Good morning. I stopped by the new Long Beach, Calif. headquarters of Vast Space yesterday to find custom electronics assembly, heavy duty aluminum machining, and cavernous spaces big enough to fit the car collections of Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld combined.
Except the facilities won’t see automobiles, but artificial gravity space stations. Vast is one of several firms competing to replace the aging International Space Station.
CEO Max Haot said all the investment—which comes courtesy of Ripple cofounder Jed McCaleb—is about leveraging Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, for microgravity testing or trips to the Moon or Mars. But it’s also another playing field for global powers to exert their influence.
“If you look at the previous administration, it was important not to cede Low Earth Orbit to China,” he told me. “In the new one—ignoring everything else geopolitically going on on Earth—it’s even more important.” Game on. —Andrew Nusca
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Who will buy 23andMe?
When 23andMe filed for bankruptcy last week, the company triggered an all-out panic and warnings that customers should delete their data before its assets are sold.
Amid calls for stepped-up regulation over how private companies use personal data, 23andMe has attempted to reassure customers that it’s doing all it can to keep their data from falling into the wrong hands.
So whose hands might those be? Four parties lead the way.
The first: Nucleus Genomics. The whole-genome testing company based in New York first floated the possibility of buying 23andMe several months ago and CEO Kian Sadeghi may revisit the idea now that 23andMe has filed for bankruptcy.
The second: The Sei Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to driving adoption of the Sei high-speed blockchain platform. It sees an opportunity in 23andMe’s bankruptcy to demonstrate how blockchains and decentralized networks could be used for DeSci, or decentralized science, a movement to make scientific research more transparent and collaborative.
The third: Pinnacle. Ryan Sitton, cofounder and CEO of the analytics company, said he would purchase 23andMe for $100 million. “We believe that our algorithms combined with your data can give people more insight into their long-term health than ever before,” he wrote in a memo.
The last? Cofounder and former 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. When she stepped down, she wrote: “I have resigned as CEO of the company so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder.” Wojcicki has tried to buy the company twice before. Her first foray involved a proposal the board deemed too low and not properly financed; her second, presented to a new, smaller board, was also rejected. —Lila MacLellan
…and who will buy TikTok?
The April 5 deadline to come to an agreement on the future owner of TikTok’s U.S. operations is nearly upon us.
Though President Trump has not yet announced a deal for Beijing-based owner ByteDance to divest the unit or face a ban, he reiterated the “tremendous interest” in the social video service.
He also hinted that he was still working things out with the Chinese government. Last week, Trump said he would consider a tariff reduction if China approved the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations.
How did we get here? The bipartisan law to force ByteDance to divest TikTok U.S. or face a ban took effect on Jan. 19. A day later, Trump took office and signed an executive order allowing a 75-day reprieve for enforcement.
Time is up this week. Trump has said that he could further extend the deadline, though continued delay could face a legal challenge in court.
Who’s in the mix, provided ByteDance is willing to divest? It’s murky. An incomplete list includes the AI company Perplexity, which proposed a merger allowing the U.S. government a 50% stake; an investor consortium organized by billionaire Frank McCourt; an investor group organized by Employer.com founder Jesse Tinsley; Microsoft, according to Trump’s comments in January; an investor group that includes Oracle and Andressen Horowitz; an investor group organized by former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin; and Rumble, the video service popular with right wingers. —AN
Crypto giant Circle files for an IPO
Circle Internet Financial, a leading U.S. crypto firm that issues the stablecoin USD Coin, filed long-anticipated paperwork for an initial public offering on Tuesday.
The 225-page financial disclosure includes previously unreported insights into one of the world’s largest crypto firms, illustrating Circle’s outsized presence in the booming stablecoin space, as well as the risk factors that might give investors pause ahead of an IPO.
Some takeaways from the S-1 filing? Circle is growing—but its income depends entirely on stablecoin reserves. It’s paying Coinbase and Binance to boost USDC adoption. And the company is feeling the heat from competition, with rivals in Tether, PayPal, and even JPMorgan Chase.
Founded in 2013, Circle has attempted to go public before, resulting in a failed SPAC agreement in 2022 that cost the company over $44 million, according to the S-1 filing.
But with the crypto industry ascendant in the U.S. thanks to the support of President Donald Trump, Circle is hoping that the second time's the charm—and boasts over $1.6 billion in revenue in 2024 to attract would-be investors.
Although the document does not lay out a timeline for Circle’s public offering plans, companies’ shares typically begin trading within weeks of filing their S-1. Fortune previously reported that the fintech firm—which plans to trade under the ticker CRCL—is working with investment banks JPMorgan Chase and Citi on the IPO. —Leo Schwartz, Ben Weiss
More tech
—Government affairs, meet Gmail. National Security Council members conducted federal government work using personal email accounts.
—CoreWeave shares jump 42%. The newly public company’s stock rebounded above its $40 IPO price, valuing it at $25 billion.
—Qualcomm weighs Alphawave offer. The British chip company’s discussions with Arm reportedly fell apart.
—Xiaomi’s China police investigation. A fatal crash involving its electric vehicle with autonomous driving features engaged.
—Meta is working on smart glasses with a display. Codename: Hypernova, cost: $1,000 to $1,400, ETA: end of this year.
—Amazon will release up to 16 movies per year in theaters. A new strategy to take major studios head on. They’ll run 45 days before streaming.
—Visa, Mastercard, Amex vie for Apple Card. Visa reportedly offered Apple $100 million to replace Mastercard as its payment network, with American Express in the mix.
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