Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
In the space economy, Vast, the startup racing to build a commercial replacement for the International Space Station, has trimmed roughly four percent of its workforce this week. The company is framing the cuts as performance-related rather than financial, and says it intends to backfill the positions — a signal that headcount strategy, not runway, is driving the decision.
Shifting to biotech, Akeso has cleared a significant regulatory hurdle in China, with its next-generation antibody-drug conjugate AK157D1 receiving clinical trial clearance from the National Medical Products Administration for use in solid tumors. The drug targets a protein called B7-H3, a pathway that has drawn considerable oncology investment, and this Phase One green light moves Akeso meaningfully closer to human data.
And on the ground in Gary, Indiana, a story that puts a human face on infrastructure fragility — a derecho storm that hit on August eleventh knocked out power to tens of thousands of utility customers, and as of Thursday more than fifty-seven thousand remain in the dark. One restaurant owner reports losing nineteen thousand dollars in sales over eight days, a ninety percent revenue collapse that underscores how devastating prolonged outages are for small operators with no buffer.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
