A few stories from across the industry are worth a quick look this week. SpaceX had to abort a Starship V3 launch attempt shortly after ignition, a reminder that even a company with SpaceX’s launch cadence still runs into last-second scrubs on its newest hardware.
On the corporate side, Uber is reportedly negotiating a deal worth roughly $14.8 billion to acquire Delivery Hero’s operations, a move that would nearly double its global delivery footprint and mark one of the largest consolidations the food delivery industry has seen. Oil giant BP, meanwhile, is closing its corporate venture arm after two decades, a sign that not every big company is expanding its bets on outside startups right now.
Finally, Apple Intelligence has been approved to launch in China through partnerships with local players Alibaba and Baidu, clearing a regulatory hurdle that had kept Apple’s AI features out of one of its biggest markets. Together these stories show an industry moving in several directions simultaneously: consolidating in delivery, retreating in corporate venture capital, and still working through the regulatory patchwork required to ship AI features globally.
