While possessing a weight of two metric tons (with a 40-metre wingspan), Gravitas will be capable of producing 20 kW of electricity for use by its onboard payloads, such as powerful sensors, transceivers, and computers. Interacting with the media, K2 Space CEO Karan Kunjur stated that “the future is higher power” and also informed that the start-up raising USD 450 million. For Kunjur, K2 Space’s satellite launch will be the company’s first step into real space operations.

Mission Gravitas: A Lot Of Things At Stake

According to a TechCrunch report, K2 Space’s Gravitas mission will fly 12 undisclosed payload modules from several customers, including the United States Department of Defence, as well as a 20-kW electric thruster that the start-up expects will be the most powerful ever flown in space. As per Kunjur, the demonstration will be evaluated across several tiers of success, with the prominent ones being: can K2 get the spacecraft deployed and generating power? Can it start running its payloads and test its powerful thruster? And if that goes well, can the deep tech venture use the thruster to raise the spacecraft thousands of kilometres into a higher orbit?

Apart from designing and building 85% of its components in-house, K-2 Space will maximise data collection to feed into the next satellite design. The start-up plans to launch 11 satellites in the next two years in a mix of demonstration and commercial missions. By 2028, Kunjur expects his company to produce satellites for customers to build out commercial networks of high-powered space vehicles.

Satellites power critical infrastructures for lifeline functions like global communication, navigation, financial transactions, and Earth observation. It has created a sort of “Orbital Economy,” which increasingly takes on complex functions like managing supply chains, optimising transportation routes, and enabling high-speed internet access in remote areas. Both K2 Space and Kunjur expect the space-based ecosystem to require more power. More power will mean the requirement for more throughputs, along with a signal less susceptible to jamming (considering geopolitical tensions). As data processing in orbit becomes more important, high-powered satellites will be needed to operate advanced processors.

This presents Kunjur’s venture a unique opportunity: to equip its spacecraft with computing power. And the concept is not new, since Starlink and Amazon LEO, along with hyperscalers, are mulling over introducing orbital compute. In fact, the Pentagon’s plans for a USD 185 billion missile defence system will also feature satellites with more electrical clout. What sets K2 Space apart here is its proactive approach of testing the concept through Gravitas’ deployment.

K2 contends that its spacecraft remains a viable option even if launch costs amount to approximately USD 7.2 million on customer rates for a Falcon 9 rocket, as opposed to USD 600,000 if Starship significantly reduces launch costs for external customers. Kunjur argues that Gravitas offers a price point of USD 15 million, which is more economical than high-powered satellites produced by traditional contractors, while also providing greater capability than smaller spacecraft in a similar price range.

“The thinking is, let’s build all the components that we’re going to need to be a first mover when Starship and New Glenn are available for everybody else,” Kunjur continued, while informing that K2 has designs ready for a 100-kW satellite all taped out on its factory floor, stretching across the entire building.

Unmatched Capability At A Fraction Of Legacy Cost

K2 has tailored its satellite portfolio into two categories: Mega and Giga. While Gravitas will be capable of producing 20 kW of electricity for use by its on-board payloads, the upcoming versions, in their “Mega” format, will produce 30 kW of peak payload power to aid 3,000 kg of available payload mass. The Mega K2 satellite will also have a 3 m x 2.7 m payload deck to host the largest antennas and instruments, while the 20 kW hall effect thrusters will support rapid orbit raise and station-keeping.

Robust thermal control and significant dissipation will ensure the satellite’s stable operations over mission lifetime, with redundancy in elements like computing, sensors, and control systems maximising the system’s reliability, while high throughput with link margins will support demanding missions.

The “Giga” version, under development, will be the start-up’s big gun in orbit, possessing features like 110 kW of array power for the most demanding space applications, 15,000 kg available payload mass, an expanded 6.2 m x 6.2 m payload deck, 4 kW–20 kW hall effect thrusters for orbit transfer and station-keeping, and the highest throughput and link margins.

What is Gravitas’ launch trying to achieve? The spacecraft will deploy the largest solar arrays ever built, paired with high-voltage, radiation-resilient power systems engineered for extreme environments. The satellite will also have the highest-power electric propulsion system ever put in orbit, a 4× leap over the current state-of-the-art counterparts. The launch will also be about achieving autonomy at a constellation scale, with onboard radiation recovery, mission-data processing, and a full in-house autonomy stack validating the technology’s scope.

Further, Gravitas will introduce other industry-firsts like managing double-digit kilowatt systems with extreme heat flux, thermal architectures that safely reject that heat across all Earth orbits and beyond, ultra-stable pointing and attitude control for massive apertures that keep the satellite’s momentum in check even with large deployables, and dispensing systems capable of deploying dozens of satellites per launch, engineered to survive the most punishing deployment dynamics.

Upon the successful deployment of Gravitas, the start-up will concentrate on its next assignment, i.e., deploying integrated satellite networks that span LEO (Low Earth Orbit), MEO (Medium Earth Orbit), GEO (Geostationary Earth Orbit), and cislunar space, with dynamic load balancing and mission-specific routing across the orbital stack. The development stage will also involve constructing autonomous relay networks in cislunar and interplanetary space to form a deep-space data backbone and building high-power observatories from X-ray to far-infrared to detect cosmic events and hunt for exoplanets.

The start-up’s upcoming line-up of satellites will also have heat pumps and massive radiators to solve the hardest thermal problems, in addition to enabling hall thrusters powered by nuclear systems and redefining solar-system travel. The ultimate goal will be to put up high-power computing platforms in orbit that will push processing to the deep-space edge.

The post Start-up of the Week: K2 Space bets big on ‘data centres in orbit’ appeared first on International Finance.

As space is set to become the new battlefield for defence missions and commercial exploration (including space tourism), governments and private companies around the world are steadily increasing their research, development, and infrastructure-related spending.

Staying true to this trend, the fundraiser saw additional backing from Washington Harbour Partners and General Innovation Capital Partners, along with existing investors, including 776, Breakthrough Energy, Glade Brook Capital, and Toyota Ventures.

Commenting on the news, Michael Ashley Schulman, partner at Running Point Capital Advisors, told Reuters, “Investors, especially those who may have missed out on SpaceX, are still very much in the mood for moonshots despite gravity, interest rates, and valuations. Stoke is building as if it expects… a future where sending cargo to orbit becomes as routine as shipping boxes through UPS or FedEx.”

Stoke Space has made headlines in 2025, as earlier in the year, the venture was awarded a “National Security Space Launch” contract by the United States Space Force, joining the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Rocket Lab USA, United Launch Alliance, and others, with the common goal of strengthening Washington’s space launch capabilities.

Making The Space Sector Green Again

There is a growing demand for medium-lift launch capacity for defence, with the Donald Trump administration backing the Golden Dome missile defence system, in which space-based assets—whether offensive or defensive—will play a huge role in the early detection and neutralisation of enemy warheads. In line with Washington’s requirements, Stoke Space is developing the fully reusable Nova Rocket for frequent, low-cost space launches. However, the start-up aims to implement its plan in an eco-friendly manner.

“Our 168,000-square-foot headquarters is home to our vertically integrated design and manufacturing operations. Leveraging next-generation tools and methods, Stoke’s rocket engines, structures, and avionics are built in days, not months or years. And with our test facility just a three-hour drive away, we test and iterate with unprecedented speed,” the start-up commented.

Since its inception in 2019, Stoke Space has been setting new benchmarks for sustainability over the last seven years, reducing atmospheric impact by 98% compared to the 21st century’s most prolific rockets. The company’s long-term vision is to foster a booming space economy that not only propels human ambition but does so with an unwavering commitment to environmental stewardship, making the space economy both sustainable and scalable.

Central to Stoke’s mission of making the space industry sustainable and scalable are the start-up’s high-efficiency engines, which significantly reduce harmful emissions, thereby creating the lowest environmental impact of any existing rocket. According to the American Geophysical Union, the current crop of rockets relies on solid rocket boosters or kerosene-based engines, both of which release harmful emissions into the upper atmosphere.

While kerosene engines account for 70% of all rocket-driven global warming impacts, emitting black carbon soot (fine particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass) that traps heat 500 times more effectively than aviation emissions, solid rockets account for 28% of rocket-based warming and release ozone-depleting chemicals like chlorine and aluminium oxide.

To steer the space sector in a greener direction, Stoke’s breakthrough product has been its Nova Rocket, powered by liquid natural gas/liquid oxygen in the first stage and liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen in the second stage, combining to form one of the world’s most efficient fully reusable rockets. These clean fuels are known for eliminating black carbon emissions, the single most damaging factor in today’s orbital launches, while also reducing rocket-driven global warming by 98%.

Knowing Nova In Detail

Talking about its flagship product, the start-up stated, “Nova’s fully reusable design changes the fundamentals of cost, availability, and reliability of launch. Full reusability means production costs are amortised across launches, and flight frequency isn’t limited by production rates. And with 100% reusability, every mission uses flight-proven hardware.”

The 100% reusable model also enables return shipments from space to Earth, unlocking new mission types and business opportunities. Not only does the rapidly reusable model make economic sense for today’s emerging market, but it is also the only approach to sustainably scaling the industry. Stoke Space’s reusable upper stage features a liquid, regeneratively cooled metallic re-entry heat shield with an integrated modular liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen (LH2/LOX) rocket engine. It’s robust, resilient to damage, and operates with passive failure modes.

Designed for minimal refurbishment between flights, the second stage unlocks rapid turnaround and offers direct access to GTO (Geostationary Transfer Orbit), TLI (Trans-Lunar Injection), and other high-energy orbits, unlimited engine restarts, and return from orbit to the launch site: precision-powered vertical landings.

Stage one, known as full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) and powered by liquefied natural gas/liquid oxygen (LNG/LOX), is the pinnacle of rocket engine cycles, providing high performance and efficiency while stressing the engine less than other, simpler engine cycles. FFSC has the highest ceiling for performance, efficiency, long life, and rapid reusability.

Stage two is the expander cycle with an integrated heat shield. Powered by liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen (LH2/LOX) fuel, which offers 30% higher efficiency and five times better cooling than conventional hydrocarbon fuels. With highest-in-class performance and unlimited restarts, the start-up’s stage two engine enables missions directly to high-energy orbits. The nozzle accommodates deep throttle operation even in the presence of atmospheric pressure and serves as an actively cooled metallic heat shield during atmospheric re-entry.

“Our dynamic approach to design, testing, and production enables us to deliver high-quality, efficient, and fully reusable rockets at an unmatched pace. We build in long life and rapid reusability from the start, using steel rather than carbon composite to give Nova’s tanks exceptional thermal properties, strength, and ductility. Steel tanks are better able to endure the multiple cycles of pressurisation, high and low-temperature cycles, and mechanical stresses of rapid reusability,” the start-up stated.

Central to Stoke Space’s R&D efforts is the start-up’s private test facility in Moses Lake, Washington, just a three-hour drive from the company’s vertically integrated design, development, and manufacturing facility, enabling the company to test, learn, iterate, and test again faster than its industry peers.

“Our state-of-the-art vertical test stand for our stage one engine is designed to qualify our full-flow staged combustion engines at full thrust and full duration—in the orientation in which they’ll launch. Our Moses Lake test facility has an ever-expanding selection of test cells for testing structures, pumps, combustion devices, engines, and more,” the start-up noted.

The post Start-up of the Week: Stoke Space eyes strengthening US’ rocket launch capabilities appeared first on International Finance.

Its arrival has been heralded as a digital lifeline for isolated communities, but it is also posing regulatory challenges and stirring debate. International Finance explores Starlink’s expansion in the Pacific, offering a balanced look at the opportunities it presents and the hurdles it faces.

What is Starlink?

Starlink is a satellite internet constellation with thousands of small satellites in low-Earth orbit. Launched and operated by SpaceX, these satellites fly much closer to Earth than traditional communications satellites, enabling low-latency, high-bandwidth internet connectivity on the ground.

Users access Starlink via a pizza-box-sized dish antenna (a terminal) that communicates with the passing satellites. The signal is then routed through ground stations and into the global internet. In essence, Starlink beams the web from the sky directly to users’ homes, bypassing the need for undersea cables or extensive land infrastructure.

This model differs from older satellite services. Traditional providers like Kacific rely on a single geostationary satellite positioned tens of thousands of kilometres above the equator. Geostationary satellites stay fixed relative to Earth’s rotation, so a dish can point at one spot in the sky. However, they often suffer from higher latency and require larger ground equipment.

Starlink’s low-flying satellites reduce latency dramatically, at the cost of needing many satellites moving across the sky and sophisticated tracking by the dish. OneWeb, a British-backed venture, is another LEO satellite internet provider eyeing the Pacific market. Together, these systems represent a new generation of space-based internet that can reach places traditional broadband has never touched.

Starlink’s Pacific debut and expansion

Starlink’s journey into the Pacific has unfolded over the past few years, beginning with a dramatic entrance in Tonga and spreading to many islands. Below is a timeline of key milestones.

In January 2022, a massive undersea volcanic eruption severed Tonga’s only international fibre-optic cable, plunging the Kingdom into digital darkness. In response, Elon Musk offered to send Starlink terminals to help. Within weeks, SpaceX set up a ground station in neighbouring Fiji and donated 50 Starlink terminals to Tonga.

Tonga’s former Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni hailed it as a “paradoxical silver lining,” noting that cutting-edge satellite technology arrived as a result of the disaster. The Starlink units were deployed to remote outer islands hardest hit by the tsunami, providing free high-speed internet until Tonga’s cable could be repaired.

In 2023, there were some early reactions and restrictions. As Starlink’s constellation grew, Pacific nations began grappling with how to regulate it. In Samoa, authorities initially banned Starlink in January 2023 due to unauthorised use of terminals, only to reconsider a few months later.

By March 2023, Samoa’s cabinet approved Starlink in principle, aiming to partner with SpaceX so that some revenue stays in-country. Meanwhile, Vanuatu’s regulator in early 2023 warned that Starlink use was illegal without a license. Vanuatu reportedly banned unlicensed Starlink gear in February 2023, reflecting concerns about interference and regulatory oversight.

By late 2023, the first licenses were granted, and demand grew. By the end of 2023, some Pacific nations had officially adopted Starlink. Fiji became a leader by licensing Starlink in November 2023, allowing the service to operate commercially. According to Fijian officials, Starlink connectivity had spread to “over 300 islands” across Fiji by May 2024.

In Niue, however, authorities grew alarmed at Starlink units quietly appearing on the island. With no license issued to SpaceX, Niue declared Starlink operations illegal, setting the stage for a ban in 2024.

Then came the legal showdowns and stopgap measures. The new year saw mixed fortunes for Starlink. In Papua New Guinea, the government announced in January 2024 that it had granted a five-year license for Starlink, calling it a “New Year’s gift” to the nation’s tech sector. However, competing providers and regulators raised questions, and by August 2024, the Starlink license in PNG had become entangled in a court challenge, now under judicial review.

PNG’s telecom authority even confiscated some Starlink kits brought in without permission, signalling that service would be on hold until the courts decide. Meanwhile, Tonga faced a mini-crisis when, on June 29, 2024, a domestic undersea cable outage cut off two of its islands from Tongatapu. At the same time, some Tongans had begun using Starlink without authorisation.

On July 9, Tongan officials ordered Starlink to cease operations due to a lack of an operating license. Just ten days later, recognising the ongoing outage, the government granted a six-month provisional permit for Starlink so that connectivity could be restored in the outer islands while a full license was processed.

Toward the end of 2024, the Pacific saw novel implementations of Starlink. Nauru opened the region’s first “Starlink community gateway” in December 2024. This is essentially a high-capacity Starlink installation meant to feed an entire community or country’s network, expanding internet access beyond individual user terminals. Similarly, in the Federated States of Micronesia, the state of Kosrae launched its own Starlink community gateway in February 2025.

Meanwhile, Vanuatu, which had initially banned Starlink, softened its stance. After back-to-back cyclones caused extensive damage in early 2023, Vanuatu granted a temporary restricted license in 2024 to allow Starlink during disaster recovery.

By mid-2025, Starlink boasted availability in over 100 countries worldwide, and the Pacific Islands are increasingly part of that map. According to regional reports, Starlink access is now on offer in many of the 18 member states of the Pacific Islands Forum, including Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, and others, though not all have formalised the service. In July 2025, Tonga moved from provisional permission to a full operating license for Starlink.

As of 2025, the momentum is evident because satellite internet is becoming a fixture in the Pacific, even as each nation finds its own path to accommodate or restrict the new technology. Fiji has emerged as an enthusiastic early adopter of Starlink’s technology. Fiji officially licensed Starlink in late 2023, with Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica touting the service as a “game changer for Fiji” that will boost connectivity during natural disasters and for remote islands.

One of the most celebrated uses of Starlink in Fiji has been in education. In a government-led initiative, Starlink units were installed at six remote schools in the interior of Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu. These are villages that previously had little to no internet access. Thanks to Starlink, students and teachers in places like Nakorosule and Nadarivatu can browse online learning materials and even join virtual lessons — activities once unimaginable in these areas.

The Education Ministry noted that these six schools are now benefiting from “high-speed, low-latency” internet, unlocking everything from cloud-based teaching tools to improved school administration. This aligns with a global “GIGA” initiative to connect every school to the internet by 2030, and Fiji’s government appears keen to leapfrog decades of limited infrastructure using satellite broadband.

Beyond schools, Starlink is extending connectivity to Fiji’s far-flung communities. With over 100 inhabited islands, Fiji has long struggled to connect rural villagers who live beyond the reach of fibre-optic cables or even cellular towers.

In stark contrast to Fiji, the tiny Pacific Island of Niue took a hard line against Starlink, at least initially. Niue’s government outright banned Starlink usage in 2024, warning that anyone operating the service without a license could face fines of up to about $200 or even three months in prison.

The sudden ban came after officials discovered several Starlink units had appeared on Niue without authorisation. In Niue, all communications services are governed by an ageing Communications Act of 1989, which requires operators to be licensed. The island’s lone telecom provider, state-owned Telecom Niue, relies on satellite bandwidth and a 4G mobile network to serve its 1,700 residents. Unlicensed Starlink dishes, in the government’s view, threatened to bypass these regulations and potentially undermine the local telecom system.

Niue’s Minister of Infrastructure, Crossley Tatui, even asked SpaceX to geofence or disable Starlink in Niue’s territory. As of mid-2024, that request had reportedly gone unanswered, and a handful of residents continued to use Starlink illicitly.

One of them is Glen Jackson, a Niuean entrepreneur and musician, who has become an outspoken advocate for the service. His multimedia company livestreams events like funerals and sports tournaments. It was nearly impossible with Niue’s limited 4G network. Jackson noted that Starlink’s faster upload speeds allow him to reliably stream from villages that previously had little bandwidth. On downloads, Niue’s 4G might deliver 40-50 Mbps on a good day, whereas Starlink gave him 200-380 Mbps. It was definitely a transformative difference.

Tonga’s experience with Starlink encapsulates both the life-saving potential of satellite internet and the complexities of integrating it into a national framework. As noted in the timeline, Tonga was the first Pacific country to use Starlink, albeit out of sheer necessity. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted catastrophically in January 2022, it wreaked physical devastation and severed Tonga’s only international fibre-optic cable.

Overnight, this nation of 100,000 was cut off from the world. In the crisis, Starlink became a lifeline. SpaceX’s donated terminals enabled connectivity in some of the worst-hit outer islands, allowing villagers to communicate and access information while the undersea cable was repaired. Tongan officials expressed deep gratitude for the assistance. So much so that the then PM Sovaleni quipped that Elon Musk likely hadn’t known much about Tonga before, “but gave generously” when the country was in need.

After the emergency period, Tonga’s traditional internet links were restored, and the Starlink units were presumably deactivated or returned. But the episode planted a seed. Tongans had tasted the “decent speeds and stable connections” that a LEO satellite system could provide, even in remote villages. Interest in Starlink remained. By 2023, some Tongans acquired Starlink kits through unofficial means.

This caught the attention of Tonga’s Ministry of Communications. The government was also mindful of its domestic telecom operators, state-owned Tonga Communications Corp and private Digicel, which provide internet via fibre and 4G networks. Regulators wanted to avoid a Wild West scenario of unauthorised dishes.

Things came to a head in mid-2024 when a section of Tonga’s domestic subsea cable network went down, cutting off two island groups. In those outer islands, people and businesses turned to whatever connectivity they could, including some rogue Starlink setups. Initially, authorities moved to crack down on the unlicensed use.

However, they faced public pressure due to the ongoing outage. The compromise was a temporary six-month permit for Starlink starting in July 2024. This allowed Starlink to operate legally in Tonga for the first time, albeit under conditions set by the government. Officials said the permit was a “pivotal step” to address connectivity needs while a full license was being finalised.

Fast forward to mid-2025, and Tonga is fully on board with Starlink. The Ministry of Communications granted an official operating license to SpaceX, enabling Starlink to “deliver high-speed internet across Tonga” on a normal commercial basis.

Approvals, bans, and uncertainty

Navigating the regulatory landscape of the Pacific has proven to be one of Starlink’s biggest challenges. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, as each island nation has its own laws, telecom landscape, and priorities. The result is a patchwork of approvals, bans, and grey zones that can be confusing for consumers.

Countries like Fiji, Tonga, and Palau are welcoming Starlink. The governments of these nations have approved Starlink through formal licenses or interim permits. The advantage for consumers is obvious because where Starlink is approved, people can legally buy the equipment and pay the monthly fees in local currency, often via a domestic reseller, without fear of penalties.

Indeed, in approved markets, the Starlink website will ship a kit straight to your door. In countries like Vanuatu and Samoa, Starlink is being allowed but cautiously. Samoa’s regulator, for instance, said it might take up to two years to fully license SpaceX, but in the meantime, Samoans have been permitted to import Starlink kits for personal use. This creates a de facto temporary legality. People can get online with Starlink now while the bureaucracy catches up later.

Then there are the holdouts and ambiguous cases. Niue’s ban is one example of an explicit “no.” Another was Papua New Guinea’s legal saga. After the initial license announcement in January 2024, PNG’s National Information and Communication Technology Authority faced pushback. Critics argued the license was rushed, and by August, the courts put the license on hold pending a judicial review.

Until that’s resolved, importing or operating Starlink in PNG without special permission is technically illegal, and authorities showed they would enforce this by seizing unauthorised equipment at customs. Vanuatu signalled that any Starlink gear brought in outside the approved emergency use would be confiscated unless and until full authorisation is granted.

A Starlink terminal is essentially a transmitter/receiver, so it normally should be certified in each country. Some nations, like Samoa, initially banned Starlink partly because the equipment had not gone through this certification process, raising theoretical safety concerns.

Additionally, there’s the economic angle, since telecommunication is often a significant revenue source for Pacific governments, either through state-owned operators or licensing fees from private companies. If everyone suddenly buys internet service from a US-based company via credit card, how do local providers survive, and how do governments get their due? Niue’s insistence on licenses and talk of taxing such services stems from this concern.

For consumers, the regulatory diversity can be frustrating. In practical terms, a person on one island might set up Starlink and enjoy fast internet, while a person on the next island could get fined for doing the same thing. This has led to some creative workarounds. Some Pacific Islanders have taken advantage of Starlink’s roaming feature. They purchase the kit in a country where it’s authorised (like New Zealand or Fiji), then use it back home where it’s not officially allowed, essentially “roaming” on a foreign subscription.

Starlink’s signals don’t respect political boundaries, so the hardware will work as long as the location is within the satellite coverage footprint. This technical reality is running up against legal boundaries drawn on maps. It’s worth noting that the regulatory landscape in the Pacific is evolving quickly. As the Asia Times observed, governance of Starlink in the Pacific remains “a mixed bag,” and change is likely. Pacific governments talk to each other, and many are watching their neighbours’ experiments.

If Tonga’s partnership model proves successful, others may imitate it. If a ban like Niue’s proves untenable or unpopular, it may eventually soften. In the interim, consumers are advised to stay informed about their country’s stance. What is perfectly legal in Fiji or Tonga now could still be a grey area in places like the Solomon Islands or the Marshall Islands, for example, if formal approvals are pending.

The Pacific’s digital future

As global satellite providers race to connect the most remote corners of the planet, the Pacific Islands stand to be one of the greatest test cases—and beneficiaries—of this revolution. The vast oceanic distances and sparsely distributed populations have long made the Pacific a connectivity challenge. Traditional infrastructure alone was never going to be enough; there will likely always be villages beyond the reach of fibre-optic cables or even cell towers. Satellite internet, led by Starlink’s widespread rollout, is now filling those gaps. In doing so, it is reshaping the region’s digital infrastructure from above.

What might the Pacific’s connected future look like? We can imagine a hybrid network, where undersea cables link the main population centres, while constellations of satellites blanket the blue gaps in between, ready to link up any community or emergency responder that needs it. In this vision, an island struck by a cyclone can switch to satellite backup within hours, or a remote outer island can host an online workshop with experts in another country. Global satellite coverage could democratise internet access in a way that was simply not feasible before.

Starlink’s expansion across the Pacific Islands brings hope and challenges. While it provides high-speed internet to remote regions, it also sparks regulatory debates and hurdles. The technology offers significant benefits, especially in education and disaster response, but local governments must navigate complex legal landscapes. As more countries adopt Starlink, the region’s digital future seems brighter. However, each island’s unique approach to regulation means the path forward will be varied, and some obstacles are likely to remain.

The post Starlink: The Pacific Islands’ digital lifeline appeared first on International Finance.

According to a public database the agency maintains that despite Musk’s status as a “special government employee” under the Trump administration, OSHA has opened more than 50 ongoing occupational health and safety charges against SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company in the last five years. DOGE employees have been employed by the Department of Labour, where OSHA is located, since at least March 18.

The American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO), which is suing the Trump administration over DOGE’s access to Department of Labour records, expressed their belief that the news reports and OSHA cases in its memo purport to show “gross mistreatment and even abuse of workers” at Musk companies in five different states in an exclusive memo provided to WIRED.

The union federation claims in the memo that “every worker in America should be of concern to Musk’s record as a boss” as he tries to use DOGE to exercise “unilateral control” over the federal government.

The Department of Labour, OSHA, SpaceX, Tesla, Musk, and The Boring Company haven’t responded publicly about this ongoing issue.

A dangerous conflict of interest

Not only bureaucratic excess, but also a fundamental breakdown of the firewall separating authorities from the companies they oversee drives the key issue in the continuous debate between Elon Musk, DOGE, and OSHA. Under OSHA’s purview, the Department of Labour is currently housing DOGE employees, some of whom have been connected both personally and professionally with Musk. That by itself would set off enough sirens. The true anxiety comes from OSHA’s current investigations into Musk’s businesses: SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company.

This conflict of interest targets the fundamental centre of democratic responsibility. Allowing a billionaire under investigation for multiple worker safety violations to access whistleblower material is not just a procedural breach; it undermines the principle that no one is above the law.

Former OSHA officials such as Jordan Barab and David Michaels have been clear-cut: internal OSHA records have to stay sealed from individuals under investigation. Anything less than that not only compromises the judicial system but also erodes public confidence.

The structural vulnerability is confirmed by DOGE operative Marko Elez’s read-access to several Labour Department databases, even if they are not used. Add to that his installation of Python and code-altering tools, and you are toying with illegal spying or backdoor manipulation rather than looking at naive oversight.

Whistleblowers in crosshairs

This is not theoretical if it sounds so. Not in a vacuum, but in response to hundreds of safety infractions across Musk’s operations, some leading to severe injuries, amputations, or even death, are the AFL-CIO and former OSHA officials delivering their concerns.

In 2020, OSHA fined Tesla 46 times, and there were nine violations combined for SpaceX and The Boring Company. These figures are based on accounts from actual people who sacrificed their livelihoods to speak out; they are not hypothetical.

Consider the instance of Victor Joe Gomez Sr, a certified electrician who was electrocuted to death at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin from incorrect electrical disconnection, a hazard OSHA had already noted as violating. Another case involved a SpaceX worker who sustained a skull fracture following an automated machinery malfunction and went into a coma.

Under such circumstances, the mere idea that Musk or his associates could follow back whistleblower identities is not only ethically repugnant; it is life-threatening. David Michaels claims that although theoretically unlawful, enforcement is weak and usually slow when reprisal against whistleblowers is taken. Once a worker’s identity is revealed, career-wise, emotionally, and perhaps physically, damage already exists.

Emphasising this threat in no less terms, Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, referred to the circumstances as an “abomination.”

Shuler has good reason for concern. Whistleblowers provide the last line of protection for worker safety in a system that already favours companies greatly.

Bureaucracy as a weapon

The Department of Government Efficiency has not openly acknowledged any active meddling in OSHA’s internal affairs. But its subdued impact is being felt in institutional silence, inexplicable inaction, and office closings. Without explanation on whether they are being combined, shrunk, or closed completely, DOGE claims to have lately revoked 17 local OSHA leases.

Meanwhile, OSHA’s National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health has not convened once this year despite scheduling two crucial meetings to address problems including heat-related occupational injuries.

These silences follow no random pattern. They are strategically important. Rebecca Reindel of the AFL-CIO claims that the Trump administration’s handling of OSHA, especially through DOGE, appears to be crippling the same mechanism supposed to safeguard workers. It is quite alarming to consider how slowing, disabling, or redirecting safety monitoring could turn bureaucracy into a weapon.

Regulatory sabotage does not necessarily show up as public firings or extensive deregulation. Sometimes it’s more subtle: closing regional offices, calling off committee meetings, or arming operators with unclear tasks and access to private networks. These sluggish poisons piecemeal destroy institutional integrity.

We enter a serious legal grey area when DOGE operator Marko Elez installs tools to change software code but claims to have never accessed important systems. The chain of command is not clear, and monitoring appears to be absent. Such uncertainty generates not only corruption but also impunity.

Protecting employees and rebuilding institutional trust

Given the stakes, the AFL-CIO’s lawsuit against the Trump administration is simply a starting point. Congressional supervision and court investigation of the reach and authority of DOGE and any related administrative agencies is absolutely needed. The curtain has to be removed on who has access to what data, how decisions are taken, and whether actual firewalls exist to guard public interest cases and whistleblowers.

This event also calls for a more general discussion on how regulatory authorities might keep their independence in the face of billionaire influence. Elon Musk is a cultural force, a policy influencer, and now, via DOGE, a quasi-government actor; he is not only a corporate billionaire. Anyone who supports democratic checks and balances should find that degree of access and leverage horrifying.

From the Boeing 737 MAX disasters, where engineers raised red flags that were disregarded, to the 2008 financial crisis, driven by lax oversight and insider immunity, history is full of cases when corporate overreach resulted in calamity. If anything, Musk’s hostile treatment of whistleblowers, threatening litigation and vowing prosecution, is a red flag that cannot be overlooked. We have seen how rapidly openness falls when the norm is reprisals.

The position of the AFL-CIO goes beyond mere union grievances. On the moral sand, it is a line. Should Musk or DOGE be let to run wild, we could find ourselves in a world where millionaires rewrite the rules in real time, whistleblowing is suicidal, and regulation is optional.

Protecting workers’ rights and safety is not a luxury; rather, it is the absolute least a society has to maintain to be civilised. As of right now, there is no proof available to the public that DOGE or Musk have obtained private OSHA documents.

However, the AFL-CIO and former OSHA managers are concerned about DOGE’s attempts to obtain access to other potentially sensitive databases at the Department of Labour and many other federal agencies.

Former OSHA deputy assistant secretary Jordan Barab, who served under President Barack Obama, said, “No company that is being cited by OSHA or investigated by OSHA should be granted access to the agency’s internal and confidential files.”

DOGE operative Marko Elez currently has read access to four record systems at the Department of Labour, including a database for tracking unemployment benefit claims and another for managing employee access to federal buildings and systems, according to a March 29 court filing by attorneys for the Trump administration in the AFL-CIO lawsuit. Elez “has not accessed any of the systems,” according to the petition, but he has installed Python and a program for altering software code at the agency.

According to the public database, OSHA has one ongoing investigation against Tesla, which means the agency has not yet issued a citation or dismissed the case. An unidentified “safety” complaint regarding a Tesla factory in Lathrop, California, prompted the opening of the case recently.

OSHA has issued 46 penalties against Tesla since April 2020 for a range of reasons, including allegedly failing workplace inspections, breaching OSHA safety laws, or causing an injury to a worker at the business. Over half of these violations are now being contested by Tesla. In the same time frame, OSHA conducted six investigations that led to violations against SpaceX and three against Musk’s tunnel construction company, the Boring Company.

According to the document, the AFL-CIO’s worry is based on almost two dozen mishaps and claimed safety issues that have been recorded at Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company since 2016. Some of these incidents were the focus of recent OSHA investigations.

A qualified electrician called Victor Joe Gomez Sr was electrocuted and murdered in one instance that was reported to OSHA in 2024 after he was told to check electrical panels at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Austin, Texas, which OSHA found had not been correctly disconnected previously. Also, Tesla is actively contesting the case, so it is still open.

Fingertip amputations were the subject of two different OSHA citations at other Tesla operations. According to the final OSHA accident report, an employee at a SpaceX plant in 2022 “suffered a skull fracture and head trauma and was hospitalised in a coma for months” following what the agency described as a technical issue with a recently automated piece of machinery. SpaceX did not dispute the $18,475 fee and OSHA citation.

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler stated that several Tesla employees have told the federation on multiple occasions that the automaker doesn’t put safety first. The AFL-CIO does not represent workers at SpaceX or Tesla, but it does collaborate with the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW).

Debbie Berkowitz, a former chief of staff and senior adviser at OSHA under Obama, accuses Tesla of having “some serious safety hazards in their facilities.”

According to OSHA’s public database, businesses have the authority to contest a citation after it is issued, and Tesla frequently does so. As per the email, OSHA has issued violations in 46 Tesla cases over the last five years, but 27 of those cases are still pending because the automaker is aggressively contesting them with the agency.

For the same reason, one Boring Company case and two SpaceX cases are still pending. Until OSHA and the employers agree on the terms of the citation, which may include related fines and certain adjustments the company must make to improve worker safety, the cases cannot be closed.

Obama’s assistant secretary of labour for OSHA, David Michaels, told WIRED that large corporations generally don’t have a financial incentive to contest OSHA penalties because the penalties associated with them are normally only a few thousand dollars.

However, until a lawsuit is closed, a corporation is not obligated to address the precise hazard that caused an accident.

“In general, some companies may be motivated to keep cases open in order to avoid addressing these alleged problems,” Michaels said.

According to Michaels, “Some employers decide they don’t want to abate the hazard, they disagree with the citation, and they will argue the case for many, many thousands of dollars, and it will cost them far more than simply paying a small fine and abating the hazard.”

Right now, there is no proof that Musk has access to any private databases at the Department of Labour that would hold whistleblowers’ personal data. However, past administrators of OSHA claim that the agency does have records that would make whistleblowers and workers who took part in anonymous interviews with agency investigators anonymous.

According to Berkowitz, she is concerned that an individual with this kind of access could be able to identify each whistleblower who has assisted with an OSHA investigation against one of his businesses.

As stated by Michaels, there is “a very significant concern” that whistleblowers who have their identities made public will face intimidation or retaliation.

Whistleblowers expose their firms to considerable personal danger, and Shuler says that she is deeply worried that their safety and identity may be compromised.

“Regarding the checks and balances we’ve incorporated into these systems,” Shuler claims, “It’s an abomination to me. Being aware that our government enjoys trust and that we have successfully persuaded employees that their government will protect them, and now we have an unelected billionaire essentially upsetting that feeling of security.”

In recent years, Elon Musk has at least twice talked of taking revenge on those who have leaked secrets. After the material was leaked to the media in March 2025, Musk declared that he would “look forward to the prosecutions” of Pentagon employees. Musk threatened to bring legal action against staff members at X who broke their non-disclosure agreements.

It’s still uncertain what OSHA’s overall future under the Trump administration would hold. According to Rebecca Reindel, the AFL-CIO’s director of occupational safety and health and a member of OSHA’s National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety & Health since 2022, the committee should have met twice by now, but none have, she stated. Her committee was drafting regulations to stop occupational heat-related illnesses and injuries.

On a website where the organisation details the amount of money it says it has saved the federal government, DOGE says it has cancelled the leases of 17 OSHA local offices in recent weeks. OSHA and DOGE have not stated if these offices will merge with other regional offices, reduce, or completely close.

Unlike many other government agencies, DOGE does not currently appear to have planned mass terminations at OSHA.

“Massive cuts have not yet been observed. We anticipate their arrival,” Reindel concluded.

The post DOGE access sparks worker safety fears appeared first on International Finance.

Musk, who, apart from owning Tesla and SpaceX, possesses a private pilot’s certificate, has locked horns with the American aviation watchdog.

“In a moment charged with peculiarity, Musk shared his bewilderment on social media over the non-linear flight path of a commercial jet. The post ignited conversations about the intricate calculus that governs flight paths, highlighting Musk’s missteps in understanding a system he aims to revamp,” a report from Science Magazine summed up the whole thing in these following words.

Elon Musk vs FAA

Conversations on X (formerly Twitter and also owned by the Tesla and SpaceX chief) show Elon Musk and his allies are overlooking variables like weather conditions, air traffic nuances, and federally dictated air highways—factors that dictate the journeys of commercial aircraft, aspects that prioritise safety and efficiency above speed.

SpaceX engineers have already entered the scene to “help” the FAA modernise its air traffic control under the Trump administration. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said in an X post that the deadly January 29 crash between a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines flight landing at Reagan Airport in Washington served as “a heartbreaking wake-up call that improvements must be made.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation reportedly told Reuters that SpaceX engineers tapped as part of Musk’s DOGE team at the FAA are serving as special government employees and will be kept separate from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, which handles regulations for the company, to avoid any conflicts of interest.

In an email to the employees, Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau said that the DOGE team would be visiting more FAA facilities, including FAA headquarters, after stops at the Air Traffic Control Command Centre and Potomac TRACON in Warrenton, Virginia.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (whom Trump defeated in the 2016 Presidential Election) was among critics to claim Musk’s team was inappropriately gaining special access to the FAA. Duffy told Fox News that the SpaceX engineers had gone to the FAA on February 24 to “just observe and would craft a phased approach on how we might be able to fix the American system.”

He added, “It’s not just SpaceX. We’re going to ask everyone else to come in that’s smart and bright and loves America to think through the process. We’re like using a rotary phone. We’re spending 90% of our money to keep the rotary phone working from back in the 1980s as opposed to thinking, well, we use cell phones today. We have such antiquated, old equipment that no one has fixed. Donald Trump has said, fix this system, make it work, keep people safe.”

As part of his outreach effort, Duffy will visit Air Traffic Control Command Centres across the United States to talk with FAA employees about “the critical need to upgrade the existing air traffic systems.”

The DC crash, which killed all 67 people aboard both craft, happened nine days after President Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president. It was the deadliest American aviation disaster since 9/11.

In another X post, Duffy rejected what he described as the “growing media narrative that there are more aeroplane crashes now in Trump’s presidency than under Biden.”

He asserted that there were 57 aviation incidents in the United States during President Joe Biden’s first month in office, “compared to 35 under Trump,” while stating, “the need for immediate improvement to our safety infrastructure is long overdue.”

Criticisms galore

Elon Musk did qualify for a private pilot certificate in 2002. However, as mentioned in the article’s beginning, the tech billionaire and his allies have been overlooking the crucial variables that control the safety and efficiency of commercial aviation.

One very good example to validate this was the supply chain company CEO Ryan Petersen sharing a screenshot of the projected flight path of a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Houston on X, which hewed close to the southern US border with Mexico.

“Why is this plane not flying in a straight line?” Petersen wondered. Musk replied, “It should be.”

“While both men appeared to suggest there was something irregular or suspicious about the flight plan, this was not the case. Planes may take certain less direct routes due to weather, air traffic, or any number of factors. Indeed, Musk’s own private jet has flown on curved trajectories, as captured in screenshots of flight records shared on X by Jack Sweeney, a software engineer who has worked for American Airlines and the aviation consultant UberJets, and famously aroused Musk’s ire by tracking the movements of his private jet with ElonJet, a network of social accounts. Sweeney posted the flight path that Trump’s plane took from Southern Florida to Texas in November ahead of a SpaceX launch, which for a while hugged the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico instead of tracing a straight line over the body of water,” reported Rolling Stone magazine.

“There are countless reasons why a flight might not follow a straight path — weather, [Extended-range Twin-engine Operations Performance Standards] regulations, or optimising fuel efficiency by following favourable winds,” Sweeney stated on X.

Sweeney told the magazine that Petersen and Musk appeared to be “jumping to conclusions” to “push a point that our system is outdated, which, there’s definitely things that can be updated.”

However, he added, “It’s a complex system currently in place, and there are reasons things were designed the way they were, including with established routes in the sky that function as aerial highways. It takes time for things to get updated properly.”

The software engineer also felt that Musk’s DOGE has not taken into account these technicalities, while it seeks to slash away at vital federal agencies, including the FAA.

“That predicted line that is on that picture is usually [navigational] points picked by the dispatchers or the pilot,” Sweeney mentioned, while referring to Petersen’s screenshot.

He found further flight data that showed the flight route was initially straight but adjusted to avoid turbulence. Scott Manley, a science educator, physicist, and licensed private pilot, offered another potential reason for the curved route between the two cities, which he said adds about 50 miles, or 12 minutes to the trip.

“The US military has a huge chunk of airspace it randomly closes to let their pilots train or to test new weapons,” he wrote in a post on X, sharing a map screenshot with a circle drawn around an area west of Bakersfield, California.

According to reports, Musk’s DOGE project directed the firing of hundreds of FAA employees. The White House has claimed that none of the workers who were fired were performing safety-critical functions. Musk backed it with his X post, which stated, “To the best of our knowledge, no one affecting safety has been fired.”

However, when Rolling Stone spoke with several current and former FAA workers, the latter mentioned that the vital jobs the fired employees were doing included air traffic control support, obstacle impact that studies and identifies hazardous obstacles (like new buildings and cranes) to inform flight paths around the country, keeping drunk or reckless pilots out of the skies, and airman certification that decides whether pilots are medically fit enough to fly their aircraft. Are SpaceX employees, who are going to replace these professionals in the FAA, are aware of the complexities associated with these roles?

FAA in complete mess

On January 20 (the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration), Michael Whitaker stepped down as FAA administrator after clashing with Elon Musk. The SpaceX CEO publicly called on Whitaker to resign after the FAA fined the company for failing to get approval for launch changes.

Whitaker was only a year into the top job and had several years left in his term. While Trump appointed Chris Rocheleau, a top executive for an aviation business association, as acting FAA administrator, there is no clarity yet on when the aviation watchdog will get its new full-time boss.

Elon Musk has been a bitter critic of Whitaker. The SpaceX boss has complained many times about the FAA, including a September 2024 outrage after the agency levied a $633,000 fine for launching missions with unapproved changes. The FAA also fined Starlink after the SpaceX subsidiary failed to submit safety data before launching satellites in 2022.

However, the biggest issue here is the FAA suffering from underfunding and outdated technology. In 2023, an expert panel’s report found that the watchdog’s increasing reliance on overtime to staff air traffic control facilities was putting air safety at risk. The agency has fielded hundreds of complaints from air traffic workers describing dangerous conditions from staff shortages to dilapidated buildings.

Now Musk wants retired air traffic controllers to consider returning to work amid staffing shortages, but to ensure that, a federal law needs to be reformed. The law requires air traffic controllers to retire by “the last day of the month” in which they turn 56.

The Transportation Secretary can exempt controllers “having exceptional skills and experience” from automatic separation, but only until that person is 61. The retired air traffic controllers, before they rejoin, also must pass annual medical examinations with strict physical requirements, like having 20/20 vision, sufficient hearing, and proper blood pressure levels.

While Duffy has announced a plan to “supercharge” controller hiring (by simplifying the existing hiring process and increasing starting salaries), the newly-appointed Transportation Secretary also plans to “make an offer” to air traffic controllers to let them stay longer, past the mandatory retirement age of 56.

However, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents the country’s air traffic controllers, told Flying Magazine that Duffy’s suggestion was not the answer to filling thousands of shortages.

“The solution to the ATC staffing crisis is a long-term commitment to hiring and training and the retention of the experience of all the highly skilled, highly trained air traffic controllers,” the union said, noting that in 2026, just dozens of air traffic controllers across 35 facilities will reach 56.

While the FAA has tried to boost recruitment efforts amid ongoing staffing and retention issues, the process of recruiting air traffic controllers is a long and strenuous one. Including training, it takes three years, while the attrition level constantly remains on the higher side.

Conflict of interest to haunt Musk?

According to reports, Starlink may secure a multibillion-dollar contract to overhaul the US air traffic control communication system, potentially displacing the long-standing contractor Verizon. The FAA is preparing to cancel its $2.4 billion deal with Verizon and shift the work to the SpaceX subsidiary, according to The Washington Post. The news got further corroborated by both Bloomberg and The Associated Press.

And if things pan out as claimed by the media outlets, there will be serious accusations of favouritism, cronyism, and conflicts of interest against Elon Musk. Why so? The SpaceX boss has raised concerns over the Verizon system, claiming without evidence that it is “not working and putting air travellers at serious risk.” In one of his X posts, the tech billionaire argued that the Verizon communication system was “breaking down very rapidly,” adding that the “FAA assessment is single digit months to catastrophic failure, putting air traveller safety at serious risk.”

“The FAA had been scheduled to begin disbursing funds for the Verizon contract next month (March 2025), but SpaceX’s team reportedly recommended that Starlink be awarded the deal instead,” reported The Washington Post.

However, the process of shifting the contract from one contractor to another needs a proper procedure, and while senior FAA officials are said to have refused to approve the proposal, Elon Musk’s team is now looking to seek assistance from a Trump-appointed official within the agency.

As per Bloomberg, Musk has reportedly approved a shipment of 4,000 Starlink terminals to the FAA, and one such terminal has already been installed at the FAA’s ATC technology lab in New Jersey. There will be a new programme “TDM X,” with the goal being to have the upgrades fully functional in 12–18 months.

Speaking to Bloomberg, an FAA spokesperson confirmed that testing has been completed for one Starlink terminal in Atlantic City (New Jersey) and two other terminals at non-safety-critical sites in Alaska.

“The FAA has been considering the use of Starlink to fix telecommunication connections to provide more reliable weather information at remote sites, including in Alaska,” the spokesperson added.

Hitting back at the DOGE chief, Verizon said that “the FAA systems currently in place are run by L3Harris and not Verizon.”

Musk later corrected himself and said that L3Harris is responsible for the “rapidly declining” system.

“Our company is working on building the next-generation system for the FAA which will support the agency’s mission for safe and secure air travel. We are at the beginning of a multi-year contract to replace antiquated, legacy systems. Our teams have been working with the FAA’s technology teams, and our solution stands ready to be deployed. We continue to partner with the FAA on achieving its modernisation objectives,” Verizon stated.

Elon Musk and DOGE will be under some scrutiny in the coming days. While they need to find a quick fix to the problem of recruiting a massive number of air traffic controllers in a short period, apart from making sure that FAA gets its house in order, any increased participation from SpaceX and Starlink in this process will be seen as a potential “Conflict of Interest.”

It’s a tightrope situation and DOGE has already entered into it proactively through its decision of downsizing the FAA workforce. There is no backing out from here.

The post DOGE’s ‘reform plans’ for FAA: What is Musk up to? appeared first on International Finance.

He was a little quirky, but America was used to eccentric, ingenious inventor-CEOs like Steve Jobs. Musk was seen as a hero of capitalism, welcomed with applause and given a prominent seat at the table of public discourse. Perhaps his charged opinions, fantastical futurism, and idiosyncrasies won the hearts of millions initially. But those same polarising opinions, unfulfilled promises, and outlandish behaviours are getting him (or more accurately, the company he built) into terrible trouble.

Without Elon Musk, there would be no Tesla. He poured his PayPal fortune into the struggling startup, a gamble that paid off splendidly. For the longest time, his cars were symbols of environmentalism, prestige, and tech-savviness. If he had just remained the focused CEO of Tesla, it could have been one of the greatest companies of all time.

However, Musk is no longer the man sleeping on the factory floor of his high-tech automobile corporation. He is distracted by politics, petty feuds, and a dozen other ventures like Neuralink, Starlink, SpaceX, and The Boring Company.

He became deeply embroiled in politics through his purchase of the micro-blogging platform Twitter (now X) and his platforming of Donald Trump. As time went by, Musk shifted from a liberal to a libertarian, eventually patronising right-wing hardliners, including those who deny the very climate change Tesla claims to solve. There are even accusations that he did a Nazi salute.

International Finance will examine how Elon Musk’s behaviour is quantifying into a “Musk Discount,” eroding brand trust, accelerating the partisan divide in sales, and leaving the company vulnerable to stagnation while its CEO fights political battles elsewhere.

The rise of a visionary

To understand the sheer magnitude of the reputational collapse and the financial “discount” currently weighing on Tesla’s valuation, one must first painstakingly reconstruct the extraordinary “Musk Premium” that characterised the company’s ascent.

For nearly fifteen years, Elon Musk was more than a CEO; he was the singular asset upon which the entire valuation of the enterprise rested. In the early 2010s, the automotive industry was defined by insurmountable barriers to entry. It was a graveyard of failed startups, a capital-intensive sector where margins were razor-thin, and brand loyalty was entrenched over decades. Into this rigid ecosystem stepped Musk, fresh from his PayPal exit, with a proposition that seemed economically suicidal. He suggested developing a luxury electric sports car to finance the production of a mass-market sedan.

The early narrative was one of existential heroism. Musk’s willingness to pour his personal fortune into Tesla (and SpaceX) when both teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in 2008 forged the initial layer of the “Iron Man” mythos. This was a technocratic saviour utilising capitalism to solve the climate crisis. By positioning himself as the protagonist in a battle for the planet’s future, Musk imbued Tesla products with a profound moral imperative. You did not merely purchase a Model S in 2013; it was also a symbolic vote for a sustainable future and a rejection of the “big oil” status quo.

This narrative construction created a formidable, intangible economic moat. While traditional automakers like General Motors and Toyota spent billions annually on advertising to maintain market share, Tesla spent absolute zero.

The CEO’s X account served as a global broadcasting tower, where updates on software, manufacturing targets, and rocket launches captivated an audience that far transcended the typical car-buying demographic. This “halo effect” allowed Tesla to command premium pricing and maintain high stock valuations despite fundamentally weaker financials than its legacy competitors.

The strength of this bond is visible in historical consumer data. For a sustained period between 2013 and 2020, Tesla topped Consumer Reports owner satisfaction surveys with consistency that defied statistical norms. In 2020, even as the company struggled with initial quality control issues on the Model Y, it secured the top spot for the fourth consecutive year. The satisfaction scores frequently hit 99%, a figure that indicated owners were judging the vehicle not by the panel gaps or paint quality, but by the ideological affinity they felt for the mission and the man leading it.

The financial apotheosis of this visionary status was reached during the bull run of 2020–2021. As Tesla finally conquered the “production hell” of the Model 3 ramp-up (a period where Musk famously slept on the factory floor at Giga Nevada), the market stopped pricing Tesla as a car company and began pricing it as a high-growth technology platform, akin to a software monopoly.

The inclusion of Tesla in the S&P 500 in December 2020 served as the ultimate institutional validation. It was the largest company ever added to the index by market capitalisation, entering with a weight that forced index funds to buy billions of dollars’ worth of shares, driving the price even higher. At the time of this inclusion, Tesla was trading at over 120 times earnings.

By comparison, traditional automakers like Ford or Volkswagen traded at single-digit price-to-earnings ratios. This delta, the difference between 8x earnings and 120x earnings, was the “Musk Premium.” It was the price investors were willing to pay for the optionality of Musk’s brain and the belief that he would solve full autonomy, robotics, and energy storage, creating trillions in value where others saw only steel and rubber.

Between 2010 and 2021, Tesla’s stock performance generated generational wealth for retail investors. The company’s market capitalisation eventually surpassed the combined value of the next nine largest automakers. This phenomenon cemented a base of retail shareholders (often referred to as “Tesla Stans”), who viewed Musk not just as a competent manager but as an infallible oracle.

However, the foundation of this valuation was implicitly and explicitly tied to the CEO’s singular focus. Tesla’s own 10-K filings contained “Key Man” risk disclosures that were far from boilerplate. They were a literal admission of corporate fragility with statements like “We are highly dependent on the services of Elon Musk, Techno King of Tesla and our Chief Executive Officer… Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla.”

As long as that “relentless drive” was directed at expanding the Supercharger network, improving battery energy density, and refining manufacturing processes, the market was willing to overlook missed deadlines, aggressive tweets, and eccentric behaviour. The eccentricities were seen as features of his genius, not bugs in his leadership.

The cost of madness

The transition from “visionary” to “liability” was not a singular event but a cascading series of reputational fractures that accelerated dramatically between late 2022 and early 2025. The purchase of Twitter (rebranded as X) marked a distinct inflexion point.

It was the moment Musk’s public output shifted from engineering optimism, the vision of sending rockets to Mars and creating electric tunnels and neural interfaces, to a relentless stream of partisan combat, cultural grievances, and conspiracy theories.

The most critical strategic error in Musk’s recent pivot has been the systematic alienation of Tesla’s primary demographic. Historically, the early adopters of electric vehicles (EVs) have skewed heavily Democratic, liberal, and environmentally conscious. These were the consumers willing to pay a premium for a “green” product.

By aligning himself with right-wing hardliners, amplifying climate change sceptics, and engaging in “anti-woke” crusades, Musk placed Tesla in an untenable commercial position. It is now a company selling a solution to climate change run by a man actively supporting politicians who mock its existence.

A landmark study by economists from Yale University and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), released in early 2025, provided devastating empirical evidence of this phenomenon. Analysing vehicle registration data matched with voter registration records across the United States from October 2022 through early 2025, the researchers identified a massive, statistically significant “Musk Partisan Effect.”

The study found an estimated 1.0 to 1.26 million lost vehicle sales (tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue) between October 2022 and early 2025. This decline was most severe in strongly Democratic counties, where sales plummeted by an astonishing 67% to 83% compared to expected trends, simultaneously providing a 17% to 22% sales increase to competitors like Rivian, Ford, and Hyundai. The study posits that without this alienation of his core customer base, Tesla’s sales in the first quarter of 2025 could have been approximately 125% higher than actual figures.

Republican interest in EVs remains structurally low due to ideological opposition to the technology itself, while Democratic interest in Tesla specifically has collapsed. The buyers haven’t stopped wanting electric cars; instead, they have stopped wanting Musk’s electric cars. They are migrating to “anti-Musk” alternatives. The study notes that this effect “showed no indication of slowing down” and had actually increased in intensity by the first quarter of 2025.
The damage to the brand’s intangible value mirrors the devastating sales data. In the early 2020s, Tesla enjoyed a reputation as the gold standard in corporate innovation, akin to the iPhone in 2010. By 2024 and early 2025, brand sentiment trackers painted a bleak picture of a brand in freefall.

Data from YouGov and other reputation indices highlight this precipitous drop. Tesla’s “Buzz score” (a metric that tracks whether consumers are hearing positive or negative news about a brand) remained consistently negative throughout 2023 and 2024, averaging -7.1. This indicates that the dominant conversation around the brand was negative for two straight years.

More alarmingly, in broader reputation polls, Tesla’s ranking plummeted from a top-tier status (sixth) to near the bottom of the list (95th). This erosion is inextricably linked to the CEO’s personal approval ratings. Pew Research Centre data from early 2025 indicates that 54% of American adults now hold an unfavourable view of Musk.

If the partisan alienation was a slow bleed, the events of January 20, 2025, served as a traumatic arterial wound for the brand. Following the inauguration of Donald Trump, Musk, who had been tapped to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” addressed a crowd of supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC.

During this speech, celebrating what he called “no ordinary victory,” Musk performed a gesture that was widely interpreted as a Nazi salute. The reaction was immediate, visceral, and global.

The optical damage to Tesla was catastrophic. For a brand that relies on coastal urban professionals, a demographic sensitive to social justice and historical sensitivity, the image of their CEO performing a gesture associated with the Third Reich was a breaking point. It cemented the “Musk Discount” as a moral penalty. Driving a Tesla was becoming a social stigma.

The “Musk Discount” is visible in the sharp divergence between Tesla’s stock performance and the broader market. While the S&P 500 and other tech giants surged on the back of the AI boom in 2024, Tesla’s stock languished, decoupling from the “Magnificent Seven” tech cohort.

Over the 12 months leading into early 2025, Tesla significantly underperformed the S&P 500. While the index grew by approximately 12%, Tesla delivered negative returns, dropping 1% over the same period and down nearly 40% from its late 2024 peak by March 2025.

By January 2025, the “political noise” was no longer treated as a sideshow by Wall Street but as a fundamental risk factor. Morgan Stanley, historically one of the most bullish firms on Tesla, downgraded the stock to “equal-weight” and cut price targets, explicitly citing “volatile behaviour” and the distraction of the CEO as primary risks to earnings. Analysts noted that the “political noise” had begun to overshadow the fundamentals.

In 2024, for the first time in its history as a mass-market manufacturer, Tesla saw a decline in annual sales in the United States and failed to meet its global growth targets. The company sold approximately 1.79 million vehicles, while the broader electric vehicle market continued to grow.

The contingency

As the liability of Musk’s leadership grows, the question of corporate governance and succession has moved to the forefront of institutional investor concerns. The lack of a clear contingency plan represents a critical failure of the board of directors, which has been accused of being “captive” to the CEO and derelict in its duty to protect shareholder value from his personal whims.

The extent of the board’s subservience to Musk was laid bare in a landmark legal ruling that reverberated through 2024 and early 2025. In the case of Tornetta vs Musk, Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick struck down Musk’s massive 2018 compensation package (valued at over $55 billion), ruling that the process to approve it was deeply flawed and legally invalid.

Tesla functions as a monarchy. The board’s subsequent attempts to reinstate the pay package through new shareholder votes in 2024 and 2025, rather than negotiating a new, reasonable deal, only deepened the conflict between institutional investors concerned with governance and retail investors loyal to Musk.
Despite “Key Man” risk being the most significant threat to Tesla’s valuation, the company has stubbornly refused to publish a formal succession plan.

Shareholder proposals demanding a “Key Person Risk” report have been repeatedly voted down by the board, which argues that such disclosures would put the company at a competitive disadvantage. However, the urgency of this issue, amplified by Musk’s distraction with X, SpaceX, xAI, and politics, has forced internal movements that hint at a shadow succession strategy.

The most prominent figure to emerge as a potential stabilising force is Tom Zhu (Zhu Xiaotong). Zhu gained fame within the company for orchestrating the “production miracle” at Giga Shanghai, where he implemented the “China Speed” ethos, characterised by extremely efficient, 24/7 operational intensity.

Under his leadership, Giga Shanghai became Tesla’s most efficient export hub, accounting for half of global deliveries in 2022. Another key player is Omead Afshar, a long-time Musk confidant often referred to as the “fixer” in the office of the CEO. Reports in late 2024 and early 2025 placed him in critical roles overseeing operations in North America and Europe, stepping in to manage sales as inventory piled up. Afshar is viewed as an executor of Musk’s will, a bridge between the chaotic vision of the CEO and the operational reality of the company.

Elon the indispensable

While the “liability” argument is supported by robust sales and brand data, any honest analysis must contend with the formidable counter-argument, i.e. Elon Musk is not merely a manager. To fire him, or to marginalise him, risks turning Tesla into “just another car company,” stripping it of the innovation premium that justifies its stock price. His “madness” is inextricably linked to the method that produced the company’s greatest breakthroughs.

Musk’s value to Tesla is most tangible in the engineering trenches. His management style, characterised by “first principles” thinking (boiling things down to the fundamental truths of physics and economics), has led to breakthroughs that traditional OEMs deemed impossible or unwise. He refuses to accept “reasoning by analogy,” instead demanding to know the atomic cost of materials and the theoretical limits of physics.

The development of the Cybertruck provides a case study in both the madness and the genius of Musk’s method. In the design phase, Musk rejected traditional aluminium body-on-frame designs, which have been the standard for pickup trucks for nearly a century. Instead, he insisted on using an ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless-steel exoskeleton.

At the same time, Musk had decided to pivot the Starship rocket design from carbon fibre to stainless steel to reduce costs and improve thermal durability. He forced this same material science onto the Cybertruck team, demanding they use an alloy so hard it would break traditional stamping presses. This decision caused immense manufacturing headaches, requiring the invention of entirely new manufacturing techniques and contributing to years of delays.

The steel was so hard it could not be painted or stamped into curves, dictating the truck’s polarising “origami” aesthetic. While some might say the design is ugly, the result is a vehicle that is bullet-resistant and dent-proof. The mobile fortress is the safest thing on the road and stands as a physical totem of his refusal to compromise vision for convenience.

The dilemma for investors is that the same psychological traits that led to the “Nazi salute” controversy (impulsiveness, lack of filter, extreme risk tolerance) are the same traits that led to the reusable rocket and the electric car revolution. You cannot have the stainless-steel truck without the chaotic personality that drives it.

Furthermore, Tesla’s recruitment strategy relies heavily on the allure of working for Musk. Top engineers in AI and robotics join Tesla not just for the stock options, but to work with the man who is trying to colonise Mars. The 10-K disclosure admits that the company competes for talent based on this “visionary” allure. Removing him could trigger a brain drain of the most critical technical talent, leaving the company as a hollow shell of its former innovative self.

The future of Tesla

The automaker is no longer a pioneer and has been sidelined by BYD in sales and technology. With Musk’s public relationship with climate change deniers, even the liberals are distancing themselves from him and his products.

The board needs to act fast and figure out if they should wait for an implosion or professionalise Tesla into a mature corporation with clear succession plans, potentially elevating leaders like Tom Zhu.

While Musk’s “first principles” thinking remains essential for breakthroughs in AI and robotics (Optimus, FSD), investors must weigh whether this engineering value still outweighs the “Musk Discount.” The company’s valuation depends on whether Wall Street continues to treat it as a tech monopoly or re-rates it as a distressed auto manufacturer.

Tesla’s future is no longer guaranteed. If the “political noise” continues to drown out product fundamentals, the company risks stagnation, surviving as a niche, volatile tech holding rather than becoming the mass-market, global titan it was promised to be.

The post Visionary CEO or liability? Tesla’s future hangs appeared first on International Finance.

According to The Washington Post, the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reportedly preparing to cancel its $2.4 billion deal with Verizon and shift the work to the SpaceX subsidiary.

While the above development may look a controversial one, given the fact that Elon Musk, the self-styled “reformer” of the American bureaucracy (under the Donald Trump administration), also owns Starlink, thereby potentially raising the “conflict of interest” allegations, this copy will discuss something else (another controversy) related to the Starlink, as the satellite internet constellation has now found itself powering Myanmar-based cyber-criminals, with the latter making billions from scam compounds located in the Southeast Asian country. To make matters worse, these “compounds” have allegedly enslaved tens of thousands of people.

Scam compounds exploit links

In the words of Matt Burgess, a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, privacy, and data regulation in Europe, “The plea for help arrived last summer. ‘I am in Myanmar and work for a fraud company,’ a Chinese human-trafficking victim wrote in a short email sent from within the Tai Chang scam compound. Like thousands of others in the region, they were promised legitimate work only to find themselves tricked into modern slavery and forced to scam people online for hours every day. Tai Chang, which is located on the Myanmar-Thailand border, has been linked to incidents of torture. ‘I’m not safe, I’m chatting with you secretly,’ they said. Despite the risk, their first request wasn’t to be rescued.”

As per the reports, over 200,000 people in Southeast Asia have been forced to run online scams in recent years, often being enslaved and brutalised, as part of criminal enterprises that have earned billions in stolen funds from these heinous acts. These scams, often known as “Pig Butchering Operations,” have largely been concentrated in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, with China-based crime groups efficiently exploiting instability and poor governance in the Southeast Asian region.

“Though they come at great humanitarian cost, pig butchering scams are undeniably lucrative and, perhaps inevitably, similar operations are now being uncovered on multiple continents and in numerous countries around the world,” WIRED reported in 2024, while adding, “Pig butchering operations that are offshoots of the Southeast Asian activity have emerged in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa. Many of these expanded operations apparently have links to Chinese-speaking criminals or have evolved in parallel to Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investments, the country’s massive international infrastructure and development initiative.”

In 2023, the FBI had reports of nearly $4 billion in losses from the scams, with some researchers even putting all-time total global losses at $75 billion or more. While Beijing has made a concerted effort in recent months to crack down on pig butchering schemes and human trafficking to scamming centres in the Southeast Asian region, the activity has proliferated around the world nonetheless.

Pig butchering involves building seemingly intimate relationships with victims, following which attacks start by texting potential targets out of the blue and getting them talking. Then, attackers build a rapport and introduce the idea of a special or unique investment opportunity. Finally, victims send funds, typically cryptocurrency, through a malicious platform meant to look like a legitimate money management service, and attackers must launder the money from there.

The entire crime racket operates through careful planning from a large workforce. As per the experts, people from more than 60 countries have been abducted and trafficked to Southeast Asian scamming compounds that typically operate with massive numbers of forced workers. And in recent months, scam centres have been detected around the world as well, in different configurations and sizes, but with the same goal.

Talking about the Tai Chang scam compound, the facility’s internet connection had recently been cut off from Thailand, the person (the Chinese human-trafficking victim as mentioned by Burgess) wrote in the messages to the anti-scam group GASO in June 2024. However, instead of scamming within the compound grinding to a halt, the organised criminals have reportedly found another way to stay online.

And that’s where Starlink is coming into the picture, as the person wrote, “Elon Musk’s Starlink is installed above all the buildings in the campus where we are now. Now the fraud work is running normally. If the fraud network here is down, we can regain our freedom.”

However, the messages from the Chinese human-trafficking victim soon landed on the desk of Erin West, the then-deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, California. West, a longtime advocate for victims of so-called pig butchering and other types of cryptocurrency scams, wrote to a SpaceX lawyer.
“Starlink connections appeared to be helping criminals at Tai Chang to scam Americans and fuel their internet needs,” West alleged at the end of July 2024. She offered to share more information to help the company in “disrupting the work of bad actors.” However, according to West, SpaceX and Starlink never replied to her communications.

Starlink: Haven for scammers?

As per Burgess, reports of Starlink’s use at Tai Chang are not the work of a one-off criminal. There are multibillion-dollar empires across Southeast Asia that appear to be widely using satellite internet. At least eight scam compounds based around the Myanmar-Thailand border region are using Starlink devices, according to mobile phone connection data.

“Between November 2024 and the start of February, hundreds of mobile phones logged their locations and use of Starlink at known scam compounds more than 40,000 times, according to the mobile phone data, which was collected by an online advertising industry tool,” Burgess mentioned.

The eight compounds, spread around the Myawaddy region of war-torn Myanmar, would likely have installed multiple Starlink devices. As Burgess and WIRED reviewed the photos of Tai Chang, it appeared to show dozens of white Starlink satellite dishes on a single rooftop, while human rights watchdogs and other experts say that Starlink use at the scam compounds has increased since 2024.

“I believe that SpaceX must have the capacity to stop this problem,” says Rangsiman Rome, an opposition member of the House of Representatives in Thailand who chairs a parliamentary committee on national security and border issues.

At the start of February 2025, Rome tagged Elon Musk in a post on X, saying criminals are “exploiting Starlink for massive fraud” at scam compounds in the region. He did not get a reply.

SpaceX can terminate services to users if they participate in “fraudulent” activities or if a system is used in unauthorised locations. It has previously emailed users in locations it doesn’t officially offer services to and threatened to shut down accounts.

“Our own technology is being used against us. Starlink is an American company, and it is the backbone for how these bad actors can access Americans,” said Erin West, who founded the non-profit “Operation Shamrock” to take action against investment scammers.

“If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorised party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,” the company said previously. However, on the alleged links with pig butchering scams, the satellite internet provider has decided to remain silent till now.

The KK Park example

Let’s talk about the KK Park Scam Compound to make things clear. In the words of Burgess, “the green, mountainous border separating Myanmar and Thailand runs for 1,500 miles. Around 200 miles of the border follow the Moei River, where dozens of compounds have replaced valley fields over the past five years. Rome, the Thai MP, says officials have identified 75 compounds across Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos, with 40 of those being in Myanmar’s Myawaddy region.”
“From the outside, the compounds resemble hotels or apartment blocks, but they are surrounded by high fences, watch towers, and armed guards. People have been trafficked from more than 60 countries. Around 120,000 people are likely held in scam compounds across Myanmar, according to one United Nations report from 2023, with another 100,000 captives in Cambodia,” he noted.

Starlink has recently agreed to increase its availability in Cambodia, according to local reports. Within the compounds, victims are typically forced to work day and night to scam hundreds of people at a time. This includes carrying out long-running investment scams that have netted criminals up to $75 billion over the past few years. If the trafficking victims don’t comply, they face torture, with either escape or paying a ransom becoming the only way out.

Stable internet connections are crucial for the operations to be successful, from the initial targeting of potential human trafficking victims with false job postings to daily scamming and ultimately money laundering.

Palm Naripthaphan, an executive adviser at Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), said that scam centres along the Myanmar-Thailand border have historically used mobile connections from cell carriers based in either of the two Southeast Asian countries. They can also connect to fibre-optic cables in Thailand or run them across the river Moei. Increasingly, Naripthaphan believes, Starlink has played a role.

“The Musk-owned satellite system is composed of multiple elements. More than 6,000 Starlink satellites orbit Earth and beam down internet connectivity to white, rectangular Starlink dishes (dubbed Dishy McFlatface). Some are portable and easy to set up, and they provide internet connections in areas where there are little or no other options, including war zones such as Ukraine,” Burgess continued.

Starlink is not officially licensed in Myanmar, which has been embroiled in a civil war since the 2021 coup, with the service being reportedly banned by the military junta. The company’s coverage map doesn’t list any availability in the country. But this hasn’t stopped Starlink terminals from working and being frequently used in Myanmar to combat frequent internet shutdowns.

Across eight known scam compound areas, KK Park, Tai Chang, Dongmei, Huanya, UK Compound, Gate 25, Apolo, and Shwe Kokko, mobile phones have logged thousands of occurrences of getting online using Starlink’s networks in recent months, according to data.

“At least 412 devices listed Starlink as their internet provider at the compound locations between November and February, according to an analyst with access to location data from the online advertising industry. In total, 40,800 instances were logged,” the media outlet noted.

Tough task for law enforcers

According to a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime report published in October 2024, Thai officials seized 78 Starlink receivers that are believed to have been heading for scam compounds in Myanmar. Myanmar’s government also seized other Starlink devices.

At the start of February 2025, Thailand cut internet connections, electricity, and fuel supplies to some areas around the compounds. Thousands have since been rescued by officials in one of the most widespread crackdowns on the compounds so far. However, the results have been mixed.

According to Mechelle B Moore, the CEO of anti-trafficking nonprofit “Global Alms Incorporated,” some shelters are struggling to cope with the number of people being freed. Also, past efforts to disrupt scam operations by shutting off internet connections have not been effective, partly due to Starlink connectivity.

About 7,000 people were rescued from Myanmar-based illegal call centre operations and were waiting to be transferred to Thailand, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on February 18. While the country has started its large-scale crackdown on scam centres operating on the Myanmar border, the road is too long, given the fact that Cambodia and Laos, which also share borders with Thailand, have in recent years become havens for transnational crime syndicates operating online scam operations.

“It’s massive, and there are thousands of people in there that have been brought in, typically through Thailand, so it’s a huge move if they clean the compounds and scams out,” said Jeremy Douglas, from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Myanmar’s border area, Myawaddy, has emerged as one of the largest single clusters of scam compounds in the region, and possibly the world, said Douglas. And the victims were mostly from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, being tricked into enslaved work. Scams generated from Myawaddy resulted in financial losses between $18 billion and $37 billion in 2023, as per the United Nations, which also highlighted that at least 120,000 people across Myanmar and another 100,000 in Cambodia may be held in situations where they are forced to execute lucrative online scams.

“Thailand has renewed efforts this year to crack down on the operations after a high-profile kidnapping of a Chinese actor in Myanmar in January. The 22-year-old man, Wang Xing, was abducted after arriving in Thailand for what he believed was a casting call with film producers,” The Guardian reported.

Douglas noted the Myanmar military’s Border Guard Force (BGF), which controls Myawaddy, has been under immense pressure to crack down on the compounds. About 200 Chinese nationals were flown back to China on a China Southern Airlines flight recently, as reported by the Bangkok Post. On the other hand, about 260 people from scam operations were deported from Myanmar in February. The group represented 20 nationalities, including 138 Ethiopians.

Mechelle B Moore said, “We have not heard of any companies shutting down or suspending operations because they don’t have access to the internet. Victims will all confirm that they’re flipped over to Starlink or they use cellular dongles with SIM cards in them. When one doesn’t work, they just flick over to the other. It doesn’t stop operations at all.”

It seems as clear as daylight: Starlink’s “easy-to-access” and cost-friendly satellite internet model has gone terribly against the company, especially in Southeast Asia. Being involved in things like “Pig Butcher Scam” and “Forced Slavery,” even though unknowingly, will likely affect the company’s prospects in this part of the world in the coming days, unless and until the Elon Musk-led venture gets serious on the compliance front.

The post Starlink at heart of scam empire appeared first on International Finance.

New Glenn’s flight marks Blue Origin’s entrance into a market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and is crucial to unlocking the centi-billionaire founder’s larger ambitions. The New Glenn flight carried a single small test payload into space.

Originally, the company aimed for the audacious feat of flying NASA’s “ESCAPADE” mission to Mars on New Glenn’s debut. However, with a dwindling launch window, the agency delayed ESCAPADE to a later launch. However, we will focus not on Blue Origin, but on the ecosystem in which the venture is operating: space tourism.

A growing industry

Seattle-headquartered Blue Origin is now planning to scale the New Glenn missions quickly, performing as many as 10 launches in 2025 alone. Given that the rocket was originally targeted for a 2020 debut, it has faced years of delays. The long-term plan for the venture is to challenge the dominance of SpaceX in the American rocketry market.

In May 2024, it announced the resumption of space tourist flights after an almost two-year hiatus resulting from a failed unmanned test flight in 2022. The concept of “space tourism” has become more of a commercial activity, with people travelling into space for recreational purposes rather than scientific or professional reasons. The industry has seen a surge in recent years, with several companies offering seats on their spacecraft to citizens willing to pay a premium to experience spaceflight.

Space tourism started in April 2001, when American businessman and engineer Dennis Tito became the first-ever “space tourist” to travel to space aboard a Soyuz-TM32 spacecraft, sponsored by Space Adventures. Since then, 63 individuals have experienced the thrill of spaceflight as tourists, with notable surges in private individuals launching in 2021 and 2022.

As of 2025, there are five names synonymous with “space tourism”: Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Space Adventures, SpaceX, and Axiom Space. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar space tourism. In 2023, Global Market Insights published a report estimating that the industry may be worth $129 billion by 2032.

According to experts, more than the technical implications, space tourism needs to address legal and environmental considerations. At a time when all industrial verticals of the 21st-century global economy are going green, people are flagging the potential pollution that space travel may produce. However, the sector is well aware of this and is taking early steps to avoid controversies. Blue Origin, in one of its flights, used hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which are fuels with a lower environmental footprint.

Rules being rewritten

What about balloons carrying space tourists into the high stratosphere? Yes, it’s becoming a reality, as aerospace companies like Spain’s Halo Space, France’s Zephalto, and Florida’s Space Perspective are working towards earning commercial licenses that could come as early as 2025.

Attached to advanced stratospheric “space” balloons, specially designed luxury capsules, like Space Perspective’s Neptune, will travel at around 12 miles per hour on a six-hour journey from the surface of the planet, 100,000 feet into the stratosphere before descending back to Earth.

Space Perspective Co-founder Jane Poynter said, “The gradual ascent will allow people’s minds to adjust to the scale change of geography, like the Florida peninsula, as the famous landmass slowly shrinks.”

Such conditions lead to the overview effect, which NASA describes as a powerful shift in the way space travellers think about Earth and their place in the cosmos. People inside Space Perspective’s Neptune spaceship will experience the same gravity as on Earth, as well as little to no turbulence. During the journey’s apex, passengers will be able to see the Earth’s blue curvature through 360-degree panoramic windows.

“The capsule also comes equipped with the amenities you would expect from a private jet, including Wi-Fi connectivity (for those selfies in space), a stocked bar, and the finest gourmet cuisine served during the flight. A trip aboard space balloon Neptune can also be customised for those who want to buy out an entire flight for their family and friends,” Poynter told Jetset, while further stating that clients have expressed interest in releasing albums from space, hosting weddings, and even bringing their pianos onboard.

Halo Space and Zephalto’s spacecraft will take around four hours to reach the highest level of the journey, the apogee, where passengers will escape approximately 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere. Although technically still in the stratosphere, the altitude will make it seem as though they are floating above the Earth, according to Halo Space’s website, promising an accessible, cheaper way to experience views a relative few have ever witnessed. Like Space Perspective’s Neptune, these other capsules have been designed to enhance the view from the high stratosphere and promote a comfortable, social atmosphere.

Inspired by “art de vivre,” or “the knowledge of how to enjoy life,” the view from Zephalto’s Celeste capsule’s interior has been customised for a contemplative experience—promoting total immersion in observing the Earth from 15.5 miles into the stratosphere. The company plans to begin commercial flights in 2025, with all flights already fully booked. Zephalto initially plans six flights a year.

Zephalto and Halo Space will have pilots onboard, with the overall flight automated and closely monitored from Earth. The capsules have parachutes built in for the event that the stratospheric balloons fail.

What makes space ballooning a safe travel option is its proven performance record. NASA and the European Space Agency have been using balloons to conduct research, and none of them has ever experienced inflight failure. Balloon flights will also come at a significantly lower price point, with each ride costing $125,000 per person.

A beginning of an ecosystem

What was once a government-controlled domain, space travel has taken a capitalistic turn post-2000, with the trio of Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk, through their space ventures (Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and SpaceX), ushering in a new era where travelling to the unknown has taken a “leisurely” turn, compared to the NASA or European Space Agency missions, where resources are deployed to learn more about our planetary systems and galaxies.

The most common tourist offerings available now are the multi-million-dollar suborbital flights that give travellers a quick hit of space. Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, for example, recently saw its rocket, “New Shepard,” complete its 26th flight. In September 2024, SpaceX sent the Polaris Dawn crew into orbit aboard its Dragon capsule, hitting the highest altitude since Apollo and performing the first spacewalk by commercial astronauts.

SpaceX also had a breakthrough with its first successful “chopsticks” landing, using mechanical arms to catch the Super Heavy booster after launch. This system could reshape space tourism by cutting costs and boosting launch frequency. By eliminating traditional landing gear and accelerating rocket reuse, the method will reduce turnaround times between flights. For the space tourism market, this innovation brings SpaceX closer to affordable, mass-accessible space travel.

Also, brands are trying to leverage the cultural aspect of space. Omega, which supplied watches for NASA on the Apollo mission, now has a next-generation moon watch. American sportswear company “Under Armour” created the spacesuits for Virgin Galactic pilots. Adidas is partnering with the ISS National Lab to test footwear in the extreme conditions of space, designing “for athletes on and off Earth.”

Renowned luxury retailer Prada created the spacesuits for Axiom Space, whose mission includes boosting space tourism. Axiom is ready for all the various sizes and shapes of human bodies, noting that the suits have increased sizing and adjustability to accommodate a wider range of the general population.

However, the eventual future of space tourism hinges upon several key factors: the ability to accommodate people in orbit, evolving regulations and legal frameworks, and the level of demand from wealthy customers. By 2035, the World Economic Forum projects the space tourism market to reach $4-6 billion annually, driven primarily by luxury stays aboard space stations, with ultra-wealthy individuals eager to experience life beyond Earth.

Suborbital flights, while expected to become more affordable over time, are predicted to account for a smaller slice of revenue, generating $1-$2 billion a year. However, the growth potential could expand significantly if larger spacecraft, like SpaceX’s Starship, begin taking more passengers on short orbital trips.

As private companies push the boundaries of space tourism, the risks associated with spaceflight will remain. Will there be a scenario like the extended stay of NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the ISS be avoided? The answer is no. Originally intended to last just over a week, their mission has stretched into months since 2024 due to a series of technical failures aboard Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

NASA and Boeing had to return the Starliner to Earth without its crew. Now, the two astronauts are set to return in early 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, demonstrating how unpredictable and fraught with challenges space travel remains.

Environment: The biggest con

Critics have pointed to the environmental impact of frequent rocket launches, which release vast amounts of carbon dioxide and pollutants, potentially undoing years of climate progress. Then there is the debate around the wealth disparity each trip represents. Some detractors also wonder whether resources being funnelled into space tourism could be better spent addressing critical issues on Earth, such as poverty.

However, the climate concerns are genuine here, as the emissions for a space tourist are astronomically higher (as much as 100 times higher per tourist), according to a 2021 estimate. Creating the necessary thrust to reach the escape velocity required to break free of Earth’s gravitational pull requires the burning of a phenomenal amount of fuel. The hot exhaust produced by rocket thrusters alters the physics and chemistry of the surrounding atmosphere as it passes through it.

“Rockets release a huge amount of water vapour into the atmosphere, and this occurs at considerably higher altitudes than with aeroplanes. While water sounds harmless, high in the atmosphere, where there is almost no water, it has a potent warming effect. The high temperatures generated during launch and re-entry transform the nitrogen naturally in the air into nitrogen oxides, potent greenhouse gases,” stated Carbon Market Watch.

Some two-thirds of the exhaust from rocket launches gets absorbed in the stratosphere (second layer of the atmosphere) and the mesosphere (third layer). Scientists are yet to fully understand the long-term effects of pollution so high up in the atmosphere, with some dubbing it the “ignorosphere.” However, scientists are now attempting to penetrate the fog around the climate impact of rocket launches. In addition to their warming effects, nitrogen oxides and water vapour pumped into the stratosphere deplete the ozone layer by converting ozone into oxygen. This can threaten the recovery of the ozone layer, which has accompanied the decades-old phasing out of chlorofluorocarbons.

“Although a rocket launch releases, on average, a seventh of the carbon dioxide emitted by an aeroplane, it emits hundreds of times more carbon soot particles than a plane. Carbon soot, also known as black carbon, absorbs light from the sun and then releases it as thermal energy, warming the surrounding air. In the atmosphere, soot falls back down to the ground in a matter of weeks. However, in the stratosphere, it can hang there for up to four years, prolonging its damaging effect. This is reflected in the fact that even though rocket soot represents only 0.01% of soot emissions, it was responsible for some 3% of the global warming effect caused by the soot humanity pumps into the atmosphere, according to one estimate,” Carbon Market Watch noted.

A rocket launch upsets the delicate CO2 balance in the higher reaches of the atmosphere. Starting from around 43.5 km up, a Falcon 9 (SpaceX launcher) spews out more CO2 than is contained in a cubic kilometre of air for each kilometre it climbs, researchers calculated. At 70 km, this climbs to an astounding 25 times the CO2 in a cubic kilometre of surrounding air.

At present, space flight is equivalent to at most 2% of the emissions of the aviation sector, but plans to expand space tourism and commercial spaceflight could lead the sector’s climate footprint to explode, leading to far-reaching environmental consequences. The soot released by increased traffic would raise temperatures in the stratosphere, deplete the ozone, and have a warming effect that is almost 500 times more intense than similar emissions from aircraft or surface sources.

“This black carbon would also disrupt atmospheric circulation by slowing the movement of air from the tropics to the upper atmosphere,” another study concluded, “leading to further depletion of the ozone layer. The researchers discovered that the stratosphere is sensitive to relatively modest black carbon injections,” Carbon Market Watch observed.

Space tourism: The future is now

The World Monuments Fund, whose mission is to preserve cultural heritage sites around the globe, in a January 15 announcement, named the moon among 25 at-risk sites, with the expectation that trips to the lunar surface will become the norm in the not-so-distant future. The WMF now warns that moon tourism could threaten more than 90 lunar landing and impact sites, including Tranquillity Base, where American astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon.

WMF officials fear the lunar landscape may be victim to looters looking for souvenirs and private lunar exploration, potentially destroying iconic footprints and tracks that are part of human history if something isn’t done to protect them now. The organisation is now urging international collaboration to preserve the moon.

While the concept of space travel has been all about democratising the exploration of the unknown, it also comes with the “climate risk,” along with the bigger worry of threatening the sanctity of, for example, lunar landing and impact sites. While the idea of “space tourism” has an exciting prospect for the future, in order to be fully successful, it must address the concerns raised by detractors, especially those related to the environment.

The post Space tourism: New age of exploration appeared first on International Finance.

Freeform co-founders Erik Palitsch (CEO) and TJ Ronacher (president) both worked at SpaceX, where they were principal architects and lead analysts, respectively, of the Merlin engines and other programmes. During that particular stint, the duo saw the potential of 3D printing parts using metal, along with the method’s shortcomings.

In today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week,” International Finance will inform its readers more about the start-up, whose tagline is “The Future Will Be Printed.”

Meet The Visionary

Palitsch told TechCrunch, “We saw the potential of metal printing; it has the potential to transform basically any industry that makes metal things. But adoption has been slow and success has been marginal at best. Why is it not practical to use at scale? Fundamentally, because of three things: crappy and inconsistent quality; speed — commercial printers are very slow; and cost — the price for these printers is astronomical.”

He and Ronacher concluded that if they could operationalise the process to provide a printing service rather than sell a printer, they could crack the whole thing wide open. So they joined up with Tasso Lappas, former CTO of Velo3D, to start Freeform.

In Palitsch’s opinion, the primary mistake companies were making in 3D printing parts was using the likes of CNC machines, which are commonly used in traditional manufacturing, as a model for the metal-printing business. They were selling the machine and its software, in their attempt to make the device work with whatever shapes and processes companies use. However, the method doesn’t bode well for 3D printing.

“The way these things work today is they’re ‘open loop’ — they’re basically playing back a file. They needed to be smarter than that, because the process by which you melt the metal powder with a laser is extremely complicated, and in a way infinitely variable,” Palitsch explained further, as he made this crucial observation, “Selling people a machine and saying become an expert to make it work, good luck, isn’t a recipe for success. But when you decide you’re not going to build and package a printer into a box, when you have the freedom to build an automated factory from a clean sheet, there’s a lot you can do.”

Palitsch and Ronacher want to make 3D printing as a service using a closed-loop process in a custom machine that monitors the print on a microsecond scale, adjusting various factors to achieve the kind of print that is expected at a sophisticated, tech-savvy workplace like SpaceX.

With the mission of making the transformative power of 3D printing available to all industries at scale and unlocking the future of innovation, Freeform has disrupted the commodities sector through its unique metal printing architecture, which is powered by autonomous factories, which allow for “effortless scaling from one part to millions.”

While advanced sensing and computing systems increase the 3D printing speed by 1000-fold, Freeform’s innovation also has another interesting aspect: the world’s first closed-loop control, which results in digitally verifiable defect-free parts.

How Freeform’s Technology Works

Automation, Data Driven Learning, Closed Loop Control, Robotics, Computer Vision and High-Performance Computing form the core of Freeform’s 3D printing ecosystem.

The closed-loop system with real-time monitoring mitigates the quality issues while still allowing speedy printing of complex geometries. And this solution keeps Freeform’s business model simple.

Palitsch said, “We have high-speed computer vision feedback on our system that runs at microsecond scale, and all that data is being processed on state-of-the-art FPGAs and GPUs. We had to build this whole stack ourselves out of stuff that’s only become available in the last few years.”

Freeform’s world-class team comprises industry leaders from the likes of SpaceX, Velo3D, Carbon, Tesla, and Apple, who have successfully overcome the challenges of disruption. Backed by leading Silicon Valley investors including Two Sigma Ventures, Founders Fund, and Threshold Ventures, the start-up has deployed a combination of advanced sensors, artificial intelligence, and several lasers.

These elements work together seamlessly to control the melting process—where a solid substance turns into a liquid— in real-time. They make instant adjustments to prevent defects, resulting in the rapid manufacture of flawless metal parts at a fraction of the cost.

Within a couple of years of its formation (2018), Freeform realised its initial concept into a production-scale printing factory, a development which is now paying rich dividends to players in key industries like advanced energy, automotive, aerospace, and industrial manufacturing.

In 2023, Freeform started scaling production with select customers with the start-up’s first high-volume system, albeit still a “prototype” production system. SpaceX owns close to 50 metal printing machines. However, Palitsch claimed in 2023 that Freeform’s single production prototype can exceed the printed volume of every machine that the Elon Musk-led venture owns.

“From a technology, de-risking perspective, we’re there. Our production prototype can print significantly faster, by a significant margin, than any other system on the planet today. And remember, this is just a prototype. Our next-gen platform will be an order of magnitude, or more, faster still,” the start-up boss commented.

As of October 2024, the “High-volume Metal Printing” solution from Freeform has its own autonomous factory in the United States, a first-of-a-kind in the world, empowering customers to innovate rapidly at scale. The factory prints thousands of parts per day without capital investment, while ensuring that the components are digitally-verified and defect-free. The facility also provides metal additives at conventional manufacturing costs.

“It really depends on the volume of that scale. We’ve delivered parts to customers in less than 24 hours in an industry where your lead time is usually eight weeks or more. That’s pretty darn good. We have the capability of our current system to go from idea to mass production in days or weeks for select materials and customers. Our goal is to be able to do this seamlessly for any customer across a variety of materials and industries, and we’re about one-two years away from that,” Palitsch said in 2023.

A Promising Road Ahead

As of October 2024, Freeform, as per Palitsch, “Is building the largest metal additive dataset in the world that’s why companies like Boeing are coming to us. We have this fundamental, core data collection and processing ability no one else has.”

Freeform is already helping customers to innovate and get products to market faster. In the words of Brandon Connors, Head of Programmes and Manufacturing at Embark Trucks (a leading developer of autonomous technology for the trucking industry), “As Embark brings autonomous trucking technology to market, we need the ability to seamlessly scale up from prototype to production. That means sourcing commercial-grade metal parts on short timelines, consistently and at a practical cost. Freeform’s printing service enables us to meet our manufacturing needs, improves supply chain reliability, and gives us the ability to change designs without impacting delivery time, so that we can accelerate the deployment of our technology.”

The start-up is also enabling customers to easily scale from initial prototype designs into high-volume production.

“Freeform offers us the ability to scale up from prototype to production,” said Nick Doucette, Chief Operations Officer at Ursa Major.

Ursa Major is an American aerospace company that is working with Freeform for the manufacturing of rocket engine parts.

“Freeform’s printing service gives us the ability to change designs rapidly without impacting production cost or delivery time. We are able to get consistent, high-quality metal parts in days instead of weeks,” Doucette stated.

“Freeform has revolutionised the additive approach. Others have tried addressing one component or problem at a time, like thermal stress, but no one else has rethought the entire architecture and approach. Freeform has created more flexibility for how parts are printed, and their cost-effective model has opened up a whole new class of 3D-printable parts,” said Scott Nolan, Investor from Founders Fund in 2023.

The practice of 3D printing is going to be the future of the manufacturing industry, in terms of addressing time and cost concerns. However, even the new method has its own limitations as incumbent technology is too slow, along with the high cost of owning and operating machines, even the best systems on the market today are unable to consistently produce high-quality parts quickly.

Freeform’s autonomous printing factories and manufacturing-as-a-service business model come with the potential to solve these challenges. Its proprietary technology stack brings the scalability of software to physical production by leveraging advanced sensing, real-time controls, and data-driven learning in a scalable factory architecture.

Due to the above factors, the company is producing digitally-verified, high-quality parts at unprecedented speed and cost. This breakthrough approach is enabling all industries to innovate faster by leveraging additive manufacturing to produce parts at a mass production scale. As more funding arrives, expect the start-up to disrupt the metal manufacturing industry with more innovations in the coming days.

The post Start-up of the Week: Meet Freeform, new player simplifying 3D printing methods appeared first on International Finance.

Under the ownership of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s family, the company declared in April 2024 that one of the primary objectives of its projected USD 7 billion capital expenditure budget for 2024 was 5G expansion.

The term “5G networks” describes the next generation of wireless cellular technology, which offers faster upload and download speeds as well as more reliable connections.

Talking about 5G expansion during a third-quarter earnings call, Daniel Hajj, CEO of America Movil, stressed that the technology’s continued adoption “will continue the same way for 2025.”

He called attention to the rollout of 5G in Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

Meanwhile, CFO Daniel Garcia mentioned that refinancing existing debt will be necessary in order to obtain additional financing in certain markets, citing Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.

He continued, “The current debt levels will be maintained.”

The CEO’s remarks come after the company’s disappointing third-quarter results in its primary market of Mexico.

JPMorgan analysts highlighted America Movil’s impressive results in Brazil and Colombia in a research note.

According to Hajj, there is a “very positive trend” as more Brazilian consumers who were previously prepaid subscribers move to contracts requiring regular payments.

To increase cooperation between the Mexican telecom company and space technology company SpaceX, the latter, led by maverick tycoon Elon Musk, is also being investigated (as an investment/partnership opportunity) by America Movil.

According to its executives, SpaceX would be able to join America Movil’s primary mobile services network through the possible agreement.

After announcing that it had tripled its quarterly profit, América Móvil’s shares rose by over 3% following the earnings call.

Who Is Carlos Slim?

Carlos Slim Helu was born in Mexico City, to Lebanese parents along with his five siblings.

Carlos’s father was a successful businessman who instilled a love of commerce in all his children from a very young age. By the time he was just 12 years old, Carlos had already made his first investment in shares of the National Bank.

Carlos worked for his father’s company until he was seventeen years old, following his death in 1953.

He studied civil engineering at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. He taught algebra and linear programming while he was in school, but as soon as he graduated, he entered the business world.

Carlos started his own brokerage at the beginning of his career after receiving years of business training from his father.

He would put his money into small, independent companies, and by 1965, he had expanded to the point where he could buy out or incorporate other businesses.

He invested in many types of businesses, but his primary interests were in real estate, construction, and mining. In 1966, his estimated net worth was USD 40 million.

He kept making investments, and by 1980, he had combined his holdings into a main business known as Grupo Galas.

The year 1982 saw a sharp decline in oil prices, which had a devastating effect on the Mexican economy. As a result, he increased the size of his holdings and made investments in foreign businesses; soon, he owned 50% of “The Hershey Company.”

He kept expanding his authority over telephone communication companies in 1990 with the intention of eventually purchasing “Telmex,” the Mexican phone company, from the government.

Soon after acquiring the business, he created a Telmex version for the US market and even acquired stock in the US mobile firm Tracfone.

Throughout the 2000s, Carlos continued to invest in major corporations, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Telekom Austria, The New York Times Company, and Volaris. By January 2015, he had become the largest individual shareholder of The New York Times Company.

With a USD 56 billion net worth in 2020, Carlos Slim ranks among the richest in the world.

America Movil Triples Quarterly Net Profit In Q3

Meanwhile, America Movil said that its net profit for the third quarter of last year more than tripled. This increase was partly attributed to lower financing costs and higher foreign earnings due to the peso’s decline.

In a filing to the primary stock exchange in Mexico, the company reported a 217% increase in net profit to 6.43 billion Mexican pesos (USD 326.37 million).

The company’s revenues for the period totalled 223.46 billion pesos (USD 11.35 billion), an increase of nearly 10% from the previous year.

Net profit came in below the estimate from analysts polled by LSEG, who had forecast dollar-denominated net earnings of USD 1.11 billion from revenues of USD 11.47 billion for July through September.

The company said its higher earnings were nonetheless helped by the sale of some towers as well as the depreciation of the Mexican peso, boosting the peso-denominated value of earnings made abroad. By the end of September, the Mexican peso had weakened more than 13% against the US dollar compared to a year earlier.

America Movil said the peso had weakened against most currencies in the regions where it operates, “with the notable exception of the Brazilian real.”

The venture’s core earnings, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), rose around 12% in the quarter to 89.42 billion pesos, an increase of 6% stripping out the impacts of foreign exchange.

The company also added 1.8 million subscribers, including 1.4 million post-paid customers, driven mainly by gains in Brazil, the region’s largest economy. In the fixed-line segment, the company added 327,000 broadband accesses.

The post Business Leader of the Week: Carlos Slim-led America Movil makes 5G push as its 2025 theme appeared first on International Finance.