Financial Mindset

For 60 years, Ormat Technologies strategically built geothermal power plants where nature allows—over underground reservoirs of high-pressure water or steam—including around the so-called Pacific “Ring of Fire” from Asia to the Americas. Doing so made Ormat the largest geothermal operator in the world. Today, Ormat hopes to grow exponentially with the AI data center boom, aiming to build baseload, clean power plants throughout the Western United States utilizing both new technologies and old. The goal is called EGS—enhanced geothermal systems—marrying the traditional geothermal business with the newest oil-drilling and fracking techniques. The idea is that EGS will allow for the construction of next-generation geothermal power almost anywhere the customer desires by tapping into deeper, higher-temperature underground reservoirs much more easily. While the science is proven, Ormat and competitors are racing to show they can build the plants economically and efficiently enough t...

Amazon has raised prices for several of its first-party devices, including its Echo smart speakers and Fire TV line, making it the latest big tech company to increase consumer costs as memory chip shortages pressure several industries. The company overnight raised prices across its hardware product line, according to a review by Fortune . This includes raising the cost of its base Echo Dot from $49.99 to $79.99 and its Echo Show 11 from $219.99 to $249.99. It also raised its 16-gigabyte Kindle from $109.99 to $149.99 and its 16-gigabyte Kindle Paperwhite from $159.99 to $199.99. Its Fire TV Stick HD model increased from $34.99 to $39.99, and its Fire TV Stick 4K Max went from $59.99 to $84.99. The Amazon eero 7 wireless mesh networking system increased from $349.99 to $399.99, and the eero Pro 7 rose from $699.99 to $799.99. Notably, Amazon did not increase prices for its Ring products. The website Pocket-lint earlier reported on the Fire TV increases. An Amazon spokeswom...

President Donald Trump announced Friday  that his administration will  allow more beef  to be temporarily imported into the U.S. without triggering higher tariffs, which drew swift pushback from cattle producers and conservative rural-state Republicans. Beef prices have climbed to record highs amid a drop in the number of U.S. cattle, consistent consumer demand and limits on cattle from Mexico, where the animals are facing a flesh-eating pest. The U.S. president has also  imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil , a major beef exporter. Trump remains under pressure to cut costs and address affordability issues ahead of November’s midterms. But ranchers, normally some of the president’s biggest supporters, are enjoying some rare profitable years and worry cheap beef imports will reduce cattle prices — and with it, the incentive to increase herd sizes. “We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers...

Prediction markets are headed for a legal reckoning. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission and state regulators are battling over who gets to police the fast-growing platforms, a conflict that could force the Supreme Court to settle the question before the end of next year, according to Flip Pidot, a prediction market executive with nearly 20 years of experience in the industry. “When you have a high-stakes intergovernmental conflict where a federal regulator like the CFTC is opposed in their position to a supermajority of state attorneys general… then that can get the Supreme Court’s attention,” Pidot, the Chief Strategy Officer at PredictIt, told Fortune . In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi in its dispute with New Jersey, finding that federal commodities law overrode the state’s gambling laws for the platform’s contracts. The ruling affirmed a lower-court decision allowing Kalshi to continue operating in the state...

In the hills of Emilia-Romagna, a bank vault holds more than half-a-million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, worth well over 300 million euros. The vault belongs to the bank Credito Emiliano, known colloquially as Credem, which has accepted young wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano as collateral for loans to local dairy farms since 1953. But now, extreme heat is threatening Italy’s “cheese banks,” and economists who study heat’s effect on growth say the exposure runs well beyond a single vault but into the country’s vineyards, its olive groves, and its broader economy. A blockchain-backed cheese loan collateral program After receiving the wheels of cheese from dairy farmers, a Credem subsidiary, Magazzini Generali delle Tagliate, ages the wheels in two warehouses in Reggio Emilia and Modena. Producers typically receive 60% to 80% of a wheel’s value upfront. But the process has come a long way from the 1950s, as blockchain technology now l...

Airwallex president Lucy Liu invokes a car metaphor to describe one of her company’s newest products. “It’s like assisted driving, like you have in a Tesla ,” she says to describe T:0, an automated bookkeeping system that can run a company’s entire financial department on its own. “You still have someone in the driver’s seat, but the car really drives itself.” T:0 is part of a broader pivot for Airwallex, which got its start in Australia, and has emerged as a major global player in fintech and payments. Like platforms like Wise and Revolut, its business first grew alongside traditional industries that rely on cross-border payments, such as e-commerce, gaming, and online travel. But as AI  changes how companies approach aspects of their business, including subscriptions and payment models, fintech firms like Airwallex are changing too. In late June, Airwallex raised $320 million in a Series H funding round led by Addition, a returning investor, alongside Baillie Gifford, T. ...

Hundreds of commercial flights will be told to change their paths over the northeastern Atlantic Ocean during the next two winters to show how minor altitude adjustments can reduce aviation’s  climate  impact. The British government is backing the landmark airspace-scale trial, launched Tuesday, to avoid creating condensation trails, or contrails. Google UK is contributing its artificial intelligence-powered forecasts to identify the contrail regions. When airplanes fly through cold and humid areas, ice crystals can form around the soot particles emitted from the engine, creating clouds that  trap heat and warm the planet . The Shanwick Oceanic Control Area in the eastern half of the North Atlantic corridor, the location of the trial, is a busy gateway for air traffic between Europe and North America. It’s also a hot spot for where contrails form. The 30-month research program known as Operation Blue Skies includes test periods this winter and nex...