OpenAI has reportedly reached a $500 billion valuation through a recent share sale, underscoring a broader trend of massive capital expenditure in AI, with tech giants like Meta and OpenAI committing billions and projecting trillions in infrastructure investment, potentially exceeding $5 trillion in data center spending by 2030 according to McKinsey. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy canceled $7.56 billion in clean energy project awards due to viability concerns, while the Trump administration prepares substantial support, potentially $10 billion, for farmers impacted by trade wars. Separately, Greenland is deepening ties with the EU, securing doubled financial aid and a strategic minerals agreement.
Happy Friday! This is the 1,500th issue of TMD! That sounds impressive, until you realize Joe Rogan’s podcast hits that milestone like every eight months. But thank you for starting your day with us, and here’s to 1,500 more! Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories - A terrorist attacked a synagogue in Manchester, England, on Thursday, leaving two dead and three seriously wounded. As Jewish worshippers gathered for Yom Kippur—the day of atonement, considered the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar—the attacker rammed his car into the crowd before exiting the vehicle and stabbing several people. Police shot and killed the assailant—who authorities identified as Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent—and arrested three other individuals in connection with the attack. This morning, Manchester police announced that one of the victims who died appears to have been killed by police gunfire, and that one of the three surviving victims had also suffered a gunshot wound. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack and announced plans to deploy police to synagogues across the country in response. According to the Community Security Trust, an advocacy group for British Jews, 1,521 antisemitic incidents were recorded in Britain in the first half of 2025. - The Trump administration is planning to announce “substantial support” for farmers on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday. U.S. farmers have been hit hard by recent trade wars launched by President Donald Trump, particularly after China’s decision to stop buying soybeans from the U.S. While administration officials have not announced the specifics of such support, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that $10 billion total could be given directly to farmers. “I WILL NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “MAKE SOYBEANS, AND OTHER ROW CROPS, GREAT AGAIN!” - The U.S. Department of Energy announced Thursday that it would cancel 321 financial awards, totaling $7.56 billion in funds, intended to help finance 223 clean energy technology projects. According to the department, the projects did not sufficiently advance the nation’s energy goals, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on taxpayer dollars. “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wrote on X, adding that the affected projects were primarily based in states led by Democratic governors. - On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration announced it had approved a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone from Evita Solutions, the second drug manufacturer to receive such approval. “Recent studies already point to serious risks when mifepristone is used without proper medical oversight,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeted Thursday, noting that the FDA “only approved a second generic mifepristone tablet because federal law requires approval when an application proves the generic is identical to the brand-name drug.” News of the approval caused swift backlash from Republican lawmakers and pro-life advocacy groups, with Students for Life Action calling it “a stain on the Trump presidency and another sign that the deep state at the FDA must go,” Sen. Josh Hawley posting on X that he had “lost confidence in the leadership at FDA,” and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser declaring the decision “reckless” and “unconscionable.” Evita Solutions had first filed for approval in October 2021, and was approved nearly four years later on September 30. - The White House sent nine universities a 10-page “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” on Thursday, offering federal funding and other incentives should they follow the administration’s list of recommended guidelines. The administration’s requests included capping the enrollment of international students at 15 percent of the undergraduate student body, requiring SAT or ACT in undergraduate admissions, and banning any “institutional units” that “punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” The Wall Street Journal first reported on the document on Tuesday. - Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said on Thursday that he wanted to “expand and strengthen” the Danish island’s relationship with the European Union. “We see great opportunities in a closer cooperation with the EU to benefit the Greenlandic people and development,” he told reporters while attending a European Political Community meeting in Copenhagen. Last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU would double its financial aid to Greenland, from 225 million euros (U.S.$265 million) to 530 million euros (U.S.$620 million), and, according to Politico, reached a minerals agreement with the island territory. - Makeshift scaffolding collapsed at a church in Ethiopia’s Amhara region on Wednesday, killing at least 36 people and injuring approximately 200 others. Pilgrims had gathered to mark the annual Virgin Mary festival at the Menjar Shenkora Arerti Mariam Church. District police chief Ahmed Gebeyehu told state media the death toll could rise. - In a memo sent to several congressional committees, which several news outlets reported on Thursday, Trump said that the U.S. was engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug-trading cartels, emphasizing the need to “use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.” Last month, the White House ordered military strikes on three separate suspected drug trafficking boats believed to be smuggling cocaine, killing those aboard. Meanwhile, an unnamed senior administration official told Semafor on Thursday that the White House has not ruled out striking within Venezuelan territory. - Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch said on Thursday that three protesters had been killed in anti-government demonstrations in cities including Casablanca and Rabat, the capital. The largely youth-led protests erupted earlier this week as activists called on the government to spend more on public services and criticized spending toward preparations for the 2030 World Cup to be held jointly by Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. Moroccan authorities reported that another 23 civilians were injured in the protests, in addition to 263 security force officials. Akhannouch said in a televised address on Thursday that he is ready to engage in “dialogue and discussion within institutions and public spaces,” though many demonstrators have called for his immediate resignation. - Bloomberg first reported on Thursday that OpenAI has agreed to sell shares to investors at a price that values the tech company at $500 billion, a higher valuation figure than any other privately owned entity, surpassing SpaceX. In all, the company agreed to sell approximately $6.6 billion of stock to a diverse group of investors, including SoftBank Group Corp, T. Rowe Price, and the Abu Dhabi-based MGX. - Australian regulators ordered the recall of additional sunscreen brands after determining that the Sun Protection Factor (SPF)—a measurement of the degree of protection against UV radiation—was significantly lower than what was labeled. Some sunscreen products, such as one brand recalled in August, had an SPF of 4 but were marked as offering 50 or more SPF protection. On Tuesday, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration determined that a base formulation—made by the manufacturer, Wild Child Laboratories, and used by at least 17 different sunscreen producers—was ineffective. - On Tuesday, 26 people were killed in north-central Nigeria after the boat transporting them down the Niger River, carrying mostly traders en route to a local market, sank. Nigerian officials announced the incident on Wednesday, but did not publicly state the cause of the accident, which occurred in Nigeria’s Kogi State. A message from The Dispatch Stay Ahead of the Curve With Dispatch Energy The Dispatch’s newest weekly newsletter will dive into the politics, policy, and innovation shaping America’s energy future, presented by Pacific Legal Foundation. Featuring a rotating roster of contributors who are experts in their respective fields, each edition will feature incisive analysis on everything from oil and gas and permitting regulations, to renewables, climate, and the grid. Watt’s Next? It’s rare to hear the size of a building compared to the area of a city. But in the treelined fields of rural northeast Louisiana, Meta is building their latest AI datacenter, which—as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook—“is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.” Filled from floor to ceiling with the most expensive, advanced chips on the planet, Meta will use the 4-million-square-foot data facility to support its growing AI business. And it’s not alone in building facilities like this. Across the country, tech companies like Meta, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are competing in a modern-day space race—except the end goal isn’t getting man to the moon, it’s putting hundreds of thousands of high-powered graphic processing units (GPUs) into supersized warehouses in states like Texas, Virginia, and Georgia. Along with offering nine-figure salaries to AI researchers, tech giants are pouring billions of dollars into the infrastructure needed to train and run AI models. OpenAI—the creator of ChatGPT—is building five new massive data centers across the U.S., as part of its Stargate platform, and CEO Sam Altman says the company could invest trillions of dollars into AI infrastructure in the “not very distant future.” According to research by McKinsey & Company, AI processing loads will require more than $5 trillion in data center investment worldwide by 2030 as AI workload demand more than triples from 44 gigawatts of capacity in 2025 to nearly 160 gigawatts in 2030. That’s the equivalent of 160 large nuclear reactors running at full output. As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our full item in the members-only version of TMD. Today’s Must-Read Most everyone is familiar with Thomas Jefferson’s views on cities. “I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man,” he wrote to fellow Founding Father Benjamin Rush in 1800. Years earlier, Jefferson said that the “mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.” Instead, Jefferson set out an agrarian vision for the young republic, where republican virtues would be nourished not in overcrowded cities, but among the open lands of a growing nation. Likewise, government should be small and restrained, to allow the protection of individual liberties. Jefferson’s opposite was Alexander Hamilton, whose vision was decidedly urban and commercial. Their dueling visions fueled the first great factional fight in American history, between Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Democratic-Repubican Party. This divide continues to be relevant in our own fractured and fractious age. Toeing the Company Line The Advent of the ‘Abundance’ Movement The push for permitting reform represents a rare moment of bipartisan agreement. Dealing the Cards Three theories of Trump’s hawkish turn on Ukraine. Dress Codes vs. Codes of Honor Pete Hegseth’s selective interpretation of what a soldier should look like. The Art of the Defamation Deal Donald Trump’s new business model is the presidential ‘strike suit.’ No Evidence Indicates FBI Agents Acted as ‘Agitators’ on January 6 Trump claimed that 274 agents reportedly present that day were not acting as ‘Law Enforcement Officials.’ The Lamest Showman on Earth | Roundtable ‘Trump is the most anti-American politician of our generation.’ Correction, October 3, 2025: This newsletter has been updated to reference 'transformers' rather than 'transistors.' Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated. With your membership, you only have the ability to comment on The Morning Dispatch articles. Consider upgrading to join the conversation everywhere. A significant capital supercycle is accelerating within the Artificial Intelligence sector, underscored by OpenAI's reported share sale that values the company at $500 billion, establishing it as the world's most valuable private entity. This valuation event, involving investors such as T. Rowe Price (TROW) and MGX, is symptomatic of a broader AI infrastructure race among tech giants including Meta (META), Google (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT). The scale of this build-out is substantial, exemplified by Meta's 4-million-square-foot data center and an industry-wide projection from McKinsey for over $5 trillion in data center investment by 2030 to meet a tripling of AI workload demand. This private sector spending surge contrasts sharply with a notable public sector capital reallocation, as the U.S. Department of Energy has cancelled $7.56 billion in funding for 223 clean energy projects, citing a lack of economic viability. Concurrently, the Trump administration is signaling further fiscal intervention with a planned $10 billion aid package for farmers affected by trade disputes. On the geopolitical front, the European Union is strengthening its strategic position by doubling financial aid to Greenland to €530 million and securing a minerals agreement, highlighting the increasing importance of controlling critical resource supply chains.
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