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Europe
BBC Business

SpaceX IPO raised $10bn more than thought

SpaceX raised $10bn (£7.5bn) more than initially thought when it sold shares to the public on Friday - bringing in a total of $85.7bn. Elon Musk's rocket and Artificial Intellgience (AI) company pulled off the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in history when it joined New York's Nasdaq stock exchange last week. The listing had raised $75bn from investors, which Musk told employees will be spent funding a "significant growth phase". But the banks which backed the IPO exercised a so-called "greenshoe" clause, which let them purchase an extra $10bn of SpaceX shares. The extra $10bn raised, revealed in a statement by SpaceX announcing the completion of the listing, would by itself rank as one of the biggest IPOs in history. It came thanks to a financial mechanism known as an overallotment option, more commonly referred to as a "greenshoe" option. When a company goes public in a highly anticipated listing, investor demand can outstrip the initial supply of shares. To prevent wild price swings and ensure a smoother launch, a greenshoe agreement lets the banks handling the listing sell more shares than originally planned. In SpaceX's case, appetite was exceptionally high. The underwriters, which included Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and JPMorgan, exercised the option in full, purchasing an additional 83.3 million shares directly from the company to meet the huge demand. The listing also saw Musk elevated to trillionaire status, according to Bloomberg calculations. And momentum behind SpaceX continued on Monday, with shares surging by more than 19% to $192. Because the vast majority of Musk's wealth is directly tied up in SpaceX equity, his new milestone status remains entirely dependent on the market. A sharp decline in the stock could strip him of the title just as quickly as continued gains could multiply it.

SpaceX IPO raised $10bn more than thought
Asia-Pacific
The Straits Times

Why $94,100 homes remain unsold in Malaysia

Facade of housing in Bukit Bintang. According to Napic, a total of 14,201 completed residential units worth $869 million remained unsold as of the first quarter of 2026. Recent data from Malaysia’s National Property Information Centre (Napic) has exposed a profound structural contradiction in the country’s residential property market. Far from a simple housing shortage, the nation is wrestling with a growing property overhang that highlights a widening disconnect between developer-led supply and the realities of household purchasing power. According to Napic, a total of 14,201 completed residential units worth RM2.77 billion (S$869 million) remained unsold as of the first quarter of 2026. Crucially, these properties account for 43.3 per cent of Malaysia’s total property overhang, with the vast majority concentrated in high-density economic hubs like the Klang Valley, Johor and Perak. This data shatters a long-held real estate assumption. For years, conventional wisdom dictated that any property priced below the RM300,000 threshold would find immediate mass-market demand. The current reality proves otherwise. The rising property overhang is no longer simply a question of headline affordability. It is a deeper crisis of product mismatch, location flaws, financing barriers and speculative development assumptions. To understand why homes priced at RM300,000 and below remain stagnant on the market, the industry must look past the headline price. True affordability is determined by a household’s net monthly cash flow, not just the initial purchase price. Several structural factors explain this inventory accumulation. While a RM280,000 apartment sounds accessible, the true cost of ownership is often burdensome for lower- and middle-income households. Beyond the mortgage, buyers must secure upfront capital for down payments, legal fees, stamping fees and moving costs.

Why $94,100 homes remain unsold in Malaysia
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Tata unit says 'extensive damage' from fire at Delhi data centre hampers recovery

The cause of the fire is not yet clear, and Delhi fire authorities said it occurred in lithium battery units. (Representational image) A fire at a New Delhi data centre owned by Singapore’s ‌ST Telemedia and Tata Communications caused “extensive damage” to parts of the facility, making data recovery challenging, ​a Tata letter seen by Reuters shows. The firm, part of the salt-to-aviation Tata conglomerate, told Indian stock ⁠exchanges on June 5 it had activated business continuity protocols to minimise disruptions after an early morning fire at the STT Global Data Centres India facility. One data centre client, India’s Matrix Cellular, which provides international SIM cards, told Reuters it is struggling to recover two decades ‌of data lost in the blaze. Some of Google Cloud’s intermittent network disruptions in India also relate to the incident, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said. Television news images from inside the facility ‌on the day of the fire showed server racks and electrical infrastructure that appeared to be completely burnt, with ‌ceiling ⁠panels collapsed and debris littering the floor. The fire was “so severe that it caused extensive damage” to parts of ⁠the facility and hindered services, Tata Communications unit Novamesh told a client in the June 15 letter, which has not previously been reported. “Despite our ongoing best efforts to recover the data, the severity of the damage ... presents significant challenges to the recovery of the affected data and systems,” it ​said in the letter sent to Matrix Cellular and ‌reviewed by Reuters. The cause of the fire is not yet clear, and Delhi fire authorities said it occurred in lithium battery units. “Matrix has potentially lost access to over 20 years of accumulated operational and business data stored in the affected Tata data centre,” CEO Gaurav ‌Khanna told Reuters. “It’s been 20 days and they have not restored backup. If there is a backup it ​should have been restored by now.” On June 9 Google said on its incidents page “a fire at a third-party data center facility required an emergency power shutdown of networking equipment”, without naming Tata.

Tata unit says 'extensive damage' from fire at Delhi data centre hampers recovery
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

West Bengal framing rules to incentivise fresh investment; benefits must match neighbouring states, says FM Swapan Dasgupta

West Bengal Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta on Wednesday said the government is working on framing the necessary rules to incentivise fresh investment in the State, underlining that, at the outset, such incentives need to be on par with those of neighbouring States like Odisha and Assam to ensure a level playing field for attracting investment. “I understand that we must make the structure, the government incentives etc on par with the rest of the neighbouring states. So that Assam doesn’t have a disproportionate advantage. Odisha doesn’t benefit too much because we didn’t quite get our sums right. So, we should have a level playing field. And, mercifully today both Odisha and Assam, our immediate two neighbouring states, have grown sufficiently in self-confidence thanks to why we have declined,” Dasgupta said at an Assocham event. Presenting the first Budget of the new BJP government in the State on Monday, the Finance Minister said the government will introduce a “West Bengal Investment Promotion Framework” to stimulate economic growth, promote industrial investment and generate employment. Its main thrust will be on industrial development through a cluster approach along industrial corridors. Notably, industry bodies were urging the reinstatement of industrial incentives, which had been withdrawn by the erstwhile Trinamool Congress government, to restore investor confidence and provide policy certainty. Speaking at the Assocham event, Dasgupta said, “Actually, it is West Bengal which needs to give extra ( incentives to industries compared with Odisha and Assam) just to catch up to where we have gone behind.” Criticising the previous governments of West Bengal, he said Bengal suffered from deindustrialisation, a unique feature for any State. “We have suffered a problem of woefully mismanaged public finances, which resulted in a crippling public debt. And more importantly we suffered from the problem of a very hostile anti-business environment,” Dasgupta said. According to him, the most important contribution the new government can make in the coming days is to assure everyone that there is a tectonic shift in West Bengal’s public culture and that, from a position of being contrarian, the State is now part of the mainstream. “We are pro-business and unequivocally so, emphatically so, pro-business. And more importantly, we want to link our economy to the national economy. I think it was that disengagement from the national economy which cost us a lot.” Dasgupta said a government should be receptive to listening to “legitimate concerns” of different industries and try to address those. “We cannot sit back and say that look we sort of carry the position of neutrality to such an extent. We don’t want to be neutral. We want to be pro-business. And I think that’s the change which we want to see,” the Finance Minister added. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

West Bengal framing rules to incentivise fresh investment; benefits must match neighbouring states, says FM Swapan Dasgupta
North America
CNBC Finance

Rivian CEO taking different approach than Elon Musk for humanoid robotics company

PARK CITY, Utah — Rivian Automotive CEO RJ Scaringe envisions a day in the not-so-distant future when the electric vehicle maker's manufacturing employees will have a new type of colleague: humanoid robots. "There's going to be thousands of people that are collaborating alongside these robots. They're going to be taking pictures, 'Hey, check this out! My co-worker's name is Phil, and he's a robot,'" Scaringe said during a media event for the launch of the Rivian R2 EV. The 43-year-old automotive enthusiast and tech entrepreneur started a robotics company last year called Mind Robotics. The company has raised more than $1 billion, according to Scaringe. Humanoid robots are designed to be shaped and move like people. Artificial intelligence algorithms power their abilities along with complex hardware like semiconductors. Proponents say they could be used in various settings, from factories to hospitality and even in the home, while others have raised concerns about the devices replacing human jobs. Scaringe said the company expects to reveal its first product in less than a year, with Rivian as a large minority shareholder and launch customer. Mind currently has roughly 20 open positions ranging from software and hardware engineers to data architects, according to its website. Scaringe, who is executive chair and acting CEO of Mind, told CNBC that the plan is to keep the robotics company separate from Rivian, as opposed to the automaker partially shifting to make humanoid robots, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk is doing with his company. "We have a deep relationship, and that was actually how we structured it," Scaringe said during an interview. "A big part of structuring the business was to allow me to be able to spend time on both." The robotics strategy adds to a narrative of Scaringe doing things differently than Musk, despite obvious similarities in their companies. There have been enough comparisons that Rivian has even been called the "anti-Tesla" and Scaringe has been referred to as the "anti-Elon." "I'd say there's a lot of alignment there, and I think that's because, obviously, I'm biased, but I think they're right ... that autonomy is a super important technology," Scaringe said about Tesla and Rivian. "But in terms of the products, they, in many ways, couldn't be more different." So far Rivian and Mind are assisting each other, though, much like Musk's companies have also done during developmental phases. That includes Musk's xAI company merging with SpaceX before the company's record-setting initial public offering on Friday as well as SpaceX purchasing vehicles from Tesla. Scaringe said Rivian will be a "huge beneficiary" of Mind, which is using data from Rivian for training its AI models. Along with Rivian's equity stake, the automaker will be Mind's first customer for the robots. "We realized it was such a big opportunity that deserved to be its own company," said Scaringe. He said he believes there is a multitrillion-dollar total addressable market for industrial labor.

Rivian CEO taking different approach than Elon Musk for humanoid robotics company
North America
CNBC Finance

Drugmakers race to find a place in the next wave of obesity drugs

Drugmakers are only months into introducing GLP-1 pills and navigating huge changes in how patients pay for weight-loss drugs. Even so, they're already outlining their visions for the future of obesity drugs. At the American Diabetes Association's Scientific Sessions in New Orleans last week, drugmakers pitched doctors and investors on the idea of new shots and pills, drugs that can be taken less frequently, and new treatments beyond GLP-1s that could come with fewer side effects. The attendees debated where all these new treatments might fit in, especially with Eli Lilly currently dominating the market for shots and impressing attendees with data from its experimental triple-acting drug retatrutide that produced the most weight loss seen yet. Lilly and rival Novo Nordisk showcased new GLP-1 pills they each introduced earlier this year. Both companies made the case that oral options are bringing more people into the market for weight loss drugs, with Novo touting that prescriptions of its Wegovy pill reached more than 3 million just five months into the launch. Behind the two market leaders are a wave of new entrants hoping to get into the massive market in the coming years. Structure Therapeutics and AstraZeneca each shared mid-stage data from their respective GLP-1 pills. Should those oral drugs succeed in Phase 3 trials, they would likely come to the market around 2029, three years behind Lilly, which introduced its small molecule pill Foundayo earlier this year (the Wegovy pill is an oral peptide). Structure Therapeutics CEO Ray Stevens thinks there will still be plenty of room in the market by then. "Who wins at the end of the day with competition? Patients, and that's really what this is all about," Stevens said, adding that being the second small molecule drug will be important. "We're really pushing hard to get into that second position behind orforglipron, now Foundayo." Pfizer also unveiled mid-stage data from a shot it gained through its $10 billion acquisition of Metsera. The drug showed the potential to be given monthly, which Pfizer thinks would be more convenient than the currently weekly shots. Another drugmaker, Amgen, is testing a different drug that could be given monthly or possibly even quarterly. Susan Sweeney, Amgen's executive vice president of obesity and related conditions, said the company sees an advantage in people not needing to take a weekly injection and instead thinking about treatment as little as four times a year. "For somebody who's lived with obesity for a long time, it can be a major advantage in not remembering your disease," she said. Some companies are looking beyond GLP-1 and other hot targets like GIP and glucagon to emerging areas like amylin, another hormone produced in the pancreas that helps people feel full. One company is Zealand Pharma, which presented mid-stage data from a drug called petrelintide that it's developing with Roche.

Drugmakers race to find a place in the next wave of obesity drugs
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp as Meta pumps $900 mn into CRED

Meta is investing $900 million (about ₹8,550 crore) into fintech start-up CRED, valuing the company at $4.5 billion, while founder Kunal Shah will step away from the business to take over as the global head of WhatsApp, marking one of the most high-profile leadership transitions in India’s start-up ecosystem. The investment, part of a Series H funding round comprising primary and secondary share purchases, gives Meta a minority stake, specific details of which were not provided, in CRED adding that it will not get access to Cred customer data. As part of the deal, Shah will relinquish his operating responsibilities at CRED and join Meta’s senior leadership ranks as the next global head of WhatsApp. While he will initially continue to be based in India, he is expected to spend significant time travelling between India and Meta’s headquarters in California before relocating permanently. “He will start from India and travel in between, though he will eventually join the team in MPK(short for Menlo Park, California),” a Meta spokesperson said. At CRED’s $4 billion pre-money valuation, a $900 million investment implies a stake of around 20 per cent. But with nearly half the deal structured as secondary share purchases from existing investors, likely at a discount to the headline valuation, Meta is expected to emerge with a larger-than-20 per cent ownership position in the fintech start-up. People familiar with the matter said Shah will continue to remain a shareholder in CRED but will not be part of the board and will have no involvement in the company’s day-to-day operations. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said Shah’s experience building and scaling CRED made him the right choice to lead WhatsApp, a platform that has increasingly become central to the company’s commerce and payments ambitions. Meta said its investment reflects confidence in both India’s digital economy and CRED’s growth prospects. “CRED is one of India’s most promising technology companies that provides financial services helping India’s economy grow. We’re excited about the progress to date and to see how this investment will fuel continued success for CRED,” a company spokesperson said. Industry observers view Shah’s appointment through the lens of WhatsApp’s monetisation challenge. “One of the issues WhatsApp is facing is how to monetise. They have launched WhatsApp Payments in India, but the uptake was not significant,” said Satish Meena, adviser at Datum Intelligence. According to Meena, India is likely to become the primary testing ground for new monetisation initiatives under Shah’s leadership, spanning payments, advertising and business-focused services. “His role will be to monetise WhatsApp globally, and India will be where most of the experimentation will happen,” he said. With Shah departing, Chief Financial Officer Miten Sampat will take charge as interim chief executive as CRED prepares for its next phase of growth and an eventual public market debut. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Kunal Shah to lead WhatsApp as Meta pumps $900 mn into CRED
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Meta’s Cox sought Kunal Shah’s WhatsApp advice — then made him leader

Meta Platforms Inc.’s decision to hand leadership of WhatsApp to Kunal Shah, one of India’s most prominent angel investors and the founder of fintech star Cred, started with a cold email. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox reached out to Shah directly in the spring, seeking advice on picking the future leader of WhatsApp. Cox had been calling entrepreneurs and investors in places like India, Brazil and Mexico, countries where WhatsApp is a dominant part of business and culture, and Shah’s ideas about the future of the app left an immediate impression. “He had an incredible set of answers,” Cox recalled in an interview with Bloomberg. “At the end of the call, I asked him if maybe he and I should talk about him doing it.” Shah on Monday was announced as the new global head of WhatsApp, one of world’s largest communications services and a potentially lucrative driver of Meta’s future revenue. Despite an audience of more than three billion monthly users, WhatsApp’s business remains relatively underdeveloped for its size. It makes billions each year from paid messaging and ads that push users into WhatsApp chats with businesses, but is still in the early stages of rolling out other key money-making products, including subscriptions and artificial intelligence agents. “While it’s come very far,” Shah posted on X, “the delta between WhatsApp today and its full potential is massive.” Maximizing the potential now falls to the 47-year-old entrepreneur, who has a track record of building and identifying successful ventures in India’s incredibly competitive online arena. A former adviser to Sequoia Capital India, Shah has made angel investments in more than 250 startups, including Indonesian super-app Gojek and Indian payments company Razorpay. He’s also founded multiple companies, most recently Cred, which offers its 17 million monthly users rewards for paying their credit card bills on time. As part of his recruitment to run WhatsApp, Meta invested $900 million into Cred, taking a roughly 20% stake. Cred is now valued at $4.5 billion post-money, though the business has yet to turn an annual profit in its eight years of operation. Shah’s experience growing a business in India is a significant part of his lure for Cox and Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, with Zuckerberg lauding his “builder mentality.” Over the three-month hiring process that involved multiple trips for Shah to Meta’s headquarters in California, including dinner at Zuckerberg’s house, Cox developed a keen sense that Meta would benefit from someone who lives with WhatsApp in a way that few in the US can fully appreciate. “It’s almost like speaking a language,” Cox said of understanding the app’s usage in markets like India. “There’s a lot of intuition that comes with that that’s hard to gather by having someone explain it to you or even learning it on a research trip.” Shah was born in Ahmedabad, a city in western India, and raised in the financial capital of Mumbai. He studied philosophy at Wilson College in the city before enrolling in a management course, but he didn’t stay long; he left after a few months to pursue entrepreneurship, according to his LinkedIn profile. He’s created multiple successful startups. In 2010, Shah started FreeCharge, a startup that rewarded users recharging prepaid mobile phones with discount coupons before expanding into digital payments. Five years later, he sold FreeCharge to SoftBank Group Corp.-backed Snapdeal, then one of India’s largest e-commerce companies, for about $450 million. Shah founded Cred in 2018, which rewards consumers with strong credit scores for paying off their credit cards in a timely manner. It has since expanded into lending, payments, insurance and wealth management, and its investors include Peak XV Partners, DST Global and Tiger Global. And, of course, Meta.

Meta’s Cox sought Kunal Shah’s WhatsApp advice — then made him leader
Europe
BBC Business

Cadbury chocolate-owner Mondelez defends staying in Russia

The boss of Cadbury chocolate-maker Mondelez has defended its decision to continue doing business in Russia but admitted he is "not pleased" the firm's taxes are funding the war with Ukraine. Chief executive Dirk Van de Put said it was the "right decision" to stay after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, saying pulling out would risk thousands of jobs and leave Mondelez vulnerable to the Kremlin taking control of its local operations. Many Western companies such as McDonald's exited Russia after it launched a full-scale assault on its neighbour. Others remained but Mondelez said it had discontinued new investment in its Russian business and suspended spending on advertising. In an in-depth discussion as part of the BBC's Big Boss Interview series, Van de Put said: "I think over time you try to be neutral in the whole conflict. We're not trying to take any side. "I think we did the right thing for our people in Russia. Can we be criticised for that? Yeah, of course. We pay taxes in Russia that helps the war. I'm not pleased about that." Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the country has generated sales of between $1bn and $1.4bn a year for Mondelez. Last year, more than 70 MPs signed a letter from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ukraine to Van de Put calling for Mondelez to sever its business ties with Russia. Alex Sobel, chair of the parliamentary group, wrote: "Continuing to operate in a nation responsible for the deaths of countless Ukrainian civilians and the abduction of thousands of children cannot be justified under any definition of 'business as usual'." Van de Put told the BBC he believed if Mondelez pulled out of Russia: "They would have confiscated our plant. It would have probably given them a much bigger source of income, keep on selling our products to fund the war. "So I feel that in the end it is not the most popular decision, but I think it was the right decision." Mondelez, which also produces Philadelphia cream cheese, Ritz crackers and triangular chocolate Toblerone, continues to operate in Ukraine although the conflict is never far away.

Cadbury chocolate-owner Mondelez defends staying in Russia