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Time Is Money

Jul 2, 2023 • 5 min read

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Twitter Rate Limits
AI Drugs

Week Recap:

SpaceX announced they will raise $750 million by selling insider shares at a price that would increase the company's total valuation to $150 billion.
Amazon announced an increase in its investment in India to around $26 billion by 2030, more than doubling its current $11 billion investment. Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy, announced that a large part of the new investment will be used to expand AWS, Amazon's cloud business, in India.
3M, a US corporation known for its diverse array of 60,000 chemical and industrial products, has agreed to pay $10.3 billion over a span of 13 years to settle claims regarding its use of PFAS - Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (forever chemicals).
President Joe Biden announced a $42 billion initiative to provide every American household with high-speed internet by 2030.
Meta unveiled Meta Quest+, a virtual reality subscription service. This service, priced at $7.99 a month, will provide subscribers with two new games each month. The Quest 2, Quest Pro, and the forthcoming Quest 3 are all compatible with Meta Quest+.
The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on Wagner, a Russian mercenary group, with the aim of restricting its weapons funding. The sanctions target four companies in Russia, UAE, and Central African Republic, and one individual, all accused of facilitating illegal gold trades and weapon deals for Wagner, particularly in Ukraine and Africa.
For the first time in two decades, local transmissions of malaria have been reported in the United States.
Fidelity, the $4.2 trillion asset manager, has officially filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
U.S. authorities have confirmed that the Chinese spy balloon, which had been aloft for 8 days traversing Alaska, Canada, and several other U.S. states, was capable of data collection, including taking photographs and videos. After intercepting and shooting down the balloon, the debris was retrieved from the Atlantic Ocean for a thorough examination.
France is currently experiencing violent riots following the police shooting of a 17-year-old boy, Nahel M., of Algerian Descent, during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb. The incident, which was caught on video, sparked outrage and led to nationwide unrest, particularly in cities such as Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, and Lille.
The US Supreme Court has officially rejected President Biden's plan to forgive student loan debt. The court's decision comes in response to a plan that proposed eliminating up to $20,000 of student debt for tens of millions of Americans, and totaled about $430 billion. Introduced in 2022, the plan cited the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason for its necessity.
Apple has reached a landmark moment in Wall Street history, becoming the first company to close with a market capitalization surpassing $3 trillion.

Twitter Rate Limits:

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter will temporarily impose daily reading limits on its users to counter data extraction activities. This move is targeted at combating computer programs that sift through posts to scrape valuable data.
Verified users will now be limited to viewing 10,000 posts daily, while unverified ones can access 1,000. New users joining the platform post-announcement will only have access to 500 posts per day.
These limitations were introduced following backlash to Twitter's initial tweet limits, and their duration or lifting conditions remain unclear. Earlier, Musk had also revealed that tweets could only be viewed by logged-in users, a measure aimed at preventing third parties from scraping data off the platform.
Musk's actions are seen as significant changes to Twitter's policies, following his acquisition of the social media platform in October for $44 billion. This change has resulted in user backlash as Twitter looks towards new avenues.

AI Drugs:

This week, Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based biotech startup, reported that its AI-generated drug, INS018_055, entered clinical trials with human patients. The firm, which has accumulated over $400 million in funding, developed the drug to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung condition causing progressive scarring.
Alex Zhavoronkov, Insilico Medicine's CEO, highlighted to CNBC that this is the first drug completely developed using AI technology to reach Phase II clinical trials with humans. While acknowledging the existence of other AI-designed drugs in trials, he pointed out that INS018_055 is distinctive due to its AI-discovered target and AI-crafted design.

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