Elon Musk has disapproved of Delaware ever since a judge there ruled against his massive pay package.
Now the company wants shareholders to move the company to Texas officially.
Tesla wants to abandon Delaware and make Texas its official home.
In a proxy statement filed with the SEC on Wednesday, Tesla asked shareholders to approve moving the electric car company's incorporation from its current location in Delaware to Texas, where its headquarters are.
"Texas Is Tesla's Home. 2024 is the year that Tesla should move home to Texas," the proxy statement reads. "We have received letters from thousands of Tesla stockholders — large and small — supporting a move home to Texas. We have heard you, and now we formally ask that you speak in a meaningful way: and vote in favor of taking Tesla to our business home of Texas."
"Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware," Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on January 30 following the judge's decision.
Now, shareholders will have a chance to make good on Musk's threats to bail.
The proxy statement also asks shareholders to re-approve Musk's pay package, which is now valued at $47 billion. Shareholders are scheduled to vote on both proposals — the move and the pay package — in June.
Before then, Tesla will announce its quarterly earnings next Tuesday, on the heels of sweeping layoffs this week to more than 10% of the company's workforce.
A F-35I fighter jet flies during a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots in southern Israel.
Amir Cohen/Reuters
Iran appeared to target Israel's Nevatim Airbase with over 350 drones and missiles on Sunday.
Nevatim houses Israel's F-35I "Adir" stealth fighter jets produced by US company Lockheed-Martin.
The planes downed a cruise missile in November and aided defenses against Iranian missiles, the IDF said.
Early Sunday morning, Iran fired hundreds of drones, missiles, and rockets at Israel in a retaliatory attack following Israel's strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria.
With military assistance from allies including the US, the UK, Jordan, and France, Israel successfully intercepted around 99% of the incoming projectiles, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
The missiles appeared to target Israel's Nevatim Airbase in the Negev desert, which houses its fleet of F-35I stealth fighter jets. The Israeli variant of the US-made Lockheed Martin Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter plane is known as "Adir," meaning "Mighty One" in Hebrew.
Here's a look at the powerful military aircraft.
F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter jets produced by Lockheed Martin are some of the most advanced military aircraft in the world.
An Israeli F-35I lands at Ovda airbase near Eilat, southern Israel.
Tsafrir Abayov/AP
The F-35 stores its weapons and fuel internally, and its aligned edges and radar-absorbent coating also help the aircraft evade detection. The planes cost $44,000 per hour to fly, The National Interest reported in January.
They feature advanced stealth and information-processing capabilities and can reach supersonic speeds of Mach 1.6, or 548.8 meters per second.
An Israeli Air Force F-35I Adir fighter aircraft flies over the Negev Desert.
YURI CORTEZ/AFP via Getty Images
Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn A. Hewson said in 2018 that the planes "can fly in what we call 'beast mode,' carrying up to 18,000 pounds of internal and external ordnance, in a mix that can include 5,000-pound-class weapons."
In 2016, Israel became the first country other than the US to acquire F-35 fighter jets.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands next to a F-35 fighter jet just after it landed in Israel at Nevatim air base.
Amir Cohen/Reuters
Israel was the first country to select the model through the US Foreign Military Sales process and bought 50 planes, according to Lockheed Martin.
Israel has made significant modifications to the jets.
A production line for F-35 wings in Israel Aerospace Industries' (IAI) campus near Tel Aviv.
Amir Cohen/Reuters
Israel manufactures its own wings and electronic warfare system for the F-35I. It also developed its own version of the high-tech helmet that displays the plane's airspeed, altitude, targeting information, and other crucial stats directly on the pilot's visor.
The Israeli Air Force named its F-35I variant "Adir," meaning "Mighty One" in Hebrew.
Israeli Air Force technicians customize an F-35I plane with a Star of David symbol.
Israeli Air Force
The Israeli Air Force also added a six-pointed Star of David to the design, a Jewish symbol that also appears on the Israeli flag.
In 2018, Israel became the first country to use the F-35I in combat, its air force chief said.
Israeli Air Force F-35 flies during an aerial demonstration.
Amir Cohen/Reuters
"We are flying the F-35 all over the Middle East and have already attacked twice on two different fronts," then-Israeli Air Force chief Major-General Amikam Norkin said in a speech at a gathering of foreign air force leaders, Reuters reported.
In July 2023, Israel acquired an additional 25 Adir planes in a $3 billion deal.
Israeli F-35I planes.
Israeli Air Force
The deal was financed through the military aid Israel receives from the US, Reuters reported.
In November 2023, Israel's F-35I Adir fighter jets took down a missile fired by an Iran-backed group in Yemen, according to the IDF.
A F-35I fighter jet flies during a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots in southern Israel.
Amir Cohen/Reuters
It was the first known intercept of a cruise missile by an F-35 plane.
The Israeli Air Force released footage of the encounter on X, writing in Hebrew that its personnel are "preoccupied at every moment with planning and managing the defense response and are prepared for any threat in any area."
Iran appeared to target the Nevatim air base, which houses Israel's fleet of F-35I jets, during an unprecedented attack on Sunday morning.
An Israeli F-35 combat aircraft is seen in the skies over Israel's border with Lebanon.
Ammar Awad/Reuters
Out of the over 350 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, launched at Israel by Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon, around 99% were intercepted by Israel and its allies. The IDF released photos showing minor damage near a runway at the Nevatim Airbase and to a road in Hermon caused by the few projectiles that landed.
The Nevatim base remained operational throughout the attack, according to the IDF, with the Adir fighter jets aiding the defensive mission.
"Iran thought it would be able to paralyze the base and thus damage our air capabilities, but it failed," IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a statement.
The ongoing war in Gaza has prompted new scrutiny of US military aid to Israel.
An Israeli soldier sits inside an F-35I fighter jet after it landed in Israel at Nevatim Airbase.
According to the UNRWA, over 1.7 million Gazans have been displaced and 1.1 million are at risk of "catastrophic levels of food insecurity."
The devastating human toll of the war in Gaza with US-funded planes like the F-35I has prompted new scrutiny of US aid to Israel, with some lawmakers in Congress raising the possibility of conditioning military and economic aid.
Tesla started sending out severance information to laid-off employees overnight.
Justin Sullivan
Tesla has begun sending severance information to laid-off staff.
The severance offered includes two months' pay and health insurance, five former workers told BI.
On Sunday, Elon Musk told Tesla staff he was cutting more than 10% of the company's workforce.
Tesla has started sending out severance information to laid-off employees.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk told staff the electric-car maker was slashing more than 10% of its workforce on Sunday night, according to an internal memo viewed by Business Insider. In the individual layoff notices to impacted workers that were sent in the hours after Musk's companywide email, Tesla told workers they'd receive their severance information "within 48 hours," according to emails viewed by BI.
The emails, which were sent to the workers' personal email accounts, notified staff they had been terminated effective immediately. The workers were also cut out of Tesla's internal systems around the same time, several former workers said.
The carmaker appears to be offering workers two months of severance — meaning the workers will be paid through June 14, five former workers told Business Insider. The severance packages did not appear to be weighted based on the length of time workers had been with Tesla, as workers with anywhere from a few months to several years of experience at Tesla received the same number of weeks paid out, the five sources told BI.
Under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), companies that have more than 100 workers are required to provide 60 days of notice before a large-scale layoff. However, Tesla's severance offer could address any potential penalties if it were found to have violated the WARN Act, which says laid-off employees can be entitled to up to 60 days of pay and benefits if not given proper advanced notice.
Tesla is also offering to pay the cost of COBRA health insurance for two months for workers who had coverage through the company, according to a severance package offer viewed by BI.
In order to receive the severance pay, laid-off workers must sign the contract being offered, which prohibits them from participating in any lawsuit or mass arbitration against the company, sharing any of the company's trade secrets or publicly defaming Tesla. These types of clauses are relatively standard for severance agreements.
Tesla said the severance agreement must be signed within five business days of its receipt and workers will receive their severance pay 45 days after their termination date, according to a severance agreement viewed by BI.
While the severance information appears to have started going out overnight, several Tesla workers who were impacted by the layoff told BI they had yet to receive a severance information as of Wednesday morning.
The severance agreement did not include any information regarding equity awards or unused PTO. An exit email that was sent to laid-off employees on Tuesday said Tesla workers had "either 30 days or 3 months (or both)" from their termination date to exercise their vested stock options and staff would have their PTO that they'd accrued leading up to their termination date paid out in their final paycheck.
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Do you work for Tesla or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at gkay@businessinsider.com
I don't regret moving my family to Florida and we've enjoyed living here.
Terri Peters
My family moved from Maryland to Florida over 7 years ago, when my teens were in elementary school.
From hurricane parties to political protests, I've experienced a lot and I love living here.
Florida is more than just Walt Disney World and gators, but both of those exist here.
It's been over seven years since my husband and I chose to relocate our family from Maryland to Florida. It's a decision I've never regretted once, but living in the Sunshine State is very different from life in the Northeast.
Aside from the obvious things like no snow and exponentially more humidity, there's a different political vibe down South and a lot more Southern hospitality. Plus, Disney World is here, which makes me — a journalist who covers theme parks — very happy.
Since arriving here, we've lived in the same place — a concrete, hurricane-proof bunker of a beach house that's steps from the ocean. My kids, who were 6 and 8 when we arrived in Florida, are now 13 and 15. They've grown up eating mangoes fresh from the neighbor's tree, hanging out at the beach, and spending summers at surf camp.
The life we've built here in our tiny beach town is what I love most about Florida, but such a drastic move is not without its surprises. Here are some things that have given me pause since we arrived as a caravan of cars, kids, dogs, and moving vans in 2016.
Although I've seen an occasional gator floating in a pond or sunning itself on the roadside, they aren't running rampant in the streets of Florida as I'd imagined. Instead, when we want to see gators, we go to Gatorland, one of my favorite Florida theme parks.
Driving here isn't always the best, and it can take us a long time to get to most places around Florida.
Florida traffic isn't great.
Terri Peters
Whether we're trying to get across the state to visit family or head south to cities like Miami, we're constantly amazed at how long it takes us to get anywhere using Florida's road system.
There can be a lot of traffic and, in my opinion, there just aren't fast ways to connect from one major highway to another in Florida.
The Florida heat doesn't actually bother us much.
We've found ways to beat the heat.
Terri Peters
Well-meaning friends and family warned us about moving to a state that has consistently hot weather. But for us, summer in Florida with temperatures regularly hitting over 80 degrees Fahrenheit in August feels no different from a hot, humid August in Maryland.
Fortunately, the super-hot weather typically lasts just a few months out of the year. The rest of the year is blissfully breezy, warm, and sunny, without the extreme heat.
There's really good food in Florida, but I feel like we have to look harder for it.
We drive pretty far to get great Indian food in Florida.
Terri Peters
When we lived close to Baltimore and Washington, DC, we had access to any type of cuisine we desired, as varied as Ethiopian and Thai.
In Florida, I've found that delicious food from different cultures exists but it can be harder for us to find. Do I drive 45 minutes to the best Indian restaurant in the area? Yes, but I have no regrets.
Orlando is also way more than just theme parks.
The Orlando Science Center is a great spot for indoor fun.
When we first moved to the area, we only visited the city to experience its theme parks. Now we know there's so much more to Orlando, such as museums, parks, and fun downtown areas to explore.
Still, having easy access to theme parks has not gotten old.
I haven't gotten sick of Disney World yet.
Terri Peters
My family still spends a lot of time at theme parks such as Disney World and Universal Orlando — we haven't gotten sick of living close to them even after seven years.
When you live within driving distance of theme parks, it's easier to enjoy them for just a bit and then head home. I don't miss the days when my kids were small and we'd plan theme-park trips from Maryland, exhausting ourselves by squeezing everything into a weeklong vacation.
Hurricane season is a blend of concern and celebration.
Always be careful if you're attending or hosting a hurricane party.
Terri Peters
The first year we lived in Florida, a major hurricane hit our town. The next year, we were faced with another that seemed equally menacing.
By our third hurricane season, we'd purchased a generator and started thinking harder about whether or not to evacuate our home. Hurricanes can cause devastating damage but we've found some Floridians try to make the most of a looming storm when possible.
After a few years, we've hosted (and attended) a few hurricane parties where people wait out the storm together with food and drinks. If you host or attend one, though, just be sure to exercise caution and stay alert.
Yes, things can get pretty political… even when you're not expecting it.
Someone handed me this pin once while I was in my car.
I'll never forget when I received the Trump pin pictured above. My family was stopped at a traffic light and a group of protesters, upset about the outcome of the 2022 election, came up to our car window, handed us a Donald Trump button, and tried talking to us about the election.
When the light turned green, we kept on moving.
Golf carts are a huge part of daily life in some parts of Florida.
I'd love my own golf cart someday.
Terri Peters
I never knew street-legal golf carts were a thing until arriving in my tiny beach neighborhood. Here, many people, including police officers and delivery drivers, use golf carts instead of cars.
There are golf carts in the school pickup line and special golf-carts-only parking spaces at restaurants. I also sometimes see teens I know aren't old enough to have a driver's license flying through my neighborhood behind the wheel.
I've been laying down hints to my husband that I want my own golf cart for my birthday, but until then, I'll catch a ride with cart-owning friends.
This story was originally published on August 4, 2023 and most recently updated on April 17, 2024.
Bridgemans Services Group operates a fleet of former cruise ships that have been converted into workforce "floatels."
Jeff Vinnick, Bridgemans Services Group
Bridgemans ServicesGroup operates a fleet of former cruise ships turned into hotels.
Its "floatels" are designed to house workers during long-term projects.
See its largest 652-cabin floatel with a game room and buffet.
Some old and unwanted cruise ships meet their demise at ship-breaking yards, where they are disassembled and sold for scrap.
Other vessels find a more fortunate fate, receiving a second chance to do what they already do best: serve as floating hotels.
Canada-based Bridgemans Services Group buys and charters former cruise ships to turn into "floatels," outfitted with standard cruise amenities like daily housekeeping, buffets, and relaxing lounges.
But the ships aren't designed to transport tourists from one destination to another anymore. Instead, companies turn to Bridgeman when they need to house workers for a long-term project, whether it be the construction of an offshore wind farm in Europe or the shooting of a major film in a remote destination.
Floatels can accommodate workers in remote destinations where hotels might not be an option.
The company also charters vessels long-term.
Bridgemans Services Group
In more metropolitan areas, Bridgemans says its ships could lessen the stress an inundation of workers might have on the local housing market.
And once they are no longer needed, the vessels depart and "leave no trace behind," the company said.
Over the last decade, Bridgemans has deployed its ships for 15 projects on every continent, Brian Grange, the company's president, told Business Insider.
As former cruise ships, the vessels already come with necessities like water and sewage treatment, auditoriums, and bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms.
Bridgemans Services Group
Grange said that its deployments — most often for liquified natural gas companies — last for an average of two years.
In the past, it has also provided accommodations for MSC Cruises at its Ocean Cay private island and housing for more than 1,000 workers in the Philippines' on a project for the Manila International Airport during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company's three ships range from 150 to 652 cabins.
Isabelle X is docked at the construction site, allowing workers to walk to work.
Bridgemans Services Group
The floatel operator acquired its largest ship, the 561-foot-long MV Isabelle X, in 2023.
In its past life, the 35-year-old vessel sailed around the Baltic Sea as one of Estonia-based Tallink Gruipp's cruise ships.
But gone are its days of leisurely cruising. The 35,000 gross-ton ship is now on its first deployment in Howe Sound, just north of Vancouver, where it's housing more than 600 workers who are building Woodfibre LNG's "net zero" LNG export facility.
Isabelle X underwent a six-month retrofit before it was sent to Howe Sound.
MV Isabelle X's dining room before (left) and after (right) its refit.
Bridgemans Service Group
The process included updating the ship's cabins and adding amenities like a game room and an 8,000-square-foot gym.
The latter two are especially important: "We need to make sure we delineate between work and home," Grange told BI. "We have to create a social environment on board these vessels that makes it attractive for workforces around the world."
During their free time, workers can play billiards, relax in the outdoor lounge, or use the ship’s WiFi to catch up on social media.
The ship has several scenic lounges and a "game" lounge.
Bridgemans Services Group
The sports lounge has large television screens, while the games lounge has darts, ping pong tables, and air hockey.
The 'quiet lounges' are the go-to space for people who need to unwind after a long work day.
The Isabelle X has also been upgraded with eco-friendly measures like the ability to run on shore power at the port, which is widely considered more environmentally friendly than relying on fuel and engines.
Bridgemans Services Group
Or, they could recharge and catch up on the latest shows in their cabins, which all come with desks, storage, and 32-inch televisions.
Like a typical cruise ship, Bridgemans' vessels have buffets with live cooking stations, a dessert bar, and the occasional themed night.
Isabelle X can house 70 Bridgemans' crew, including cooks, housekeeping, and safety systems operators.
Bridgemans Service Group
The ships' chefs tailor their menus to the demographic and dietary restrictions of the workers on board, the company's president told BI.
Residents can expect at least four protein options, plenty of veggies, and handmade bread and desserts.
Unlike most cruise lines, Bridgemans can pre-purchase all the food it needs before deployment.
Isabelle X's interior spans 450,000 square feet including spaces like a "VIP dining room."
Bridgemans Services Group
Grange says this allows the ships to maintain food quality and consistency in remote locations.
Remember that deployment in the Philippines during COVID-19? He said the ship had packed almost 800 tons of food ahead of the project.
He wouldn’t disclose the cost to rent one of Bridgemans’ floatels.
Bridgemans charges a premium for deployments in remote destinations.
Bridgemans Services Group
But he did note that the cost of a cabin on the Woodfibre LNG project in Howe Sound is comparable to a hotel room in nearby Vancouver, as is the case with most of its projects near major cities.
The company’s most recent acquisition, the 150-cabin Diamond XI, is currently being retrofitted and would be ready for deployment this year.
Diamond XI is being refitted in Europe.
Bridgemans Services Group
According to the company's president, the vessel is small and high-end, likely to be used for sporting events and movie shoots.
It could also be the start of a greater expansion: He hopes to add two or three more vessels to its fleet in the next five years.
"The world has opened up to this as a valued alternative to housing," Grange told BI.
The company currently has 2,300 beds on the water, Brian Grange, president of Bridgemans Services Group, told Business Insider.
Bridgemans Services Group
Who knows, the next time you see a cruise ship off the coast, there's a slim but possible chance it could be housing workers — not vacationers.
People who know how to use artificial intelligence could get a leg up in the job hunt.
sorbetto/Getty Images
In a survey, 49% of business leaders said knowing how to use ChatGPT could top having a degree.
About three-quarters of leaders say mandating the use of the AI tool can boost worker productivity.
Despite this, 36% of respondents didn't see ChatGPT experience as more valuable than a degree.
If you ask ChatGPT whether it makes more sense to learn how to use the artificial intelligence tool or go to college, you get a version of "It depends."
If you ask corporate types, you get a more surprising ambivalence: In a recent survey, 49% of business leaders said that knowing how to chat up the chatbot could, in some cases, amount to more than four years of lectures and term papers.
The early April survey of 800 senior managers, directors, and execs by Intelligent.com also found that eight in 10 regard ChatGPT experience as valuable for entry-level gigs.
The results illustrate how quickly some bosses expect the technology will redraw the way work gets done, and also how readily some of them are rethinking degree requirements in favor of a show-me-what you-can-do approach.
Huy Nguyen, chief education and career development advisor at Intelligent.com, told Business Insider that many execs see AI as a speedy way to boost productivity.
"They're thinking that if people have experience with chatGPT — generative AI — they can come in there and have an immediate impact on the business," he said.
About three-quarters of respondents said they required ChatGPT experience for some entry-level jobs to increase how much workers could accomplish and to help employees learn. Sixty-eight percent said it was to promote creativity.
"They may not have the same experience or skillset as others," he said, adding AI might make it "easier to close the skills gap" between new workers and veterans.
With more seasoned workers, Nguyen said there's often less need to worry about how technology could supercharge people's abilities because those who have been at it for a while have had time to build up expertise. "You're hiring for experience," he said.
It's also possible that some business leaders expect that newer — and presumably younger — workers might have more exposure to AI, Nguyen said.
Regardless, a greater focus on what someone can do and less on formal training reflects a certain pragmatism among employers, he said. For many young people in the US, scaling a mountain of debt in pursuit of a degree might not be worth it. And workers can be hard to come by in many fields, so doing away with degree rules can widen the pool of candidates.
"What's more important is actually demonstrating the skill," he said. "If you're a programmer, you either can program or you can't."
Don't drop out just yet.
Not all leaders are ready to skip over the education sections of résumés, however. In the survey, 36% of respondents didn't see experience with ChatGPT as more valuable than a college degree, and 12% were unsure.
While some employers set aside degree requirements, not all have made good on promises to hire more people who didn't attend college, one study found.
Nguyen said that regardless of how it's done, what's important is that workers keep learning. Nearly all of those polled endorsed that idea.
Just under nine in 10 leaders said that having taken courses on ChatGPT could make job candidates for certain roles more attractive. Nguyen said he suspects what many leaders are really after — more than those who took AI 101 — is workers who are conversant in using the technology.
"ChatGPT is still quite new," he said. "The course that you took 12 months ago may actually be irrelevant. And you may not be using ChatGPT in the future — and may be using something else."
For now, though, workers with an eye on an entry-level role might need to get used to working with AI. About six in 10 companies require experience with ChatGPT for at least some entry-level jobs, particularly in tech, according to the survey. That includes 7% of companies that require it for all jobs.
Some eight in 10 execs said knowing how to use AI would be even more important for entry-level workers in 2025.
"I don't think that people fully understand the business impact of it yet, but it's moving quick," Nguyen said.
The Allied Pilots Association says safety problems are increasing at American Airlines.
It said incidents include tools left in wheel wells and increased collisions between towed planes.
United Airlines has faced increased oversight from regulators, which American will want to avoid.
The union for American Airlines pilots has warned that safety problems are increasing at the carrier.
In a Saturday statement, the Allied Pilots Association said it "has been tracking a significant spike in safety- and maintenance-related problems in our operation."
It listed incidents like tools being left in wheel wells, and more collisions between towed or tugged aircraft.
The APA also said some maintenance actions hadn't been closed out properly, and there were increased intervals between inspections.
"Remember: Don't rush, don't be intimidated, and don't be pressured into doing something that doesn't pass the 'smell test,'" the union told pilots. "Just because it's legal doesn't make it safe."
The union encouraged its members to speak up and report any issues: "As the last link in the safety chain, our passengers and crew depend on us to be the strongest link in that chain."
It also referenced recent problems at United Airlines. A series of safety events — like a tire falling off a Boeing 777 — have seen regulators ramp up their oversight of the carrier.
"While United Airlines is currently under public and government scrutiny, it could just as easily be American Airlines," the APA said.
United's share price fell 3.4% after the Federal Aviation Administration announced the move last month, Reuters reported. So, avoiding similar actions from the FAA will be important for American.
Two days after the memo, the APA's president, Ed Sicher, said the union's safety committee had met with senior management to discuss the issues earlier this month.
"APA is squarely focused on finding solutions — which will require collaboration between the union and management — and management's initial response to our concerns was encouraging," he added.
An American Airlines spokesperson told Business Insider: "Safety at any airline is a shared mission and it's especially true at American. Our robust safety program is guided by our industry-leading safety management system."
They added: "It includes a multitude of collaborative programs — and regular touchpoints — with the FAA and all our unions, including APA, to further bolster our strong safety record and enhance our ever-evolving safety culture."
Russia's economy is predicted to grow by 3.2% in 2024, outpacing all advanced economies, including the US, the IMF said.
Despite the war, high investment and robust private consumption have driven Russia's economy forward.
The IMF expects the momentum to fade in 2025, with Russia growing at a rate of 1.8%.
Russia's economy is expected to grow significantly faster than major developed economies this year, including the US, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The country's war-time economy is forecast to grow by 3.2% in 2024, largely outpacing expected growth for other advanced economies including the US (2.7%), Germany (0.2%), the UK (0.5%), and Japan (0.9%), IMF said in a report published on Tuesday.
The surging growth rate has been linked to the effects of "high investment" and "robust private consumption" buoyed by wage growth in a tight labor market, though the IMF said it expects these effects to taper off in 2025, with a growth rate of 1.8%.
The forecast is a wake-up call for Western countries that have hoped to throttle Russia's economy with sanctions to make its war in Ukraine unsustainable. Growth at that level would back up Vladimir Putin's claims that Russia's economy has withstood the most dire effects of Western sanctions and trade restrictions.
Meanwhile, as foreign companies leave Russia amid the war, Moscow has been accruing funds from fleeing firms, seizing $387 million as of mid-March.
Russia's resilience against Western sanctions stems largely from its boundless alliance with China. Trade volume between the two countries surged to a record $240 billion last year, fueled in part by Beijing's appetite for essential Russian commodities that have been discounted amid the West's reluctance to trade with Moscow.
Government investment into research and development has helped the UK become a leader in life sciences, engineering biology, and artificial intelligence.
As humans, we depend on scientific advancements for our development and vitality. These innovations keep us healthier longer and living more fruitful, happier lives. But developments in science often require years of trial and error — and finding success in engineering biology, life sciences, and AI is easier said than done.
Take the costly enterprise of drug discovery, for instance. It costs around $2 billion and 13 years for a drug to go from proof-of-concept to final pill. In part, that's because the odds of success are stacked against companies. Around 95% of projects that start fail because of one reason or another, said Ben Taylor, chief financial officer and chief strategy officer at Exscientia, which blends the twinned fields of AI and life sciences.
"There's usually some sort of Achilles' heel to most drug candidates," he explained. "What we do is we try and identify the Achilles' heel for different pharmaceutical compounds and various disease indications. And then we make predictive models using AI, aiming to design a better-quality drug candidate without that Achilles' heel — or others — before it ever reaches a patient."
Exscientia is a leading global biotech company headquartered in the UK, using AI, machine learning, and automated experimentation to rifle through millions of permutations of molecules within a potential drug to find the "perfect fit" before putting compounds into patient trials. It saves time, effort, and money. Above all, it can lead to better quality drug candidates. Using AI to predict what qualities may have the most benefit for patients and then how to design the molecule to match those qualities changes the drug discovery process, Taylor said.
The company, which floated on the Nasdaq stock market in October 2021, raising $510 million — the largest initial public offering (IPO) for a European biotech company in history — has developed eight "development candidates" for medicines to date.
"We've been able to take about 75% of the time and cost out of going from an idea to an actual drug candidate," Taylor said.
Born in the UK
Exscientia was spun out of the University of Dundee around 12 years ago and is now located in Oxford, with nearly 500 staff members working on around 20 separate projects. "The talent pool has been terrific here," Taylor said, setting the UK apart from its peers. "The UK has been a great place for us to really set up home and build our headquarters from."
Government support and a receptive business environment mean Exscientia is far from the only home-grown success story in life sciences. AstraZeneca helped spearhead the fightback against COVID-19 by developing the world's first vaccine, saving millions of lives around the world. And medical equipment manufacturer Smith & Nephew is a UK-born business helping improve lives by manufacturing the artificial joints used in countless knee, hip, and other joint operations around the world.
Exscientia's growth was bolstered by government support: The company didn't take venture funding until 2019. "One of the things that I think causes people to be hesitant about the UK is that there's not a massive venture community," Taylor said. "But what we've been able to find is that actually, between the tax rebates and the support of some of the grants, that was enough for us to get going and really move forward." Exscientia wouldn't be where it was, Taylor said, without the support of the UK higher education system and government funding. "If you don't have that, the idea just falters," he said. "It remains on a cocktail napkin."
Martin Tangney, the chief scientific officer of Edinburgh-based Celtic Renewables, said the £11 million of funding his company received in 2015 from the UK government was "pivotal." The grant "wasn't to do research in the university. It wasn't that kind of funding, which is available," he said. "This was a grant that was transformative for the company to do something commercial."
With the help of government funding, massive shifts in the biosciences sector are possible. Exscientia isn't just competing; it's leading the way.
"We really believe … [that] basically, soon all drugs are going to be created with AI," Taylor said. "It's a fundamentally better way of doing things."
To help support that, in late December 2023 the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) announced its national vision for engineering biology. As part of that strategy, the government will invest more than £2 billion into engineering biology over the next decade, keeping the UK at the cutting edge of the technology.
Renewed passion for renewables
Celtic Renewables also believes it has found a fundamentally better way of doing things. The business aims to re-establish the use of acetone-butane-ethanol (ABE) byproducts as a fuel stock. ABE was used to make acetone for explosives in the First World War, and up until the 1960s was second only to ethanol production as a fermentation industry. However, the rise of fossil fuels, and particularly oil, changed all that.
ABE is the fermentation process used in the production of whisky, which has huge volumes of waste material. Each liter of whiskey produced results in 2.5 kilograms of solid waste byproducts, and 18 liters of liquid byproducts. Nearly 3 billion liters of waste liquids come from malt whiskey production in Scotland every year. "Then you've got Ireland, Japan, America, India, and so on," Tangney said.
But those waste liquids can be turned into a fuel source. "We can still do everything that we currently do, but use the carbon that's above the ground and repurpose it, rather than digging up oil and gas," he said. Tangney set up the Biofuel Research Center at Edinburgh Napier University in December 2007, spinning out Celtic Renewables four years later. "The UK is very good at funding fundamental research, [but] the biggest problem is taking that out of the lab and putting it into factories," he said.
Government backing makes a difference
The government support was useful because of its comparative lack of strings — getting out of the way and allowing the entrepreneur to build his business. Tangney points out that by and large, funding into private enterprises is made in exchange for shares in the company, and once you've sold all of them, you're unable to do anything else. "That's the only currency you have as a startup," he said. The government grant was different. Before, the largest vessel in Celtic Renewables' lab had a capacity of five liters. "We can now run our fermentations in our plant in vessels that hold 100,000 liters of volume, and we have five of these vessels at our plant," Tangney said.
The company has also grown its staff from four to nearly 60. A facility at Grangemouth is producing fuel from waste materials, with plans for more facilities to come.
"There needs to be an awful lot more Celtic Renewables out there at scale around the world," Tangney said. "Then it creates a brand new economy, and it creates skills."
In the aftermath of the cuts, market watchers wonder what's next for Tesla, writes Business Insider's Graham Rapier.
Tesla reports earnings next week, but we've already got an idea of one of Elon Musk's big ideas: robotaxis. Amid all the bad news over the past week, the Tesla CEO said the long-awaited robotaxis will be unveiled in August.
But as Graham points out, robotaxis aren't a novel concept for Tesla, which has been pitching the idea for years. And rolling them out would mean improvements to Tesla's Full Self-Driving software, which has lagged behind competitors.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times; Chelsea Jia Feng/BI
In the meantime, Tesla's stock keeps falling.
Shares of the EV maker are down more than 35% this year, giving back a good chunk of the massive gains it saw in 2023. Meanwhile, most of its Magnificent 7 peers have continued their 2023 hot streaks.
Tesla's been good to its longtime investors. It's up more than 900% over the past five years, far outstripping the S&P 500 index (72%). And the stock has bounced back from volatility before. Tesla's incredible 2023 was preceded by a 65% drop in share price during 2022.
But external factors make this year's comeback more daunting.
Yet, despite a long list of recent setbacks, there is some good news buried amid the carnage: EV sales data shows Tesla has outpaced all competitors in the US electric vehicle market lately, growing its market share to 51.3%.
Andy Sieg has been the head of Merrill Lynch since 2017.
Merrill Lynch, Abanti Chowdhury/BI
The Andy Sieg era is underway at Citi's wealth business, and it includes some massive changes. The Merrill Lynch vet has only led the unit since September, but almost a dozen executives have left since he arrived. Here's a running list of who's departed so far.
There ain't no stopping this bull market. Despite geopolitical concerns and interest rates staying high, some Wall Street vets don't see an end to the bull market.From explaining away the high inflation data to why we're in a buy-the-dip moment, four experts weigh in with their optimistic take.
Truth Social users are feeling glum about Trump Media's tanking share price. The ex-president's social media platform has plummeted over 60% since it went public at the end of March. Truth Social has been buzzing about the stock's steep decline, with some "Truthsayers" claiming its shares have been artificially devalued.
3 things in tech
Many young people aren't using the VR headsets they own, according to a new Piper Sandler survey.
DAVID SWANSON
Kids are bored with VR goggles. A new survey found 56% of teens who own VR devices rarely use them. That's bad news for companies like Apple and Meta, which are banking on the tech for the future.
Silicon Valley's new favorite social-media platform is an invite-only audio app. Airchat, an app marketed as a "social walkie-talkie," is taking off among tech and creator-economy insiders. But can it stick around?
Microsoft is gearing up for the AI boom. The tech giant's data center capacity grew rapidly in recent quarters, according to an internal presentation seen by BI. It's planning an even faster ramp-up in capacity over the rest of 2024, the document showed.
3 things in business
Juanjo Gasull for BI
The new American Dream? Leaving the US. With the cost of living in the States on the rise, more and more Americans are deciding that the only way to get ahead financially, pay off debts, and save for retirement is to move abroad.
Australia's retirement model could inspire America's. While US retirement plans rely on workers' contributions to accounts like 401(k)s, Australia's superannuation system mandates employer-funded retirement contributions. Adopting something similar could improve Americans' retirement.
New York is using AI to challenge wealthy remote workers. CNBC reported that the state's tax department is sending out hundreds of thousands of AI-generated letters looking for revenue. It's mainly targeting wealthy remote workers and those who require a change in tax residency, per the outlet.