Good evening.

It’s Wednesday, July 16 — and yes, you’re getting this at night. No, we’re not drunk. We’re just experimenting with open rates. We're switching things up, seeing who’s still scrolling instead of sleeping.

Today in history, the Moon got its first human visitors. On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 lifted off from Kennedy Space Center. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Moon and rewrote history.

Anyway, if you’re reading this from bed, congrats: you’re already halfway to a healthy sleep routine. Sleep tight. Dream big. Let’s get into it.

Today’s stories:

• Ritz-Carlton launches floating marble palace

• Japan sets insane internet speed record

• Larry Ellison overtakes Zuck for #2 spot

• Apple buys $500M worth of magnets

• NYC’s Bubble House lists for $5.75M

• Sperm freezing now comes by mail

• Saudi may shrink its desert dream

• Scientists clone a yak. Yes, really

• Nvidia can sell AI chips to China

• Google drops $25B on AI power

• Teens can now ride in Waymos

  and more…

Stocks spun midair Wednesday after a White House official told CNBC that Trump was edging closer to firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell — news that initially sent the S&P 500 sliding. But the index clawed back gains after Trump denied the report, even as Wall Street stayed jittery he might still pull the trigger.

The S&P 500 ended up 0.32% at 6,263.70. The Nasdaq added 0.26% to close at a record 20,730.49 — its ninth of the year. The Dow climbed 231 points, or 0.53%, to 44,254.78, after falling as much as 264 points earlier in the day.

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Ellison Overtakes Zuckerberg as World’s Second-Richest Person

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison just leapfrogged Mark Zuckerberg to become the world’s second-richest human, with a net worth now at $251.2 billion. Oracle shares have nearly tripled since ChatGPT dropped in 2022, and in just the past three months they’ve soared 90%, because AI now prints money. The latest boost came Tuesday, when news broke that U.S. chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD could resume exports to China. Oracle popped 5.7%, and Ellison, now 80, casually bumped Zuck down a spot. 

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Nvidia gets the green light to sell AI chips to China. The U.S. government just did a 180 and told Nvidia it can go ahead and sell its AI chips to China after all. The same chips that were banned in April. The same ones specifically designed to sneak past the last round of export rules. Now Nvidia’s H20 chips are cleared for takeoff — pending paperwork, of course. The company says it’s filing for licenses and Washington has promised they’ll be approved. This comes right after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had a cozy little meeting with Trump, complete with the usual job-creation buzzwords and AI world-domination chatter. A few handshakes later, trade tensions are suddenly on pause and Nvidia’s back to business.

Apple drops $500M on American magnets. Apple just threw $500 million at MP Materials to lock down rare earth magnets — the little things that make your iPhone vibrate and your AirPods click together. The move is all about avoiding another “oops, China stopped exporting” situation. MP Materials runs the only rare earths mine in the U.S. and just landed a juicy Pentagon deal too, turning its stock into a rocket. Not bad for a company that was crying about prices last year and almost merged with an Aussie rival. Apple will prepay $200 million for magnets made from recycled material, because green tech supremacy sounds better in a press release. The magnets will roll out from Texas in 2027, far from any Chinese shipping port — or logic. This is all part of Apple’s plan to look patriotic while still quietly manufacturing most of its stuff in places where labor is cheaper than a New York bagel.

Google drops $25 billion to feed the AI beast. Google is throwing $25 billion into data centers and AI infrastructure across the U.S.’s biggest power grid, because training chatbots isn’t exactly energy-efficient. It’s also tossing in another $3 billion to give two aging hydropower plants in Pennsylvania a much-needed glow-up. The plan is part of a bigger energy deal with Brookfield to snag 3,000 megawatts of hydro power nationwide. The PJM grid, which covers 13 states and includes northern Virginia’s data center jungle, is already stretched thin. Google’s cash infusion is just the latest in a $90 billion tech energy arms race announced this week at a Pittsburgh AI summit that included Alphabet execs, Trump, and enough lobbyists to power a small city.

Saudi Arabia reconsiders its 105-mile desert fantasy. Saudi Arabia is rethinking The Line — its 170-km straight-line, car-free, utopia-in-the-desert plan. Consultants have been hired to take a long, hard look at whether this mega project is feasible or just a really expensive Pinterest board. A unit of the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund wants ideas on how to maybe tweak, scale back, or commercialize the futuristic dream. Translation: the budget's tight, the oil money’s not flowing like it used to, and someone finally asked how many people actually want to live inside a corridor. The project, part of Saudi’s flashy Vision 2030, is getting squeezed by oil prices hovering at $71 a barrel — far below the $96 needed to break even, and miles away from the $113 required to fund the crown prince’s fantasy builds. 

Meet the First Yak to Be Cloned

Chinese scientists just pulled off the world’s first cloned yak, delivered via C-section like a true diva. Born July 11 in Tibet’s Damxung County, the 74-pound calf came out heavier than your average yak baby and strutted off like it had a brand deal. The researchers used somatic cell cloning — science’s version of copy-paste — to create this high-altitude superstar. Yaks are basically the Swiss Army knife of the Tibetan plateau, doing everything from feeding families to fueling stoves with their dung. This definitely marks a milestone in livestock science.

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Japan breaks internet speed record. Japan just hit 125,000 gigabytes per second. That’s 4 million times faster than the average U.S. broadband. The kind of speed that makes your Wi-Fi look like a pigeon with a USB stick. This record-breaker blew past the old record of 50,250 GB/s like it was a dial-up modem. They used new optical fiber tech to shoot data across 1,120 miles — roughly New York to Florida, but without the traffic or tears. The speed isn’t independently verified yet, but neither is your cousin’s crypto coin. Still, it’s fast enough to download the entire Internet Archive in under four minutes. 

Teenagers can now ride driverless cars alone. Waymo is now giving 14- to 17-year-olds their own accounts to summon driverless cars — starting in Phoenix. Parents can link accounts and stalk their kid’s ride in real-time, complete with receipts and “specially trained support agents,” aka adults paid to babysit a robot taxi. Until now, you had to be 18 to ride solo, but Waymo’s desperate for more users as it expands into more cities and tries to justify all that Alphabet AI money. Uber did the teen thing last year, so naturally, Waymo’s now playing catch-up. 

Sperm freezing is now a startup trend. Biotech founder Alexander McKinnon was so exhausted last summer he thought he had burnout. Turns out, it was low testosterone. The steroids helped — but tanked his sperm count. So, like any health-conscious tech bro, he froze his swimmers. He didn’t even have to leave the house. A company called Legacy mailed him a cup, some pink goo, and a padlocked box. He did the deed, dropped it off, and boom — his future children are now chilling on ice somewhere in New Jersey. Legacy is riding a $4 billion wave of male fertility anxiety, offering app-based semen analysis, mail-in storage, and branding that screams “masculine convenience.” It's backed by VCs, celebs like Justin Bieber, and an army-green cooler that wouldn’t look out of place in a military bunker. Sperm counts globally are half of what they were 40 years ago. No one knows exactly why, but startups are cashing in. And all you need is an iPhone and five minutes. 

Ritz-Carlton Launches Superyacht for Celebs Who’ve Run Out of Land

The Ritz-Carlton’s latest flex, Luminara, just cruised into the Mediterranean dripping in marble, mahogany, and famous faces. On board for its maiden voyage: Kendall Jenner, Naomi Campbell, Tom Brady, Sting, Martha Stewart, and every other person you’ve seen in a Super Bowl ad or skincare campaign. The 794-foot floating hotel features 226 suites with butlers, floor-to-ceiling windows, and enough Emperador marble to make Versailles jealous. Martha served cocktails, Janelle Monáe DJ’d, Sting crooned, and a drone show reminded everyone this was still technically a boat. There are five restaurants curated by actual Michelin humans, seven bars, a wine vault, a Warhol collection, and spa treatments more expensive than your rent. For children, there’s a Ritz Kids Club. For adults, there’s Chanel and Hermès. After pretending to be in Rome for Instagram, the yacht will float to places like Vietnam, Japan, and Alaska, where you too can experience curated wilderness — from the comfort of a temperature-controlled suite.

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NYC’s Bubble House is on the market. The Upper East Side’s quirkiest rebel — aka the “Bubble House” — just hit the market for the first time in 50 years, asking $5.75 million. Designed in 1969 by architect Maurice Medcalfe, who clearly had a thing for portholes and outer space, the four-story home stands out like a UFO crash-landed in Lenox Hill. Its convex oval windows (yes, some of them rotate open) give it major space-age-meets-nautical vibes. Tourists and architecture nerds have been gawking at it for decades. Some even knocked on the door — a bold move in a city where eye contact is already pushing it. Originally a basic 19th-century brownstone, the home got a full modernist facelift in the late '60s and never looked back. Inside: 4,736 square feet of retro realness with four bedrooms, five bathrooms, and enough personality to terrify your HOA.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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