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The Lagos State Government has said that the ban on Single-Use Plastics, such as pet bottles, and sachet water, among others, would take effect from January 2025 across the state.
The Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, announced this at an event in Ikeja on Tuesday, October 2.
“Plastic waste materials make up a significant proportion of solid wastes and litter the metropolis. It has become a highly visible part of the waste stream, PET, Styrofoam and nylon for sachet water, popularly called ‘pure water’ commonly being used for water and beverages, take away plates and cups, carrier bags, among others.
This development is posing environmental challenges ranging from ecosystem degradation, Drainage clogging and flooding, Lagoon and Ocean debris with attendant harm to humans resulting in high socio-economic impacts on the state.
It will improve the situation of the State’s drainage channels and reduce plastic pollution in the marine environment.
Investopedia
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OpenAI's latest fundraising round has made the ChatGPT maker one of the world's most valuable startups, and an unusually costly investment from a historical perspective.
On Wednesday, Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI completed a $6.6 billion fundraising round that valued the nonprofit startup at the center of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) craze at more than $150 billion, nearly double its valuation just a few months ago. If OpenAI were a public company in the S&P 500, it would be among the index’s 70 largest components and have a market value roughly equivalent to that of AT&T (T) and Pfizer (PFE).
But OpenAI, if it was a public company, wouldn’t be eligible for the S&P 500 because it's never been profitable. Nor have many of its major competitors like Amazon (AMZN)-backed Anthropic, Elon Musk’s xAI, or Safe SuperIntelligence (SSI), the organization born out of the recent schism between OpenAI and its former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever.
The valuations of AI startups have skyrocketed this year as they’ve attracted billions of dollars in investment from tech giants and venture capital firms. Anthropic is in the midst of a fundraising round and is expected to be valued at as much as $40 billion. xAI has been valued at $24 billion and SSI is worth an estimated $5 billion just three months after its founding.
These unprofitable firms trade at a high multiple. A Deutsche Bank analysis estimates Anthropic is likely to be valued at 50 times its full-year sales, while OpenAI is valued at almost 40x sales. At the height of the dotcom bubble, Microsoft's and Oracle's (ORCL) price-to-sales ratios peaked around 30.
Their valuations also dwarf those of America's largest tech companies. Nvidia (NVDA), expected to book $90 billion in profit in the next year, trades at 30x annual sales. Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft, two of the most profitable companies in the world, trade at price-to-sales ratios in the low teens.
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization with a for-profit arm through which investors can stake a claim to future profits. Last month, reports emerged that the company was planning to convert to a for-profit company, and its latest fundraising reportedly made the investments conditional on its completing that conversion in the next two years.
Even so, it could be a while before the company does turn a profit. OpenAI as a whole is expected to lose $5 billion this year, according to analyses by and . The number of monthly users of its chatbot ChatGPT, OpenAI's main source of revenue, more than tripled between March and June of this year, and ChatGPT's revenue is expected to quadruple to $2.7 billion this year. But those users come at a high cost—renting the servers to run ChatGPT will cost an estimated $4 billion this year.
Growing revenue will be vital to the profitability of OpenAI, and the company has set ambitious goals for itself. According to documents reviewed by the , the company expects to grow sales from nearly $4 billion this year to $11.6 billion in 2025. It's targeting $100 billion in revenue in 2029, which would require a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 90% over the next five years. By comparison, analysts forecast Nvidia's revenue will grow at a CAGR of 33% through 2026.
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Why Vistra Stock Jumped To Another Record High On Thursday
The Gains Keep Coming For Shares Of...
Investopedia
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The gains keep coming for shares of independent power producer Vistra Corp. (VST), which jumped more than 5% on Thursday to notch one of the best performances in the S&P 500 and set a new record closing high.
The Texas-based electricity provider has ridden a wave of enthusiasm about using nuclear capacity to power energy-intensive artificial intelligence (AI) processes. These AI-driven expectations have helped Vistra surpass Nvidia (NVDA) as the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 in 2024, up a whopping 244% year to date.
The most recent push higher for the red-hot Vistra stock came after Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL), said the tech giant is exploring ways to power its data centers using electricity from nuclear plants.
Vistra shares gained 5.7% on Thursday to close at $132.45, bucking a broader downturn for U.S. stocks.
In an interview with Japan's , Pichai said Google is evaluating investments in a variety of energy technologies as it aims to achieve its ambitious goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
The CEO provided no details as to where Alphabet might source nuclear power. However, announcements this year by other big tech firms support the idea that U.S.-based nuclear generators are poised to benefit from the opportunity.
For instance, Amazon (AMZN) said in March that it would lean on nuclear generation to meet some of its power demand. Microsoft (MSFT) also reached an agreement in September with Vistra competitor Constellation Energy (CEG) to procure power from the currently shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania.
Analysts have expressed optimism that Microsoft's deal with Constellation Energy could set a precedent for more agreements between big tech and nuclear generators. On Thursday, analysts at RBC Capital Markets increased their price target on Vistra stock to $141 from $105.
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Instablog9ja
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Former Nigerian striker, Jonathan Akpoborie, has cautioned young footballers against living lavish lifestyles.
Speaking in an interview with Elegbete TV Sports, the 55-year-old said: “I grew up in Ajegunle. I saw everywhere before I travelled from Nigeria. There is always a difference, you know, when you close your eyes. As I’m here now, in the evening, my friends might call me and I am in Ajegunle.
Sometimes, I am coming back from America, I drop my bag at home here, and I am in Ajegunle. That difference — you close your eyes and you are in Ajegunle. If you cannot learn from that, there is nothing that will be able to teach you.
The problem when you have money, it pushes you to do a lot of things. If you don’t get control, you will lose it, and when you lose it, it is a deep fall. That is why I am praying for these young ones that are playing now that they should be very wise.
I remember when I was in Stuttgart, we did so many things. Sometimes, after a game, seven or eight people would come together, and we’d take a private jet to Spain, rent a villa, stay overnight, and do whatever we wanted. The next morning, the jet would fly us back. That’s the power of money.
When I was in Stuttgart, every two weeks I’d be in Lagos, staying at the Sheraton Hotel. I’d be in the room, and by Sunday or Monday, I’d be back in Germany. My family wouldn’t know, nobody would know.
Money pushes you like that. That’s why I pray the young ones will be wise and start acting responsibly. When money pushes you, you’ll do things you won’t even believe you’re doing.”
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Investopedia
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A legal victory for President Joe Biden's administration has removed an obstacle standing in the way of student loan forgiveness for millions of borrowers.
A federal judge in Georgia late Wednesday allowed a temporary block on Biden's latest student loan forgiveness program to expire. The expiration of the block was a setback for Republican states who filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the $147 billion program from going into effect.
Missouri and seven other states had sued to stop Biden's second attempt at student loan forgiveness, arguing the new rules are unconstitutional. Judge J. Randal Hall in early September temporarily blocked the program while the case was considered, but ruled on Thursday that the case must be heard in Missouri, not Georgia, because the state of Georgia did not have legal standing to sue.
Biden’s Department of Education created the latest debt forgiveness program after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier attempt that would have wiped out up to $20,000 of student loan debt per borrower.
The latest iteration was scheduled to go into effect as early as this month before it was blocked. The program would forgive some or all of the federal student loan debts for people in certain situations, including those whose debts grew because of interest, borrowers with decades-old debts, and those who qualify for existing debt relief programs but haven’t applied, among others.If it survives court challenges, the program will bring the total number of people who have received some amount of student loan forgiveness to 30 million. About 4 million borrowers have already had their loans forgiven under other Biden programs, the department said.“While we appreciate the District Court’s acknowledgment that this case has no legal basis to be brought in Georgia, the fact remains that this lawsuit reflects an ongoing effort by Republican elected officials who want to prevent millions of their own constituents from getting breathing room on their student loans,” an Education Department spokesperson said via email. “ We will continue our lawful efforts to deliver relief to more Americans, including by vigorously defending these proposals in court.”
The fate of the program could ultimately be determined by the same Supreme Court that struck down Biden’s earlier attempt at forgiveness.
In that case, the court’s conservative majority ruled that Biden had overstepped his authority as president when discharging the loans, siding with Missouri and other Republican-led states that had sued to block forgiveness. The new program, however, uses a different bureaucratic procedure based on a different law—the Education Act of 1965—which the Department of Education says is constitutional.
The loan forgiveness program is just one of Biden’s student loan-related programs currently tied up in court. Republican lawsuits have also blocked the SAVE repayment plan, a lower-cost loan repayment plan Biden rolled out last year, enrolling 8 million borrowers. Those borrowers’ loans are in interest-free forbearance until the legal battle is resolved.
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The price of the XRP token fell by as much as 11% Thursday following the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) decision to appeal a federal court ruling last year that found XRP (XRPUSD) is not a security when algorithmically sold to retail investors via exchanges. XRP has since given up some of those losses and was trading roughly 3% lower at 52 cents in recent trading.
This ruling had been seen as a partial victory for XRP's developer, Ripple Labs, and the broader crypto industry, with U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres stating in the July 2023 order that the XRP token itself is not a security. However, the the court did view institutional XRP sales as unregistered securities offerings.
The SEC’s renewed push against Ripple continues after it initially sought $2 billion in damages in the case, although the court ordered Ripple to pay only a $125 million penalty.
"The SEC's decision to appeal is disappointing, but not surprising," Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty posted late Wednesday on the social media platform X in response to the SEC's court filing.
This legal development came just hours after crypto asset manager Bitwise filed to offer for the first spot XRP ETF Wednesday. The SEC's appeal likely weakens the potential for the proposed spot XRP ETF to be approved anytime soon.
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