An investor group including BlackRock, Microsoft, and Nvidia is buying one of the world’s biggest data center operators with nearly 80 facilities in a deal worth $40 billion to secure coveted computing capacity for artificial intelligence.
The purchase of U.S.-based Aligned Data Centers from Australian Macquarie Asset Management on Wednesday is the first deal for the AI Infrastructure Partnership formed last year which includes Abu Dhabi-based fund MGX and Elon Musk’s startup xAI among its backers.
“With this investment in Aligned Data Centers, we further our goal of delivering the infrastructure necessary to power the future of AI,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who also serves as the chairman of the AI Infrastructure Partnership.
Deals to snap up chips and infrastructure
The acquisition is the latest in a series of big-ticket deals involving Big Tech and Silicon Valley startups that have been fueled by the boom in AI.
Major tech companies including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Meta, Microsoft, and CoreWeave, are on track to spend $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year, Morgan Stanley estimates.
OpenAI, the startup at the heart of the AI boom, struck deals in recent weeks with chipmakers Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Broadcom that may cost over $1 trillion to secure about 26 gigawatts of computing capacity, enough to power roughly 20 million U.S. homes.
Meta Platforms is building several multi-gigawatt AI data centers, including one called Prometheus due to come online in 2026 and another, Hyperion, that can scale up to 5 gigawatts.
Privately-held Aligned Data Centers currently has over 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity located across 50 campuses in the U.S. and Latin America.
Joe Tigay, portfolio manager at Nvidia shareholder Equity Armor Investments, said the acquisition highlights the growing value of data center assets for investors.
“Theyre looking at rapid expansion to meet AI demand and optimize for it.”
Spending surge as interest booms
Founded in 2013, Aligned has been a big winner of the AI infrastructure spending boom, raising $12 billion in equity and debt earlier this year in one of the largest private capital injections into a data center company.
Its customers include cloud-computing platform Nutanix and IT services provider Datto, according to its website. The company also has a land portfolio with access to significant near-term power capacity in key markets, said Macquarie, which first invested in the company in 2018.
Shares of its publicly listed rivals, such as Applied Digital, have soared more than four-fold this year. Applied Digital shares jumped 5% on Wednesday.
The investment group buying Aligned, which also includes Kuwait Investment Authority and Singapore state-owned investor Temasek as backers, has an initial target of deploying $30 billion of equity capital, with the potential of reaching $100 billion including debt. It has not disclosed how much each partner has contributed to the group nor the equity value of Wednesday’s deal.
Nvidia and Aligned declined to comment, while the investors did not immediately respond to requests seeking more details on the deal.
“All the major parties in that consortium, they are showing the strength of the AI ecosystem,” said Hendi Susanto, portfolio manager at Nvidia investor Gabelli Funds.
Aligned will remain headquartered in Dallas, Texas, under CEO Andrew Schaap when the deal closes in the first half of 2026, the investor group said in its statement.
Arsheeya Bajwa and Aditya Soni, Reuters
With every passing day of the government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal employees furloughed or working without pay face mounting financial strain. And now they are confronting new uncertainty with the Trump administration’s promised layoffs.
Little progress has been made to end the shutdown as it enters its third week, with Republicans and Democrats digging in and convinced their messaging is resonating with voters. The fate of the federal workers is among several pressure points that could eventually push the sides to agree to resolve the stalemate.
Luckily, I was able to pay rent this month, said Peter Farruggia, a furloughed federal worker. But for sure I am going to have bills that are going to go unpaid this month, and I really dont have many options.
The shutdown has a familiar feel for many federal employees who endured past stalemates including during President Donald Trumps first term but this time, the stakes are higher. The Republican White House is leveraging federal workers jobs to pressure Democrats to soften their demands.
The shutdown began on Oct. 1 after Democrats rejected a short-term funding fix and demanded that the bill include an extension of federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Trump and other Republican leaders have said the government must reopen before they will negotiate with Democrats on the health subsidies.
Trump administration launches wave of layoffs
Farruggia is the executive committee chair of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883, representing employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency that faced a wave of layoffs over the weekend. Like 8,000 other CDC employees who have been furloughed from the agency, he was already living paycheck to paycheck, and the partial pay that arrived Friday was his last until the government comes back online.
With the agency’s leadership in turmoil and still rattled from a shooting, the shutdown and new firings mean people are scared, nervous, anxious, but also really just exasperated, Farruggia said.
After Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said last week on social media that the RIFs have begun, referring to reduction-in-force plans aimed at reducing the size of the federal government, Vice President JD Vance doubled down on the threat Sunday, saying the longer this goes on, the deeper the cuts are going to be.”
The layoffs have begun across federal agencies. Labor unions have already filed a lawsuit to stop the move by Trumps budget office.
In a court filing on Friday, the Office of Management and Budget said well over 4,000 federal employees from eight departments and agencies would be fired in conjunction with the shutdown.
Jessica Sweet, an Albany, New York, Social Security claims specialist who is a union steward of AFGE Local 3343 in New York, said, I, myself, have a backup plan in case she is fired during the shutdown, but I know most people don’t.
She says the Social Security Administration is already so short-staffed from layoffs earlier this year brought on by the Department of Government Efficiency, she doesn’t fear a massive layoff during the shutdown.
The one thing this administration has taught me is that nothing is ever for certain, even if it’s codified into law,” she said.
Having received a partial payment in her last paycheck, Sweet has begun reaching out to her local power companies to request that she not get charged late fees, since my bills won’t wait for me to eventually get paid.
Shutdown drags on, and frustration grows
For some federal workers, this isnt their first shutdown the last one, during Trumps first term in 2019, stretched a record 34 days. But this time, federal employees are being used more directly as leverage in the political fight over government funding.
The Republican administration last week warned that there would be no guaranteed back pay for federal workers during a shutdowna reversal of long-standing policy affecting roughly 750,000 furloughed employees, according to a White House memo. The move, which Trump later backtracked on, was widely seen as a strong-arm tactic.
Adam Pelletier, a National Labor Relations Board field examiner whose agency furloughed nearly all of its workforce on Oct. 1, going from roughly 1,100 workers to fewer than a dozen people, said he wouldn’t mind if the shutdown continued if it meant meaningful progress toward gaining health care protections for Americans across the country a key demand by Democrats for ending the stalemate.
Pelletier, a union leader for NLRB local 3, said, Right now, nothing is being investigated at the NLRB. Theres no elections for unions or elections for decertifications. Basically, nothing is happening.
As for the financial strain on workers, he said workers can’t even find alternate employment to weather the shutdown because “the ethics office that would approve of those requests is not staffed now.”
Workers used as political pawns
National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald, which represents workers across dozens of federal agencies, said several of the union’s members had been laid off as of Friday. The Treasury Department would lose 1,446 workers, according to the filing.
Greenwald said it was unfortunate that the Trump administration was using federal employees as political pawns by furloughing and proposing to fire them all to try to cuse pressure in a political game of chicken.
This isnt about one party or the other. Its about real people, said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.
The correction officer worrying about his next paycheck. The TSA officer who still shows up to work because he or she loves their country, even though theyre not getting paid. No American should ever have to choose between serving their country and feeding their family, Kelley said.
Kelley and other major federal worker union leaders gathered blocks from the Capitol last week, urging congressional leaders to find a solution and put people over politics. The event grew emotional at times, with union heads outlining the difficulties facing their members and the stakes growing daily.
Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents 110,000 workers nationwide, called on both sides of Congress to find a resolution. He said Trump appeared to aim to degrade, frighten, antagonize hardworking federal employees.
Chris Bartley, political program coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters, said thousands of firefighters were showing up for work without pay out of a sense of devotion but stressed that could have broader consequences.
Families go without income,” Bartley said. Morale and retention suffer. Public safety is compromised.
Fatima Hussein, Joey Cappelletti, Jesse Bedayn, and Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press
When you type a question into an AI search engine like ChatGPT or Google AI Mode and it comes up with an answer, that information comes from somewhere. Scouring the web for content thats contextually relevant to the asker, it typically assembles an answer based on several different sources, interpreted through the lens of its training data and system prompt.
The fight over being one of those sources is the new game of online discovery thats replacing SEO. Typically called GEO or AEO for generative/answer engine optimization, the field is nascent, and the rules, best practices, and even the benefits arent entirely clear. Theres one thing everyone agrees on, though: Its growing rapidly.
Growth markets are opportunities, so even if the rewards of appearing in AI search havent been fully established, both media companies and marketers want to understand GEO and potentially crack the code on being the answer, or at least fuel for the answer. The precise methodshow content optimization differs from SEO, how to leverage social and PR to improve your chances of appearing, how to build a system for understanding AI queriesare promising, but still being worked out.
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Also being worked out? What to do when you win.
The AI search rewards system
The rewards for winning at search were clear. Earning a high rank in search results means people click to your site, interact with your content, and either give you ad impressions or convert into some kind of paying customer. As Ive written before, being cited in AI answers is more akin to advertising your brand than a viable business strategy. A win in GEO means successful reputation management.
This of course is why many publishers prefer to block AI crawlers from indexing their sites at all. They may want to understand GEO, but theyre not interested in having their content serving as raw material for an AI layer they feel they have no stake in (licensing deals notwithstanding). For sites that do appear in AI search, willingly or unwillingly, a win means readers perceive your publication to be more authoritative.
So what happens when you losesay, your competition gets cited instead of you? For both media and marketers, its a missed opportunity for your brand to appear in front of someone interested in your area of expertise.
What is the value of that? Its easy to point at ChatGPTs 800+ million users and think its a lot, and it might be, but remember: queries arent the same as search terms. Theyre much more specific, and the tools for analyzing them are in the very early stages. Its difficult to understand if youre optimizing for an audience of one or one million.
When the answer is wrong
Theres another kind of loss that brands are finding intolerable: incorrect or damaging information in AI answers. This is becoming a more serious problem than when it happens in traditional search because its difficult to fix. An AI answer is amalgamated from several different sources, so the precise ranking of those sourcesranking is a huge deal in SEOdoesnt matter as much as the bad information simply being present.
Worse, that information may be on Wikipedia or Reddit, two sites that are based on user-generated content, have byzantine systems for how content is created and promoted, and are newly influential in the age of AI. Since they are both huge repositories of human-created text on myriad topics, theyre extremely valuable to data-hungry large language models, and the big AI companies have awarded them a kind of favored status. Reddit, notably, has used this as leverage to negotiate deals with Google and OpenAI worth tens of millions every year.
All of which is to say that dealing with a reputational problem in AI search is a new kind of difficult-to-crack crisis. At the recent MarCom Summit in Washington, D.C., marketers who specialize in dealing with problematic content on Wikipedia or Reddit told me theyre newly busy this past year.
Who will benefit from ads in AI search?
So at least one kind of business is making money from GEO. For everyone else, theyll likely have to wait until AI answers begin to incorporate ads in a meaningful way. This is inevitableChatGPT may have almost a billion users, but most arent paying a dime. Thats a massive untapped revenue stream. Perplexity has been experimenting with ads in answers for a year, and Google is slowly stapling ads into its AI experiences, too.
Skeptics roll their eyes at AI answers adopting an advertising business model, criticizing the companies for being less interested in solving societal problems than making money from user attentionthe same old Silicon Valley playbook. However, there’s another perspective: You know how AI summaries provide links to sources? That same attribution can be used to apportion the revenue from any ads in the summary to those same sources. The AI media tech startup Dappier is building such a system, splitting revenue from ads in the answer with everyone who contributed to it.
So while I understand the cynicism about advertising coming to AI engines, I cant help but be a little bit hopeful about it. Yes, ads are certainly coming to AI search, but the search engines might not necessarily hog all the rewards. Will there be enough money to go around? Not yet. But like I said, its a growth market.
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The Trump administration has escalated its campaign to fire federal workers during the government shutdown, seizing the opportunity to further slash the already diminished Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Tuesday, the union that represents workers at the CDC said that the agencys workforce has already been reduced by a quarter since the beginning of the year. During the shutdown, the public health agency, which steered U.S. health policy through the pandemic, has found itself in the crosshairs of the Trump administration once again.
Over the weekend, around 1,300 CDC employees received layoff notices. By Saturday, the agency rescinded roughly 700 of the planned terminations, saying that the additional unintended layoffs were due to a coding error. The CDC layoffs are part of a new round of mass layoffs that have reduced core parts of the federal government, including the Treasury Department, the Education Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which houses the CDC.
In August, CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired after refusing to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives or fire health experts on her team, according to her legal team. Many of the CDCs top leaders followed her departure, resigning in protest and deepening the chaos roiling the nations public health agency.
Life-and-death stakes
Dismantling the CDC is clearly a top priority during Trumps second term, but the risks are huge. The agency, which was largely regarded as uncontroversial and essential until the COVID-19 pandemic, is tasked with protecting Americans from infectious diseases and other public health threats, both domestic and global.
CDC employees involved in the response to the domestic measles outbreaks and an Ebola outbreak in central Africa were among those who were fired during the shutdown, but they have since had their layoff notices reversed.
Other CDC workers werent so lucky, including analysts working to monitor biological and chemical threats, and members of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response who work with U.S. intelligence agencies on biodefense issues such as pandemics and weaponized pathogens, The Washington Post reported. Other employees in the same department ran biodefense drills and monitored natural disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, and cyberattacks on health facilities.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said late last week that all fired CDC employees were designated as nonessential, defending the decision to further diminish the agency. HHS continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administrations Make America Healthy Again agenda, Nixon said.
In a joint letter from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and other organizations focused on epidemiology, public health experts condemned the firings as a completely reckless act that may compromise the health of all Americans.
For nearly eight decades, CDC has worked around the clock to protect Americans from a growing range of health threats, from rabies to food safety to Ebola, the organizations wrote. The agencys support of state and local health departments and healthcare professionals is the backbone of our nations public health response.
Fighting the layoffs
Two unions representing federal workers, the AFGE and AFSCME, filed a lawsuit to halt the layoffs and will await a San Francisco district judges decision after preliminary arguments on Wednesday. The unions argue that the Trump administration is “using federal employees as pawns to put political pressure on its political opposition, and they have asked for a temporary pause on the most recent firings. In previous government shutdowns, employees faced furloughs but were never fired en masse.
“These illegal firings of our union members during a federal government shutdown are a callous attack on hardworking Americans and put the livelihoods, health, and safety of our members and communities at great risk,” AFGE Local 2883 President Yolanda Jacobs said in a call with reporters.
Over the weekend, Vice President JD Vance defended the mass firings on NBCs Meet the Press and blamed Democrats for the layoffs and the government shutdown. Vance misleadingly characterized the layoffs as necessary to keep other parts of the government funded and running, but many federal workers arent being paid during the shutdown.
We have to lay off some federal workers in the midst of this shutdown to preserve the essential benefits for the American people that the government does provide, Vance said.
That story conflicts with Trumps own. The president has hailed the shutdown as a golden opportunity to slash departments and programs that he doesnt agree with. “We’re ending some programs that we don’t want, Trump told reporters over the weekend. They happen to be Democrat-sponsored programs. But we’re ending some programs that we never wanted, and we’re probably not going to allow them to come back.
Owning a home sounds like a dream, sure, but a majority of Gen Z Americans feel discouraged about whether they can make this sort of lifetime goal a reality. To blame? Housing just isnt affordable.
While two-thirds of Americans between the ages of 18 and 27 say that homeownership is a lifetime goal, 82% of people in this generation believe that actually buying a home is more difficult for them than older generations, according to a new survey of 1,000 Gen Z adults released today by Realtor.com. Things are so bad, in fact, that 16% of Gen Zers rate housing affordability as one of their top life concerns.
And its not just a feeling: Younger generations have been largely locked out of the housing market in recent years because of the affordability issue thats made worse by a few influencing factors, according to Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com. In addition to a lack of new housing inventory, the elevated home prices for existing homes and high mortgage rates mean that homeownership really is out of reach for many would-be buyers, she says.
Its really, really challenging to be a first-time homebuyer in this market, Jones tells Fast Company. But there are definitely ways to go about it, and creative ways to approach homeownership.
33% OF GEN Z SAVING FOR A DOWN PAYMENT
Thats because the survey results, while largely showing how discouraged Gen Z feels, did reveal something that Jones finds encouraging: Nearly three-quarters of respondents have already started saving for a down payment. While respondents predict theyll need about $54,500 for a down payment, which is far less than the $85,000 necessary for a 20% down payment on a home with the national median listing price of $425,000, its nearly double the most-recent average down payment of $30,250.
By proactively saving, even if they worry about affordability, this underscores just how much of a priority owning a home is for younger people and that theyre still optimistic its possible, provided they save enough money, Jones says. Even though Gen Z views homeownership as unattainable, theyre thinking about it and saving for it.
Respondents said theyre interested in dependable ways to grow their wealth or cut costs to save for a down payment rather than betting on the potential for making money from riskier bets on stocks or cryptocurrencies. And theyll make some sacrificeslike going back home to live with their parents, living with roommates, buying homes with friends if theyre unmarriedso they can overcome that affordability hurdle, Jones says.
MARKET SOLUTIONS NEEDED
But some solutions that will help this generation are far beyond their control: More new homes need to come on the market, including the construction of more starter homes and multi-family homes that are available at different sizes and price points for generations that arent yet earning a lot, Jones says.
And while much has been made of the so-called great wealth transfer, in which trillions of dollars will be transferred from older generations to younger generations, would-be homebuyers will benefit more immediately from a dip in mortgage rates. About 80% of home owners with outstanding mortgages are locked in at rates below 6%, so that will serve as an important psychological boundary that may help unlock some housing inventory, Jones says.
The national average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is currently 6.19%, according to Nerdwallet.
Realtor.com hasnt yet forecasted mortgage rates for 2026, when its possible that theyll dip below 6%, but thats coming in the relatively near future and once it does, it will bring a wave of people who are ready to move and will bring more housing inventory to the market.
Lower mortgage rates will unlock a lot of housing so it can boost housing affordability, Jones says.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid for the 2026-27 school year has officially opened.
Despite the U.S. government shutdown, the Education Department will continue to process the FAFSA.
If you plan to attend college next year, Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, recommends that you fill it out as soon as you can.
If it’s your first time applying, here’s what you need to know:
How does the FAFSA work?
The FAFSA is a free government application that uses students and their families financial information to determine whether they can get financial aid from the federal government to pay for college.
The application will send a students financial information to the schools they are interested in attending. The amount of financial aid a student receives depends on each institution.
The application is also used to determine eligibility for other federal student aid programs, like work-study and loans, as well as state and school aid. Sometimes, private, merit-based scholarships also require FAFSA information to determine if a student qualifies.
What is the deadline to fill out the FAFSA?
The 2026-2027 FAFSA application must be submitted by June 30, 2027. However, each state has different deadlines for financial aid. For example, California has a March 2, 2026, deadline and Kansas has an April 15, 2026, deadline for state financial aid programs.
You can check your states deadline here.
This year’s application rolled out Sept. 24, a week ahead of the anticipated Oct. 1 launch.
This is a really welcomed change and hopefully it will be a turning point where we can expect to see a FAFSA every year by or even before October 1st, Desjean said.
How can I prepare to fill out the FAFSA form?
The first step in the process is to create a studentaid.gov account and gather the following documents:
Social Security number
Drivers license number
Alien registration number, if you are not a U.S. citizen
Federal income tax returns, W-2s and other records of money earned
Bank statements and records of investments
Records of untaxed income
Who should fill out the FAFSA?
Anyone planning to attend college next year should fill out the form. Both first-time college students and returning students can apply.
Even if you think you wont qualify, the worst thing that can happen is that you might get finance aid you didnt know you qualified for, Desjean said.
Students and parents can use the federal student aid estimator to get an early approximation of their financial package.
What information do I need from my parents?
If you are filing as a dependent student, youll need to provide the financial information of at least one parent. Parents need to create their own FSA IDs. When your parents fill out the application, they can manually input their tax return information or use the IRS Data Retrieval Tool.
The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.
Adriana Morga, Associated Press
When the corroded pipeline burst in 2015, inky crude spread along the Southern California coast, becoming the states worst oil spill in decades.
More than 140,000 gallons (3,300 barrels) of oil gushed out, blackening beaches for 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, polluting a biologically rich habitat for endangered whales and sea turtles, killing scores of pelicans, seals, and dolphins, and decimating the fishing industry.
Plains All American Pipeline in 2022 agreed to a $230 million settlement with fishers and coastal property owners without admitting liability. Federal inspectors found that the Houston-based company failed to quickly detect the rupture and responded too slowly. It faced an uphill battle to build a new pipeline.
Three decades-old drilling platforms were subsequently shuttered, but another Texas-based fossil fuel company supported by the Trump administration purchased the operation and is intent on pumping oil through the pipeline again.
Sable Offshore Corp., headquartered in Houston, is facing a slew of legal challenges but is determined to restart production, even if that means confining it to federal waters, where state regulators have virtually no say. California controls the 3 miles (5 kilometers) nearest to shore. The platforms are 5 to 9 miles (8 to 14 kilometers) offshore.
The Trump administration has hailed Sables plans as the kind of project the president wants to increase U.S. energy production as the federal government removes regulatory barriers. President Donald Trump has directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to undo his predecessors ban on future offshore oil drilling on the East and West coasts.
Environmentalists sue to stop the project
“This project risks another environmental disaster in California at a time when demand for oil is going down and the climate crisis is escalating,” said Alex Katz, executive director of Environmental Defense Center, the Santa Barbara group formed in response to a massive spill in 1969.
The environmental organization is among several suing Sable.
Our concern is that there is no way to make this pipeline safe and that this company has proven that it cannot be trusted to operate safely, responsibly or even legally, he said.
Actor and activist Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who lives in the area, has implored officials to stop Sable, saying at a March protest: I can smell a rat. And this project is a rat.
The California Coastal Commission fined Sable a record $18 million for ignoring cease-and-desist orders over repair work it says was done without permits. Sable said it has permits from the previous owner, Exxon Mobil, and sued the commission while work continued on the pipeline. In June, a state judge ordered it to stop while the case proceeds through the court. The commission and Sable are due back in court Wednesday.
This fly-by-night oil company has repeatedly abused the publics trust, racking up millions of dollars in fines and causing environmental damage along the treasured Gaviota Coast, a state park south of Santa Barbara, said Joshua Smith, the commissions spokesman.
Sable keeps moving forward
So far, Sable is undeterred.
The California Attorney Generals office sued Sable this month, saying it illegally discharged waste into waterways, and disregarded state law requiring permits before work along the pipeline route that crosses sensitive wildlife habitat.
Sable placed profits over environmental protection in its rush to get oil on the market, the agency said in its lawsuit.
Last month, the Santa Barbara District Attorney filed felony criminal charges against Sable, also accusing it of polluting waterways and harming wildlife.
Sable said it has fully cooperated with local and state agencies, including the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and called the district attorney’s allegation inflammatory and extremely misleading. It said a biologist and state fire marshal officials oversaw the work, and no wildlife was harmed.
The company is seeking $347 million for the delays, and says if the state blocks it from restarting the onshore pipeline system, it will use a floating facility that would keep its entire operation in federal waters and use tankers to transport the oil to markets outside California. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, the company updated its plan to include the option.
Fulfilling the president’s energy promise
The U.S. Interior Departments Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said in July it was working with Sable to bring a second rig online.
President Trump made it clear that American energy should come from American resources, the agencys deputy director Kenny Stevens said in a statement then, heralding the “comeback story for Pacific production.
The agency said there are an estimated 190 million barrels (6 billion gallons) of recoverable oil reserves in the area, nearly 80% of residual Pacific reserves. It noted advancements in preventing and preparing for oil spills and said the failed pipeline has been rigorously tested.
Continuous monitoring and improved technology significantly reduce the risk of a similar incident occurring in the future, the agency said.
CEO says project could lower gas prices
On May 19 the 10th anniversary of the disaster CEO Jim Flores announced that Sable is proud to have safely and responsibly achieved first production at the Santa Ynez Unit which includes three rigs in federal waters, offshore and onshore pipelines, and the Las Flores Canyon Processing Facility.
State officials countered that the company had only conducted testing and not commercial production. Sable’s stock price dropped and some investors sued, alleging they were misled.
Sable purchased the Santa Ynez Unit from Exxon Mobil in 2024 for nearly $650 million primarily with a loan from Exxon. Exxon sold the shuttered operation after losing a court battle in 2023 to truck the crude through central California while the pipeline system was rebuilt or repaired.
Flores said well tests at the Platform Harmony rig indicate there is much oil to be extracted and that it will relieve California’s gas prices among the nation’s highest by stabilizing supplies.
Sable is very concerned about the crumbling energy complex in California,” Flores said in a statement to The Associated Press. With the exit of two refineries last year and more shuttering soon, Californias economy cannot survive without the strong energy infrastructure it enjoyed for the last 150 years.
California has been reducing the states production of fossil fuels in favor of clean energy for years. The movement has ben spearheaded partly by Santa Barbara County, where elected officials voted in May to begin taking steps to phase out onshore oil and gas operations.
Julie Watson, Associated Press
Associated Press writer Matthew Brown contributed to this report.
Shares of stocks linked to agriculture, soybeans and cooking oil are are up on Wednesday after President Donald Trump said that the U.S. was considering “terminating business with China having to do with Cooking Oil and other elements of Trade” as retribution against Beijing for refusing to buy American soybeans.
Pinnacle Food Group Limited (PFAI) shares were up over 77%, Sadot Group Inc. (SDOT) was up over 87%, and Australian Oilseeds Holdings Limited (COOT) rose over 260% at the time of this writing in midday trading on Wednesday.
Pinnacle Food Group Limited sells smart farming solution services, Sadot Group is a Texas-based global food supply chain company, and Australian Oilseeds Holdings has grown to be the largest cold pressing oil plant in Australia, pressing GMO-free conventional and organic oilseeds.
This marks the latest chapter, and second week, in Trump’s ongoing trade and tariff war with China, which reignited October 9 with restrictions on rare earth mineral exports, vital for U.S. chipmakers and the tech and defense industries.
Last week, Trump said he was putting 100% tariffs on Chinese goods after Beijing added five American subsidiaries of a South Korean shipping company to its sanctions list.
“I believe that China purposefully not buying our Soybeans, and causing difficulty for our Soybean Farmers, is an Economically Hostile Act,” Trump said Tuesday on his social media platform Truth Social. “We can easily produce Cooking Oil ourselves, we dont need to purchase it from China.”
China responded that its position on tariffs remains the same: A trade war is in neither country’s interest.
The latest row comes ahead of Trump’s scheduled meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month.
Robotaxi pioneer Waymo plans to expand to London next year, marking the companys latest step in rolling out its driverless ride service internationally.
Waymo said Wednesday that it will start testing its self-driving cars on London streets in the coming weekswith a human safety driver behind the wheelas it seeks to win government approval for its services.
In a blog post, Waymo said it will lay the groundwork for its London service in the coming months. The company said it will continue to engage with local and national leaders to secure the necessary permissions for our commercial ride-hailing service.
Waymos self-driving taxis have been operating in the United States for years, and currently serve the cities of Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin. This year, the company made its first moves to expand internationally by teaming up with local partners in Japan for testing, though no launch date has been set for commercial service there.
The company began as a secret project within Google and was then spun out from the tech giant.
Waymo will have to follow new U.K. regulations on self-driving cars that pave the way for autonomous vehicles to take to the country’s roads. They require self-driving cars to have a safety level at least as high as careful and competent human drivers and meet rigorous safety checks.
The company will be able to take part in a pilot program for small-scale” self-driving taxi and bus services that the government plans for spring 2026.
Waymo will also have to stick to rules from Transport for London, the city’s transport authority, which oversees licensing for its famous traditional black cabs as well as other taxi operators like Uber.
U.S. quantum computing firm D-Wave Quantum has struck a deal with a company called Swiss Quantum Technology (SQT) to bring D-Waves Advantage2 quantum computer to Europe.
The deal, which amounts to 10 million ($11.63 million), will see D-Waves quantum computer deployed in Italy, where it will play a role in supporting the Italians efforts toward large-scale digital transformation, D-Wave announced on Wednesday.
It will be part of a joint effortcollectively called the Q-Alliance”between D-Wave and IonQ, another American quantum computing company.
In its announcement on Wednesday, D-Wave said little about what SQT does, and scant information about the company is accessible online. When contacted for comment by Fast Company, a rep for D-Wave described it as “a Swiss company that has been established to focus on quantum hybrid applications and research.”
Shares of Palo Alto, California-based D-Wave rose after the announcement and were up around 1.29% in early afternoon trading.
The stock has had an astounding run since last year, growing more than 4,235% over the last 12 months as excitement around quantum computersseen by many experts as a transformative technologyhas hit fever pitch.
“A very important day”
D-Waves CEO, Alan Baratz, said during a short livestreamed announcement on Wednesday morning that it’s “a very important day for Italy, for the Q-Alliance, and for D-Wave as we are now bringing one of the worlds largest quantum computers to the region.”
The announcement comes after D-Wave made waves earlier this year by announcing that it had achieved quantum supremacy, by knocking out computations that would have taken roughly 1 million years to solve on a classical computer.
Accordingly, Baratz said that D-Waves Advantage2 is the only quantum computer in the world thats been able to solve an important, useful, real-world problem that could not be solved classicallyreferring to the quantum supremacy announcement, which involved D-Waves quantum computer simulating the properties of magnetic materials.
This is what everybody [in the quantum industry] has been aspiring to, he said, and thats been achieved.
D-Waves quantum computing technology is already being used in other parts of the world.
A police department in Wales, for instance, is using it to predict and analyze police force deployments. Ford Otosan, a Turkey-based auto manufacturer representing a joint effort between Ford and Koç Holding, is using D-Wave tech as a part of its assembly process. And in Japan, a cellphone carrier is using it to improve its network performance.
D-Wave announced the general availability of its Advantage2 in May of this year. News that it is bringing one to Italy may be seen as more evidence that the quantum industry is set for a breakoutdespite skepticism from some tech leaders who have contended that practical use cases are still years away.
