Shares of the Fundrise Innovation Fund fell sharply for a second straight day Friday, though remain well above the underlying value of its holdings in private tech firms including the potentially IPO-bound SpaceX and Anthropic PBC.
The closed-end fund sank 34% to $173 in New York, extending the prior day’s 31% slump. The pullback capped a wild week of trading since shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange on March 19.
The Department of War confirmed to Reuters that it deployed Ukrainian-style drone boats to the Middle East as part of Operation Epic Fury against Iran. This move signals that the DoW is quickly learning a major lesson from the four-year Russia-Ukraine war: inexpensive autonomous systems, from drone boats to kamikaze drones, are necessary and are becoming core assets (very cheap) on the modern battlefield.
Tim Hawkins, a DoW spokesperson for Central Command, told the outlet that the drone boats deployed in the operation were built by Baltimore-based BlackSea and are known as the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, or GARC. He said the drone boats are being used for reconnaissance missions.
"U.S. forces continue to employ unmanned systems in the Middle East region, including surface drone assets like the GARC. This platform, in particular, has successfully logged over 450 underway hours and more than 2,200 nautical miles during maritime patrols in support of Operation Epic Fury," Hawkins said.
BlackSea's high-speed drone boat is described as a modular, autonomous, and remotely operated USV (unmanned surface vehicle) built for missions such as ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), communications relay, mine countermeasures, survey, interdiction, and potentially strike roles.
The DoW's push for inexpensive, scalable autonomous air, ground, and maritime systems has only been reinforced by Operation Epic Fury and appears to take a page from Ukraine's playbook in its war of attrition against Russia, where FPVs and killer ground bots have dominated 'no man's land.'
In addition to drone boats, U.S. forces have deployed kamikaze drones based on the Iranian Shahed-136 attack drone - yet another acknowledgment by the DoW that autonomous systems are the future of warfare.
None of this should surprise readers, as we have outlined how four years of rapid development in war technology across Ukraine, Russia, and China have provided a glimpse of 2030s warfare.
Latest snapshot of the two wars across Eurasia: we overlaid natural gas pipelines on the map.
Next up are humanoid robots as physical AI on the battlefield.
A “woke” taxpayer-funded agency was exempt from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s directive for New York City to find sweeping savings in a bid to narrow a $5.4 billion budget deficit, The Post has learned.
The city Commission on Racial Equity, which has a $4.8 million budget, confirmed it was opting out of the mayor’s Jan. 29 executive order calling for city departments to each find 2.5% in spending cuts.
“As a non-mayoral agency, NYC CORE is not subject to the terms of the Executive Order in question,” a commission rep wrote.
The order, which Hizzoner signed on live TV, directed all “mayoral agencies” — such as the NYPD, the Department of Sanitation and the Parks Department — to submit individual belt-tightening plans by March 20.
The CORE, a 15-member commission created via a 2022 ballot measure to ensure racial equity in city government, is considered a “non-mayoral” agency, which also include NYCHA, the MTA and CUNY.
However, Mamdani’s order noted that First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan and the Office of Management and Budget “shall take all steps necessary … to facilitate and encourage participation by non-mayoral City agencies” with the directive.
The commission’s response that it was “not subject” to the order infuriated critics.
“I doubt the average New Yorker could name any of these ‘equity’ commissions, let alone describe one thing they’ve done to make their lives any better,” Councilman David Carr (R-Staten Island) told The Post on Friday.
“The least they could do is chip in and save a few taxpayer dollars. But I guess you just can’t put a price on woke.”
Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) said the commission “should honestly have been the first thing to go,” noting each city department already has a diversity office.
“But that might take an unnecessary job from some of his DSA supporters, and we can’t have that now can we?” she said sarcastically, referring to the mayor and his democratic socialist allies.
“Who would’ve thought that a woke and useless agency would have the shameless chutzpah to not face any budget cuts,” a Democratic operative quipped.
City Hall would only say in a statement that the commission, as an “independent government body” and not a mayoral agency, was not subject to Mamdani’s mandate.
The CORE’s head, Linda Tigani, who was appointed by both former Mayor Eric Adams and then-Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, was exposed by The Post for hateful social media posts, including repeatedly using the phrase “from the river to the sea” which calls for the eradication of the Jewish state of Israel.
The executive order reduction reports, which were meant to be done by what Mamdani has dubbed chief savings officers in each agency, were supposed to be public — but have yet to be released nearly a week after the due date.
The Post filed dozens of records requests for the reports, which the mayor said on Feb. 17, when unveiling his preliminary budget, would be publicly released on March 20.
City Hall has only revealed a mere $200 million of cuts — a tiny fraction of the total $1.7 billion slashes Mamdani promised — and much of the savings were vaguely described, such as changing or canceling software subscriptions or bringing certain outsourced services in-house.
Mamdani said New Yorkers may have to wait till April 20 — when the mayor’s executive budget is due — to actually see all the savings that are being made, but promised the less than $2 billion benchmark was reached.
CORE is tasked with “holding government accountable to advancing racial equity in government operations and increasing community voices in government decision making.”
Mamdani’s preliminary budget showed it had a $4.6 million budget for next year, the same level Mayor Eric Adams set in his final spending plan.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued an evacuation notice on Friday to the industrial companies with ties to the United States and Israel.
"Our fighters are carrying out retaliatory attacks, so we warn all employees of industrial companies in the region that have American shareholders, as well as heavy industries allied with the Zionist regime in the region, to leave their workplaces immediately so that your life is not endangered," the IRGC said in the notice, following attacks on Iran's steel factories.
The guard also accused Israel of targeting Iran's industrial facilities despite previous warnings and urged all locals to evacuate within a one-kilometer radius.
https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Iran-warns-US-Israel-allied-firms-to-evacuate-sites/65969473
Kailera Therapeutics, a Phase 3 biotech developing injectable and oral GLP-1s for obesity, filed on Friday with the SEC to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering.
Kailera is progressing four clinical-stage candidates targeting obesity, leveraging multiple glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) based mechanisms of action and routes of administration. Its lead candidate, ribupatide (also known as KAI-9531), is currently being evaluated in global Phase 3 trials as a once-weekly injectable GLP-1/glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor dual agonist peptide. The company is expanding its ribupatide franchise by developing a once-daily oral tablet formulation, oral ribupatide, based on the same peptide as injectable ribupatide.
The Waltham, MA-based company was founded in 2024 and plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol KLRA. Kailera Therapeutics filed confidentially on December 19, 2025. J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Leerink Partners, TD Securities, and Evercore ISI are the joint bookrunners on the deal. No pricing terms were disclosed.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff says the United States is hopeful that there will be meetings with Iran soon.
“We think there will be meetings this week. We’re certainly hopeful for it,” Witkoff says at an investment forum in Miami, Florida, without specifying whether he is referring to the current week or the coming one.
“We have a 15-point deal on the table that the Iranians have had for a bit of time. We expect an answer from them, and it would solve it all,” he says, referring to the US proposal to end the monthlong war.
According to an Axios report, Witkoff says the conditions include ending Iranian uranium enrichment so there’s “no second North Korea in the Middle East.”
He also reportedly says, “We have an extension of the deadline for Iran. We see it as a real positive. We are negotiating with the Iranians. We may have a different definition of negotiating than they do. But we are talking to them.”
He adds that Iran letting some ships through the Strait of Hormuz is a “good sign,” according to the report.
“The president wants a peace deal. But without pressure, you don’t get anybody to the table. We are prepared to solve this diplomatically,” he says, according to the report.
European countries are supposedly drafting plans to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz once the war is over, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The media outlet cited sources familiar with the matter, who shared that the plans include sending frigates to escort oil tankers and other merchant ships through the passage, shooting down Iranian drones and missiles and showing military power to reassure shipping companies and their insurers that they will be safe when they sail through the Gulf.
Previously, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Mark Rutte shared that allies are actively working together to find a way to reopen the passage.
https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Europe-may-escort-tankers-through-Hormuz-after-war/65970568
