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(Reuters) -Wireless tower operator Crown Castle on Wednesday raised its annual site rental revenue forecast for the second time, helped by steady demand for wireless infrastructure services. Crown Castle derives majority of its revenue from leasing out tower infrastructure to U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Verizon Communications on a long-term basis. With about 40,000 cellular towers across the U.S., Crown Castle is looking to focus on growing its tower business, which is expected to benefit from the largest U.S. carriers upgrading their networks to 5G and increasing capacity to meet booming data demand. The real estate investment trust now sees annual site rental revenue in the range of $4.01 billion to $4.05 billion, compared with its earlier projection of between $4 billion and $4.04 billion. Analysts expect earnings growth of real estate investment trusts to improve going into 2026, as pressures from supply, tenant churn, and high development capex ease. Crown Castle posted site rental revenue of $1.01 billion for the third quarter ended September 30, compared with an average estimate of $1 billion. Its adjusted funds from operations came in at $1.12 per share, compared with $1.20 a year earlier. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Maju Samuel)

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(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is in talks with several quantum-computing companies to take equity stakes in exchange for federal funding, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of the agreements, the report said, adding that the discussions include minimum funding awards from Washington of $10 million each. Other companies such as Quantum Computing and Atom Computing are considering similar arrangements, the Journal added. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Earlier this year, Trump said the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel that converts government grants into an equity share, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America. Other deals include an agreement for the Pentagon to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company, MP Materials to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government's winning a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Japan's Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel. Ion declined to comment while the White House, U.S. Commerce Department, Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, Atom Computing and Quantum Computing did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. U.S. Deputy Commerce Secretary Paul Dabbar, a former quantum-computing executive and Energy Department official, is leading the funding discussions with companies in the industry, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. In February, Microsoft unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is "years, not decades" away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed. (Reporting by Devika Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Lincoln Feast.)

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(Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is in talks with several quantum-computing companies to take equity stakes in exchange for federal funding, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Companies including IonQ, Rigetti Computing and D-Wave Quantum are discussing the government becoming a shareholder as part of the agreements, the report said, adding that the discussions include minimum funding awards from Washington of $10 million each. Other companies such as Quantum Computing and Atom Computing are considering similar arrangements, the Journal added. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Earlier this year, Trump said the U.S. would take a 10% stake in Intel that converts government grants into an equity share, the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America. Other deals include an agreement for the Pentagon to become the largest shareholder in a small mining company, MP Materials to boost output of rare earth magnets and the U.S. government's winning a "golden share" with certain veto rights as part of a deal to allow Japan's Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel. Ion declined to comment while the White House, U.S. Commerce Department, Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, Atom Computing and Quantum Computing did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. U.S. Deputy Commerce Secretary Paul Dabbar, a former quantum-computing executive and Energy Department official, is leading the funding discussions with companies in the industry, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. In February, Microsoft unveiled a new chip that it said showed quantum computing is "years, not decades" away, joining Google and IBM in predicting that a fundamental change in computing technology is much closer than recently believed. (Reporting by Devika Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Lincoln Feast.)

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(Reuters) -Social media platform Reddit sued artificial intelligence startup Perplexity in New York federal court on Wednesday, accusing it and three other companies of unlawfully scraping its data to train Perplexity's AI-based search engine. Reddit said in the complaint that the data-scraping companies circumvented its data protection measures in order to steal data that Perplexity "desperately needs" to power its "answer engine" system. The case is one of many filed by content owners against tech companies over the alleged misuse of their copyrighted material to train AI systems. Reddit filed a similar lawsuit against AI startup Anthropic in June that is still ongoing.  "Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide factual answers with accurate AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest," Perplexity said in a statement. "AI companies are locked in an arms race for quality human content – and that pressure has fueled an industrial-scale 'data laundering' economy," Reddit chief legal officer Ben Lee said in a statement.  Reddit, which features thousands of interest-based "subreddit" web communities, said in the lawsuit that it is the most commonly cited source for AI-generated answers to user questions. It has licensed its content to Google, OpenAI and others for their AI training.  Reddit said that Lithuania-based Oxylabs, Russia-based AWMProxy and Texas-based SerpApi scraped Reddit data from billions of search results without permission and that Perplexity, which does not have a license to use Reddit content, worked with at least one of the data-scraping companies to obtain Reddit material. "We strongly disagree with Reddit's allegations and intend to vigorously defend ourselves in court," a SerpApi spokesperson said. Oxylabs said in a statement that it was "shocked and disappointed by this news, as Reddit has made no attempt to speak with us directly," and that it would also defend itself against the allegations. AWMProxy could not be reached for comment. Reddit said it sent Perplexity a cease-and-desist letter last year, after which it "increased the volume of citations to Reddit forty-fold." Reddit asked the court for unspecified monetary damages and an order blocking Perplexity from using its data. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Stephen Coates)

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By Blake Brittain (Reuters) -Conservative activist Robby Starbuck sued Google on Wednesday, alleging the tech giant's artificial intelligence systems generated "outrageously false" information about him. Starbuck said in the lawsuit, filed in Delaware state court, that Google's AI systems falsely called him a "child rapist," "serial sexual abuser" and "shooter" in response to user queries and delivered defamatory statements to millions of users. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said most of the claims were related to mistaken "hallucinations" from Google's Bard large language model that the company worked to address in 2023.  "Hallucinations are a well-known issue for all LLMs, which we disclose and work hard to minimize," Castaneda said. "But as everyone knows, if you’re creative enough, you can prompt a chatbot to say something misleading." Starbuck is best known for opposing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. "No one — regardless of political beliefs — should ever experience this," he said in a statement about the lawsuit. "Now is the time for all of us to demand transparent, unbiased AI that cannot be weaponized to harm people." Starbuck made similar allegations against Meta Platforms in a separate lawsuit in April. Starbuck and Meta settled their dispute in August, and Starbuck advised the company on AI issues under the settlement. According to Wednesday's complaint, Starbuck learned in December 2023 that Bard had falsely connected him with white nationalist Richard Spencer. The lawsuit said that Bard cited fabricated sources and that Google failed to address the statements after Starbuck contacted the company. Starbuck's lawsuit also said that Google's Gemma chatbot disseminated false sexual assault allegations against him in August based on fictitious sources. Starbuck also alleged the chatbot said that he committed spousal abuse, attended the January 6 Capitol riots and appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files, among other things. Starbuck said he has been approached by people who believed some of the false accusations and that they could lead to increased threats on his life, noting the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.  Starbuck asked the court for at least $15 million in damages. (Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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By Akash Sriram and Abhirup Roy (Reuters) -Tesla  reported record third-quarter revenue that beat Wall Street estimates on Wednesday, driven by the highest quarterly sales of its electric vehicles as U.S. buyers rushed to lock in a key tax credit ahead of its expiry last month. However, Tesla's profit failed to live up to analysts' expectations, in part due to tariff and research costs, as well as a drop in income from regulatory credits that are expected to continue to fade away with recent legislation passed by the Trump administration. Tesla's $1.45 trillion valuation largely reflects investor bets on CEO Elon Musk's pivot to robotics and AI, but vehicle sales remain key to the financial stability of the company while those products are being developed. Shares of the Austin, Texas-based company were down 4% in extended trading. Demand for Tesla's vehicles and those of its rivals is also expected to drop through the rest of the year without the tax credits that have been a key driver of EV sales. Tesla did not provide a full-year forecast. "While we face near-term uncertainty from shifting trade, tariff and fiscal policy, we are focused on long-term growth and value creation," the company said on Wednesday. Apart from the removal of tax credits and the waning sales of regulatory credits that traditional automakers bought to make up for their polluting vehicles, Tesla is also grappling with tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on auto-parts imports, which Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja said cost Tesla more than $400 million in the quarter. The EV maker flagged rising expenses in multiple areas, also including a 50% rise in operating expenses driven by AI and other research and development projects, and an increase in stock-based compensation. On an earnings conference call, Taneja said capital expenditures would rise substantially in 2026. "Tesla dished out just the right amount of good and bad news to both appease its fans while also providing enough evidence for its critics," Camelthorn Investments adviser Shawn Campbell told Reuters. "This earnings report isn't going to change anyone's mind on Tesla." To combat a demand drop, Tesla introduced lower-cost "Standard" variants of Model Y and Model 3 vehicles earlier this month, stripping out a myriad of premium and basic features and lowering prices by about $5,000 to $5,500. While Tesla hopes the cheaper variants will drive higher volumes, analysts warn the move will squeeze margins as thousands of dollars of cost cuts per vehicle may not fully compensate for lower selling prices. Tesla said it was on track to start volume production of its Cybercab robotaxi, Semi truck and Megapack 3 battery in 2026. Tesla's energy business also showed strength, including an 81% increase in storage deployment in the quarter, and its robot plans are advancing, with the first-generation production line of its Optimus humanoid robot being installed. The electric vehicle maker reported total revenue of $28.1 billion for the third quarter ended September 30, compared with analysts' average estimate of $26.37 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG. Profit per share in the third quarter was 50 cents, below analysts' estimates of 55 cents. Automotive regulatory credits, once a key driver of profit, fell to $417 million in the quarter from $739 million a year ago and $435 million in the second quarter. Tesla reported gross margin of 18%, compared with estimates of 17.5%. Its closely watched automotive gross margin, excluding regulatory credits, was 15.4%, compared with an average estimate of 15.6%, according to 19 analysts polled by Visible Alpha.  Tesla's limited rollout of its self-driving "robotaxi" service in Austin, Texas earlier this year marked a key strategic pivot, underpinning investor expectations that the company will transition from pure vehicle sales to focusing on self-driving technology. Musk on the conference call said he expected robotaxis to operate without safety drivers in large parts of Austin this year and that robotaxis would be operating in eight to ten metropolitan areas by the end of the year as well. Wall Street expects Tesla's deliveries in 2025 to fall 8.5% due to the expiry of the tax credit, reliance on older models and rising competition. CEO Musk's embrace of right-wing politics has also alienated some potential buyers. Some analysts remain skeptical of a strong rebound as the cheaper version could take away sales of more profitable premium vehicles. (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Abhirup Roy in San Francisco; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)

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(Reuters) -A group including right-wing U.S. media personalities Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck has signed a statement calling for a ban on developing superintelligent artificial intelligence until the public demands it and science paves a safe way forward, according to the non-profit organizers of the initiative. The proposal, also signed by technology pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, is the latest organized by the Future of Life Institute, which for more than a decade has raised concerns about the risk it says intelligent machines pose to humanity. The institute, founded in 2014, was supported early on by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and software programmer and tech investor Jaan Tallinn. Many in the technology industry and the U.S. government have opposed such pauses, arguing these worries are unwarranted and undermine innovation and economic growth. Still, the support from figures such as Bannon reflects potentially growing AI unease among the populist right at a time when many with ties to Silicon Valley hold influential roles in the Republican administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Other signatories for the statement include Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak, Ireland's former President Mary Robinson, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, the institute said. (Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)

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(Reuters) -Polymarket is in early discussions with investors and looking to raise funds at a valuation between $12 billion and $15 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Polymarket did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. In June, the world's biggest prediction market was close to raise $200 million in a funding round that would value it at more than $1 billion, Reuters reported. Polymarket allows users to place bets using cryptocurrency on real-world events. Earlier this month, Intercontinental Exchange announced that it would invest up to $2 billion in Polymarket as it prepares to re-enter the U.S. more than three years after restricting American users. Prediction markets, where users wager on outcomes across sports, entertainment, politics and the economy — including bets on when the U.S. government shutdown will end and the least-streamed song on Taylor Swift's latest album — have seen a surge in institutional interest since the presidential election last year. (Reporting by Anusha Shah in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

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