'Pharma Bro' Shkreli Runs Afoul of Court's Lifetime Pharma Ban

Martin Shkreli, the scorned "pharma bro" who drew the ire of patients for his actions as a pharmaceutical company executive, has come under the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly violating his lifetime ban from the industry.

The FTC asked a judge to hold Shkreli in contempt, presenting evidence that he has "flagrantly and repeatedly" violated the court order that has been in place since 2022, according to a Tuesday press release. The disgraced executive has been trading in pharma stocks and "broadcasting his opinions about the business and management of many pharmaceutical industry companies," according to the complaint.

In the complaint, the FTC recapped the actions that led to the lifetime pharma ban. Shkreli was originally found guilty of securities fraud in 2018 and sentenced to seven years in prison. In a separate case brought by the FTC in 2020, a court in 2022 found that Shkreli, in his capacity as executive of companies Vyera Pharmaceuticals and Phoenixus, and his co-defendants executed an anticompetitive scheme to prevent the entry of low-cost generics to the market.

The FTC on Tuesday went further and asked the court to force Shkreli to divest his shares and issue a fine in the amount he has profited. Shkreli should also face escalating penalties for continued violations of the lifetime ban, the agency said.

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Greg Guenthner:

Bitcoin Falls as Hot Inflation Puts a Fed Hike Back on the Table

Bitcoin fell 1.5% to $82,142 on Wednesday after U.S. inflation came in hotter than expected, dragging most of the crypto market down with it. Ethereum dropped 2.8% to $2,440, while total crypto market cap shed 0.7% to $2.8 trillion.

Core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 2.6% annually against a 2.5% forecast for the month of September. Core CPI is the reading the Federal Reserve watches most closely.

When inflation runs hot, the Fed raises interest rates to cool spending. It already hiked in September to a 3.75%-4.00% range, and traders now see roughly 44% to 49% odds of another hike at its October 27-28 meeting, up from 22% before the report.

The 2-year Treasury yield, which closely tracks Fed rate expectations, jumped about 10 basis points to roughly 4.9%, while the 10-year climbed to about 5.3%, near 24-year highs.

Higher yields hit crypto directly. A government bond paying 5.3% with almost no risk competes with Bitcoin, which pays nothing. Rising rates also make borrowing more expensive and tend to strengthen the dollar, draining the cheap money speculative assets feed on.

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Davis Wilson:

Save This Investing Tip for 2031

Over the last two weeks, investor sentiment has taken a sharp turn for the worse. AI stocks have been hit particularly hard. Suddenly, the financial news is filled with reasons to worry.

Here are the biggest concerns: the OpenAI revenue scare, rising interest rates, and the war in Iran. However, none of these concerns have fundamentally changed the businesses we're investing in.

Hyperscalers aren't canceling their AI infrastructure projects. Demand for computing power hasn't disappeared. Companies aren't suddenly abandoning the massive data centers they've spent years planning. Yet stocks are moving lower and investors are panicking.

It's starting to feel a lot like Apple (AAPL) in early 2023 or Meta (META) in late 2022.

Of course, if you actually traveled back to those moments, you wouldn't know Apple was near a bottom or that Meta was about to begin an incredible run. But the best buying opportunities rarely feel like buying opportunities when you're living through them.

I think that's exactly what we're experiencing today. I suggest you invest accordingly.

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Epic Games Reportedly Pivoting to "AI First" Game Development Model

Epic Games is shifting to an "AI first" development strategy for its collaboration with the Walt Disney Company, letting AI models write all the code and guide all the artwork for an upcoming shooter.

Human developers will be tasked with managing and guiding code and art assets generated by models such as Anthropic's Claude, according to internal Epic employee messages. That means "no more hand-written code" and art assets "generated with full AI workflows."

The $1.5 billion collaboration between Epic and Disney, announced in early 2024, was slated to release a Marvel- and Star Wars-themed shooter in March 2027. That project has now been delayed indefinitely amid the AI-related shakeup and understaffed, slower-than-expected development thus far.

CEO Tim Sweeney and Epic have long been bullish on what they see as an impending game development revolution spurred by AI. In an interview with IGN in June, Sweeney saw the technology resulting in games with "the possibility of infinite dialogue with a really simple setup for creators," leading to situations where "small teams will be able to create games with immense amounts of characters and immense and interactive worlds."

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Chris Campbell:

Hackers Break Into Supermarket Fridges and Spoil All the Groceries

Over Sunday night, some spoilsport hackers hijacked the fridge systems of hundreds of supermarkets across France and cranked up their thermostats to temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit, ruining incalculable stores of groceries and even causing fires.

The Paris prosecutor's office described it as a "large-scale" attack that affected "several major food retailers across France."

The numbers are incredible. The chain Carrefour said that 80 of its supermarkets were attacked. The owner of Intermarche said that fridges at 150 stores were heated up to 122 degrees for six hours overnight. And Monoprix, which has 490 stores in France, said that about 5% of its locations were affected.

Intermarche CEO Thierry Cotillard estimated that the attack has caused losses amounting to "tens of millions of euros nationwide in a single day," calling it "unprecedented."

Supermarket fridges and freezers are designed to be accessible over the internet so organizations can monitor their temperatures and remotely adjust them as needed. But evidently these setups weren't as secure as they should have been. France's National Cybersecurity Agency is reportedly investigating the attack and has identified a vulnerability in the software supplied by the Danish firm Danfoss.

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James Altucher:

Carlos Gutierrez: ADHD Diagnosed at 65, Career Lessons

Carlos Gutierrez, the guest on the latest episode of The James Altucher Show, was diagnosed with ADHD at 65. By then, he had already run Kellogg. He had already served in George W. Bush's Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce.

And only then did someone explain the procrastination, the disorganization, and those stretches where he could lock onto one thing for weeks and almost nothing else existed.

Seeing as he ran a department where trade was one of the biggest parts of the job, I had to ask him about tariffs. Carlos is not a big tariff guy. He thinks broad tariffs raise prices and hurt businesses. But he also said something about Trump that I didn't expect.

Carlos also touches on China in our discussion. And at the end, I asked what he would tell a 25-year-old trying to build a career today. His answer is basically the opposite of a lot of what I've written over the last decade. And he might be right.

His new book is Sheer Will: Learning to Lead When There Is No Path.

Here's Carlos Gutierrez.

⇒ Listen Here

Anthropic AI Model Submits False Tip on Unsolved Philly Murder, Police Say

One of Anthropic's artificial intelligence (AI) models, Claude Haiku 4.5, submitted a false tip on an unsolved Philadelphia murder. The false homicide tip was posted on PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com back on July 18, 2026, and it claimed to come from someone with information on the case.

Anthropic notified Philly police of the incident on Oct. 7, and the department met with the company on Oct. 8. Police then located the submission in the website's tip records and confirmed the corresponding email remained in spam.

"Those PPD safeguards limited the impact of this incident. They do not diminish the seriousness of an AI system presenting fabricated information as though it came from a person with knowledge of a homicide," the police spokesperson wrote. "Unsolved cases involve real victims, grieving families, and investigators working to secure answers."

Police encourage the public to continue to submit legitimate information through PhillyUnsolvedMurders.com. They also said Mayor Cherelle Parker's administration will closely monitor the incident and provide more information when it becomes available.

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Ray Blanco:

Microsoft Reveals Maia 300 AI Chip As It Works To Reduce Dependence on Nvidia, AMD

Microsoft (MSFT) has debuted its latest AI chip, the Azure Maia 300, as it looks to reduce its reliance on third-party processors from the likes of Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD).

Unveiled at the OCP Global Summit 2026 in San Jose on Monday, the Maia 300 will join Microsoft's Maia 200 and Maia 100 chips as part of what the company said will be multigigawatt deployments beginning next year.

The Windows maker said that it will make its Maia chips the "primary AI inference system for Microsoft products and services." It noted Maia 300 provides 40% more tokens per megawatt than "leading GPU-based systems," a clear swipe at Nvidia, and that a 96-chip rack offers seven times the rack-scale token throughput of Microsoft's Maia 200.

Microsoft and fellow hyperscaler peers Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Meta (META), as well as AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), either already offer or are working on their own custom chips.

That doesn't necessarily mean hyperscalers will stop purchasing Nvidia chips entirely. Customers still want access to a number of chips for different workloads, meaning the Amazons and Microsofts of the world will need to continue stocking up on the most in-demand processors. And for now, those are Nvidia's.

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Greg Guenthner:

Strategy Scoops Up $21.5M in Bitcoin, Buys Back $192M in STRC

Strategy bought 250 BTC last week and spent $192.4 million repurchasing its STRC preferred stock, the company said on Monday.

The Bitcoin treasury firm paid $21.5 million for the coins between October 5 and October 11, an average of $86,194 per Bitcoin including fees. It now holds 848,250 BTC, a new record, acquired for a total of $64 billion at an average of $75,444 per coin.

Strategy raised $21 million by selling about 125,000 shares of its MSTR common stock through its at-the-market offering program, and used $500,000 of cash to cover the rest. It sold none of its preferred stock during the week.

The company repurchased 1,932,145 shares of STRC, its variable-rate Stretch preferred stock, leaving $354.8 million available under its program to buy back preferred shares.

Last week, Strategy bought $29 million in Bitcoin and repurchased $176 million of STRC as it posted a $21 billion third-quarter gain.

Despite the uptick in buying, traders on prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, do not expect the firm's holdings to surpass one million BTC by the end of the year, putting just a 5% chance on that outcome.

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Scientists Just Built a Computer Out of DNA – and It Runs Without Electricity

Researchers at Maynooth University in Ireland have developed one of the fastest DNA computers to date. As they report in a new study published in the journal Nature, the machine uses billions or even trillions of DNA strands housed in a single drop of water.

The ingredient list for this machine reads more like a biology experiment than an electronics catalog: water, salt, short DNA strands, and a longer DNA scaffold combine to form what's called a Scaffolded DNA Computer.

The DNA computer uses the principle of "energetically favorable" states to perform calculations using just a little bit of heat. In the droplet, the trillions of short DNA strands attach to the longer DNA scaffold, and the shape they form is the answer to a calculation.

Testing their DNA computer across 700 calculations, ranging from simple multiplication to eight-bit parity detection, the scientists discovered that the system achieved a 95% success rate. Simple equations only took a couple dozen seconds to answer, while solving more complex problems could stretch out to several hours.

While DNA computers aren't as fast as traditional silicon-based machines, they have multiple advantages in terms of energy efficiency, storage, and parallel processing.

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Chris Campbell:

900 Million Freeloaders

ChatGPT has roughly 900 million weekly users. But only about 5% pay for it.

Nothing as popular as AI has ever been this free. So what happens when 900 million freeloaders start paying? And who collects?

These are important questions to ask as AI keeps getting cheaper. Epoch AI estimates the cost of a fixed level of AI smarts is falling between 13x and 50x a year. Faster than electricity, batteries, or DNA sequencing ever fell.

How does anyone get rich selling something that gets 50x cheaper every year? It’s simple: the same way companies did during the Electric Age. As electricity got cheap, people wired everything. The price per unit collapsed and the total bill exploded.

Cheap AI follows the same law. But 100x faster. Every price cut opens up work that wasn’t worth automating last year. And the bill’s already exploding. Enterprise spending on generative AI tripled in 2025 to $37 billion. It's the fastest-scaling category in software history.

In September 2025, Anthropic’s coding tool, Claude Code, was bringing in revenue at a pace of $500 million a year. By February, that pace hit $2.5 billion. Five months. Five times the money.

That’s the freeloader-to-payer shift. It’s happening at scale. Right now.

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Enrique Abeyta:

AI Is Now “Too Big to Fail”

For years, investors have compared AI with the dot-com bubble. AI does have the spending and speculation of the dot-com bubble. But it also has the debt, interconnected financing, and dependence on confidence that made the Global Financial Crisis so dangerous.

Then add something neither crisis had: Credible national security concerns.

Washington was willing to intervene directly in semiconductors, steel, and critical minerals on behalf of America's economic or national security interests. Washington won't watch from the sidelines if America's lead in AI is threatened or the technology itself jeopardizes its economy or national security.

That's where I'll make two predictions: If OpenAI ever requires a major restructuring, I think Microsoft becomes its natural home with Washington's blessing. And if Anthropic ever requires a similar restructuring, I think it could end up inside SpaceXAI.

This isn't a call to sell AI stocks. It's a warning that being right about AI may not mean being right about today's AI companies and their leadership.

And if this bubble bursts, or one of these models crosses a line Washington can't ignore, we may discover that this isn't another dot-com bust at all. It could be the dot-com bust and the Global Financial Crisis rolled into one.

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Fraudster Jailed for Using 10K Bots and AI Songs to Outstream Taylor Swift

After pleading guilty, a 54-year-old North Carolina man, Michael Smith, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for using artificial intelligence to generate songs for a scheme that stole millions from music streaming platforms.

In a press release Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice said that Smith is the first American criminally charged with AI-assisted streaming fraud.

Starting in 2017, Smith began using fake email accounts and "fraudulently obtained debit cards" to create "thousands of fraudulent accounts" on services including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music. He then employed software that pushed the bots to continuously stream songs that he claimed to own, which the DOJ said were AI-generated.

By his arrest in 2024, he had created "hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs," then dispersed billions of automated streams among them so that the bots could avoid raising any red flags by all targeting the same song at once.

All together, the fake songs generated substantially more streams than some of the most popular artists today. According to the DOJ, in a glaring example from April 2023, Smith's fake songs were fraudulently streamed 80.9 million times during that month, while Taylor Swift's entire catalog only got 9.3 million streams during the same time period.

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James Altucher:

"Software Is Over": Developer Uses AI To Build Free Adobe Clones After Frustration With Cancellation Fees

Adobe, a company that was once sued by the U.S. government over its early cancellation fees, has seen plenty of customers abandon its products in favor of free alternatives. One developer has even used AI-powered reverse engineering to create a suite of tools intended to replicate Adobe's apps, leading him to declare that "software is over."

Developer Brandon Thomas says he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to build the replacements in Rust. Photocraft imitates Photoshop, while Vectorcraft and Filmcraft take on Illustrator and Premiere. Lightcraft, Effectcraft, Designcraft, and Printcraft are the alternatives to Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, respectively.

The apps are open source and free, with no subscription required. Users can download the source code, modify it, and contribute fixes. Thomas describes himself as a software industry veteran with 15 years of experience, including roughly a decade working with Rust. He also insists the project has team support and will not be abandoned after launch.

For now, the software remains at an early stage, and commenters have reported problems with basic functionality. They might look like Adobe's apps, but it doesn't sound like they're able to replace the long-established programs just yet.

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Davis Wilson:

RKLB Is a BUY!

Blue Origin just raised money at a $130 billion valuation. Rocket Lab's market capitalization is under $50 billion. Think about that.

Rocket Lab is the company with the longer orbital launch history (80 successful orbital launches versus three for Blue Origin). Rocket Lab also has the proven deep-space track record, the diversified business model, and recurring revenue.

Yet it trades at a fraction of the valuation.

That doesn't mean Blue Origin is a bad company. Not at all! It's just that Rocket Lab has already delivered much of what investors hope Blue Origin can deliver in the years to come.

Yet the market values it dramatically lower. That's why I continue to believe Rocket Lab (RKLB) remains one of the most compelling investments in the commercial space industry.

Sometimes the best investment isn't the company making the biggest promises. It's the one quietly delivering the biggest results.

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The AI Revenge Trade

Go find your last electric bill. Look for the line that says "supply" or "generation." Part of that number powers Big Tech's data centers. You never signed up for that.

More specifically, a big piece of that number comes from an auction almost nobody watches. It's run by power grid operators like PJM, which runs the power grid for 65 million people in 13 states and D.C.

PJM pays power plants in auctions, years in advance, to stand by for it. The auction sets one price, and every plant gets paid it.

Until recently, nobody minded. Then AI showed up. One AI data center can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes.

In a single auction, AI caused the price to rise nearly tenfold, and the region's yearly bill jumped about $12.5 billion. So the governors forced a cap, at about 11 times what the price was in 2024. The auction has hit it three times in a row. In July, even at the cap, PJM came up short by about seven nuclear reactors' worth of power.

Last week, regulators froze PJM's emergency plan to buy new power plants. The fight is over who pays. On November 3, the states elect the people who decide. And it's looking like AI companies will need to become power companies.

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James Altucher:

David Rubenstein: Why Owners Care About Winning, Not Money

On The James Altucher Show, I'm usually the one asking the questions. But near the end of this conversation, David Rubenstein turned it around on me. He asked why I care whether the Mets win. And I didn't really have an answer.

I said, "I guess when I was a kid, it felt like I was winning when they won." And David said, basically, yeah. That's the whole thing.

David owns the Baltimore Orioles now. And he explained that Baltimore has spent roughly 200 years living in the shadow of cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington. If the Orioles win, somebody in Baltimore who will never make a dollar from the team still gets to feel like they won too.

His new book is Inside the Owner's Box: Conversations on Power and Leadership in Sports.

I wanted to ask someone who actually owns the team what ownership teaches you that being a fan never can. And there were two things David told me that I can't shake.

Here's David Rubenstein.

⇒ Listen Here

Ray Blanco:

SpaceX Seeks $40 Billion Financing To Buy Nvidia AI Chips

SpaceX (SPCX), Elon Musk's rocket and AI company, is seeking $40 billion in financing to buy Nvidia chips, potentially creating one of the largest debt-funded AI hardware purchases.

The proposed financing would comprise about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in investment-grade bonds, with Apollo Global Management (APO) expected to lead the transaction and Pimco among investors considering the debt.

Talks remain at an early stage, with the financing expected to close in 2027, while SpaceX, Nvidia, Apollo and Pimco have not commented.

The borrowing highlights the capital required to build AI infrastructure, as companies spend heavily on processors, data centers, and power equipment.

SpaceX has expanded its computing operations since incorporating xAI, Musk's AI business, and has said its data centers will use Nvidia hardware exclusively.

The proposed deal comes after SpaceX completed an $86 billion initial public offering in June and raised $25 billion through a bond sale, increasing scrutiny of its spending and debt.

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Wikimedia Foundation: OpenAI Agents Tried To Edit Pages and Compromise Notes Tool

OpenAI agents tried to compromise a public note-taking tool, attempted to edit Wikipedia pages, and possibly contributed to site disruptions earlier this year, according to a new statement from the Wikimedia Foundation.

The nonprofit released a detailed investigative report about a series of incidents involving OpenAI agents that repeatedly abused the site's rules and took several unauthorized actions.

The California-based foundation is best known for hosting and running Wikipedia – which has more than 67 million articles across 300 languages. It has become one of the most popular sources of information over the last decade, allowing people to make verified edits to pages.

The organization's investigation found edits made to Wikipedia pages by OpenAI agents that were not published. The agents also made "potentially malicious edits" that were intended to misuse a citation tool "as a proxy for fetching data from remote services."

Wikipedia does allow bots to make edits to pages when they are disclosed and approved by community editors, but those rules weren't followed in this incident.

Wikimedia also found two other issues tied to OpenAI agents, including unsuccessful attempts to compromise Etherpad – a note-taking tool the organization hosts as a community service.

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Ray Blanco:

Blood Tests Reveal Why Astronauts Get Constipated in Space

Constipation is a familiar problem for astronauts, but scientists have not fully understood why spending time in space can disrupt normal digestion.

New research from the University of Copenhagen, conducted in collaboration with NASA, offers a possible explanation. Scientists analyzed blood samples from 52 astronauts who spent months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and found signs that the digestive system begins changing relatively soon after astronauts leave Earth.

"We see changes in astronauts' blood samples that indicate that the gut bacteria begin to ferment protein to a greater extent than usual within weeks after the astronauts arrive in space, and this change continues until they are back on Earth," says joint first author and associate professor at the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Giorgia La Barbera.

The researchers suspect that microgravity may slow the movement of food through the digestive tract. If food remains in the intestines longer, bacteria have more time to turn to protein fermentation. The results could matter beyond digestion because changes in the gut can influence other parts of the body, including the brain.

The findings could become especially important as space agencies prepare for longer missions to the Moon and eventually Mars.

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Davis Wilson:

Paramount Completes $110 Billion Acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery To Form Skydance

Skydance Corporation completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, creating a combined entertainment company named Skydance that trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "SKYD." Warner Bros.

Discovery stock ceased trading on Nasdaq, effective Tuesday. WBD shareholders received $31.01666668 per share in cash under the terms of the agreement, the company said.

The deal unites two film studios, two global streaming services, and a television portfolio spanning CBS, HBO, CNN, CBS News, and a collection of cable networks. The combined entity claims more than 200 million streaming subscribers across platforms, a franchise library running from Top Gun and Harry Potter to White Lotus and SpongeBob SquarePants, and pro forma content spending of more than $30 billion over the last 12-month period.

David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Skydance, called the closing "a historic day" in a statement, saying the combined company would focus on "building a company that empowers creatives, entertains audiences and rewards shareholders."

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Trump Unveils His New Super Intelligence Force

As promised, President Trump has announced the formation of a new Super Intelligence Force, which he said will be led by national intelligence director Jay Clayton and other members of his administration.

"The Super Intelligence Force is tasked with coordinating the effort of the Federal Government to ensure that America continues to lead the World in Super Intelligence, which many say is bigger than the Industrial Revolution, and the Internet, and will protect the interests, and improve the lives, of all Americans," Trump said in a Sunday morning post on his social network Truth Social.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order seeking to rebrand AI as "super intelligence," a term seemingly embraced, with some stumbles, by the tech executives who gathered at the White House this week to sign a non-binding safety pledge.

Clayton will chair the Super Intelligence Force, effectively making him the new AI/SI czar, with Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering Emil Michael, and Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor serving as vice chairs.

The task force will reportedly have 120 days to create a report on the risks and opportunities presented by AI.

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Davis Wilson:

Florida Woman Used Claude as a Diary, Then Anthropic Reported an Entry to Police

A Florida woman is facing felony charges after she used Claude as a diary and allegedly wrote that she planned to "shoot up" the Sheriff's office. After a human reviewer examined the statements, they were reported to police.

According to the arrest report, Carli Michelle Heller, of Bonita Springs, Florida, wrote on September 26 that she would attack the Sheriff's office. She later said that she uses Anthropic's chatbot like a "diary."

Claude's safety systems flagged the entry and it was escalated to a human reviewer. After deciding it was a credible threat, the reviewer reported it to law enforcement.

The company says it may share user information in limited emergencies if it believes disclosure is necessary to prevent death or serious physical injury.

Deputies identified Heller and visited her home. She was detained without incident before an LCSO intelligence detective took over the investigation.

The latest incident is another reminder to think before you enter something into a chatbot that could get you into trouble. It's certainly not a private diary whose contents are for your eyes only.

⇒ Read More Here

Greg Guenthner:

The AI "Mega-Theme" Nobody's Talking About Yet

Every investor in the world is crowded into the chip trade. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) is up nearly 70% year-to-date, leaving the Nasdaq in the dust.

But here's what the crowd is missing. While everyone stares at the chips, a group of biotech stocks left for dead for the better part of a decade has quietly begun putting up gains of 150%, 200%, even 300% this year. I'm talking about biotech – genomics, specifically.

Keep an eye on two of ARKG's biggest holdings as we start the fourth quarter:

10x Genomics Inc. (TXG), up more than 50% since it beat top- and bottom-line estimates last month. Shares are up more than 300% year-to-date, and – more telling – they recently cleared $65 to complete a four-year base breakout.

Twist Bioscience Corp. (TWST) – raised full-year guidance in August, and shares are up more than 60% since it reported. Another 300%-plus winner on the year, now closing in on its 2021 all-time highs near $215.

Remember, price leads the news. You're going to be hearing a lot more about these biotech themes as the news cycle sprints to catch up to the action.

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Elon's "Flying Car" DELAYED!

Tesla postponed last night's highly anticipated Roadster event until October 15, citing severe weather near the outdoor venue in Texas. Elon Musk has spent years teasing a Roadster equipped with technology developed by SpaceX – including thrusters that could allow the car to briefly leave the ground.

According to Elon, the all-wheel drive car can go from zero to 60 mph in under a second with a top speed of 250 mph. Its range is reportedly up to 620 miles, its battery 200 kWh in the original prototype, and it seats up to four people.

Musk has said Tesla plans to offer an optional "SpaceX package" that incorporates rocket technology. The idea is to install small cold-air thrusters around the vehicle. These thrusters would rapidly release compressed gas to generate additional force, potentially improving: acceleration, braking, cornering, and top speed.

He has repeatedly suggested that the Roadster could hover or briefly leave the ground.

Tesla originally announced the Roadster base model at $200,000 and the Founders Series at $250,000. However, Tesla has since removed those prices from its website, so the final Roadster could cost considerably more.

If the Roadster takes flight using SpaceX thrusters on October 15, it'll be another sign that Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to ultimately becoming one company.

⇒ Read More Here

Greg Guenthner:

'Uptober' Off With a Bang as Bitcoin Surges to $86K

Bitcoin was trading at $86,757 on Friday, up 3% over 24 hours and 2% on the week, after a September that broke the month's losing reputation. Bitcoin remains about 31% below the record it set a year ago.

The move follows Wednesday's inflation reading. August core PCE came in at 3% against expectations of 3.3%, and the repricing that followed has swung the odds toward the Federal Reserve holding rates at its October 28 meeting. Futures put a hold at 74%, according to CME's FedWatch tool, against 35.8% a week ago, and traders on Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, price it at 75%.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $2.65 billion in September, behind only August's $3.52 billion since October 2025, and $6.34 billion across the third quarter. Net assets stand at $109.3 billion.

The third quarter mostly undid earlier damage. The funds lost $4.97 billion in the second quarter and $490 million in the first, leaving 2026 net inflows under $1 billion.

October and November have historically been Bitcoin's best months, a pattern traders call Uptober, averaging an 18% October gain and 46% across the quarter over the past decade.

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Ari Goldschmidt:

Robotaxi Operators Will Face Fines for Blocking First Responders

Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology companies like Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox will have to provide first responders with local, on-the-ground support when their robotaxis cause problems under a new California law. The companies could also face penalties if a robotaxi blocks police or firefighters for more than 30 minutes.

Senate Bill 1246, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, sets a series of new rules for AVs designed to improve safety and response times when they become disabled or interfere with emergency responders. The law also creates ways to hold these companies accountable if they don't.

The law follows a string of high-profile incidents in California in which robotaxis broke down and disrupted traffic, drove into crime scenes, or impeded first responders.

The bulk of those incidents involved Waymo, the largest robotaxi operator in the U.S., which has about 4,000 autonomous vehicles in its commercial fleet across the country. About 1,200 of those are in the San Francisco Bay Area. An investigation earlier this year identified a number of incidents in which Waymo relied on first responders to manually drive its vehicles when they encountered problems.

The law goes into effect in July 2028.

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9 Free Stock Picks (Live James Altucher Call)

James Altucher just dropped a ton of new stock recommendations – completely free – during his first-ever live Ticker Tuesday call earlier this week.

Ticker Tuesday is James' latest project. Each Tuesday, he and his team will reveal a weekly stock pic over James' private VIP text group. These are stocks, sectors, and opportunities we're actively watching in real time. (Sign up for Ticker Tuesday here!)

As Tuesday's call kicked off, James wasted no time pointing out just how massive the AI infrastructure buildout has become. He says optical fiber manufacturer Corning (GLW) is one of the major beneficiaries of all this spending.

James also noted how memory is a major key to the AI buildout. He added that Micron is currently by far the cheapest mega-cap stock in the market. Greg Guenthner – who was also on the call – agreed with James and said Micron's stock looks "coiled" for a breakout.

This is only a fraction of what James and Greg talked about. Click the link below for a recap of the nine stocks James and his team recommended on Tuesday's call. You can also sign up for Ticker Tuesday and get a full replay of the call texted straight to your phone.

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Enrique Abeyta:

U.S. Creates New Autonomous Warfare Command To Fuse and Enhance Military Drone Ops

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Wednesday the launch of a new U.S. military command with "service-like authorities" to facilitate the rapid adoption of autonomous and robotic assets across the entire joint force.

The Autonomous Warfare Command emerges as Defense Department personnel have been confronting severe technical and structural bottlenecks as they hustle to buy and deploy affordable drones and associated unmanned capabilities en masse for modern combat operations.

Hegseth unveiled the new Autonomous Warfare Command, which he also called "AutoWarCom," as part of a slew of announcements during his "State of the Force" address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

Among other announcements, the secretary also revealed the new Project Meridian "to creatively look to the future" of warfare and identify the domains that the U.S. military must conquer, and the technological capabilities it will need to quickly master.

Project Meridian will be co-directed by defense tech executives Elon Musk from SpaceXAI, Palmer Luckey from Anduril, as well as political commentator and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

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Ray Blanco:

TSMC Is Weighing a New Multibillion-Dollar Chip Campus in Texas

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is weighing the construction of a new Texas campus that could pump tens of billions of dollars into its growing U.S. chipmaking footprint.

The investment, if it moves forward, would be separate from the $265 billion TSMC has already committed to an Arizona campus. Each fabrication plant at a Texas campus would carry a price tag of at least $20 billion. People with knowledge of the discussions, who requested anonymity, said the planning is still in its early phases.

Customers based in North America represent more than 75% of TSMC's wafer revenue through this point in the year. The surge in demand for AI chips has pushed the limits of the company's current manufacturing footprint.

Texas already has a meaningful semiconductor footprint, with Samsung Electronics Co. running a major chip production complex there and Elon Musk's Terafab project slated to add another facility. Texas Instruments Inc. is separately growing its manufacturing presence in Sherman, north of Dallas.

Elsewhere, TSMC's international construction activity includes facilities in Kumamoto, Japan, developed alongside Sony, as well as an early-stage project in Saxony, Germany.

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