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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is on the launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites, which are expected to eventually rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., April 9, 2025. 

Steve Nesius | Reuters

Amazon on Monday launched the first batch of its Kuiper internet satellites into space after an earlier attempt was scrubbed due to inclement weather.

A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida shortly after 7 p.m. eastern, according to a livestream.

“We had a nice smooth countdown, beautiful weather, beautiful liftoff, and Atlas V is on its way to orbit to take those 27 Kuiper satellites, put them on their way and really start this new era in internet connectivity,” Caleb Weiss, a systems engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.

The satellites are expected to separate from the rocket roughly 280 miles above Earth’s surface, at which point Amazon will look to confirm the satellites can independently maneuver and communicate with its employees on the ground.

Six years ago Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’s Starlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.

The first Kuiper mission kicks off what will need to become a steady cadence of launches in order for Amazon to meet a deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency expects the company to have half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, up in the air by July 2026.

Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy dozens of satellites at a time. In addition to ULA, its launch partners include Musk’s SpaceX (parent company of Starlink), European company Arianespace and Jeff Bezos’ space exploration startup Blue Origin.

Amazon is spending as much as $10 billion to build the Kuiper network. It hopes to begin commercial service for consumers, enterprises and government later this year.

In his shareholder letter earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kuiper will require upfront investment at first, but eventually the company expects it to be “a meaningful operating income and ROIC business for us.” ROIC stands for return on invested capital.

Investors will be listening for any commentary around further capex spend on Kuiper when Amazon reports first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.

WATCH: Amazon launches Project Kuiper prototypes

Amazon launches Project Kuiper prototypes to low orbit as tech giant enters satellite internet race

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Tesla shares drop 6% in premarket trading after auto sales plunge again

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Tesla shares drop 6% in premarket trading after auto sales plunge again

Elon Musk, during a news conference with President Donald Trump, inside the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on May 30, 2025.

Tom Brenner | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Tesla shares fell 6% in premarket trading on Thursday after the company reported a second straight quarter of declining automotive sales.

Elon Musk’s electric carmaker reported a top and bottom line miss on second-quarter results, noting that automotive revenue fell 16% year-on-year to $16.7 billion.

On an earnings call, Musk said Tesla “probably could have a few rough quarters” ahead as a result of the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits.

“I am not saying that we will, but we could,” Musk said.

Tesla has been facing rising competition in key markets like China and Europe, especially from lower costs Chinese electric vehicle players.

Data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, or ACEA, released on Thursday show Tesla’s new car registrations, declined in June in Europe.

Tesla shares have been hammered this year with the stock down nearly 18% to date, not including the Thursday premarket move.

Tesla second-quarter earnings: The key takeaways

Along with Tesla’s core auto business coming under pressure, Musk’s own political activity has been in focus. 

The tech billionaire played a key role at the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, under President Donald Trump‘s administration and has endorsed Germany’s extreme anti-immigrant AfD party. In recent months, the two former allies have clashed over the president’s spending bill. Musk has since said he is forming his own political party.

Some investors have urged the billionaire to step away from politics, for fear that his involvement is hurting Tesla’s brand and sales.

Tesla investors have been eagerly waiting for the company to release a cheaper model to refresh the aging lineup and perhaps reinvigorate sales. Tesla management said it started limited production of the more affordable model in June and expects to ramp that up in the second half of the year.

Still, the outlook for the rest of the year remains murky as Tesla did not provide any official guidance — in a departure from earlier this year, when management said Tesla would return to growth in 2025.

“Management initially guided for deliveries growth in 2025. We interpret no guidance as a signal that management is no longer forecasting volume growth. This aligns with our expectation for deliveries to decline in 2025,” Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said in a Wednesday note.

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No ‘woke AI’ in Washington, Trump says as he launches American AI action plan

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No ‘woke AI’ in Washington, Trump says as he launches American AI action plan

U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order related to AI after signing it during the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington D.C., U.S., July 23, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to keep “woke AI” models out of Washington and to turn the country into an “AI export powerhouse” through the signing of three artificial intelligence-focused executive orders on Wednesday. 

The phasing out of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — an umbrella term encompassing various practices, policies, and strategies aimed at fostering a more inclusive and equitable culture — has been a major focus of the second Trump administration. Now, the White House is bringing the battle to AI. 

The “PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” order states that the federal government “has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.”

The executive order identifies DEI as one of the “most pervasive and destructive” of these ideologies to be kept out of AI models used by the government. 

“LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI,” the order said, adding that developers should not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM’s outputs unless those judgments are prompted by users. 

As acknowledged by the order, the use of AI is increasingly prevalent across Americans’ daily lives and is expected to play a critical role in the way they learn and consume information — making “reliable outputs” necessary.

In the eyes of the Trump administration, DEI in AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes; distort and manipulate AI model outputs in regard to race and sex; and incorporate concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality and systemic racism. 

“DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI,” the anti-woke order reads. 

Without giving specifics, the order refers to past examples of this, including a major AI model that changed the race or sex of historical figures such as the pope and Founding Fathers when prompted for images.  

In response to backlash last year, Google had pulled its Gemini AI image generation feature, saying it offered “inaccuracies” in historical pictures. Months later, the company rolled out an improved version. 

Instead of “woke AI”, the government should procure “truth-seeking” AI models that “prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory,” the order stated. 

However, it adds that the federal government “should be hesitant” to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace.

In other AI developments on Wednesday, the Trump administration signed an order to spur innovation in the technology by removing what it called “onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment.”

Another order aims to establish and implement an “American AI Exports Program” to support the development and deployment of the U.S. AI technology stack abroad. 

The moves are part of the administration’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” which it says identifies 90 federal policy actions across three pillars: the acceleration of innovation, building of AI infrastructure, and leadership in international diplomacy and security.

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Estonia’s tech elite are getting behind a European challenger to Robinhood

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Estonia's tech elite are getting behind a European challenger to Robinhood

The Lightyear app.

Lightyear

Some of the biggest names of Estonia’s tech scene are backing Lightyear, a startup looking to become Europe’s answer to commission-free trading pioneer Robinhood.

Based in London, Lightyear develops an app that lets users invest in a range of over 5,000 stocks, exchange-traded funds and money market funds. It was founded by two former Wise employees, Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, in 2021.

The company is set to announce later on Thursday that it has raised $23 million in a new round of funding led by NordicNinja, a Japanese-backed venture capital fund based in Europe. Estonian tech entrepreneur Markus Villig, who co-founded ride-hailing unicorn Bolt has also invested.

Lightyear CEO Sokk told CNBC that the firm didn’t necessarily need to raise more cash for the business but chose to do so because of the caliber of investors involved.

“People like Markus have been building massive companies in many, many markets, and this is something that’s really exciting for us because it’s so hard to go into all the markets and understand their local dynamics and what people need,” he said.

Lightyear currently operates in 25 countries. However, with help from angel investors like Bolt’s Villig, the firm will be able to launch in another five markets “pretty quickly,” Sokk said.

Villig told CNBC that it can be “challenging to scale a business across multiple countries in a heavily regulated sector,” adding that Europe’s less developed retail investing market provides ample opportunities for disruption.

Other Estonian angel investors who have previously backed Lightyear also participated in the funding round, including Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Checkout.com’s former Chief Technology Officer Ott Kaukver and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn.

Estonia is widely considered a prominent tech hub in Europe. The country is home to the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe, according to the Estonian Investment Agency. Meanwhile, Estonia’s e-residency scheme has also enabled foreigners to become digital residents and launch their companies in the country.

The new round values five-year-old Lightyear at between $200 million and $300 million, significantly higher than its valuation in 2022 when it raised $25 million, according to two people familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous as the information has not been made public.

Pushing into AI, crypto

Alongside the additional funding, Lightyear is also launching new artificial intelligence features. AI has been a hot area of investment for startups following the explosive popularity of generative AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

One of the features, called “Why Did It Move,” allows users to select a point in time on a stock chart and see what happened that day to cause a jump or fall in a company’s share price. The firm is also using AI to provide “bull” and “bear” theses on stocks as well as short updates on assets in their own portfolios.

“In the end, you’re going to have two models” when it comes to investing, according to Sokk: “Self-driving money,” where you ask an AI to achieve certain investment goals, and a “manual gearbox” approach of figuring out different strategies and approaches on your own.

Still, the market for online investment products is heavily competitive. Lightyear faces some hefty competition from both incumbent brokerage services as well as more modern tech players such as Robinhood, Revolut and Trade Republic.

However, Sokk insists Lightyear is building a differentiated enough product to stand out from the crowd. While competitors like Robinhood profit from offering risky products like crypto and margin trading, Lightyear is focused on serving long-term investors, he told CNBC.

To that end, Sokk said Lightyear is planning on rolling out a crypto product of its own in two months’ time — one that’s “more focused on a long-term view.”

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