the clearest example. Trump has repeatedly argued that American control of Greenland is necessary for national security, citing its strategic Arctic location. His administration has also emphasized the territory’s natural resources and its importance as competition with Russia and China intensifies in the Arctic.

The problem is that Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland and is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenlandic leaders have repeatedly rejected the idea that the territory is for sale.

That makes the issue fundamentally different from an ordinary trade or diplomatic negotiation. Acquisition would require the consent of the people concerned.

Canada

Trump has also repeatedly spoken about Canada becoming part of the United States, at times referring to Canada as the “51st state.” He has mixed that rhetoric with arguments about trade, the border and national security.

Canada, however, is a sovereign country and a close American ally. There is no serious indication that Canadians have voted or otherwise expressed a desire to surrender their sovereignty.

Consequently, Canada’s appearance on Trump’s rhetorical map should be distinguished from an actual U.S. government plan to annex Canada.

The Panama Canal

Trump has also challenged the existing arrangement governing the Panama Canal and previously said that he would not rule out military force in pursuing American control.

Here again, the administration frames the issue primarily around American strategic and economic interests. But Panama is a sovereign nation, and the canal is governed under treaties and international arrangements.

Venezuela

Venezuela is an even more consequential example because events there have moved beyond rhetoric. The Trump administration’s actions toward Venezuela have dramatically altered the regional balance and, in turn, affected Cuba’s access to Venezuelan oil.

That connection is critical to understanding the Cuban crisis. Cuba’s dependence on Venezuelan petroleum meant that changes in U.S.-Venezuelan relations could have enormous consequences in Havana. The subsequent pressure on Cuba helped produce the energy crisis now gripping the island.

What is the common thread?

It would be too simplistic to say that Trump is trying to “take over” every country he discusses.

Greenland, Canada, Panama, Venezuela and Cuba are very different cases, and the administration has different objectives in each.

But there is a common theme: Trump’s foreign policy places unusually heavy emphasis on American power, territorial access, strategic resources, economic leverage and the idea that U.S. strength should produce favorable outcomes—even when the other country strongly objects.

That represents a significant departure in tone from the traditional post-Cold War emphasis on alliances, international institutions and negotiated limits on American power.

The administration calls this approach necessary realism. Critics call it expansionism.

The danger of the Cuba precedent

Cuba may ultimately be the most revealing test.

If economic pressure produces a negotiated transition toward greater political freedom, Washington will argue that its strategy worked.

If it instead produces prolonged shortages, migration, suffering and confrontation without meaningful political change, the policy will look much less like liberation and much more like collective punishment.

And if military intervention were ever added to the equation, the consequences could be vastly greater.

Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida. A military confrontation there would not be an abstract geopolitical event. It would affect the Caribbean, the United States, Latin America and potentially relations with Russia and China.

The wisest approach should therefore distinguish between pressuring a government and impoverishing a population.
The Cuban government deserves scrutiny for repression, corruption, economic mismanagement and restrictions on political freedom. But ordinary Cubans should not have to bear unlimited suffering simply because their government is unpopular in Washington.

Likewise, the United States has legitimate security interests in the Caribbean, the Arctic, the Panama Canal and the Western Hemisphere. But legitimate interests do not automatically create legitimate claims to another country’s territory.

The central question facing Trump’s foreign policy is therefore larger than Cuba:

Can American power be used aggressively to defend American interests without abandoning the principle that other peoples have the right to determine their own political future?

Cuba is becoming the test case. Greenland, Canada and Panama are part of the larger conversation. And the answer will say a great deal about what kind of world the United States intends to help create.

Source: The Hustle, Danny Jensen
Photo: ChatGPT

We’ve all had one: the friendly, well-intentioned boss who’s a bit clueless. But what if your bumbling boss is a bot?

Andon Market, a San Francisco boutique, and Andon Café, a Stockholm coffee shop, are experimenting with letting an AI “boss” run the show — with help from human employees — and the results have been… unusual, per Inc.

Andon Labs, the startup behind the experiments, is testing how AI agents handle operating in real-world commercial endeavors (they’ve also tested an AI-run vending machine and radio station).

Each shop was given a lease and budget by co-founders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund, and told to make a profit.

Both struggle with that mission. But at least they’re nice?

According to employees and Andon Labs, AI bosses are “kind, but sometimes dumb.”

Plenty of candles and time off

Luna, the AI agent running Andon Market, was given a $7.5k/month three-year lease and $100k in the bank.

After four months, they’re down $62k.

Tasked with everything from hiring to inventory, Luna struggles with the latter:

Misprinted mugs and $700 worth of prints of her art.

Ordered 1k toilet seat covers (listed as merchandise).

Lots of candles.

A curious book selection: Making of the Atomic Bomb, Brave New World, and The Singularity Is Near.

Products that don’t sell (often reordered).

Luna is also very lenient with employees, replying “no worries” to tardiness and granting days off even when it required the store to close. They also offered to loan money to an employee, and nearly broke labor laws. Whoops.

A lot of napkins… and eggs?

At Andon Café, AI agent Mona has (mostly) succeeded in navigating European regulations, staffing, and other operational hurdles, but also made dubious choices:

Impersonated Andon staff when applying for an alcohol license.

Ordered 120 eggs and ~50 pounds of canned tomatoes despite no stove.

Ordered 6k napkins and 3k nitrile gloves.

Lied to suppliers about competitor pricing for leverage.

By mid-May, the cafe had burned through most of its original $21k+ budget while bringing in ~$5.7k in sales, according to The Associated Press.

Thankfully, employees’ jobs don’t depend on turning a profit.

Andon Labs says there are no plans to launch a chain of shops (phew). Instead, they want to test “how much autonomy AI can responsibly hold” and develop AI guardrails.

At least our AI overlords will be generous with time off.