U.S. November Core PCE Price Index YoY 2.8%, Expected 2.8%

Jan. 23 — CNN reported Wednesday that former President Trump and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reached a verbal agreement on Greenland during their meeting, though no written document has yet been produced to confirm a potential future deal. Sources stated the two agreed to further negotiate updates to the 1951 trilateral agreement between the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland—an accord governing U.S. military presence on the island. Another potential component of the deal would expand U.S. access to Greenland’s natural resources, including minerals. Stoltenberg, however, denied Thursday that he had discussed the matter directly with Trump.

On January 23, the Financial Times reported that SpaceX—Elon Musk’s rocket manufacturing firm—is seeking Wall Street banks to underwrite its "mega" initial public offering (IPO), which is expected to rank among the largest in history. Sources familiar with the matter say Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley have been tapped as lead underwriters to oversee the listing process. SpaceX executives have held talks with several investment banks in recent weeks to prep for the IPO, which could launch as early as this year. The company is currently conducting a round of pre-IPO secondary transactions, with a valuation pegged at roughly $800 billion. Late last year, SpaceX signaled it plans to go public in mid-to-late 2026 at a valuation of around $15 trillion, targeting funds well in excess of $300 billion.

**January 23 Update** Elon Musk said at the World Economic Forum that artificial intelligence (AI) will outpace human thought speed by the end of this year—with that timeline set for no later than next year. He added it’s highly likely AI will surpass the entire human race in intelligence by 2030. Separately, SpaceX is targeting a major breakthrough this year to achieve full rocket reusability—a critical step to slashing space travel costs, as only fuel expenses will be incurred in the future. Musk closed his remarks by urging everyone to stay optimistic and passionate about the future.

On January 23, Elon Musk told the World Economic Forum (WEF): “By the end of next year, we’ll sell a humanoid robot to consumers. We’re confident this robot will be highly reliable and feature-packed—capable of doing just about anything you want.” “Tesla often rolls out full updates for its Autopilot software weekly, and some insurance companies recently noted it’s actually very safe. I believe autonomous driving cars will fundamentally solve today’s problems, and autonomous taxi services will be widely available across the U.S. by the end of this year. Tesla aims to secure supervised autonomous driving approval in Europe next month, if possible.” Per Bitget market data, Tesla reversed its intraday decline to trade higher, with its current gain at 1.27%.

January 22, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Elon Musk said SpaceX’s founding goal is to maximize civilization’s future. The company is advancing rocket technology to enable extending life and consciousness beyond Earth—reaching the Moon, Mars, and eventually other galaxies. “Consciousness and the unknown darkness are unstable and delicate, and we should always view them that way,” Musk noted. Humans don’t know if aliens exist, he added. “The bottom line: we should assume life and consciousness are extremely rare—maybe only here on Earth. If that’s true, we need to do everything to keep the light of consciousness from going out; humanity is a small candle in a vast darkness. That’s why it’s critical to pave the way for life to survive on multiple planets—so consciousness can persist if a natural or man-made disaster hits Earth. That’s SpaceX’s purpose.”

On January 22, Bloomberg reported that Inferact—an AI startup founded by the team behind the open-source vLLM software—has closed a $150 million seed round at an $8 billion valuation. The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Lightspeed, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and True Ventures. Inferact focuses on AI inference, aiming to tackle the high operational costs and instability plaguing existing AI models. The project originated at UC Berkeley and is now overseen by the PyTorch Foundation.