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Category: finance – Page 14

The big question is whether the wealth boom of the past decade, initially fueled by low interest rates and liquidity, and more recently by Covid-19 pandemic stimulus and artificial intelligence, can continue. Global conflicts, elections, interest rates and a potential economic slowdown could all slow the pace of wealth creation, said Elias Ghanem, global head of the Capgemini Research Institute for Financial Services.

“The last 10 years were exceptional,” Ghanem said. “We now have inflation, a potential recession and geopolitical problems and elections. The environment is completely different.”

Indeed, globally, the wealth picture looks more mixed than in the U.S. The number of millionaires worldwide grew 5.1% last year, to 22.8 million, according to the report. Their combined fortunes grew to a record $86.8 trillion.

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The mercurial billionaire said in a subsequent X post that xAI’s pre-money valuation was $18 billion. The financial term refers to the value of a company before any equity investment is made.

Pre-money valuation was $18B— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 27, 2024

Sunday’s announcement marks the first time xAI has talked about its fundraising efforts. Musk had repeatedly denied earlier reports from Bloomberg and the Financial Times about xAI’s outreach to investors.

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Black hat hackers have reportedly unleashed malicious software targeting over 1,500 banks and their customers worldwide.

Security researchers at IBM say a revamped version of the Grandoreiro banking trojan has just rolled out, enabling attackers to perform banking fraud in 60 countries.

The malware allows attackers to send email notices that appear to be urgent government requests for payments.

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And officials can come at those in slightly different ways — meaning that there isn’t necessarily a disconnect between SPACECOM and Space Force, she noted.

But, writ large, Christensen isn’t convinced most new commercial space companies currently being funded by venture capital — whether looking to provide satellite servicing or remote sensing or delivery via rocket — will be able to make it long term without Pentagon and IC dollars.

“I think the US national security community is going to shape commercial space for the foreseeable future,” she said.

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Hackers are utilizing code from a Python clone of Microsoft’s venerable Minesweeper game to hide malicious scripts in attacks on European and US financial organizations.

Ukraine’s CSIRT-NBU and CERT-UA attribute the attacks to a threat actor tracked as ‘UAC-0188,’ who is using the legitimate code to hide Python scripts that download and install the SuperOps RMM.

Superops RMM is a legitimate remote management software that gives remote actors direct access to the compromised systems.

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One of the largest banks in the world says a data breach has exposed customer and employee information.

In a statement, Santander says it’s aware of “unauthorized access” to a third-party database containing information on an undisclosed number of customers and employees.

The bank, which has $1.8 trillion in total assets and operates in ten markets across Europe and the Americas, says customers of Santander Chile, Spain and Uruguay are affected.

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Retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration lead to photoreceptor death and loss of visual perception. Despite recent progress, restorative technologies for photoreceptor degeneration remain largely unavailable. Here, we describe a novel optogenetic visual prosthesis (FlexLED) based on a combination of a thin-film retinal display and optogenetic activation of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs). The FlexLED implant is a 30 µm thin, flexible, wireless µLED display with 8,192 pixels, each with an emission area of 66 µm2. The display is affixed to the retinal surface, and the electronics package is mounted under the conjunctiva in the form factor of a conventional glaucoma drainage implant. In a rabbit model of photoreceptor degeneration, optical stimulation of the retina using the FlexLED elicits activity in visual cortex. This technology is readily scalable to hundreds of thousands of pixels, providing a route towards an implantable optogenetic visual prosthesis capable of generating vision by stimulating RGCs at near-cellular resolution.

### Competing Interest Statement.

All authors have a financial interest in Science Corporation.

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Innovation For A Sustainable Global Energy Transformation — Dr. Roland Roesch, Ph.D. — Director, Innovation and Technology Centre, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

Dr. Roland Roesch, Ph.D. is Director, Innovation and Technology Centre (IITC), of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA — https://www.irena.org/) where he oversees the Agency’s work on advising member countries in the area of technology status and roadmaps, energy planning, cost and markets and innovation policy frameworks.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) is a leading global intergovernmental agency for energy transformation that serves as the principal platform for international cooperation, supports countries in their energy transitions, and provides state of the art data and analyses on technology, innovation, policy, finance and investment. IRENA drives the widespread adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy, including bioenergy, geothermal, hydropower, ocean, solar and wind energy in the pursuit of sustainable development, energy access, and energy security, for economic and social resilience and prosperity and a climate-proof future.

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