Scan your eyes, get crypto: Sam Altman's World orbs come to the US
Sam Altman's cryptocurrency project is now available in the US and brought its eye-scanning orbs, too. At an event dubbed 'At Last' in San Francisco, Sam Altman and Tools for Humanity unveiled their latest plans to bring blockchain-based identity to the mainstream. Deputy editor Alex Heath and supervising producer Vjeran Pavic bring you the latest news from the event.
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Walmart Shareholders Fail Racial Equity Audit Proposal for a Third Time
The third time was not the charm for United for Respect Education Fund. The non-profit filed a shareholder proposal asking Walmart to undergo a third-party, independent racial equity audit focused on analyzing the company's impact on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Per the proposal, once completed, Walmart should share the results publicly on its website. More from Sourcing Journal Walmart to Bring Drone Delivery to Five Additional Cities Trump Lashes Out at Walmart, Says Retailer Should 'Eat the Tariffs' Walmart US Nearly Doubled Deliveries Made in Three Hours or Less 'Given its worker demographics and scale, we request Walmart assess its behavior through a racial equity lens to obtain a complete picture of how it contributes to, and could help dismantle, social and economic inequality,' the filers wrote in their proposal. 'A racial equity audit would help Walmart identify, remedy and avoid adverse impacts on nonwhite stakeholders, communities of color and long-term diversified shareholders. Failure to effectively address inequities in its operations exposes stakeholders, including employees, to unacceptable abuses and exposes Walmart to risks that may ultimately affect shareholder long-term value.' According to Walmart's 2024 Mid-Year Belonging Report, people of color make up 51 percent of its U.S. workforce. United for Respect Education Fund filed similar proposals in 2023 and 2024. But this time around, part of the importance for the group and its co-filers was the fact that Walmart, like several other major companies, announced late last year that it would roll back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in favor of a theme of 'belonging.' Ultimately, the filers' argument proved unsuccessful in swaying shareholders' minds. In 2023, the proposal garnered 18.1 percent of shareholder votes; in 2024, that proportion declined to 15.4 percent. This year, the proposal received 6.9 percent of shareholder votes, according to a vote result announcement from Walmart's Thursday shareholder meeting. That's down 8.5 percentage points from last year. Like in previous years, Walmart recommended shareholders vote against the proposal. 'The Board recommends shareholders vote against these proposals because we already disclose substantial information on our people strategies, providing information about our business rationale, key metrics, progress, Board oversight and approach to continuous improvement based on stakeholder feedback and results,' the company published in its 2025 proxy statement. Ahead of the vote, Bianca Agustin, co-executive director of United for Respect, told Sourcing Journal that the organization had hoped to see at least the same percentage of shareholder votes headed their way as last year. She had also hoped that the proposal would garner one-fifth of all shareholder votes, since many proxy advisers recommend a company open formal dialogue with shareholders proposing a change if their proposition receives at least 20 percent of the total vote. Ultimately, the filers saw neither of those outcomes come to fruition this year. Nonetheless, Agustin said she hoped the proposal would bring attention to Walmart's DEI-related decisioning in recent months. 'We [wanted] to basically give a referendum on Walmart's really, really opaque decision to roll back the DEI initiatives,' she told Sourcing Journal. 'We [wanted] to send a strong message to the company that stakeholders do not agree with their decision, and that…they have a responsibility to lead in this moment of political turmoil and division. Given the demographic of their workforce and the communities they operate in, that responsibility is enhanced for Walmart.' TaNeka Hightower, a Tennessee resident who is currently on medical leave from her role at Walmart, supported the non-profit and its co-filers in re-filing the proposal this year. She said she believes a racial equity audit would help answer questions about pay equity and would provide insight into broader employee concerns about their ability to move up within the company, the treatment they receive from upper management and more. 'If we were to do a racial equity audit, it would really give an insight as to the disparity between Black and Brown workers in comparison to others,' Hightower told Sourcing Journal. 'The people up top that are the ones benefiting from all the profits, while the people that are actually doing the work to get the profits in the store aren't able to live.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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Why Centrus Energy Stock Soared Higher This Week
Meta Platforms signed a massive 20-year deal with a nuclear energy provider, leading to investor enthusiasm across the industry. Bank of America initiated coverage of Centrus with a buy rating. Centrus is in a strong position to capitalize on the growing demand for nuclear power. 10 stocks we like better than Centrus Energy › Shares of Centrus Energy (NYSE: CCJ) are moving higher this week. The company's stock was up 11.5% at 1:08 p.m. ET from last Friday's close. The S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq-100 index were up 1.2% and 1.8%, respectively, at the same time. Centrus, a provider of enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors, saw its stock rise after the announcement of a major deal between Meta Platforms and Constellation Energy and after receiving a buy rating from Bank of America. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, signed a deal earlier this week that will grant it access to all the energy output from the Clinton Clean Energy Center nuclear reactor in Illinois. The 1.1 gigawatt output is enough to power 800,000 homes. Meta and other tech companies are finding it difficult to access enough power to meet the incredible demands of AI, especially if they are to try to meet their respective climate goals. Nuclear power offers relatively cheap, consistent, and abundant power without pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The announced deal helped shares of Centrus move higher, as it was a clear signal that the AI industry will actively pursue nuclear energy solutions. Centus is in a strong position to capitalize on this accelerating demand for nuclear power. It is one of only two licensed producers of enriched uranium in the U.S., giving it a substantial moat. If the marketwide trend holds, and I think it will, Centrus will no doubt benefit. And while its stock is not cheap, I think its future income justifies it. Before you buy stock in Centrus Energy, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Centrus Energy wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $674,395!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $858,011!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 997% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join . See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bank of America, Constellation Energy, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Centrus Energy Stock Soared Higher This Week was originally published by The Motley Fool Sign in to access your portfolio
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40 minutes ago
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Why this key chip technology is crucial to the AI race between the US and China
In the largest single foreign investment in US history, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has unveiled a $100 billion investment, drawing global attention and prompting concern in Taiwan. TSMC, which produces more than 90% of the world's advanced semiconductor chips that power everything from smartphones and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to weapons, will build two new advanced packaging facilities in Arizona, among others. Here's everything you need to know about advanced packaging technology, which has seen exponential demand growth along with the global AI frenzy, and what that means for the struggle between the US and China for AI dominance. While the two countries have announced a temporary truce that rolled back disruptive three-digit tariffs for 90 days, the relationship remains tense because of ongoing feuding over chip restrictions imposed by the US and other issues. Last month at Computex, an annual trade show in Taipei that has been thrust under the limelight because of the AI boom, the CEO of chipmaker Nvidia, Jensen Huang, told reporters that 'the importance of advanced packaging for AI is very high,' proclaiming that 'no one has pushed advanced packaging harder than me.' Packaging generally refers to one of the manufacturing processes of semiconductor chips, which means sealing a chip inside a protective casing and mounting it to the motherboard that goes into an electronic device. Advanced packaging, specifically, refers to techniques that allow more chips — such as graphic processing units (GPU), central processing units (CPU) or high bandwidth memory (HBM) — to be placed closer together, leading to better overall performance, faster transmission of data and lower energy consumption. Think of these chips as different departments within a company. The closer these departments are to each other, the easier it is, and less time it takes, for people to travel between them and exchange ideas, and the more efficient the operation becomes. 'You're trying to put the chips as close together as possible, and you're also putting in different solutions to make the connection between the chips very easy,' Dan Nystedt, vice president of Asia-based private investment firm TrioOrient, told CNN. In a way, advanced packaging keeps afloat Moore's Law, the idea that the number of transistors on microchips would double every two years, as breakthroughs in the chip fabrication process become increasingly costly and more difficult. While there are many types of advanced packaging technologies, CoWoS, short for Chips-on-Wafer-on-Substrate and invented by TSMC, is arguably the best known that was thrown under the limelight since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which sparked the AI frenzy. It has even become a household name in Taiwan, prompting Lisa Su, CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), to say that the island is the 'only place that you can say CoWoS and everybody would understand.' Advanced packaging has become a big deal in the tech world because it ensures AI applications, which require a lot of complex computing, run without delays or glitches. CoWoS is indispensable to producing AI processors, such as the GPUs produced by Nvidia and AMD that are used in AI servers or data centers. 'You could call it the Nvidia packaging process if you want to. Almost anyone making AI chips is using the CoWoS process,' said Nystedt. That is why demand for CoWoS technology has skyrocketed. As a result, TSMC is scrambling to ramp up production capacity. In a visit to Taiwan in January, Huang told reporters that the amount of advanced packaging capacity currently available was 'probably four times' what it was less than two years ago. 'The technology of packaging is very important to the future of computing,' he said. 'We now need to have very complicated advanced packaging to put many chips together into one giant chip.' If advanced fabrication is one piece of the puzzle in terms of chip manufacturing, advanced packaging is another. Analysts say having both pieces of that jigsaw in Arizona means the US will have a 'one-stop shop' for chip production and a strengthened position for its AI arsenal, benefitting Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and Broadcom, some of TSMC's top clients. 'It ensures that the US has a complete supply chain from advanced manufacturing to advanced packaging, which would benefit the US' competitiveness in AI chips,' Eric Chen, an analyst with market research firm Digitimes Research, told CNN. Because advanced packaging technologies key to AI are currently only produced in Taiwan, having it in Arizona also reduces potential supply chain risks. 'Instead of having all eggs in one basket, CoWoS would be in Taiwan and also the US, and that makes you feel more safe and secure,' said Nystedt. While CoWoS got its moment recently, the technology has actually existed for at least 15 years. It was the brainchild of a team of engineers led by Chiang Shang-yi, who served two stints at TSMC and retired from the company as its co-chief operating officer. Chiang first proposed developing the technology in 2009 in an attempt to fit more transistors into chips and solve bottlenecks in performance. But when it was developed, few companies took up the technology because of the high cost associated with it. 'I only had one customer … I really became a joke (in the company), and there was so much pressure on me,' he recalled in a 2022 oral history project recorded for the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. But the AI boom turned CoWoS around, making it one of the most popular technologies. 'The result was beyond our original expectation,' Chiang said. In the global semiconductor supply chain, companies that specialize in packaging and testing services are referred to as outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) firms. In addition to TSMC, South Korea's Samsung and America's Intel, as well as OSAT firms including China's JCET Group, America's Amkor and Taiwan's ASE Group and SPIL are all key players in advanced packaging technologies.
