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(Reuters) -OpenAI generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, The Information reported on Monday, citing financial disclosures to shareholders. OpenAI said it burned $2.5 billion, in large part due to its research and development costs for developing artificial intelligence and for running ChatGPT, the report added. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for a comment. Research and development cost the ChatGPT maker $6.7 billion in the first half, the report said, adding that it had about $17.5 billion in cash and securities at the end of the period. OpenAI looks to meet its full-year revenue target of $13 billion and a cash-burn target of $8.5 billion, the report added. In August, Reuters reported that OpenAI was in early-stage discussions about a stock sale that would allow employees to cash out and likely valuing the company at about $500 billion. Nvidia said last week it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply data‑center chips. (Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)

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(Reuters) -OpenAI generated around $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025, about 16% more than it generated all of last year, The Information reported on Monday, citing financial disclosures to shareholders. OpenAI said it burned $2.5 billion, in a large part due to its research and development costs for developing artificial intelligence and for running ChatGPT, the report added. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. (Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)

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By Christine Chen and Renju Jose SYDNEY (Reuters) -Optus's CEO will need more time to get its house in order, the boss of parent Singapore Telecommunications said on Tuesday, after back-to-back emergency call outages in Australia intensified scrutiny of the telecom carrier's governance. The two outages that occurred less than a fortnight apart affected thousands of Australian customers and have been linked to four deaths. The incidents deepen Optus's reputational crisis following a 2022 cyberattack that compromised data on millions of customers, and an A$100 million ($65.8 million) penalty imposed this year for sales misconduct. Singtel boss Yuen Kuan Moon met with Australian authorities on Tuesday morning, amid calls from some analysts and lawmakers for Optus CEO Stephen Rue to resign and Optus to be stripped of its operating licence. Asked by journalists whether Rue still had his support, Yuen said it would take time to fix the problems at the No. 2 Australian telecoms firm.  "We brought in Stephen 11 months ago to transform Optus, to really address the issues that we had since 2022-23," Yuen told reporters in Sydney after talks with Communications Minister Anika Wells. "It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company." Singtel, majority owned by Temasek Holdings, saw its shares fall as much as 2% in early trade. The latest disruption to Optus' services interrupted emergency triple zero ("000") calls and affected around 4,500 people on Sunday. The company said it was caused by a faulty tower south of Sydney.  It came just 10 days after a botched firewall upgrade triggered an outage lasting 13 hours that disrupted emergency calls in two states and the Northern Territory and was linked to four deaths. Optus Chairman John Arthur said the failures were not caused by a lack of investment from owner Singtel. Yuen said the deadly outage was due to a "people issue". "The 18 September incident is due to a people issue and it takes time to transform and change the people," Yuen said. "VERY SERIOUS" Wells, the communications minister, said there was a "very serious lack of confidence" in Optus to deliver triple zero calls. She called for external oversight "so Australians can take advice not just from Optus themselves". "The CEO of Optus now needs to work with their parent company Singtel on the systems and holistic change required within their own company to give that confidence back to Australians," she said. Former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was ousted over the nationwide outage of Optus services in 2023. Rue took the reins in November 2024 and was tasked with improving service standards for customers. ($1 = 1.5191 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Christine Chen and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Stephen Coates)

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Cryptocurrency exchange OKX said on Tuesday it has launched a service allowing its customers to make payments in stablecoins to merchants on ride-hailing operator Grab's payments platform in Singapore. This marks the first time that GrabPay merchants in the city-state will accept direct stablecoin payments, highlighting the increasing adoption of the digital asset in the country. Payments done using USDC or USDT stablecoins through the service, called OKX Pay, will first be converted to StraitsX's Singapore dollar-backed stablecoin XSGD, after which merchants will receive the amount in Singapore dollars. Interest in the use of blockchain-based stablecoins – which are pegged to a fiat currency and offer cheaper and faster transactions – has surged and many companies around the world are looking at launching their own stablecoins. The Metro department store chain in Singapore also began accepting stablecoin payments this year. (Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Cryptocurrency exchange OKX said on Tuesday it has launched a service allowing its customers to make payments in stablecoins to merchants on ride-hailing operator Grab's payments platform in Singapore. This marks the first time that GrabPay merchants in the city-state will accept direct stablecoin payments, highlighting the increasing adoption of the digital asset in the country. Payments done using USDC or USDT stablecoins through the service, called OKX Pay, will first be converted to StraitsX's Singapore dollar-backed stablecoin XSGD, after which merchants will receive the amount in Singapore dollars. Interest in the use of blockchain-based stablecoins – which are pegged to a fiat currency and offer cheaper and faster transactions – has surged and many companies around the world are looking at launching their own stablecoins. The Metro department store chain in Singapore also began accepting stablecoin payments this year. (Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

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TOKYO (Reuters) -Japanese beer and beverage giant Asahi Group Holdings has not been able to resume production at domestic factories a day after a cyberattack and cannot foresee when it can be resumed, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday. The company has 30 plants in Japan making beer, beverage and food products, but it is still investigating whether all of them have stopped production, the spokesperson added. The maker of Asahi Super Dry Beer, Nikka Whisky and Mitsuya Cider last night said its group companies in Japan suspended operations, including order processing, shipping and call centre functions, due to a cyberattack-caused system outage, although no personal information leakage has been confirmed. (Reporting by Kentaro Okasaka; Writing by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

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Frankfurt (dpa) – Why is it that some people have never had sex, even well into adulthood? This is the question that an international research team hoped to answer in the largest study of its kind to date. The authors, publishing their study in the journal PNAS, found that virginity into later life is due to a complex mix of psychological, social and genetic factors. "Romantic and sexual relationships are often an important social support. Their absence is associated with loneliness, anxiety, depressive feelings and reduced well-being for many," said co-author Laura Wesseldijk from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt. The research team, which included scientists from the Netherlands and Australia, analysed data from more than 400,000 people in the UK aged 39 to 73. Around 1% of them reported never having had sex. What do people without sexual experience have in common? This group was, on average, better educated but also lonelier, more anxious and less happy than those with sexual experience, the MPIEA reported. The researchers also found that lifelong virginity was more common in areas with greater income inequality. For men, physical characteristics also played a role: Men who had never had sex were more likely to be physically less strong. They also tended to live in regions with fewer women. About 15% of the differences in lifelong virginity could be explained by genetic factors. Co-author Abdel Abdellaoui from the University of Amsterdam explained: "Most striking is the overlap with genetic factors related to intelligence, education and neurological developmental disorders such as autism." The study also revealed that people who had never had sex were less likely to consume alcohol or drugs and were more likely to have worn glasses in their youth. "We see here a group of people who tend to be more socially withdrawn and therefore more often have difficulty finding a partner," commented co-author Brendan Zietsch from the University of Queensland in Australia. The following information is not intended for publication dpa sat yyhe n1 bok coh

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SYDNEY (Reuters) -Optus's CEO will need more time to turn around the embattled telecom carrier, the boss of its parent Singapore Telecommunications, who is in Australia to confront the fallout from outages of its emergency call services, said on Tuesday. The back-to-back outages, which happened less than two weeks apart, follow a string of other high-profile failures at Optus including a nationwide outage and data breach, which have intensified scrutiny of the carrier’s governance and management. Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, who was summoned from Singapore to meet with Australian authorities, said it would take time for Optus CEO Stephen Rue to transform the No. 2 Australian telecoms firm. “We brought in Stephen 11 months ago to transform Optus, to really address the issues that we had since 2022-23,” Yuen told reporters in Sydney after a meeting with Communications Minister Annika Wells. “It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company.” Singtel is a unit of Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings. The latest disruption on Sunday, caused by a faulty tower south of Sydney, interrupted emergency calls and affected around 4,500 people. It came just 10 days after a botched firewall upgrade triggered an outage lasting 13 hours that disrupted emergency calls in two states and the Northern Territory and was linked to four deaths. The incidents deepen Optus’s reputational crisis following a 2022 cyberattack that compromised data on millions of customers and an A$100 million ($65.83 million) penalty this year for sales misconduct. Former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was ousted over a nationwide outage of Optus services in 2023. Rue took the reins in November 2024 and was tasked with improving service standards for customers. ($1 = 1.5191 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Christine Chen and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) -A top U.S. securities regulator known for her supportive stance on the cryptocurrency industry said on Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is open to working with industry participants on tokenising products. "We are willing to work with people who want to tokenise, we urge them to come talk to us," said Hester Peirce, a Republican commissioner on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who was speaking virtually at the Digital Assets Summit in Singapore. (Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

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SINGAPORE (Reuters) -A top U.S. securities regulator known for her supportive stance on the cryptocurrency industry said on Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission is open to working with industry participants on tokenising products. "We are willing to work with people who want to tokenise, we urge them to come talk to us," said Hester Peirce, a Republican commissioner on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who was speaking virtually at the Digital Assets Summit in Singapore. (Reporting by Rae Wee; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

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