Author: Bloomberg
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SpaceX’s AI spending spree overshadows a stronger than expected debut earnings report
SpaceX’s first earnings report since its record IPO beat revenue forecasts, but a jump in AI spending to $18.4 billion spooked investors and sent shares tumbling. Elon Musk, born and raised in South Africa, still faces a domestic hurdle unrelated to Wall Street: Starlink remains unlicensed here, blocked by ownership rules requiring local equity that…
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BN Daybreak: AfriForum targets Malema; Nedbank surges; SA pitches power to China; SpaceX
Listen here In todays Daybreak, AfriForum’s CEO reveals an upcoming contempt of court case against Julius Malema for land grab calls. Paramount Group’s founder warns of a potential uprising in South Africa. Locally, Nedbank report strong interim results, while a scam victim shares his R450,000 loss. Globally, SpaceX and AMD release earnings, and South Africa…
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Stroke victim loses R450,000 disability money on online trading platform
Listen here Another BizNews tribe member has suffered a huge online trading platform loss. In this interview with Chris Steyn, Tommy Salem describes how he ended up on the FXSI platform after clicking on a clip showing AfriForum’s Kallie Kriel before losing R450 000 in two months. It was money Tommy could ill afford to…
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Nedbank H1 results: 12% underlying growth, dividend up, East African expansion on track
Financial highlights: • Headline earnings of R8 405m, up by 0.1% (June 2025: R8 399m). • Revenue of R38 235m, up by 6% (June 2025: R35 981m). • Credit loss ratio of 95 bps (June 2025: 81 bps). • Total operating expenses of R21 696m, up by 3% (June 2025: R21…
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The defence industrialist warning South Africa is out of time, and what it stands to lose.
Listen here Ivor Ichikowitz turns sixty this year, and by his own account he’s never felt more energised. As founder of Paramount, the defence and aerospace group he built into a business operating in twenty countries, he’s used to controversy. But in this conversation with Alec Hogg, he’s not talking weapons. He’s talking about what…
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BizNews Edge: SA is sitting on a defence asset it doesn’t know it has; Malema; Tshwane and more
Listen here Thirteen votes vanish, a city manager gets his job back, and Tshwane’s bondholders are left wondering what happens to every tender signed while he was out. Kallie Kriel tells Chris Steyn that AfriForum is coming for Julius Malema again, and this time the government’s in the crosshairs too. Then Ivor Ichikowitz, the famously…
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Kallie Kriel: AfriForum’s legal eagles to swoop on “Land Grab” Malema
Listen here In this interview with Chris Steyn, Kallie Kriel, the CEO of AfriForum, describes the legal battle being fought against the Expropriation Act in the Cape High Court this week. Detailing the implications of the act in current form, Kriel warns that after the Local Government Elections in November, municipalities under MK control could…
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BN Portfolio: Palantir shares surge as CEO Karp calls demand “otherworldly”
Palantir Technologies shares jumped as much as 17% in premarket trading after the company raised its full-year revenue and profit outlook, with CEO Alex Karp describing commercial demand as “otherworldly.” Full-year adjusted operating income is now expected to reach up to $4.91 billion, with sales of up to $8.16 billion, both above prior guidance and…
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Climate change set to add SA to Africa’s Malaria map
A new Nature study finds climate change will redraw Africa’s malaria map by 2050, with cases potentially rising by up to 20% in coastal southern Africa. Warming temperatures are set to push malaria-carrying mosquitoes into cooler regions, including South Africa’s three northeastern provinces, says University of Cape Town co-author Christopher Trisos, who warns local health…
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Paul Hoffman: Can Parliament actually kill off IDAC and start again?
DA chief whip Glynnis Breytenbach plans a private member’s bill to repeal the IDAC legislation, signed into law weeks before the 2024 election. Because IDAC was created by ordinary legislation, only a simple majority is needed to scrap it, unlike a Chapter Nine institution, which would need two-thirds. Evidence at the Madlanga Commission has exposed…
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The Economist: How to actually spot AI-written text
A new Economist study of nearly 56,000 sentences and 1.2 million words tested ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok against the publication’s own writing to find genuine markers of AI-generated text. Old assumptions don’t hold: the bots no longer overuse “delve,” and only Claude now uses more em dashes than humans. Instead, AI models favour long,…
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BN Daybreak: Record FSCA fines; New police bosses; US-China AI rivalries; Trump warns Iran
Listen here In today’s episode, we cover South Africa’s crowning as Africa’s ransomware capital and the FSCA’s record R2.8 billion in fines, including action against the Banxso deepfake scam. We also discuss the appointment of seasoned provincial police commissioners and new anti-corruption progress. Globally, we unpack President Trump’s tariff lawsuits, OpenAI’s security briefing following the…
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Dr Lennit Max: Non-racial, merit-based appointments of four new police commissioners
Listen here In his latest interview with Chris Steyn, former Western Cape Provincial Police Commissioner, Dr. Lennit Max hails the appointments of four new provincial commissioners. “This time around I am very pleased that the Acting National Commissioner in her wisdom decided that there’s merit among people of colour.” He points out that all four…
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Who digs Africa’s gold, who keeps it — and who could hold it?: Duarte da Silva
Africa now mines more gold than any other region on earth, yet almost none of the value stays on the continent, according to a new paper from Northbound Processing’s Dr Duarte da Silva. Roughly R580 billion worth of African gold is smuggled out undeclared each year, mostly to the UAE, while conflicts in Sudan and…
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China’s rare earths weapon is losing its bite as global supply expands: David Fickling
China has leaned on rare-earth export controls to strong-arm the US and Japan, but David Fickling argues the tactic is backfiring. Neodymium and praseodymium are now too widely mined to threaten, forcing Beijing to focus on scarcer heavy rare earths like dysprosium, terbium and samarium, long thought to exist only in one Chinese deposit. New…
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SA’s industrial masterplans are quietly protecting monopolies, not fixing them: Donald MacKay
XA Global Trade Advisors Director Donald MacKay argues South Africa’s sector masterplans, far from reviving struggling industries, are entrenching decades-old monopolies at consumers’ expense. With 69.5% of SA sectors highly concentrated according to the Competition Commission, MacKay says government-backed protection (anti-dumping duties, safeguards, and a maze of 110 import rebates) shields inefficient incumbents rather than…
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Can your portfolio handle inflated retirement costs?
By Dorothy Avvakoumides* Picture a ‘typical’ breakfast for two at home. Two slices of toast each, with cheese, plus two eggs and milk for your coffees or tea. Ordinary, unremarkable, the kind of thing you don’t think about twice. Until you look at what this daily routine will cost you in retirement. Whereas this breakfast…
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Madlanga fells another giant, but where should the buck stop?: John Matisonn
IDAC head Andrea Johnson resigned this week after the Madlanga Commission exposed a fabricated affidavit, an admitted cover-up of her closeness to suspended crime intelligence general Feroz Khan, and baseless charges against police commissioner Fannie Masemola. A leaked recording caught her mocking the commission and scheming to shield a key witness. John Matisonn argues this…
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ANC set to lose about 500 councillors in November local elections
This article was first published by The Common Sense Polling by The Common Sense shows the ANC’s support has slipped to 39%, down from 46% in 2021. Even accounting for the party’s usual advantage in converting votes into seats — a quirk of South Africa’s mixed ward/proportional system that has historically boosted the ANC’s seat share…
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‘Magnificent 7’ no more: the problem with stock nicknames
The “Magnificent Seven” tech giants have lost over $2 trillion in market value since June, as investors question whether massive AI spending will ever pay off. FT columnist John Plender argues these catchy market nicknames — from the Nifty Fifty to the Faangs — are more than marketing hype: they’re symptoms of momentum-driven bubbles where…