Questcorp Mining Inc. (CSE: QQQ,OTC:QQCMF) (OTCQB: QQCMF) (FSE: D910) (the ‘Company’ or ‘Questcorp’) announces that has closed its non-brokered private placement (the ‘Offering’) of flow-through units (each, an ‘FT Unit’). In connection with closing, the Company has issued 6,023,077 FT Units, at a price of $0.13 per FT Unit, for gross proceeds of up to $783,000. Each FT Unit consists of one common share of the Company, issued as a flow-through share within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada), and one-half-of-one share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a ‘Warrant’). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase an additional common share of the Company at a price of $0.20 until December 17, 2027.
The Company anticipates the proceeds from the Offering will be used to conduct exploration of the Company’s North Island Copper Property, located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
In connection with closing, the Company paid $53,900 and issued 414,615 share purchase warrants (each, a ‘Finders’ Warrant‘) to certain arms-length parties who assisted in introducing subscribers to the Offering. Each Finders’ Warrant is exercisable to acquire a common share of the Company until December 17, 2027, with 134,615 of the Finders’ Warrants exercisable at a price of $0.13 and 280,000 exercisable at a price of $0.20. All securities issued in connection with the Offering are subject to restrictions on resale until April 18, 2026 in accordance with applicable securities laws.
About Questcorp Mining Inc.
Questcorp Mining Inc. is engaged in the business of the acquisition and exploration of mineral properties in North America, with the objective of locating and developing economic precious and base metals properties of merit. The Company holds an option to acquire an undivided 100% interest in and to mineral claims totaling 1,168.09 hectares comprising the North Island Copper Property, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, subject to a royalty obligation. The Company also holds an option to acquire an undivided 100% interest in and to mineral claims totaling 2,520.2 hectares comprising the La Union Project located in Sonora, Mexico, subject to a royalty obligation.
This news release includes certain ‘forward-looking statements’ under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, uncertain capital markets; and delay or failure to receive board or regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that the geophysical surveys will be completed as contemplated or at all and that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/278391
The title of Dan Wang’s book Breakneck focuses on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) specifically, but it is really about the self-conscious great-power rivalry between China’s Communist Party leaders and the United States. Along the way, we encounter all the popular points of controversy between the two great nations, covering everything from bullet trains, iPhone factories, and Trump tariffs to zero-COVID lockdowns, rare-earth mineral supply chains, and the demographic long tail of the One Child policy.
This isn’t just another case of two big nations clashing—as big nations tend to do from time to time. For finance analyst and university research fellow Dan Wang, the US and the PRC are uniquely paired in world affairs. In his introduction, he writes, “…no two peoples are more alike than Americans and Chinese,” citing their shared love of consumerism, pragmatic natures, and appreciation for technological progress.
Wang sees the US and PRC economies, in particular, as complements, which explains the rapid growth of trade between the two in the twenty-first century: “It is almost uncanny how much the United States and China have been complementary of each other.”
Yet at the same time, he says that, on a political level, “the two systems are a study in contrasts.” Fair enough, as they’re obviously very different. Yet in other passages, he frames the US and PRC systems as “inversions” of each other. This is seen in each society’s attitudes toward innovation and technology adoption, and to politics in general. It would take a sublime Confucian scholar to disentangle these contradictions. Perhaps the two nations are the phoenix and the dragon of world politics, the cobra and the mongoose, or simply each other’s evil twin.
Focusing on differences, Wang describes a Chinese government run by relentlessly practical but unsentimental engineers, who excel at building impressive infrastructure projects yet often disregard the negative impact on individual citizens. By contrast, America—the home of legal proceduralism and bureaucracy—has, in recent decades, erected a bewildering array of roadblocks to major projects, but does a much better job of recognizing and safeguarding individual rights.
This summary of strengths and weaknesses naturally suggests that each nation could benefit from borrowing elements of the other. The Chinese would be better off in certain ways by becoming more American, and vice versa. The first nation to adopt its counterpart’s advantages, Wang argues, will—like a comic book villain or mythic hero—bring balance to the force of good governance and “win” the twenty-first century.
It’s a reassuring prescription in a way, implying that there are no fundamental conflicts between the two nations that can’t be resolved through better understanding. Yet it contrasts sharply with the rhetoric coming out of both Beijing and Washington, D.C., where policy hawks from each country frame a twenty-first-century showdown that many fear could lead to war in the Taiwan Strait or elsewhere.
It also recalls the attitudes of some Western academics and center-left pundits during the Cold War, who assumed that the US and Soviet systems were similarly paired and would eventually converge in ways beneficial to both societies.
As late as 1988, for example, famed Affluent Society author John Kenneth Galbraith co-published a book with Marxist economist Stanislav Menshikov that imagined a future of increased trade and cooperation between the US and the USSR. They also, as Publisher’s Weekly put it at the time, “…criticize[d] establishment interests on both sides that seek to perpetuate the cold war.”
Galbraith and Menshikov were right that the Cold War would soon end—but not in a way that left the Soviets with a 50 percent stake in the world’s political future. If the collapse of the Soviet system—at a time when some Western economists were still predicting that the Warsaw Pact countries were on track to surpass the West economically—arrived so unexpectedly, one wonders what yet-unseen surprises the Chinese Communist Party has in store for the twenty-first century.
The Party, after all, has delivered plenty of dramatic—and mostly unpleasant—shocks to its own people over the decades. Wang takes deep dives into two of the most infamous: the One Child policy and the zero-COVID containment strategy. The former was certainly more horrific, although the latter’s impacts are far more recent and the responsibility of the current government, giving the pandemic lockdowns more resonance for younger Chinese citizens.
The PRC’s One Child policy was enforced, in successive iterations, from 1980 to 2015, and as a two- and three-child policy until 2021. The statistics, as Wang recounts them, are grim. In 1983, for example, the government sterilized 16 million women and aborted 14 million babies. Women who tried to resist were pressured, harassed, and sometimes even kidnapped by enforcement squads. Official propaganda claimed the procedures were voluntary, but in reality, they were the result of well-organized coercion: “…women [were] hauled before mass rallies and harangued into consenting to an abortion.”
Unsurprisingly, the policy was extremely unpopular among the women and families subjected to it, and the regime did little to blunt the pain it inflicted. “It didn’t help,” Wang dryly notes, “that the abortion posses literally carted off women in hog cages.”
The PRC’s COVID containment strategy was similarly authoritarian. Despite officials praising themselves for initially managing the pandemic well, by early 2022, rising infections were creating growing anxiety among Politburo members in Beijing. The government eventually imposed some of the largest forced quarantines in modern history, confining most of Shanghai’s population, for example, to their homes from March onward.
The lockdown lasted roughly five months—in a metro area of 25 million people, three times the size of New York City. Officials failed to ensure that residents could maintain reliable access to food and clean water. Chaos and panic were widespread, with many forced to adopt digital hunting and gathering as a full-time strategy to supplement the unpredictable and insufficient official provisions.
Wang quotes the unexpectedly poetic—and horrifying—propaganda broadcast throughout the city via drones: “Please comply with COVID restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom,” the floating loudspeakers intoned.
Compared with scenes like that, the 3,000-page environmental impact statements and NIMBYism of US lawyerly society hardly seem so bad. Certainly, if most Americans had to choose between enduring the persistent defects of the United States and living under a system designed by the Chinese Communist Party, they would almost certainly opt for slow trains and the Bill of Rights.
Also, as Wang describes in a chapter on dissatisfied PRC expats, plenty of Chinese nationals with the money and initiative to leave have done so. Some of them, in line with popular narratives, have come to the US to get STEM doctorates and apply for H1B engineering jobs, but plenty have also become beach bums in Thailand or slam poets, democracy activists, and bookshop proprietors in global outposts.
Ultimately, Wang’s equal-but-opposite framework shows the limits of its evenhandedness. While understandably not wanting to depict his family’s home country as evil and vicious, it is difficult to “both sides” the human rights atrocities of something like the One Child policy. Are fast trains and tall bridges as admirable a civilizational achievement as respect for freedom of speech, religion, and the press? Should we pretend that the PRC could have had all of the former if they had brought themselves to embrace the latter?
More prosaically, the “each should be more like the other” framing muddies the question when it comes to issues like housing affordability and supply, which Breakneck repeatedly identifies as a problem in the US today. Wang argues that US institutions of government haven’t built enough.
“American cities have broadly failed to build adequate housing or infrastructure,” he writes. But in a market economy with robust property rights, it is not the government’s job to build housing—that’s what D.R. Horton, Pulte Homes, hundreds of smaller companies, and thousands of work crews are for. The problem is that major American cities have made it nearly impossible for the private sector to actually do its job.
Our problem is not, as many industrial policy proponents claim, a “lack of state capacity,” but precisely the opposite. We have empowered governmental institutions far beyond their constitutional limits with too much capacity for spending, debt, obstruction, and veto. We are being strangled and impoverished by the state capacity we have now. Making San Francisco and New York more like the land of ghost cities and abandoned theme parks will not be an improvement. Does anyone really believe that the most indebted nation in the history of the world is being chiefly held back because its government agencies aren’t able to borrow even more money and saddle future taxpayers with even more debt?
Granted, Wang generally does an admirable job of holding Americans’ feet to the fire with respect to our own problems around productivity and growth, which are significant. We would, after all, not want to end up like the CCP itself, which is notoriously bad at processing bad news and dealing with dissent, leading to consequences ranging from farcical to nightmarish.
We also wouldn’t want our industrial strength to decline so far that we end up like Europe, which Wang dismisses as a “mausoleum economy.” Americans, both as citizens and policymakers, will need to step up to compete with the machinations of the Communist mandarins in Beijing. We should, however, be careful not to copy their worst policies along the way.
Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who announced on Wednesday that he will be departing from his role in January, later replied to FBI Director Kash Patel, who gave him a glowing review.
‘Dan is the best partner I could’ve asked for in helping restore this FBI. He brought critical reforms to make the organization more efficient, led the successful Summer Heat op, served as the people’s voice for transparency, and delivered major breakthroughs in long unsolved cases like the pipe bomb investigation. And that’s only a small part of the work he went about every single day delivering for America,’ Patel said in a post on X.
‘He not only completed his mission – he far exceeded it. We will miss him but I’m thankful he accepted the call to serve. Our country is better and safer for it,’ Patel added.
Bongino replied, thanking Patel.
‘Thank you my friend, it’s been the honor of a lifetime to serve beside you,’ he wrote.
Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who stepped aside from his work hosting a popular show as a conservative commentator to join the FBI, will depart the federal law enforcement agency less than a year after his swearing-in ceremony, which occurred in March 2025.
Prior to Bongino’s announcement on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said, ‘Dan did a great job,’ noting that he thinks Bongino wants to return to his show.
Attorney General Pam Bondi shared Bongino’s announcement post, commenting, ‘Americans are safer because of @FBIDDBongino’s service. Thank you, Dan.’
In its manifesto for the 2024 general election, Britain’s Labour party listed “Five Missions to Rebuild Britain,” the first being: “Kickstart economic growth.”
The party’s second budget since winning that election, delivered on November 26 by Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, suggests it has already abandoned that mission—and offers a cautionary tale to other governments on what not to do.
Tax, Borrowing, and Spending Hikes
Before the election, the Financial Times quoted Reeves admitting that, unlike previous incoming chancellors, she would not be able to claim she had “looked inside the books and realized things were even worse than they looked from the outside, giving a flimsy excuse for immediate tax rises or spending cuts.” She promised no increase in national insurance (NI, a payroll tax like Social Security), income tax, or Value Added Tax (VAT, a national sales tax).
Once elected, Reeves claimed she had, after all, looked inside the books—and discovered a £21.9 billion “black hole” in government finances. This supposedly arose from the previous Conservative government’s failure to spend enough, curious given that in 2023–2024, government spending as a share of GDP was higher than in all but seven of the previous 75 years.
Reeves now had her “excuse for immediate tax rises” in the October 2024 budget. Public sector workers were rewarded for supporting Labour with a £9.4 billion pay hike—42.9 percent of the alleged “black hole”—while the perpetually cash-hungry National Health Service received £1.5 billion. To fund this, Reeves raised taxes by £40 billion—the largest increase since 1993—including a two-percentage-point hike in employer NI contributions. She denied breaking her pre-election promise, noting that the employee share was unchanged, but this convinced no one. Overall, taxes were forecast to reach “a historic high” as a share of GDP.
Incredibly, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR, Britain’s version of the Congressional Budget Office) projected that Reeves’ budget would push government spending, taxes, borrowing, inflation, and interest rates up, while driving employment, disposable income, and GDP growth down.
The Economy Crashes
This is exactly what happened.
The unemployment rate is up from 4.3 percent in the three months to October 2024 to 5.0 percent in the three months to September 2025 and the number of “payrolled employees…fell by 117,000 (0.4%) between September 2024 and September 2025,” according to the Office for National Statistics. Over 40 percent of organizations reported reducing employee numbers in response to the payroll tax rise, according to last month’s Bank of England Decision Maker Panel survey, and one-third said likewise for a hike in the minimum wage.
Growth of Total real pay, 2.4 percent in the three months to October 2024, is down to 0.7 percent in the three months to September 2025. Much of this is due to resurgent inflation. Annual growth in the Consumer Price Index is up from 2.3 percent in October 2024 to 3.6 percent in October 2025. “The government has undoubtedly added to, and extended, the inflation problem with its generous public pay settlements and minimum wage increases,” says Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics.
“The underlying fiscal outlook has also deteriorated since October,” the OBR noted in March, but it has continued deteriorating and, in November, it reported that “Borrowing in 2024-25 is £12 billion higher than estimated at the time of the March forecast.” Meanwhile, Martin Wolf notes for the Financial Times, “the yield on UK government bonds is one of the highest among all advanced economies.” Indeed, British government bond yields are now higher than those which brought Liz Truss down when she was said, by Reeves, to have “crashed our economy” in 2022. Kier Starmer’s government finds itself in the difficult position of having levels of borrowing and the cost of that borrowing increasing at the same time. Of course, it is a situation they chose to put the country in.
More Taxes, Borrowing, and Spending Hikes
Before the November 26 budget, Reeves—like some fiscal Hubble telescope—had discovered yet another “black hole.”
Closing it required raising “taxes by amounts rising to £26 billion in 2029–30, through freezing personal tax thresholds and a host of smaller measures,” the OBR noted. Freezing the thresholds will push 5.4 million additional people into the higher- and additional-rate tax bands by 2030, in what the Centre for Policy Studies calls the largest tax rise in at least the last 60 years. It breaks another of Reeves’ pre-election pledges—not to raise income taxes—and “brings the tax take to an all-time high of 38 percent of GDP in 2030–31,” the OBR reports.
But again, this wasn’t really about plugging some “black hole”—which Reeves may have lied about anyway—but about financing yet another expansion of government spending, mostly on welfare. “Budget policies increase spending in every year and by £11 billion in 2029–30,” the OBR reports, “primarily to pay for the summer reversals to welfare cuts and lift the two-child limit in universal credit.” Government spending will be higher as a share of GDP in 2030–31 than in 70 of the last 78 years.
Perhaps this could be justified if it were likely to “kickstart economic growth,” as Labour promised—but it won’t. The OBR revised real GDP growth for 2025 up from 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent but revised it downward for every year afterward owing to Reeves’ fiscal measures. Growth now averages 1.5 percent over the forecast, 0.3 percentage points slower than in March. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research estimates that fiscal policy will shave 0.4 percentage points off growth over the next five years. In October, real GDP shrank for the fourth month in a row.
Lessons for the United States
The United States shares Britain’s problems of yawning deficits and spiraling debts but, relatively speaking, it does not share its chronic inability to generate economic growth. Since 2008, GDP per capita has increased by 7.3 percent in real terms in Britain compared to 24.2 percent in the US, as Figure 1 shows.
Figure 1: Real per capita GDP growth, 2008 = 100 (PPP, constant 2021 international $)
Source: World Bank World Development Indicators
This Labour government’s economic record illustrates the folly of trying to close budget gaps—driven in part by a vastly expanding welfare state—through payroll tax hikes and minimum wage increases, soon to be joined by higher income taxes. These measures are strangling economic growth in Britain and would do the same in the United States if attempted here. You cannot expand your welfare state by shrinking your economy.
To the extent Labour is still thinking about growth, it diagnoses the problem as one of insufficient demand—much like the Biden administration did with its misnamed Inflation Reduction Act. It isn’t. Britain’s growth problems are supply-side, and so are the remedies. The issue is not a lack of money to spend but a lack of things to spend it on. Perhaps the most important lesson for the United States and any other country facing this familiar cocktail of problems is simple: it’s the supply side, stupid.
In opposition, Labour and affiliated think tanks made noises suggesting they understood this. In office, Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves have delivered Labour at its most neanderthal, providing policymakers elsewhere with a cautionary example of what not to do.
Uranium prices stayed fairly steady in 2025, but experts agree its long-term outlook is compelling,
Demand picked up from reactor restarts, new nuclear construction projects and growing interest in small modular reactors. Meanwhile, supply constraints continued as miners faced issues ramping up.
1. Trump Admin Pushes for Uranium Stockpile Boost to Secure Nuclear Power Future
Publish date: September 16, 2025
In September, the Trump administration zeroed in on its plan to reduce uranium reliance on Russia.
A report by Bloomberg outlined that Russia still accounts for approximately a quarter of the fuel used in America’s 94 nuclear reactors, which generate roughly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity.
Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said that the Department of Energy was working to reduce that dependence by rebuilding domestic uranium and enrichment supply chains.
The concept of a federal uranium reserve dates back to 2020, when the first Trump administration sought US$150 million to begin direct purchases from US producers, though Congress approved only half the amount.
Supply concerns sharpened after Russia briefly restricted uranium exports to the US in late 2024, underscoring Washington’s exposure to geopolitical risks.
A law signed in May 2024 requires US utilities to phase out Russian uranium by 2028, with future stockpile levels expected to rise in line with new reactor construction, including small modular reactors.
“We’re moving to a place — and we’re not there yet — to no longer use Russian enriched uranium,” Wright said, adding that the US needs significantly more domestic uranium and enrichment capacity.
2. China Achieves World’s First Thorium-to-Uranium Conversion
Publish date: November 6, 2025
China marked a milestone in 2025 by converting thorium into uranium inside a working molten salt reactor.
The experimental thorium molten salt reactor, developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics in the Gobi Desert, is the first in the world to demonstrate stable thorium-based fission.
The reactor has been operating since reaching first criticality in October 2023 and has now produced data confirming the conversion of thorium-232 into uranium-233, a fissile material capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction.
Unlike conventional reactors that use solid uranium fuel rods, the system relies on liquid fuel dissolved in molten fluoride salt, allowing continuous refueling and stable heat generation without shutting down operations.
3. Uranium Energy’s Sweetwater Project Fast Tracked Under Trump Initiative
Publish date: August 6, 2025
In August, Uranium Energy’s (NYSEAMERICAN:UEC) Sweetwater uranium complex in Wyoming was designated for expedited permitting under the Trump administration’s FAST-41 initiative. The initiative is part of a broader strategy to revitalize the US nuclear fuel supply chain and reduce reliance on imports from geopolitical rivals.
The Sweetwater complex, located in Wyoming’s Great Divide Basin, is anchored by a fully licensed conventional uranium mill with a capacity of 3,000 metric tons per day and annual output of 4.1 million pounds.
The site previously included several permitted mines — Sweetwater (Red Desert), Big Eagle and Jackpot (Green Mountain) — and will now be evaluated for in-situ recovery mining, a lower-impact extraction technique.
The new permitting push will allow the company to modify existing approvals to incorporate in-situ recovery capabilities both within and beyond the current mine boundary, including on adjacent federal lands.
Sweetwater is the second uranium project to receive fast-track treatment under the policy, following Anfield Energy’s (TSXV:AEC,NASDAQ:AEC) Velvet-Wood project in Utah, which received the status in May.
4. Denison Mines Moves Closer to Federal Approval for Phoenix ISR Uranium Project
Publish date: February 28, 2025
In February, Denison Mines (TSX:DML,NYSEAMERICAN:DNN) announced that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) had scheduled public hearings for its Wheeler River uranium project in Saskatchewan.
The hearings were scheduled for October 8 and December 8 to 12, and according to the company would represent the final stage in the federal environmental assessment process. Denison holds an effective 95 percent interest in Wheeler River, the largest undeveloped uranium project in the Eastern Athabasca Basin. If approved, the company expects to begin site preparation and construction for its Phoenix in-situ recovery uranium project in early 2026.
In its Q3 report, released on November 6, Denison said the first part of the hearing was complete, and that it was expecting a decision from the CNSC in early 2026 after part two of the hearing.
5. Western Australia Reviews Uranium Mining Ban as Nuclear Energy Investment Grows
Publish date: October 2, 2025
Possibly the biggest uranium news in Australia in 2025 was Western Australia’s move to consider lifting its ban on new uranium licenses. In October, ahead of an energy-focused trade mission to China and Japan, Premier Roger Cook signaled the policy might be under review as part of broader strategic development considerations.
China, Western Australia’s largest trading partner, accounts for more than half of the state’s exports.
While the state’s three existing uranium mines continue to operate under previously approved permits, no new developments have been allowed since the ban was put in place in 2017. Cook emphasized that Western Australia intends to respect legal mining leases, while exploring future opportunities.
He also stressed that any change to the uranium policy would likely depend on a “significant shift” in global markets, while the state continues to monitor existing permit holders and potential future projects.
Securities Disclosure: I, Gabrielle de la Cruz, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
The House passed a bill on Wednesday that would criminalize gender transition treatment for minors.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., passed by a 216-211 vote with some bipartisan support.
Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, and Don Davis, D-N.C., voted with most Republicans for the bill, while Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Gabe Evans, R-Colo., and Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, voted with most Democrats against the measure.
‘Children are NOT experiments. No more drugs. No more surgeries. No more permanent harm. We need to let kids grow up without manipulation from adults to make life-altering decisions! Congress must protect America’s children!!!’ Greene wrote on X ahead of the vote.
Greene had reached a deal with House leadership to bring her bill to the floor in exchange for her backing a rule last week to advance the National Defense Authorization Act.
The bill faces a significant hurdle to pass the Senate, as Republicans would need Democrat support to approve the legislation in the Upper Chamber.
The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the House passage, saying the measure ‘would have immediate and devastating effects on the lives and transgender youth and their families across the country.’
‘Politicians should never prohibit parents from doing what is best for their transgender children,’ Mike Zamore, National Director of Policy & Government Affairs at the ACLU, said in a statement. ‘These families often spend years considering how best to support their children, only to have ill-equipped politicians interfere by attempting to criminalize the health care that they, their children, and their doctors believe is necessary to allow their children to thrive.’
‘But this bill also creates an incredibly dangerous precedent far beyond the specific care at issue, criminalizing care based on ideology and placing Washington politicians between families and their doctors,’ he continued. ‘We strongly condemn the passage of this measure and urge members of the Senate to do everything in their power to prevent it from ever becoming law.’
Greene and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, butted heads over the bill before its passage. The Georgia congresswoman, set to resign next month, had criticized Roy, who sits on the House Rules Committee, for introducing an amendment she argued would ‘gut the commerce clause.’
Roy’s amendment attempted to modify the bill to limit federal criminal liability under certain circumstances ‘by defining when prohibited conduct falls within federal jurisdiction,’ according to the Rules Committee.
But Greene contended that her bill ‘criminalizes ALL pediatric gender affirming care (transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormones) NOT just those receiving federal funds and protects ALL children allowing them to grow up before they make permanent changes to their body that they can never undo!!!’
‘WTF is Chip Roy doing????? And this guy wants to be attorney general of Texas but refuses to protect children??!!!’ she wrote on X.
Roy responded that ‘the constitution matters & we should not bastardize it to use ‘interstate commerce’ to empower federal authorities.’
The Texas Republican, however, said in a statement on Wednesday that he would not offer the amendment ‘to avoid any confusion about how united Republicans are in protecting children from these grotesque procedures.’
IRIS Metals Limited (ASX: IR1, “IRIS” or “the Company”) is pleased to announce it has executed a binding Heads of Agreement (HOA) with Finley Mining Inc for the exclusive right to farm-in to the Finley Basin Tungsten Project (Tungsten Project) located in Granite County, Montana, USA. This strategic farm-in opportunity further expands IRIS’ exposure to critical minerals beyond lithium, positioning the Company in a key tungsten district with historical production potential and untapped high-grade tungsten potential in a jurisdiction primed for revival under U.S. critical minerals policies.
HIGHLIGHTS
IRIS Metals has signed a binding Heads of Agreement with Finley Mining Inc and its shareholders, granting IRIS an exclusive right to farm-in to the high-grade Finley Basin Tungsten Project, located in Granite County, Montana, USA, subject to the execution of full form farm-in agreements to be negotiated in good faith on the agreed key terms within 40 business days (unless extended).
Due to the transaction materialising during a proposed capital raising program, the Company decided not to raise capital at this point in time, having regard to the strategic merits of the Tungsten acquisition.
Limited drilling undertaken by Union Carbide in the late 1970s–early 1980s resulted in a historical, non-JORC compliant tungsten reserve, 850,000 tons at an average grade of 0.68% WO₃1, which is considered high-grade relative to many global tungsten deposits.
The farm-in provides IRIS with exposure to tungsten, a critical mineral with strategic importance for defense, energy, and industrial applications, complementing IRIS’ existing critical minerals portfolio.
The farm-in structure allows IRIS to earn up to a 100% interest in the project through staged exploration expenditure of up to USD$2,000,000 over 4 years and delivery of a JORC- compliant Inferred Resource.
Exploration activities to commence at the Finley Basin Project in early 2026, focusing on resource definition, expansion, and development studies.
The transaction aligns with IRIS’ strategy to expand its critical minerals footprint in the USA, leveraging incentives for domestically sourced materials.
IRIS Metals Executive Chairman Peter Marks commented:
‘This binding agreement marks an exciting step for IRIS as we grow and diversify our critical minerals portfolio into tungsten, a vital component for the defense and technology industries. The Finley Basin Project offers significant upside with its prospective geology and location in a mining-friendly jurisdiction. Combined with our existing South Dakota portfolio, this positions IRIS to capitalise on significantly growing demand for US-sourced critical minerals.’
Montana Portfolio Expansion and Development
IRIS is actively evaluating additional critical mineral opportunities to complement its core South Dakota holdings. This farm-in to the Finley Basin Tungsten Project diversifies IRIS’ assets into tungsten, a critical mineral essential for military energetics, alloys, electronics, and renewable energy technologies, with U.S. demand surging amid defense initiatives and clean energy goals, yet vulnerable to geopolitical supply disruptions.
The expansion of IRIS’ mineral portfolio to tungsten was measured in approach with a number of projects reviewed and compared. The Company selected the Finley Basin Project due to its high-grade characteristics when compared other tungsten occurrences in the US2, historical exploration results, favourable jurisdiction, potential for expansion of known mineralisation, local milling capabilities, and reasonable proximity to the Company’s South Dakota operations.
IRIS’ primary focus remains on advancing its South Dakota lithium and rubidium projects toward near- term development under its “Hub & Spoke” strategy, which emphasises centralized processing across multiple sites.
Recent expansions, including the September 2025 acquisition of the Ingersoll Project from Rapid Critical Metals have significantly grown IRIS’ Black Hills footprint and private land holdings. IRIS is rapidly expanding mineral resources and progressing studies to support a multi-mine production model, with economic analysis targeted for 2026.
This strategic diversification importantly aligns with broader U.S. incentives for domestically sourced critical minerals and supports resilient supply chains under frameworks such as the Australia-U.S. Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact.
InMed Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: INM) (‘InMed’ or the ‘Company’), a pharmaceutical company focused on developing a pipeline of proprietary small molecule drug candidates for diseases with high unmet medical needs, today confirmed that, at its annual general and special meeting of shareholders held on December 17, 2025 (the ‘Meeting’), the matters put forward before shareholders for consideration and approval as set out in InMed’s notice of meeting and management information circular, dated November 3, 2025, were voted upon by the shareholders. A total of 993,491 common shares of the Company, representing approximately 35.43% of the Company’s 2,804,186 issued and outstanding common shares, were represented in person or by proxy at the Meeting.
Results of the vote for the election of the board of directors (the ‘Board‘) at the Meeting are set out as follows:
Director
Votes For
Withheld Votes
Number
Percentage
Number
Percentage
Eric A. Adams
125,352
82.03%
27,469
17.98%
Andrew Hull
125,315
82.00%
27,506
18.00%
Nicole Lemerond
125,485
82.11%
27,336
17.89%
Neil Klompas
125,444
82.09%
27,377
17.91%
John Bathery
125,227
81.94%
27,594
18.06%
In addition, shareholders voted to approve CBIZ CPAs P.C. as the Company’s auditors for the following year.
Shareholders also voted to approve the potential issuance of 20% or more of the Company’s common shares issued and outstanding as of December 13, 2024, pursuant to the Standby Equity Purchase Agreement with YA II PN, Ltd., as amended on June 13, 2025, pursuant to Nasdaq Listing Rules 5635(d) and 5635(b) (the ‘SEPA‘).
InMed filed a report of voting results on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca on December 17, 2025.
About InMed:
InMed Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company focused on developing a pipeline of proprietary small molecule drug candidates targeting the CB1/CB2 receptors. InMed’s pipeline consists of three separate programs in the treatment of Alzheimer’s, ocular and dermatological indications. For more information, visit www.inmedpharma.com.
Investor Contact:
Colin Clancy Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications T: +1 604 416 0999 E: ir@inmedpharma.com
This news release, and oral statements by the Company and its executive officers and directors, contain ‘forward-looking information’ and ‘forward-looking statements’ (collectively, ‘forward-looking information’) within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are frequently, but not always, identified by words such as ‘expects’, ‘anticipates’, ‘believes’, ‘intends’, ‘potential’, ‘possible’, ‘would’ and similar expressions. Such statements, based as they are on current expectations of management, inherently involve numerous risks, uncertainties and assumptions, known and unknown, many of which are beyond our control. Forward-looking information is based on management’s current expectations and beliefs and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements about H.R. 5371, the ‘Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026’ (the ‘Act‘), the impact of the Act on BayMedica Inc., any potential modifications to the Act and/or the timing thereof and the alternative options available to BayMedica and the Company, statements about developing a pipeline of proprietary small molecule drug candidates for diseases with high unmet medical needs, and statements about the potential issuance of common shares pursuant to the SEPA.
Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause InMed’s actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. A complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing InMed’s business is disclosed in InMed’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K and any other documents filed or furnished with the Securities and Exchange Commission available on www.sec.gov.
All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and InMed disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except as required by law.
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/278446
Silver’s strong performance in 2025 is drawing attention to silver-mining companies.
During Q3, the silver price closed in on all-time highs, reaching a quarterly high of US$46.92 per ounce on September 29. It has continued to soar since then, breaking past US$50 on October 9 and then past US$60 on December 9 on its way to setting a new all-time high.
The price of the precious metal has seen firm support from fundamentals, as silver continues to experience a structural supply deficit, while industrial silver demand remains near record levels. Investment demand is also rising as investors return to the market, seeking a more affordable safe-haven alternative to gold.
How has silver’s price movement benefited Canadian silver stocks on the TSX, TSXV and CSE?
The five companies below have seen the best performances since the start of the year. Data was gathered using TradingView’s stock screener on December 9, 2025, and all companies listed had market caps over C$10 million at that time.
Santacruz Silver is an Americas-focused silver producer with operations in Bolivia and Mexico. Its producing assets include a 45 percent stake in the Bolivar and Porco mines, which it shares with the Bolivian government, and a 100 percent ownership of the Caballo Blanco Group mines in Bolivia, along with the Zimapan mine in Mexico.
In its Q2 results, Santacruz reported silver production of 1.42 million ounces from the mines, as well as silver equivalent production of 3.55 million ounces, which includes its zinc, lead and copper production.
In addition to its producing assets, Santacruz also owns the greenfield Soracaya project, an 8,325 hectare land package located in Potosi, Bolivia. According to an August 2024 technical report, the site hosts an inferred resource of 34.5 million ounces of silver derived from 4.14 million metric tons of ore with an average grade of 260 g/t.
In October 2021, Santacruz acquired Glencore’s (LSE:GLEN,OTC Pink:GLCNF) 45 percent stake in the Bolivar and Porco mines and a 100 percent interest in the Soracaya project. Under the terms of the deal, Santacruz made an initial payment of US$20 million and was obligated to make an additional US$90 million over a four-year period from the closing of the transaction. Glencore also retained a 1.5 percent net smelter return.
The pair amended the deal in October 2024, giving Santacruz the option to either pay off the US$80 million base purchase price through annual US$10 million installments or to accelerate the repayment by paying US$40 million by November 2025. The deal also includes additional terms such as monthly payments to Glencore contingent on zinc pricing benchmarks.
Santacruz chose the accelerated option through a structured payment plan, allowing it to satisfy the base purchase price of the properties while saving US$40 million compared to the annual installment option.
On September 4, the company made its fourth and fifth payments, completing all payments to Glencore.
The most recent news for the Soracaya project was announced on October 7, when Santacruz stated that it was initiating development activities and would be applying for a full production permit.
The company reported Q3 production figures on November 3, with production of 3.42 million silver equivalent ounces, including 1.24 million ounces of silver. Its Q3 financials report released on November 27 highlighted revenues of US$79.99 million, up 2 percent year-over-year, and an adjusted EBITDA of US$19.51 million, up 30 percent year-over-year.
In late October, the company reported it planned to list on the NASDAQ, and on December 8 reported a share consolidation on a 4 to 1 basis.
Shares in Santacruz reached a year-to-date high of C$12.24 on December 9.
Andean Precious Metals is a precious metals company with a pair of operating assets in the Americas.
Its primary silver-producing operation is the San Bartolomé facility in the Potosi Department of Bolivia. The onsite processing facility has an annual ore capacity of 1.8 million metric tons. The company has transitioned from conventional mining and is processing feed from both its low-cost fines deposit facility and third-party ore purchases.
Its other producing asset is the Golden Queen mine in Kern County, California, US. It hosts a 12,000 metric tons per day cyanide heap leach and a Merrill-Crowe processing facility. A mineral reserve statement shows a measured and indicated silver resource of 11.24 million ounces from 41.81 million metric tons at an average grade of 8.37 g/t silver. The company acquired Golden Queen from Auvergne Umbrella in November 2023 for US$15 million.
On June 2, Andean announced it entered into an exclusive, long-term agreement with Bolivian state-owned miner Corporacion Minera de Bolivia to acquire up to 7 million metric tons of oxide ore from mining concessions in Bolivia.
The ore is located within a 250 kilometer radius of the processing facility at its San Bartolomé operation, where it will process the ore. Under the terms of the 10 year agreement, Andean will immediately receive an initial 250,000 metric tons of ore, with the remaining to be delivered in tranches of 50,000 metric tons.
On October 15, Andean released its Q3 operating results. During the first nine months of the year, it produced 3.41 million ounces of silver across its operations, toward the middle of its guidance of 3.22 million to 3.78 million ounces. It also noted that its output was driven by a strong increase in silver production at San Bartolome.
In its Q3 financial results released on November 11, the company reported record consolidated revenue for the quarter, totaling US$90.42 million, which it stated was due to increased silver production and higher average realized prices for silver and gold. Its revenue was US$68.35 million during the same quarter of 2024.
According to a mid-October exploration update for its properties, Andean expects to release an updated mineral resource and reserve estimate for Golden Queen in the first half of 2026.
Shares in Andean Precious Metals reached a year-to-date high of C$9.25 on December 1.
Capitan Silver is an explorer focused on advancing silver and gold projects in Durango, Mexico.
The company’s flagship asset is the 100 percent owned Cruz de Plata project in the heart of Mexico’s historic Peñoles Mining District. The region is known for hosting significant silver mineralization and historic mining. Cruz de Plata encompasses two historic silver mines — Jesús Maria and San Rafael — and the Capitan Hill gold oxide deposit.
According to a 2020 technical report, the Jesús Maria deposit hosts an inferred resource of 15.16 million ounces of contained silver and 26,000 ounces of gold from 7.57 million metric tons of ore with average grades of 62.3 g/t silver and 0.12 g/t gold.
Capitan Silver made a series of strategic acquisitions during the second and third quarters.
On June 11, the company completed the purchase of a 2 percent net smelter royalty in place at Cruz de Plata from Exploraciones del Altiplano and eliminated the royalty. Total costs incurred by Capitan were US$1 million.
Then, on August 22, the company executed a definitive agreement to acquire a strategic land package surrounding its Cruz de Plata property from Fresnillo (LSE:FRES,OTC Pink:FNLPF) for total cash consideration of US$4 million. The transaction was initially announced in June.
The new parcel consists of seven mineral concessions covering 2,171.4 hectares. It increases Capitan’s total holdings in the area by 85 percent and the surface expression of the silver-gold trend by 1.2 kilometers to the east.
Capitan’s most recent silver news from Cruz de Plata came on November 11, when the company reported it had identified further high-grade mineralization during its drilling at the Jesus Maria trend, including one highlight of 1,767.4 g/t silver equivalent over 1.5 meters within a larger interval of 25.9 meters grading 234.2 g/t silver equivalent.
The company stated the results confirmed ‘the emergence of a new large, high-grade silver zone at Jesus Maria.’
The company is expecting a property-wide geophysical survey to be completed during the first quarter of 2026.
Shares in Capitan reached a year-to-date high of C$2.38 on December 5, coinciding with its release of an updated mineral resource estimate for the Capitan Hill gold oxide deposit that increased contained gold and silver to 525,000 ounces and 4.2 million ounces respectively, from an overall inferred resource of 39.8 million metric tons of ore.
Avino Silver & Gold Mines is a precious metals miner with two primary silver assets: the producing Avino silver mine and the neighboring La Preciosa project in Durango, Mexico.
The Avino mine is capable of processing 2,500 metric tons of ore per day, and according to its FY24 report released on January 21 the mine produced 1.1 million ounces of silver, 7,477 ounces of gold and 6.2 million pounds of copper last year. Overall, the company saw broad production increases with silver rising 19 percent, gold rising 2 percent and copper increasing 17 percent year over year.
In addition to its Avino mining operation, Avino is working to advance its La Preciosa project toward the production stage. The site covers 1,134 hectares, and according to a February 2023 resource estimate, hosts a measured and indicated resource of 98.59 million ounces of silver and 189,190 ounces of gold.
In a January 15 update, Avino announced it had received all necessary permits for mining at La Preciosa and begun underground development. It is now developing a 350 meter mine access and haulage decline. The company said the first phase at the site is expected to cost less than C$5 million, which will be funded from cash reserves.
In Avino’s Q3 financials, the company reported revenues of US$21 million, up 44 percent year-over-year, ‘primarily the result of increased metal prices and marginally higher ounces sold.’ It also highlighted record net income after taxes of US$7.7 million, an increase of 559 percent from US$1.17 million in Q3 2024.
On the production side, the company produced 580,780 silver equivalent ounces during Q3, representing a decrease of 13 percent from the same quarter in the previous year, while silver production alone dropped 7 percent to 263,231 ounces.
‘The decrease was driven by lower feed grades in all three metals (silver, gold and copper), as we moved through a lower grade section of the mine plan,’ noted the press release. However, it’s still on track to meet its production estimate of 2.5 to 2.8 million silver equivalent ounces.
Avino shares reached a year-to-date high of C$9.14 on October 15.
Starcore International Mines is a gold and silver producer in Mexico, with exploration projects in Mexico, Canada and Côte d’Ivoire. Its flagship property is the San Martin underground gold-silver mine, which has been in operation since 1993. The company acquired the mine in February of 2008 from Goldcorp. The mine has an average gold grade of 2.31 grams and 18 grams of silver.
On July 29, Starcore published its full-year financials for its fiscal year ending April 30, 2025. The company reported income of C$6.3 million for the year from its mining operations.
Starcore finalized a 10 year lease in October land holdings named the Tortilla project in Queretaro, Mexico, that host a historical past-producing silver mine. Preliminary metallurgical tests on samples from the sulfide zone resulted in silver recoveries of 91.49 percent and gold recoveries of 48.25 percent.
In November, Starcore released its fiscal year Q2 2026 production results, which included 1,860 gold equivalent ounces, down 13 percent from the previous quarter. The total ore milled came in at 51,960 metric tons with a grade of 14.48 g/t silver and 1.33 g/t gold. The decrease was due to clay-related challenges, which the company said it has addressed through CIL plant optimization.
Shares in Starcore reached a year-to-date high of C$0.74 on December 9.
Securities Disclosure: I, Melissa Pistilli, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
After a year marked by policy changes and trade uncertainty, experts are calling for cleantech investment to be dominated by artificial intelligence (AI) energy demand in the first quarter of 2026.
The COP30 conference, held in Belém, Brazil, this past November, was marked by cautious optimism and a bias toward action, despite global sustainability commitments seeming to slow.
The shift to net zero is recognized as a complex, regional effort — fossil-rich economies must prioritize carbon capture and lower-emitting fuels like hydrogen and geothermal, while others focus on renewables.
In the US, renewables will maintain momentum in the face of grid overcapacity, with targeted government funding for nuclear and fusion; however, policy headwinds may persist for areas like wind, solar and electric vehicles (EVs).
AI’s energy demand boost
The energy investment landscape is being fundamentally reshaped by AI energy demand, with Bain & Co. projecting that data centers will consume 9 percent of US electricity by 2030.
Analysts are eyeing this trend, with CFRA Research placing “buy” ratings on many companies held in utilities exchange-traded funds. It notes that some benefit from power agreements for AI-linked data centers.
The American Clean Power Association projects that 2025 will set a full-year record for combined clean energy deployments, despite US policy headwinds that sparked concerns about a sector contraction at the start of the year. Solar and storage capacity made up around 85 percent of new power capacity added to the US electricity grid from January to September 2025, according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie.
A separate analysis by energy think tank Ember reveals that global solar and wind power generation surpassed electricity demand in the first half of this year, generating more power than coal for the first time.
The report also show solar generation grew by a record 31 percent in H1, and wind by 7.7 percent.
The US Energy Information Administration now forecasts that renewables will climb to about 27 percent of US energy generation by 2026, up from 23 percent in 2024.
The clean AI investment surge
Meanwhile, startups are racing to make infrastructure smarter and faster to build with the help of AI.
Emerald AI, which uses smart software to manage a cleaner, more flexible grid and ease data center strain, announced its first commercial deployment alongside US$18 million in new seed funding, while Infravision, a company that uses drones to string transmission lines more efficiently, raised US$91 million in a Series B round to scale globally.
AI is also accelerating cleantech breakthroughs, as highlighted by the CleanAI Initiative’s report on AI’s growing role in climate solutions. It shows energy and power technologies garnered more than half of total clean AI investments.
The sector is seen as a critical, multi-layered investment opportunity tied to sustainability and technology leadership in multitrillion-dollar markets; however, key challenges to its growth include the high energy consumption of AI technologies themselves and a lack of combined expertise in both AI and climate science.
Billions in private investment have helped sustain the cleantech sector.
Experts Jason Bordoff and Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh argue that corporate funding will help boost energy transition, citing power purchase agreements and other financial commitments by Big Tech companies such as Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN).
NextEra Energy’s (NYSE:NEE) landmark Q4 deals with Alphabet and Meta to power their AI data centers are prime examples of this trend. The Florida-based company will supply clean energy capacity through 11 power purchase and two energy storage deals, with projects expected to become operational between 2026 and 2028. NextEra is also collaborating with Google Cloud to develop three US data center campuses.
However, this transformative period carries significant risks: if the AI boom proves to be a bubble that bursts, energy investment could swiftly vanish, leading to billions in stranded assets.
As China solidifies its dominance in clean energy manufacturing, the question remains whether the US administration’s efforts to expand nuclear and geothermal power can successfully challenge China’s current leadership, as Beijing also accelerates its own nuclear buildout and eyes global reactor exports.
Nuclear and geothermal gaining traction
Nuclear and geothermal are gaining traction as promising solutions for AI and data center reliability in 2026, attracting enterprise and policy support as other clean energy initiatives and incentives are pulled back.
The Department of Energy formally released its Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap in Q4, outlining a strategy to accelerate commercial fusion by the mid-2030s. Separately, the department announced it will award up to US$800 million in cost-shared funding to advance small modular reactor projects.
Startups are accelerating too, with Antares raising US$96 million for mid-2026 microreactor tests, while Radiant Nuclear is planning a US$280 million factory in Tennessee targeting 2028 deliveries. Under the leadership of CEO Bob Mumgaard, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is transitioning fusion energy from the realm of research to practical power generation. The company is currently building sites for its commercial fusion plants and is utilizing a partnership with Google DeepMind, focused on AI, to speed up the development of its fusion technology.
Geothermal is scaling, too, with some investors turning their attention to even more ambitious high-temperature projects. Mazama Energy, a startup backed by billionaire businessman Vinod Khosla, is developing a geothermal project at Newberry, one of the largest and most active volcanoes. If successful, this could be a top global geothermal site, supplying electricity to local homes and businesses starting next year.
Endeavors like these are viewed by enthusiasts as a potential catalyst for a new era of geothermal power.
“Geothermal has been mostly inconsequential,” Khosla told the Washington Post.
“To do consequential geothermal that matters at the scale of tens or hundreds of gigawatts for the country, and many times that globally, you really need to solve these high temperatures.”
Another notable example is Zanskar Geothermal and Minerals, which precisely located a deep geothermal reservoir using AI, effectively lowering the exploration and drilling costs of its Big Blind geothermal system. The company is seeking permits to develop Big Blind, aiming to supply power by the end of the decade.
EV localization and self-driving options
Looking ahead, robotaxis are gaining traction in the EV market, with growing fleets operating in multiple cities.
Alphabet’s Waymo is the most aggressive company in this space, currently offering driverless rides in five cities with plans to expand in 2026. Other key players are actively engaged in various testing stages.
Both Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) and Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) are incorporating Waymo and other robotaxi services into their platforms, and Uber is adding robotaxis to its platform in Dallas, Texas, through a partnership with Avride, using autonomous Hyundai (KRX:005380,OTC Pink:HYMTF) Ioniq 5s that will initially include a safety operator.
Amazon’s self-driving robotaxi subsidiary, Zoox, expects to start charging passengers for rides in Las Vegas in early 2026, with paid rides in the San Francisco Bay Area coming later next year; however, the move depends on obtaining federal regulatory and state approvals. Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), led by CEO Elon Musk, is operating smaller, monitored robotaxi fleets in Austin and San Francisco, with Phoenix anticipated to be the next market for a major expansion.
Meanwhile, self-driving truck startup Waabi, a Canadian company with backing from Uber and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA), launched its new autonomous truck developed with Volvo (STO:VOLV-A,OTC Pink:VLVCY).
Investor takeaway
As the cleantech market navigates this transformative period, its long-term success will hinge on strategic investments that successfully balance immense AI energy demands with the imperative of avoiding a stranded-asset bubble.
Sector participants will also need to track country-level developments. In the US, Senator Ruben Gallego’s (D-Ariz.) energy plan prioritizes affordability over climate primacy, calling for reinstated clean tax credits, small modular reactor R&D funding, transmission exemptions and zero-carbon sources alongside oil/gas with clean timelines.
Meanwhile, Canada’s 2025 budget includes a C$2 billion cleantech fund, and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism pressures imports, favoring compliant North American projects that blend reliability with decarbonization.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
