Axios

Trump Media and Technology Group CEO Kevin McGurn declined to comment on investigations into Truth API when asked onstage at Axios' annual Media Trends Live event in New York City on Tuesday.

Why it matters: Democratic lawmakers have called for investigations into TMTG's Truth API product, alleging faster access to President Trump's market-moving posts would constitute insider trading.

AI is helping secure one of the world's most widely used encryption libraries while simultaneously overwhelming the people responsible for maintaining it.

Why it matters: The challenges facing OpenSSL, one of the better-funded open-source software projects, offer a glimpse into how AI is straining the maintainers of software that businesses rely on every day.

SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss a potential merger — and Elon Musk thinks "it's a good idea," the CEO of both companies said Tuesday.

Why it matters: SpaceX and Tesla have increasingly been collaborating on chips and AI projects — and Musk leads both companies — prompting widespread speculation that they could join forces.

LAS VEGAS — Digital agents are researching and purchasing products for consumers, but questions remain around security, authorization and liability, commerce leaders said at an Axios Live roundtable at Money20/20.

Why it matters: Merchants and financial institutions are under pressure to establish safeguards that protect shoppers while still enabling a seamless buying experience.

Axios' Dan Primack and Lucinda Shen moderated the Oct. 18 roundtable discussion. The event was sponsored by Synchrony.

5 big takeaways from the conversation:

1. "A significant amount of commerce" will become "at least agent-assisted or initiated," predicted Sherri Haymond, Mastercard executive vice president and head of digital commercialization, pointing to how consumers could use the technology to look for the best price on a specific product.
2. One-off transactions are already building trust with consumers easing into the habit of using agents to make purchases, Stripe Link business lead Jay Shah said. This includes big-ticket items like travel.
3. Assistants integrated with infrastructure "will win the consumer agent battle," said Blue Language Labs CEO Zor Gorelov. "Real traction" will come from assistants that can anticipate needs by being integrated with calendars, emails and payments, he added.
4. Permission is a bottleneck, Oscilar co-founder and CEO Neha Narkhede said. This will continue to be an obstacle until there's a process to establish whether agents should be making purchases or who is liable if something goes wrong, she added.
5. "A catastrophic event of loss" may trigger greater regulation, said Natural CEO Kahlil Lalji. In the meantime, organizations and leaders can get clear on how they plan on operating their businesses within the policy and governance frameworks that do exist

The bottom line: There are many opportunities to wield AI in commerce, but leaders aiming to do it well are prioritizing the user experience, trust, and clarity on governance.

Content from the sponsor's remarks:

In opening remarks, Rachel Moore, Synchrony SVP of agentic commerce, payments and incubation, said AI is touching every corner of the industry and bringing segments together.

• "Commerce is changing with AI … [and] every part of the customer journey is changing. From discovery, to how someone is making decisions, how commerce is ultimately happening. Synchrony sits at a really interesting intersection of merchants meeting consumers meeting payments and technology."

SpaceX rocketed past expectations on revenue and profit in its second earnings report as a publicly traded company — with its space, connectivity and AI businesses all delivering strong performances.

Why it matters: With a market cap of about $2 trillion, SpaceX is one of the most powerful companies in the AI economy and has aggressive plans to uproot entire industries, such as telecommunications.

LAS VEGAS — The buzz at Money 20/20 is focused on consumers being on the verge of near-instant banking transfers, including at night or on weekends, Axios' Ryan Lawler and Lucinda Shen report.

Why it matters: America's financial giants have talked for years about bringing blockchain — the technology that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are built on — into their systems. Now they're actually doing it.

That shift to instant transfers could also make investing faster and more convenient: Digital versions of stocks could let investors transfer shares around the clock, even when exchanges are closed.

• "It's becoming more mainstream institutionally than it ever has been," Digital Currency Group investor Aaron Fu tells Axios, pointing to financial institutions building more blockchain infrastructure in-house.

💡 How it works: Financial institutions have begun using private blockchains to instantly track money and investments as they change hands.

Yes, but: Using the technology behind cryptocurrencies doesn't necessarily mean using the currencies themselves.

• Banks can create digital versions of the dollars customers already have on deposit.

💰 State of play: Money 20/20 attendees say that the conversation has moved from "Is this possible?" (the answer is yes) to figuring out exactly how banks will put these services into the electronic hands of consumers like you and me.

• The industry group that handles much of the recordkeeping and settlement behind U.S. stock trades is preparing a service that creates digital tokens representing securities held in its system. This is called "tokenization."
• Already, Citibank has said its tokenized-deposit service operates in seven markets, letting clients move funds between Citi accounts on a private blockchain.

🔎 Reality check: Competing tokenization efforts could create different versions of the same asset trading on separate networks.

• That could confuse investors, reduce liquidity, and make it harder to establish reliable prices.

The bottom line: Blockchain is closer than ever to revolutionizing banking. First, banks, brokers and asset managers must connect systems so consumers and investors can move assets between them as easily as within them.

OpenAI has acquired Orchestra Bio, a startup building AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies manage drug development, the ChatGPT maker shared exclusively with Axios.

Why it matters: Rival AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic are both pushing into science as they look to expand beyond their core competencies in coding and cybersecurity.

Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, will leave Meta next year after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg's top Washington adviser.

• Kaplan — a Harvard Law graduate and former Marine artillery officer who was deputy White House chief of staff for President George W. Bush — built Facebook's U.S. policy team from scratch. Kaplan led the global policy team through years of massive growth and controversy.

Why it matters: Kaplan, who helped Meta build a strong relationship with the incoming Trump administration, was a leading internal advocate for consistency on Zuckerberg's free-expression principles, even when that was unpopular, associates tell Axios.

The AI boom is sucking up all the capital. The Federal Reserve is raising rates to try to cool inflation. And one sector is bearing the brunt of the pain from both: housing.

The big picture: The situation is lose-lose for both homebuilders and homebuyers. Builders are facing more expensive capital and bidding for scarce construction-related resources. Would-be buyers are being quoted some of the highest mortgage rates of this century.

• New September housing starts data out Tuesday morning puts an exclamation point on what has been a slow-moving disaster for a sector that plays an outsized role in the economic cycle and in Americans' basic living standards.

The Federal Trade Commission and a dozen state attorneys general have sued to stop Platinum Equity and portfolio company PlayPower from buying rival playground equipment maker BCI Burke from Bertram Capital.

Why it matters: It's been rare in Trump 2.0 for federal and state antitrust regulators to work in concert.

Salesforce on Tuesday agreed to acquire marketing platform Braze for $5.66 billion in cash.

Why it matters: We're a long way since 2023, when Salesforce dissolved its board M&A committee, in part because of how hard it was to integrate a trio of mega-deals (MuleSoft, Tableau, and Slack).

Goldman Sachs has raised its rating on the shares of CoreWeave to a "buy" recommendation after a brutal week for the data center operator.

Why it matters: That view may come as a surprise given that the tumble in CoreWeave bonds and stock last week had appeared to encapsulate all what markets fear about the debt-dependent AI boom: too much money, most of it borrowed, chasing returns that may prove elusive.

Project Omega and Charter Space want to explore how radioactive isotopes can be used to keep expensive satellites in orbit longer and prevent them from being lost to the depths of space.

Why it matters: Satellites often rely on solar power, which can be unpredictable. Reliable power could increase the odds of spacecraft survival.

• NASA has previously observed that about 41% of small satellites fail or partially fail.

Rolls-Royce brought its engine for the MV-75 Cheyenne to full power using a new digital controller known as a FADEC, executives told Axios.

Why it matters: It's another milestone for this closely watched, multibillion-dollar tiltrotor project, which is expected to replace many of the U.S. Army's Black Hawk helicopters.

GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas — Hadrian is embedding a factory inside a factory not its own.

• And its machinery, capable of running around the clock, is expected to help build some of the world's most complex, in-demand and scrutinized weapons.

Why it matters: This is a major move for the $8 billion startup, and it comes as the U.S. wages war in the Middle East and as the Pentagon strikes deals, in some cases, to triple and quadruple munitions output.

Slowly but surely, the leading AI companies are creating a national self-governing structure to oversee their technology and its societal impact.

• With the federal government largely hands-off, Anthropic, OpenAI and others are self-regulating their technology and now setting up their own plans to redistribute their wealth.

Why it matters: Not since the age of the robber barons have America's industrial titans wielded such sweeping power to shape society — and decide how their private fortunes should serve the public good.

Silicon Valley moves fast and breaks things, but the U.S. electrical grid moves slowly and requires permits.

• The explosive growth of AI is colliding with the glacial pace of building out new power infrastructure, prompting a new warning from Goldman Sachs that energy bottlenecks are set to stall the AI race.

Why it matters: Amid a wave of anxiety from Wall Street about the debt-fueled AI buildout, Goldman points to power as the biggest risk to trillions in spending in a new report shared exclusively with Axios.

A startup offered free pizza on Friday in exchange for letting its AI agent handle the ordering. After multiple attempts, I ended up with a $30 DoorDash credit, no pizza and an empty stomach.

Why it matters: AI agents promise to take everyday tasks off our plates, but they still have to clear a basic hurdle: making a task easier than doing it ourselves.

Let's call it the Battle of the Bots, Part 1: I decided to put two of the newest personal AI agents, OpenAI's Dots and Meta's Muse, through their paces, with the WNBA Finals providing a natural testing ground.

Why it matters: AI companies are racing to create the digital assistant we turn to for everything from shopping to travel planning. But there's still a gap between what these agents can do and what I'm comfortable letting them do.

• They also need to pass what we'll call "The Human Benchmark": that is, can they do something as fast, or as well, as a human? The answer is ... not quite yet, but the capabilities are still impressive.