Author: GT

(This is CNBC’s “Power Insider” newsletter, your inside look at the investments, people and companies powering the global energy industry. Click here to subscribe.)Trying to predict where energy prices are heading is tough enough, but in a time of war it’s even more difficult.  Now, add in a war that also involves a massive slowdown in shipping in one of the most important channels in the world.  It may not be an impossible task, but it’s darn close.  Even the smartest energy insiders on the planet are now doing a fair bit of guessing. If you tell us when and…

The White House said its meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was “productive and constructive” on Friday, the latest sign of a potential thaw in the standoff between the government and the leading artificial intelligence company. But when President Donald Trump was asked about Amodei’s visit on a runway in Phoenix, Ariz., he responded, “Who?” and then said he had “no idea.”Amodei met with Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and other senior administration officials to talk about the company’s powerful new Mythos model, which was announced earlier this month. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was one of the…

Voice AI company ElevenLabs has quietly released an iOS app called ElevenMusic that can be used to create music with AI and discover AI-generated music in order to compete with platforms like Suno and Udio. The new app, which was listed on the App Store for a few weeks and finally released on April 1, suggests ElevenLabs wants to be more than just a voice model company. The company sees tools that use AI to create music and other mediums as a way to grow and protect itself from the eventual commoditization of AI audio models. ElevenMusic is currently free…

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the United States was preparing a daring mission to rescue an airman whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, there was money to be made.Users on Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, could place bets on when the airman would be rescued. When Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., shared a screenshot of the activity on social media, an April 3 rescue was trading at 15% compared with 63% who were betting on April 4.After Moulton posted the screenshot and blasted this “dystopian death market,” Polymarket stopped the betting, saying the market “does not meet our integrity…

Consider the chief difference between living systems and electronics: The first is generally soft and squishy, while the latter is hard and rigid. Now, in work that could impact human-machine interfaces, biocompatible devices, soft robotics, and more, MIT engineers and colleagues have developed a soft, flexible gel that dramatically changes its conductivity upon the application of light.Enter the growing field of ionotronics, which involves transferring data through ions, or charged molecules. Electronics does the same, with electrons. But while the latter is well established, ionotronics is still being developed, with one huge exception: living systems. The cells in our bodies…

U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) speaks to reporters after a roundtable on rising energy costs on Capitol Hill on March 17, 2026 in Washington, DC. Anna Moneymaker | Getty ImagesThe top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is probing whether the Trump administration adequately planned for the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has roiled energy markets for weeks as the war with Iran drags on.Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., in a letter dated Tuesday to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, shared exclusively with CNBC, demanded answers to a series of questions about how the administration prepared…

Flipboard on Thursday announced social websites, a new way for creators and publishers to build their own spaces on the web. These social websites are built around conversations already taking place across the open social web, which includes decentralized platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as other public web content. Social websites bring together social posts, videos, podcasts, newsletters, and other conversations into a single destination that creators control, Flipboard says. You can consolidate profiles and posts from Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, YouTube, podcasts, blogs, and RSS feeds into a single destination. Flipboard sees social websites as a new model…

A view of the vessels passing through Strait of Hormuz following the two-week temporary ceasefire reached between the United States and Iran on the condition that the strait be reopened, seen in Oman on April 8, 2026. Shadi J. H. Alassar | Anadolu | Getty ImagesAt least nine oil tankers have transited the Strait of Hormuz this week as the U.S. and Iran contest control of the vital sea lane. A big tanker named the RHN entered the strait from the Gulf of Oman on Wednesday, according to data from LSEG. The tanker is a very large crude carrier, or…

Arda Kucukkaya | Anadolu | Getty ImagesMeta has committed to spending an additional $21 billion on AI cloud infrastructure from CoreWeave, which comes on top of a prior arrangement of $14.2 billion, as the social media company continues to ramp up its investments in artificial intelligence.CoreWeave also said Thursday it would raise $3 billion in fresh debt. The shares rose 3.5%, while Meta shares gained 2.6%.The new agreement, announced on Thursday, runs from 2027 to 2032. The previous deal, disclosed in September, goes through 2031. CoreWeave’s data centers are filled with hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units that…

OpenAI has acquired popular tech industry talk show TBPN — Technology Business Programming Network — making this the AI giant’s first acquisition of a media company. The show will report to OpenAI’s chief political operative, Chris Lehane. TBPN, hosted by former tech founders John Coogan and Jordi Hays, is a daily live show that airs on YouTube and X for three hours, focusing on tech, business, AI, and defense. The show has gained a cult following in Silicon Valley, a safe space where industry power players can speak candidly and be questioned by fellow insiders. The show has a reputation…