Elon Musk, CEO of X and other firms whose names include the letter “X,” found himself in the crosshairs of regulators after he failed to testify this month as a part of an investigation into Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

In a document filed today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it intends to impose sanctions on Musk after he missed a court-ordered hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court on September 10. According to the document, Musk didn’t notify the SEC that he wouldn’t appear for the hearing until three hours before the hearing was set to begin.

“The court must make clear that Musk must stop his games and delaying tactics,” the letter reads.

According to the documents, Musk spent September 10 overseeing the launch of Polaris Dawn, a spacecraft manufactured by his space exploration company, SpaceX.

SEC counsel proposed rescheduling Musk’s hearing for the following day, September 11. However, Musk’s lawyer declined, agreeing only to an October hearing.

The SEC is searching for “significant contingent relief” if Musk fails to appear in court in October. The agency has also indicated it plans to file a motion for sanctions against Musk to get well travel expenses for the canceled testimony and other relief. (In the lawsuit, the SEC said it spent “thousands of dollars” to fly three attorneys to Los Angeles for the Sept. 10 hearing.)

Musk’s court-ordered appearance stems from an SEC investigation into whether the billionaire acted lawfully in disclosing his Twitter stock purchases ahead of his $44 billion acquisition of the corporate in 2022. The investigation can also be looking into whether Musk’s statements in regards to the transactions were misleading; the SEC alleges that Musk waited at the least 10 days too long to disclose that he was buying Twitter stock.

The investigation is the second time Musk has found himself under the SEC’s gun in recent years. In 2018, the agency ordered Musk to step down as Tesla CEO and pay $40 million for tweets about Tesla stock that the SEC found amounted to market manipulation. At the time, Musk called the fraud allegations “unjustified.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also investigated Musk and Tesla over claims about Tesla’s vehicles’ ability to achieve “full autonomous driving” in addition to Tesla’s use of company funds to construct a “glass house” for Musk.

The full text of the appliance will be read below.

JOINT STATEMENT ON THE R… By SP-TechCrunch

The iPhone 16 officially goes on sale on Friday. But for its early adopters, it arrives with a fundamental compromise built into the deal.

Simply put, this isn’t the iPhone 16 they were promised. Tim Cook said it will be “the first iPhone built for Apple Intelligence.” But that “for” is vital: the phones won’t even have the most anticipated AI features from the get-go.

This appears to be a turning point for Apple. When it involves recent features on phones, the corporate is not at all times known for being the primary to market or jumping on the bandwagon, but it surely is understood for being the perfect. That’s not the case here. Apple has been forced to leap on board the AI ​​hype train, and in doing so, it’s taking a leap into the unthinkable void.

Apple has mentioned its Apple Intelligence Suite twice before — first announcing the AI ​​Suite at its WWDC developer conference in June, and again throughout the iPhone 16 launch in September.

In reality, nevertheless, the corporate falls far short when it comes to feature offerings in comparison with competitors like Google and Microsoft, in addition to newcomers like OpenAI and (*16*).

The company’s first AI toolkit, announced and released in developer beta, includes tools for transcribing, article and notification summarization, object removal from photos, and audio transcription. Much of this functionality already exists available in the market. Apple is betting that its give attention to privacy — your usage data just isn’t shared with other users or other tech corporations, it guarantees — might be enough to draw buyers.

Strictly speaking, the difference between product and have isn’t as drastic because it might sound — or a minimum of that’s how Apple would defend all of it. The iPhone went on sale on September 20, and Apple has promised to begin rolling out AI features in October.

However, only a number of features might be made available at the moment, and so they might be available only in U.S. English. (Recall that the corporate is banking heavily on international markets, with North America accounting for just over half of all iPhone sales.)

And we’ll need to wait for more complicated AI gadgets. The company plans to introduce features like visual search and Image Playground next month, and support for added languages ​​will begin in December — but first with English localization. Other languages ​​will follow in 2025.

The iPhone 16 just isn’t absolutely vital for individuals who want the brand new AI features. The company has already confirmed that the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max can even get access to the platform.

So if Apple Intelligence is actually the game-changer Apple guarantees, one wonders whether the disruptions and delays in rollouts will deter users from upgrading. Or whether we’ll start seeing consumers adopt a wait-and-see attitude — which could also translate into lower sales.

As my colleague Sarah has identified, Apple’s AI features could grow to be more useful once third-party developers can fully integrate them into their apps. That’s nice to contemplate, but when and when that happens, that’s more of an iPhone 17 conversation.

That stands out as the crux of the matter. Apple is constructing for the long run, and for the primary time, it appears to be asking buyers to take that leap of religion.

Alanthe French insurance unicorn has just signed a multi-faceted agreement with Belfiusconsidered one of the most important banks in Belgium, which incorporates a distribution partnership and a major financial investment within the startup.

Belfius is leading Alan’s Series F funding round of €173 million (around $193 million at current exchange rates). Some of Alan’s existing investors are participating again, namely OTPP via Teachers’ Venture Growth, Temasek, Coatue, and Lakestar.

If you’re not familiar with Alan, the corporate originally began as a health insurance product that supplemented France’s national healthcare system. French corporations are required to offer health insurance to all of their employees after they join.

Alan has optimized his core product as much as possible to make the user experience a lot better than the legacy insurance provider. For example, Alan has automated many parts of the claims management system. In some cases, you get a refund in your checking account only one minute after leaving the doctor’s office.

Over time, the corporate has added other health-related services, reminiscent of the power to talk with doctors, order prescription glasses, and access preventive content about mental health, back pain, and more through its mobile app. More recently, the corporate has turned to artificial intelligence to spice up its productivity.

Earlier this yr, Alan shared some metrics concerning the company’s performance. The company said that greater than 500,000 persons are covered by Alan’s insurance products and that it could reach profitability without raising one other round of funding.

Alan, nonetheless, said the partnership with Belfius is a very good opportunity to expand the bank’s customer base in Belgium – the bank will offer the startup’s health insurance products to its corporate and institutional clients, who make up thousands and thousands of employees.

“This privileged partnership with Belfius, whose transformation over the past decade has been truly inspiring, opens the door to a new era for Alan in Belgium. Belfius’ investment will enable us to accelerate our growth and expand our ability to offer cutting-edge, accessible healthcare products and services to a broad audience,” said Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve, co-founder and CEO of Alan, in a press release.

Since February, Alan has signed up one other 150,000 clients, including the Prime Minister’s office in France. His annual recurring revenue is predicted to succeed in €450 million (about $500 million) this yr.

But Alan isn’t any typical software-as-a-service company, with most of its revenue going to insurance claims. Still, one thing is needless to say: the corporate’s growth shows no signs of slowing down.