30/09/2026

BIZ & FINANCE WEDNESDAY | SEPT 30, 2026

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SpaceX Starship makes orbital debut o All 26 next-generation V3 satellites successfully placed at their target altitude (RM8.2 trillion) as of Friday’s close — ride on the success of Starship, which was designed as the world’s first fully reusable spacecraft. The 40-story-tall vehicle, Huot to announce on the company’s live stream of the mission that the craft would be unable to reach orbit. “The team has made the call not to commit to orbit,” Huot said. Starship’s very first revenue generating commercial flight,” said Dean Sladen, quality manager and aerospace engineer at Accu Components. “But from an

engineering perspective, the real story was how the team handled that engine failure during ascent.” Engine issues have popped up on some of Starship’s previous suborbital flights in space, a lingering challenge for the programme in an area crucial to the rocket’s ability to maneuver in space. While that function is less critical for low-orbiting Starlink deployments, it is crucial for Starship’s future assignments of taking Nasa astronauts to the moon. Nasa administrator Jared Isaacman, writing on X, congratulated SpaceX on “getting Ship to orbit and managing every step in a safe, responsible, and especially inspirational way.” Starship’s controlled descent into the Pacific culminated with a thruster maneuver that flipped the vehicle vertically so that it hit the sea in a nose-up position. Fire engulfed the base of the rocket as it touched down on the ocean surface before tipping on its side, followed by a large fireball. The company had not planned to recover and reuse the spacecraft from the sea following the mission. Starship was built to launch SpaceX’s Starlink satellites more frequently and carry future Nasa missions to the moon. Reaching orbit, a primary benchmark for any new rocket designed to deliver payloads to space, was a long delayed feat for Starship, which Musk once predicted would be achieved in 2022, to be followed by satellite deployments in 2023. All 13 of Starship’s previous test flights since 2023 were limited to suborbital space in a nearly decade long development campaign that has cost SpaceX more than US$15 billion to date. Musk has said he envisions ultimately flying hundreds or thousands of Starship missions a year, a launch pace unprecedented in the space industry. – Reuters divide its limited funds between computing power, expensive AI talent and safety. Anthropic said that its customer usage, and as a result revenue, is driven by new models and that a “continuous and overlapping cadence” of releases is “inherent to remaining at the frontier of AI development.” The company last week released a new version of its Opus model, 10 days after CEO Dario Amodei published a nearly 4,000-word essay calling for pacing the frontier. Some analysts and experts have said no leading AI lab would slow down when doing so risks handing rivals an advantage in an industry where valuations can change with each release. Anthropic has pledged in recent weeks to disclose more data publicly about how it uses AI models to build future generations of the technology, as experts warn about recursive self improvement — the point at which models can develop on their own without human help. – Reuters

But Huot reversed course minutes later after an update from engineers confirmed that the craft could still attempt to fire other onboard engines that would boost it into orbit, which Starship successfully did minutes later. Once in orbit, Starship deployed 26 next-generation Starlink satellites one by one at an altitude of roughly 269km, marking the ship’s first orbital deployments. “All 26 Starlink V3 operational satellites deployed and operating nominally,” Musk wrote on X. “Deploying all 26 Starlink V3 satellites into target orbit is a huge win, especially since this marks

consisting of a Super Heavy booster rocket topped by the main upper stage Starship vessel, launched from SpaceX’s Starbase complex along the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville. The Super Heavy booster lofted the Starship upper stage into space before returning itself to Gulf waters for an engine-controlled splashdown, following hard landings for the booster on two previous missions. Some engines on that booster stopped working during its descent, SpaceX said. Upon reaching space, one of Starship’s three main engines shut down prematurely, a development that led SpaceX spokesman Dan

STARBASE: SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket reached orbit for the first time on Monday and deployed new Starlink satellites, achieving milestones in its 14th test flight despite an engine failure and a decision to cut the mission short. The uncrewed mission was scheduled to last 10 hours, but was reduced to three after one of Starship’s three main engines shut down prematurely following separation from the spacecraft’s lower-stage Super Heavy booster rocket. It is unclear how much of a setback Monday’s engine failure, the latest glitch since Starship test flights Certification of Boeing 737 MAX 10 delayed by software bug NEW YORK: US air safety regulators are delaying certification of the 737 MAX 10 until determining a fresh software glitch poses no safety risk, a top official said Monday. The problem stems from a cockpit software update to the 737 MAX that can cause an automated navigation feature to fail when planes shift their approach to landing. Shares of Boeing, which has staked its turnaround in part of MAX production growth, fell sharply Monday after a weekend Wall Street Journal article outlined the problem. While pilots are trained to safely land planes without the automated navigation system, regulators must evaluate whether the “workload” is excessive for pilots under such a scenario, said FAA administrator Bryan Bedford. Bedford said Monday at a press conference that the MAX planes certified by FAA thus far are safe but that“we will be delaying the 10 until ... we’re satisfied we don’t have an issue here.” Earlier, an FAA spokesman said the regulator “is working closely with Boeing and the airlines,“ adding that the FAA will convene an advisory board and “will take immediate action if it identifies a safety concern.” The statements come after Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told a Wall Street conference on Sept 16 that he expected FAA certification of the 737 MAX 10 “very soon.” The problem surfaces when pilots alter their preprogrammed flight plan following a missed approach, according to Boeing. “Last month, we informed all 737 operators about a software issue where pilots may not have access to automated flight guidance during a specific landing scenario,“ a Boeing spokesman said Monday in an emailed statement. – AFP

began in 2023, will pose for the goal of Elon Musk’s newly public company to put the powerful spacecraft into routine service later this year. Unlike past Starship flights, Monday’s mission was both a high stakes test of the next-generation rocket and an operational endeavour carrying millions of dollars’ worth of Starlink satellites to orbit, representing Starship’s first revenue-generating mission, even though its final design is still under development. SpaceX shares fell 2% on Monday. Much of SpaceX’s market worth and continued investor confidence in the company — valued at US$2 trillion

The SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy v3 Booster lift off on its 14h test flight from the SpaceX launch complex in Starbase, Texas, on Sept 28. – REUTERSPIX Anthropic’s IPO filing includes caution on AI risks

SAN FRANCISCO: Anthropic plans to caution potential investors in its IPO that advanced AI could pose “catastrophic or existential risks to humanity,“ an extraordinary warning by a company seeking to profit from the same technology. The company’s IPO prospectus, reviewed by Reuters, highlights risks associated with its AI models, which it said could exhibit “self-preserving behaviours,“ including attempts to “resist shutdown,“ to “conceal or manipulate information” and behaviour “resembling blackmail.” “Our development of highly advanced models, platforms, and applications and expansion of use cases could further increase the risk that our models cause harm,“ Anthropic said in the filing. While public firms routinely outline product risks to investors, few, if any, have issued warnings suggesting their technology could cause potential human extinction. Anthropic emphasised both the transformative potential of AI on par with industrialisation and electricity and

prospectus, adding that models sometimes develop unexpected capabilities during training that may not be discovered until they have been deployed and have resulted in significant safety incidents. AI researchers have also warned that as models grow more capable, they increasingly recognise when they are being watched and adjust their behaviour accordingly, which makes it harder to monitor model behaviour. Anthropic declined to comment in response to a request for comment on Monday. Despite emphasising AI safety, Anthropic said that returns on its safety investments are unclear. It did not disclose in the filing how much the company was spending on such research. Earlier this month, Anthropic said about 6% of the computing power it used for AI research went to safety work in a sample week in July. The company, creator of Claude AI models, described safety efforts as “resource-intensive” and said it must

the irreversible harm it could cause if mishandled. Anthropic and other AI developers, including OpenAI, have faced scrutiny after incidents where experimental systems defied constraints, including a report of an OpenAI model breaching Australia’s health-system database. Anthropic safety researcher Evan Hubinger estimated a greater than 10% probability that AI could kill humans within the next decade, echoing a sentiment by a former colleague Jacob Coxon. The company, which has positioned itself as a safety-first AI lab, devoted roughly 80 pages of the 261-page main body of its prospectus to laying out risk factors, nearly twice the 48 pages it used to describe its business. For comparison, SpaceX, which owns xAI, dedicated just around 38 of the 277-page main body of its prospectus to risk factors. “Potential model awareness of our evaluation efforts creates a significant limitation on our ability to assess model safety,“ Anthropic said in the