Tech
Internet down: How one error brought down some of the biggest websites in the world

Internet down: How one error brought down some of the biggest websites in the world

The internet is down

For a few hours on Tuesday morning, huge swathes of the internet went down.

Data from DownDetector.com, a tool that tracks outages and reports of problems at major websites, details how problems reported at huge internet properties such as Amazon, Spotify, PayPal and many others suddenly exploded in volume.

Not so Fastly

You probably recognize most of the companies in the chart above, with the exception of the last one. Fastly is the reason everything went wrong. Fastly is a cloud computing company, which maintains servers that let websites load content quickly — and it turns out a lot of websites use them.

One of the industries hit hardest were news sites, including CNN, The New York Times, The Financial Times and many others. Some resorted to live tweeting their news reports, but our favourite impromptu solution has to go to tech website The Verge which fired up a public Google Doc to start publishing their news stories. That kind of worked, but they forgot to turn public editing off so — for a brief period — anyone could edit the document, which obviously was chaos.

Fastly has come out and said "our bad", and so far it appears that the error was not the cause of a cyberattack. Intentional or not, the outage was a timely reminder of how fragile — and interdependent — the tech ecosystem can be.

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Tesla investors like the idea of merging with SpaceX

Tesla is trading up about 2.5% in early trading Friday after reports Thursday that the Elon Musk-led company was considering a merger with SpaceX, another of Musk’s many companies.

That’s a better showing than the stock’s reaction to its better-than-expected earnings a day earlier, after which shares closed down 3.5%. Acquiring a very valuable, entirely different company, it turns out, is a more attractive prospect than watching an existing one’s revenue and profit decline.

Musk is also reportedly considering merging SpaceX with xAI, his artificial intelligence company, which recently combined with his social media platform, X.

Musk is also reportedly considering merging SpaceX with xAI, his artificial intelligence company, which recently combined with his social media platform, X.

tech
Jon Keegan

WSJ: OpenAI plans Q4 IPO in race to be the first AI startup to enter public markets

OpenAI was the first to the generative-AI market with ChatGPT, and now it hopes to be the first of its AI startup cohort to pull off an initial public offering, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The $500 billion startup is in a race against its $350 billion competitor Anthropic, which has also been exploring an IPO.

Per the report, OpenAI is in talks with banks to try for a fourth-quarter IPO this year, which has the potential to be one of the largest IPOs ever in a year that is expected to see many record-breaking tech companies tap into public markets to raise sizable new rounds of capital.

Ahead of a potential public listing, OpenAI is reportedly attempting to raise a massive round of private investment. The company is reportedly aiming to raise $100 billion, with Amazon potentially accounting for up to half of that target. Other investors in talks with OpenAI over the private fundraising round include Nvidia, Microsoft, and SoftBank.

Per the report, OpenAI is in talks with banks to try for a fourth-quarter IPO this year, which has the potential to be one of the largest IPOs ever in a year that is expected to see many record-breaking tech companies tap into public markets to raise sizable new rounds of capital.

Ahead of a potential public listing, OpenAI is reportedly attempting to raise a massive round of private investment. The company is reportedly aiming to raise $100 billion, with Amazon potentially accounting for up to half of that target. Other investors in talks with OpenAI over the private fundraising round include Nvidia, Microsoft, and SoftBank.

tech
Rani Molla

SpaceX is actually considering a merger with Tesla or xAI: Report

Bloomberg reports that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is considering merging with Musk’s Tesla. Earlier today, Reuters had reported that SpaceX was thinking of potentially merging with xAI ahead of SpaceX’s IPO this year.

From Bloomberg:

The firm has discussed the feasibility of a tie-up between SpaceX and Tesla, an idea that some investors are pushing, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Separately, they are also exploring a tie-up between SpaceX and xAI ahead of an IPO, some of the people said.

Musk’s companies already have numerous relationships between themselves, including most recently Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI. At Tesla’s shareholder meeting last year, shareholders voted to invest in the company but the board didn’t approve the measure due to significant abstentions.

In 2024, SpaceX incurred about $2.4 million in expenses under commercial, licensing, and support agreements with Tesla, and Tesla incurred about $800,000 in expenses for Musk’s use of SpaceX’s jet.

From Bloomberg:

The firm has discussed the feasibility of a tie-up between SpaceX and Tesla, an idea that some investors are pushing, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information isn’t public. Separately, they are also exploring a tie-up between SpaceX and xAI ahead of an IPO, some of the people said.

Musk’s companies already have numerous relationships between themselves, including most recently Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI. At Tesla’s shareholder meeting last year, shareholders voted to invest in the company but the board didn’t approve the measure due to significant abstentions.

In 2024, SpaceX incurred about $2.4 million in expenses under commercial, licensing, and support agreements with Tesla, and Tesla incurred about $800,000 in expenses for Musk’s use of SpaceX’s jet.

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