Axios

Ian Urbina — a former New York Times reporter who now runs a journalism nonprofit, The Outlaw Ocean Project — is unveiling a five-year, 70+-reporter investigation that found the seafood on your plate can be downstream from "forced labor, rancid waste, harmful chemicals."

• "The inspiration was to delve deeper into the hidden portion of an especially opaque supply chain — seafood — and reveal all the hidden crimes or concerns that precede our food," Urbina, who's based in Washington, told me.

Soaring jet fuel prices are expected to add $6 billion to Delta Air Lines' fuel bill this year, the company said Friday.

Why it matters: Elevated fuel costs have been driving up fares and prompting airlines to cut flights — changes that could outlast the fuel price spike itself.

SpaceX's plan to compete with the major cell phone service providers is coming into sharper focus — and raising investor concerns about the threat it poses to traditional telecom companies.

Why it matters: Elon Musk has designs on turning SpaceX's Starlink satellite business into a major player in telecom — and he's using the company's massive market position to put his plan in motion.

We're in the golden age of decacorns.

• The average time from launch to decacorn has been cut in nearly half, and some decacorns arrive literally overnight.

By the numbers: It took companies globally an average of 5.5 years to hit decacorn status in 2025, data from PitchBook shows.

• That's down from 9.4 years in 2020, and it's even faster than the 8-year average to hit unicorn status that year.

SpaceX inked an $8 billion deal to acquire a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio from Grain Management on Thursday, per the WSJ.

Why it matters: AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile shed some $36 billion in combined market cap on the news.

Top executives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event.

Why it matters: These officials anticipate a large-scale event, most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.

• The first example of significant real-world harm caused by unsafe AI would turn an already wary public further against the technology and its leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, as well as President Trump for his reluctance to regulate it.

Reese's rules Halloween candy nationally — but the next state over might be craving something else.

The big picture: New DoorDash data shows the most uniquely popular Halloween candy by state, based on last October's orders.

The Trump administration said Thursday that it was suspending Microsoft from a key program used to sponsor employees for green cards. Later that day, the administration honored the tech giant's CEO with a medal for innovation.

Why it matters: The split-screen day highlights the tension between the administration's championing of Big Tech and its immigration policies, which constrain an industry that has long relied on hiring foreign-born workers.

• Tech leaders have said that restrictions on hiring hamper the country's ability to compete — especially at a moment when the U.S. is in a race with China on AI.

OpenAI's annualized revenue is $50 billion, about $20 billion less than previously reported figures, a discrepancy related to how different AI companies account for overall sales.

The big picture: The $70 billion figure, widely reported in September by Axios and other media outlets, was based on information shared with investors in an attempt to create a more direct comparison to rival Anthropic, Axios has learned.

• Anthropic includes revenue from cloud partner sales in its tally.

Zoom in: Both companies are GAAP compliant, but they account for revenue through partner sales differently.

• If a customer pays $100 for an AI service through a cloud provider, Anthropic's accounting method allows it to record the full $100 as top-line revenue, per Francine McKenna, accounting professor and author of the newsletter The Dig. The cloud provider's cut is then listed as an expense.
• OpenAI records only its share of certain partner sales.
• The difference comes down to how each company views its role in the transaction — including who controls the customer relationship and is responsible for delivering the product, according to McKenna.

Between the lines: The $70 billion ARR figure for OpenAI was an attempt to "gross up" its revenue number based on an interest from investors in having an apples-to-apples figure using Anthropic's methodology, sources said.

Reality check: Annualized revenue, when sales from a given period are projected out for a year, is a commonly used figure in Silicon Valley. But in public markets, investors will prefer actual revenue rather than financial constructs that are far more appropriate for early-stage startups.

What to watch: Anthropic has reportedly told investors it realized an operating profit in the second quarter, per the Financial Times, but those figures have excluded stock-based compensation.

• They also largely preceded an array of computing deals signed by the company that are set to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to The Information.
• Beware of claims about "profit" as well, at least until they come with the financial documents typical in an earnings release.

Chipotle shares jumped Thursday after a report that Starbucks has considered a bid to acquire the burrito chain.

Why it matters: The potentially seismic deal would pair the world's biggest coffee chain with one of the most powerful players in the fast-casual sector.