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Hard Numbers: Search wars, Lumen lights up, Anduril gets a raise, Public-private partnership

August 13, 2024
Scott Nover
An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a Perplexity AI logo displayed on a computer screen.
An image of a woman holding a cell phone in front of a Perplexity AI logo displayed on a computer screen.
Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Reuters
250 million: Perplexity, the AI search engine, says it’s answered 250 million user questions in the past month alone. That’s half of the 500 million it answered in all of 2023. Surging popularity for the service comes as OpenAI readies its forthcoming SearchGPT product and as Google lost a major antitrust case over its dominance in search.

500: Lumen Technologies is watching its stock surge thanks to AI. The US telecom company revealed its fiber optics infrastructure is in demand by data centers needed for the AI boom. The company’s stock jumped 500% in the past month, when it was hovering around $1 per share.

14 billion: Palmer Luckey’s defense tech company, Anduril, just raised $1.5 billion in a new funding round, valuing the company at $14 billion. Luckey, best known as the founder of Oculus VR, which he sold to Meta in 2014, started Anduril in 2017 to make drones and other autonomous aircraft, and it is seen as one of the major AI companies challenging the legacy defense contractors.

100,000: The state of California has struck a partnership with Nvidia to train 100,000 students in AI-related skills. The initiative focuses on community colleges and will feature new curriculums, certifications, workshops, and labs to get students ready for careers in AI — including those with the state government.

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Hard Numbers: Missing Palestinian medics found in mass grave, Renowned Japanese species dies off, Romania’s far right keeps rolling, Trump’s latest approval ratings come in

Palestinians mourn medics, who came under Israeli fire while on a rescue mission, after their bodies were recovered, according to the Red Crescent, at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2025.
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15: Fifteen Palestinian medics who went missing last week were apparently killed by Israeli forces and buried in an impromptu mass grave along with their ambulances, according to the UN.

Here comes more Saudi oil

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After cutting Saudi oil production beginning in late 2022 to set a floor under slumping global oil prices, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is set to change course.

Can France’s Marine Le Pen run again?

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.
THOMAS SAMSON/Pool via REUTERS

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen was found guilty by a French court on Monday for embezzling European Parliament funds, and faces a five-year ban from running for public office. While it may seem like Le Pen’s political career is dead, “This isn’t the end of the story,” says Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group’s managing director of Europe.

Viewpoint: What to expect from Trump’s tariff “Liberation Day”

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REUTERS/File Photo

Donald Trump argues that any short-term pain from his global tariffs will translate into long-term gain as businesses move their operations to the US. He plans to announce a sweeping new round of tariffs on April 2. We asked Eurasia Group expert Nancy Wei what to expect from what Trump is billing as a “Liberation Day” from an unfair global trading system.

Le Pen barred from running from office after embezzlement conviction

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, member of parliament of the Rassemblement National party, leaves the courthouse on the day of the verdict of her trial alongside 24 other defendants over accusations of misappropriation of European Union funds, in Paris, France, on March 31, 2025.

REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq

Oh là là! A French court on Monday found National Rally leader Marine Le Pen guilty of misappropriating European funds to her far-right party, and barred the three-time presidential candidate barred from running for office for the next five years. Le Pen has denied wrongdoing and said last November, “It’s my political death that’s being demanded.”

The rise of Elon Musk's DOGE under Trump

- YouTube

youtu.be

In a few short weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has rapidly reshaped the federal government, firing thousands of workers, slashing spending, and shutting entire agencies. DOGE’s actions have faced some pushback from the courts, but Musk says he’s just getting started. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with WIRED Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond for a look at President Trump’s increasingly symbiotic relationship with the tech billionaire, Musk’s impact on politics and policy, and what happens when Silicon Valley’s ‘disrupt-or-die’ ethos collides with the machinery of the US government.

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