Caitlin McCabe

Coming up, why open AI boss Sam Altman is looking to space, yes, you heard that right, for AI's energy needs.

Plus, we look at why there are now more billionaires in the world than ever before.

Those stories after the break.

Now, the billionaire space race is heating up once again.

We are exclusively reporting that OpenAI boss Sam Altman has explored acquiring or partnering with a rocket company, potentially building a competitor to Elon Musk's SpaceX.

We understand that Altman reached out to at least one rocket maker, Stokes Space, over the summer, and that discussions picked up in the fall.

While those talks are no longer active, one of the proposals discussed was for OpenAI to make investments worth billions of dollars over time in order to end up with a controlling stake.

Altman has been interested in the possibility of building data centers in space for some time, thinking that the energy needed to run AI systems might eventually become so large that it could strain Earth's resources.

The idea is that orbital data centers would allow companies to harness the power of the sun to operate them.

Big tech ventures are also garnering the interest of Congress, with Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats pressing the bosses of companies including NVIDIA, Meta, and Amazon to provide details of their donations to President Trump's White House ballroom.

The journal has seen letters to corporate executives in which the lawmakers note that many of the donors have active business before the federal government, raising questions about whether the donations could lead to more favorable treatment.

That's Elizabeth Warren speaking there in a video posted to her website recently.

Nvidia said in a statement that, as an American company, its support for the U.S.

is paramount and independent of any other business interests.

Meta and Microsoft declined to comment.

The other companies didn't immediately respond.

And one final update on the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

The world has more billionaires than ever before.

That's according to Swiss bank UBS, which calculated that some 2,900 billionaires now control $15.8 trillion.

That's 287 more billionaires than a year ago.