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Image: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Wake up to the shifts shaping the future.
From boardroom shakeups and billion-dollar bets to the latest tech breakthroughs rewriting the rules, The Company Brief is your front-row seat to the stories moving markets and mindsets.
We cut through the noise so you can stay ahead of the curve, one bold business move at a time.
OpenAI hits $500 billion valuation after share sale,
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has reached a valuation of $500 billion following a deal in which current and former employees sold roughly $6.6 billion worth of shares, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
Google says hackers are sending extortion emails to executives
Alphabet's Google said hackers are sending extortion emails to an unspecified number of executives, claiming to have stolen sensitive data from their Oracle business applications. In a statement, Google said a group claiming affiliation with the ransomware gang cl0p was sending emails to "executives at numerous organisations claiming to have stolen sensitive data from their Oracle E-Business Suite."
Bitcoin is up as the US government shuts down.
The U.S. government has shut down. Here’s how Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies are performing in the hours after the federal government shut its doors. Nearly every major cryptocurrency is up by multiple percentages, including:
Elon is edging closer to becoming a trillionaire
Billionaire Elon Musk, the world's richest person, is nearly halfway to becoming the planet's first trillionaire, Forbes magazine reported Wednesday. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO became the first person to achieve a net worth of $500 billion, briefly, as the shares in his electric vehicle company rebounded from his clumsy stint in politics, amid other gains. The 54-year-old's net worth hit $500.1 billion Wednesday before dipping back to $499.1 billion, the publication's "Real-Time Billionaires" tracker reported.
Eskom's R100bn municipal debt: This could cripple its turnaround plans
Debt from municipalities is set to climb from just under R100 billion now to more than R300 billion within the next five years. Eskom itself has previously warned that this trajectory could cripple its turnaround plans. Municipal debt has increased by an average of 26% per year from 2021 to 2025, outpacing revenue growth, which averaged around 14% per year, Eskom’s results show. The number of municipalities with an arrear debt balance of more than R100 million has increased to 75 as of the end of March, when compared to the 69 seen a year earlier.