Tech Brew Ride Home - Space Race Acquisition

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Starting point is 00:00:17 and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at AKA.m.m.S. college PC. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, April 14th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Amazon's dropping $10.8 billion on Global Star

Starting point is 00:00:42 to beef up its Leo satellite network and challenge Starlink and apples along for the ride. Plus federal charges for the Sam Altman attacker. Open AI aquires a fintech startup. Google declares war on back button hijacking, data labeling startups are printing money, and Missouri voters revolt over a data center. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Amazon has agreed to acquire satellite operators, Global Star with the deal set to close in 2027 to expand its Leo space internet system. Amazon and Apple say Leo will still power some iPhone and watch services, quoting the journal. Amazon is paying $10.8 billion to buy satellite operator Global Star, the biggest rival to Elon Musk's

Starting point is 00:01:26 Starlink service. Amazon will acquire the company's existing satellite operations, infrastructure, and assets, including mobile satellite services, spectrum licenses. It's Leo, service plans to deploy its own direct-to-device satellite system beginning in 2008. The satellite industry is rushing to find ways to provide connections on cell phones using fleets in orbit, anticipating a large market will coalesce in the coming years. Musk's SpaceX has been the most aggressive, conducting regular launches of satellites dedicated to offering those links. SpaceX has upended the satellite industry with two major acquisitions of spectrum to support

Starting point is 00:02:00 its satellites to cell phone goals. It committed more than $20 billion in cash, stock, and debt committed. to acquire wireless resources from Echo Star and separate deals disclosed last year. Leo competes with Starlink, but for now is far behind in getting satellites into space. It has a few hundred satellites in space and plans to deploy thousands more, while Starlink already has thousands of satellites in space. Amazon Leo has been falling behind Starlink on satellite broadband, said Armand Musi, founder and president of consulting firm Summit Ridge Group.

Starting point is 00:02:31 Acquiring Global Star allows it to catch up on their direct-to-device spectrum and boost their deployment, he said. Amazon has also agreed to a deal with Apple to power satellite services for its iPhone and Apple Watch and work together on future satellite services using Leo's growing network. Global Star previously agreed to provide virtually all of its satellite capacity to Apple to support a limited suite of services such as emergency texting on iPhones, end quote. And quoting Bloomberg. Amazon is building out its low Earth orbit satellite network Amazon Leo in a bid to compete with Elon Musk SpaceX, whose fast-growing Starlink unit has more than than 10 million active customers and about 10,000 satellites in orbit. Starlink is anticipated to

Starting point is 00:03:12 bring in more than $9 billion in revenue this year. Satellite broadband is booming, especially in hard-to-reach locations, but Amazon is falling behind on its goal to boost its coverage with more than 7,700 satellites. It's asked the Federal Communications Commission to waive or extend a deadline to have 1,600 satellites aloft by July. Global Star could accelerate Amazon's efforts because it already operates a functioning network of satellites, said Bloomberg intelligence analyst John Davies. But the company's network is smaller than Starlink's, and it mostly focuses on connecting phones and other devices in areas of low coverage. The company powers Apple's emergency services feature on iPhones, for instance. Apple's relationship with Global Star likely

Starting point is 00:03:51 gives the iPhone maker a say in the satellite provider's future, people familiar with the matter have told Bloomberg. In 2024, Apple invested about $1.5 billion in the satellite operator, taking a 20% stake in the company as part of the deal. Global Star's buildout plans may be linked to Apple's product roadmap, and the iPhone maker will not want to alter its plans, said Davies. Originally formed as a joint venture between Qualcomm and Laurel. Global Star launched its first low-earth orbit satellites in 1998. Global Star had nearly 800,000 subscribers to its mobile satellite services at the end of 2025, end quote. The U.S. Department of Justice has officially charged Daniel Moreno Gama, that 20-year-old Texas man accused of throwing a Molotop cocktail at Sam Altman's home

Starting point is 00:04:42 with attempted murder and arson. And there's a bunch more in terms of details we have found out about now. Quoting the Times. The man, Daniel Moreno Gama, also appeared to have written a document that identified views opposed to artificial intelligence and discussed the purported risk AI poses to humanity, according to a federal affidavit. The document included the names and addresses of other executives investors and board members of AI companies, but prosecutors did not name them. If I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message, Mr. Moreno Gama wrote in the document according to the affidavit. As early as the summer of 2024, Instagram and substack accounts with Mr.

Starting point is 00:05:25 Moreno Gama's name had shared posts warning about AI. The accounts also recommended papers and books by AI safety researchers. If we do nothing very soon, we will die. I am very sure of that, a post on the Instagram account said in December. In January, an essay on the Substack account discussed the existential risk posed by AI and said the chief executives of AI companies appear to lack strong morals. These people are almost nothing like you, the essay said. They are most likely sociopathic, psychopathic, and in the case of Altman consistently reported to be a pathological liar. Mr. Morino-Gama faces both state and federal charges, including possession of an unregistered firearm. The police did not find a gun on him when he was arrested.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Federal prosecutors said the attack could be treated as an act of domestic terrorism. Mr. Morano Gama traveled from Texas to California this month and attacked Mr. Altman's home on Friday, according to the federal affidavit. After throwing the explosive device at Mr. Altman's home early Friday, Mr. Morano Gama traveled to opening eyes offices. The authorities said, there Mr. Morano Gama used a chair to hit the building's glass doors and was approached by security officers while holding a jug of kerosene, according to the federal affidavit. The office's security staff said Mr. Morano Gama had told them that,

Starting point is 00:06:35 he was there to burn it down and kill anyone inside. Shortly after, the San Francisco police arrested Mr. Morano Gama. The FBI said it had searched Mr. Morano Gama's home in spring, Texas, on Monday. The 11 charges he faces in California could carry a sentence of 19 years to life in prison. Brooke Jenkins, San Francisco's district attorney said during a news conference on Monday, among these charges is the attempted murder of Mr. Altman. Federal prosecutors charge Mr. Moranogama with two additional crimes related to the attack on Mr. Altman's home said Craig Misakayan, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, the federal charges could also lead to a lengthy prison sentence. If the evidence shows that Mr.

Starting point is 00:07:15 Moran-Ogamma executed these attacks to change public policy or coerce government or other officials, we will treat this as an act of domestic terrorism. Mr. Misakayan said, end quote. Open AI is acquiring personal finance startup Hiro Finance for an undisclosed sum. Hiro has stopped new signups, we'll shut down on April 20th, and we'll delete all data on May 13th. Quoting TechCrunch, founder Ethan Block said in his post that Hiro employees are coming with him to Open AI. He didn't specify how many employees that entails, but LinkedIn lists about 10 people associated with the company. Block did not respond to our request for comment. The company was founded in 2023 and launched its AI tool about five months ago.

Starting point is 00:08:01 Hiro offered AI-powered financial planning for consumers. users. Users entered financial information like salary, debt, and monthly costs, and the app model different what-if scenarios to help them make financial decisions. Hirae was specifically trained to nail financial math, including an option that allowed users to verify accuracy, Block said, in a demo of the product. Over the past couple of years, state-of-the-art frontier models have gotten significantly better, even good at math of all kinds, but historically, they haven't been. This deal stands out for a couple of reasons. Block previously found a digit, a digital-only, bank that helped people automatically save money. Digit was sold to Opertune in 2021 for more than $200 million, according to OPPT. Plus, this isn't the first financial app OpenAI has bought. Given that OpenAI markets chat GPT as a good tool for business finance teams, we can see why the

Starting point is 00:08:51 model maker would be looking to add more talent to this side of the house. Whether OpenAI plans to pursue financial planning as a more specialized app, we'll have to wait and see. It's also possible that this Aqua hire is an effort to make OpenAI more popular with OpenClaw users. who often tend to prefer clawed. OpenClaw is a popular agent for Robo Stock Trading. In fact, Block created his own auto-trading OpenClaught agent that he named Robo Buffett, he said on LinkedIn. Another fun fact, Block told Business Insider that Hirao was the 15th project he launched, having started as a tech entrepreneur when he was a 13-year-old. The first 13 failed, he said. He sold number 14, Flowtown, a social media SaaS tool launched in 2009 for $4.5 million.

Starting point is 00:09:33 dollars. Block said he's sold digit for about $230 million. Now he's sold his latest startup to Open AI, a company that has broken records for growth and raising money, and may yet break records with an IPO, end quote. Turn your market hunches into trades with liquid. Liquid lets you go long or short on commodities, stocks, or private markets right from your phone with up to 100x leverage. That means a $10 position can give you up to $1,000 in market exposure. And you don't have to work around market hours or weekends. With Liquid, you get one platform for every market open 24-7. More than $3 billion has already been traded on Liquid. Check them out at Liquid. Trade slash TechBrew and sign up with referral code TechBrew for a $25 deposit match. Terms apply.

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Starting point is 00:11:31 Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for citizens back. Google has designated so-called back-button hijacking as malicious, saying sites interfering with a browser's back-button functionality could be demoted in search beginning June 15th. Quoting 9 to 5, Google, back-button hijacking occurs when a site prevents users from using their back button

Starting point is 00:12:02 to immediately get back to the page they came from. Users are instead sent to pages they never visited before, be presented with unsolicited recommendations, or ads or are otherwise just prevented from normally browsing the web. As Google notes, this breaks the fundamental expectation of how a browser's back button should work. Besides breaking browser functionality, it breaks the expected user journey and results in user frustration. Google search is now classifying back button hijacking as a violation of its malicious practices spam policy. Malicious practices create a mismatch between user expectations and the actual outcome,

Starting point is 00:12:36 leading to a negative and deceptive user experience or compromise user security or privacy. As such, pages that engage in this deceptive practice will be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site's performance in Google search results. Google says it has seen a rise of this type of behavior. The company is giving site owners two months to make changes, including reviewing advertising platforms that engage in back-button hijacking. Policy enforcement begins June 15th, end quote. Once again, you know who is very early to actually making a ton of money with AI?

Starting point is 00:13:14 The data labeling folks. quoting the information. AI firm's voracious appetite for more data has lifted sales for obscure startups doing the industry's unglomerous work, contracting with lawyers, PhD holders, and medical doctors who grade the answers AI models generate. The latest is Handshake, a 12-year-old startup that began as a job site for college graduates. Handshake's gross annualized revenue from AI training has risen to nearly $1 billion up from $550 million in January and 5 to $10 million a year ago. A few months after it started the new business, according to two people familiar with its finances. Its revenue from AI training has risen to nearly $300 million after paying the contractors engaged to do this work.

Starting point is 00:13:57 In addition, Handshake is generating close to $150 million in gross annualized revenue from its college recruiting business, an older software business that sells data on job seekers to employers, the people added. Handshake would become at least the fourth data labeling startup to generate at least a billion dollars in annualized gross sales in recent years. industry leader surge AI, passed that milestone in 2024. The information reported and scale AI reached that level before meta platforms acquired nearly half the firm last year. And Mercor, a three-year-old startup that pays thousands of contractors to train AI models hit a gross annualized revenue pace of more than $1 billion earlier this year, up from $500 million in September. The information reported last week. Like Handshake, Mercore pays 60 to 70 percent of those sales to

Starting point is 00:14:42 contractors, so its revenue after those contracts has reached $300 to $400 million. The startup is profitable on a free cash flow basis, according to a person familiar with its finances. These companies supply AI labs such as Anthropic and Open AI with customized data generated by human experts employed on a contract basis to stress test models and answer questions about niche subjects like doctorate-level physics. Merckor's growth occurred before a late March data breach, however, and it's not clear if the company has been able to sustain its revenue pace this month.

Starting point is 00:15:12 Meta indefinitely paused its work with Mercor and is internally investigating the security breach, a meta-spokesperson said. Several other startups, including Invisible Technologies and Turing, are also competing to win contracts. Turing, which focuses largely on using contractors to evaluate models on coding tasks and other science-based reasoning, notched $300 million in annualized revenue by the end of 2024. Another data labeling startup after query said last week, it had surpassed $100 million in gross annualized revenue and was recently valued at $300 million. While the race to develop smarter AI labs has fueled fast growth,

Starting point is 00:15:46 revenue gains aren't always consistent because it's fairly easy for the biggest labs to switch data labeling services. For example, last year, OpenAI said it would stop working with Scale after the meta-investment. Scale's recent revenue couldn't be learned. It now also works on AI applications for enterprise customers, end quote. Finally today, reminder that the AI slash data center backlash is very out there and very real, quoting Politico. Voters in a small Missouri town, unhappy with the city council's approval of a $6 billion data center, struck back at the polls last week, ousting all four incumbent council members running for re-election. Tuesday's election in Festus, Missouri, a city of 12,000 people along the Mississippi River,

Starting point is 00:16:35 a half hour south of St. Louis, is the latest example of growing public backlash against cities agreeing to host hyperscale data centers over the objections of residents concerned about their local impacts. On the same day as the Festus election, voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin, a Milwaukee suburb, where Tech Giants Oracle and Open AI are building a $15 billion data center campus also registered their disapproval by overwhelmingly passing a first-of-a-kind referendum to restrict future projects. At least three other cities across the country will vote on similar measures this year. The route of half of the Festus City Council was fueled by a surge in voter turnout and widespread frustration with the data center approval process. It's really the way the deal was handled that led to this kind of uprising, said Rick Belleville, who won the nonpartisan race for Ward 4 Councilmen by more than 40 percentage points over incumbent Jim Tinnon, who voted to approve the Data Center. And the Data Center fight is far from over in Festus. Opponents are gathering signatures for a recall petition to oust the mayor and remaining four council members. They also filed a lawsuit Thursday against the city and developer CRG, part of Chicago-based Clayco,

Starting point is 00:17:44 a National Real Estate Development and Construction Company. The City Council voted March 30th to approve a development agreement for the Data Center planned for 360 wooded acres on the city's southwest side. The operator of the data center hasn't been identified. One of the many questions that the city and CRG have been unable or unwilling to answer, said Festus resident Sherman Boyle, end quote. Hey, I want to try out a new type of bonus episode experiment. Let's call this an AI show and tell.

Starting point is 00:18:21 episode. I want one of you to come on for like half an hour and show me something you've done with AI, a project you've built, a workflow that has changed how you work, that sort of thing. My preference would be something that isn't too in the weeds as like a developer sort of tool or project, like bonus points if you're a lawyer, a salesperson, a teacher, or something like that. And you can come on and be like, look, I did this and I use it all the time and I barely even know how to code. Maybe we can do screen shares as well and you can walk us through how you built it, but ideally I just want to see what you've built and how you're using it. The idea here is very much a show and tell, and you know, this is a tangible use case that

Starting point is 00:19:05 I bet you didn't know what's possible, but here's what it does. If you're interested in sharing something like that and being a guest for this sort of an episode, hit me up at brian at ridehomefund.com and let's get something scheduled. Talk to you tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage

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Tech Brew Ride Home - Space Race Acquisition

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