SAN FRANCISCO — A growing number of prominent figures within Elon Musk’s personal and professional orbit have been directing significant financial resources toward psychedelic therapeutics companies, part of a broader push to move drugs like MDMA and psilocybin from the fringes of medicine into mainstream mental health treatment.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the trend reflects a convergence of personal enthusiasm and financial investment among a small but influential group of billionaires and executives connected to Musk, several of whom have spoken publicly about their own experiences with psychedelics or their belief in the drugs’ therapeutic potential.

Antonio Gracias, a longtime Musk ally, former Tesla board director and adviser to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, has emerged as one of the most active figures in the space. Gracias made a bid earlier this year to acquire a controlling stake in Lykos Therapeutics, the pharmaceutical company formerly known as MAPS Public Benefit Corp. that has been working to bring MDMA-assisted therapy to market for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. According to Psychedelic Alpha, Gracias has since been joined in that effort by Sir Christopher Hohn, the British hedge fund manager who leads TCI Fund Management, one of the largest hedge funds in the world with more than $60 billion in assets under management.

Gracias’s involvement in the space reportedly began with a chance meeting at Burning Man with Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the nonprofit research and advocacy organization that originally spun off Lykos Therapeutics as its for-profit pharmaceutical arm. That connection took on added significance after Lykos suffered a significant setback in 2024, when the Food and Drug Administration denied the company’s application to market MDMA for PTSD treatment, citing inadequate clinical trial data.

Beyond his interest in Lykos specifically, Gracias has also directed philanthropic resources toward academic research in the field. In 2023, the Gracias Family Foundation gifted funds to Harvard University to establish a program dedicated to the Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture, reflecting an effort to build institutional credibility for the field beyond purely commercial drug development.

Gracias is far from the only figure in Musk’s broader circle with financial exposure to the psychedelics industry. PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is a major investor in Atai Life Sciences, a biotechnology company that itself holds a significant stake in Compass Pathways, a company focused on developing psilocybin-based therapies for treatment-resistant depression. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has reportedly discussed his own use of psychedelic mushrooms, has helped fund Soneira, a startup developing psychedelic treatments based on ibogaine, a compound derived from the iboga plant that has drawn increasing research interest for its potential in treating addiction and other conditions. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has also discussed his own experiences with psychedelics helping him manage anxiety and has separately invested in psychedelic therapy companies.

Musk himself has been notably open about his views on psychedelics over the years, expressing public support for the drugs’ potential therapeutic value even as he has also publicly disclosed using ketamine, a related dissociative compound, under a prescription he has said he uses to manage depression. Musk has previously argued publicly that societal attitudes toward psychedelics are likely to shift as younger generations move into positions of political influence, a view he articulated during a 2021 interview, saying he believes people should generally be open to psychedelics and that lawmakers from an earlier era will gradually be replaced by those more receptive to the drugs’ potential benefits.

The broader psychedelics investment landscape has continued expanding well beyond Musk’s immediate circle. Venture capital fund Palo Santo closed a $50 million fund dedicated specifically to backing emerging psychedelic therapeutics companies, with the fund currently maintaining a portfolio spanning more than 20 companies across the broader psychedelics ecosystem. Palo Santo co-founder Tim Schlidt has framed the fund’s mission in terms of addressing a growing global mental health crisis through what he and other backers view as a coming shift in the standard of care.

“Against the backdrop of a growing global mental health crisis, our mission is to drive clinical development and FDA approval of these much-needed therapies that we believe will become the future standard of care,” Schlidt said.

Julie Holland, a physician and adviser to the Palo Santo fund, echoed that sense of urgency around funding.

“It’s crucial that the most promising companies and therapies receive the funding needed to advance psychedelic medicines through clinical trials in a timely manner, and I am proud to be part of a team of experts who share that same goal,” Holland said.

The renewed institutional and celebrity interest in psychedelics comes amid a broader cultural shift in how the drugs are perceived, following decades in which they remained largely relegated to underground or purely recreational use following their prohibition in the 1970s. Oregon and Colorado, along with several U.S. cities, have moved to decriminalize psilocybin, the active compound found in so-called magic mushrooms, with Oregon going further to legalize its supervised use. Pharmaceutical companies have also found commercial success with related compounds already approved for medical use; Johnson & Johnson’s nasal esketamine treatment, Spravato, became the company’s fastest-growing product at one point, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in sales within a single nine-month period.

Despite the growing enthusiasm and capital flowing into the sector, the regulatory path for psychedelic-assisted therapies remains far from settled, as illustrated by the FDA’s 2024 rejection of Lykos Therapeutics’ MDMA application. That setback has not deterred figures like Gracias and Hohn from continuing to pursue investment in the company, betting that additional clinical trial data and continued advocacy could eventually clear the path toward regulatory approval.

With billionaires spanning the technology, finance and artificial intelligence industries now directing substantial personal wealth toward psychedelic drug development, alongside dedicated venture funds like Palo Santo building out broader portfolios across the sector, the psychedelics industry appears positioned to continue attracting significant capital in the years ahead, even as questions remain about how quickly, and how thoroughly, these compounds can move from high-profile private investment interest into broadly accessible, FDA-approved medical treatments.

Former NBA player Terrence Ross has reignited one of basketball’s most enduring debates, arguing that Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving possesses more raw basketball talent than Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry, even while ultimately naming Curry the greater overall player.

Ross made the comments during a recent appearance on the “Players Choice” show, where he was asked to choose between the two guards.

“I’m gonna say Steph,” Ross said. “But I will say this: I think Kyrie is definitely more talented in a sense of him as a basketball player. We all know Steph is relying on that three, hell or high water, and because he’s goated at it, it’s nothing you can do. But Kyrie, bro, I’ve never seen a dude … I played against Kyrie. He had 60 points, bro. He ain’t even played the whole fourth.”

Ross, who spent 11 seasons in the NBA, was referring to a game between his Orlando Magic and the Brooklyn Nets on March 15, 2022. Irving, then playing for the Nets, scored a career-high 60 points on 20-of-31 shooting from the field in just 35 minutes, and could have finished with an even higher total had he not been subbed out with 8 minutes, 32 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

Ross went on to describe the specific style of that scoring outburst, contrasting Irving’s shot-creation ability with Curry’s reliance on catch-and-shoot three-point shooting.

“And it was one of the hardest 60s,” Ross said. “If Curry gonna get 60 or 50, he’s gonna hit 11 threes, and it’s gonna be quick. He gonna catch and shoot it, bow. Kyrie is gonna be like, walking the ball up, iso, pick-and-roll … And it’s annoying, bro.”

Ross recalled a specific sequence from that game in which Irving scored directly over former NBA center Mo Bamba, who is widely regarded as having the longest wingspan in league history.

“I seen him go up against Mo Bamba. He had the longest wingspan in the history of the game, bro,” Ross said. “He goes up at Mo with the right, hits him in the chest, and then scoops it to his left, and then just finishes it. And I’m just like, ‘Yeah, it’s just one of them nights. We can’t do s***.’ We throwing double teams at him. He essentially turning the double team into another pick-and-roll and just going off the slower dude and just fading s***. So, I’m just like, there’s nothing we could do, bro.”

Ross’s comments echo similar praise Irving has received throughout his career from other current and former players. Kevin Durant, who played alongside both Irving and Curry at different points in his career, has previously described Irving as capable of doing anything imaginable with a basketball, often citing him as the most skilled offensive player he has ever shared a court with.

Despite acknowledging Irving’s exceptional individual skill, Ross ultimately said he would still choose Curry when forced to pick the better overall player, pointing to the tangible difference in team success and individual accolades between the two.

“So, I see him do wild s***,” Ross said of Irving. “But at the end of the day, bro, what Steph got like 4,000 threes and four championships, two MVPs, one of them unanimous. I would have to go Steph.”

Curry, 38, remains widely regarded as the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history, though his overall game extends well beyond that specific skill, including a strong ball-handling ability and effective finishing at the rim, qualities Ross suggested often get overlooked given how dominant Curry’s shooting has become as his signature trait.

Curry’s career résumé significantly outpaces Irving’s by traditional team and individual honors. The 12-time All-Star has won four NBA championships, one Finals MVP award, two regular-season MVP awards and two scoring titles over the course of his career. Curry remains the only player in NBA history to win the MVP award unanimously, a feat he accomplished during the 2015-16 season. Irving, by contrast, has never received a single MVP vote throughout his career, despite being widely regarded by many players and analysts as one of the most individually skilled offensive talents the league has ever produced.

Irving, 34, has built his own decorated career since entering the league, winning an NBA championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 as part of the team’s historic comeback from a 3-1 deficit against the Warriors in the NBA Finals. He has earned nine All-Star selections over the course of his career and has frequently been described by teammates, opponents and analysts as possessing one of the deepest offensive skill sets, sometimes described as a “bag,” in the history of the sport, reflecting his ability to score in a wide variety of ways against nearly any defensive scheme or individual defender.

The Curry-versus-Irving talent debate has persisted for years within basketball circles, often centering on the distinction Ross drew between individual offensive skill and overall team-level impact and accolades. Analysts and former players who favor Irving in pure skill-based comparisons typically point to his exceptional ball-handling, finishing creativity and ability to consistently create difficult shots against tight, well-schemed defenses, as illustrated by the 60-point performance Ross referenced. Those who favor Curry, even while acknowledging Irving’s individual talent, generally point to Curry’s unprecedented shooting efficiency at scale, his broader offensive gravity that reshapes how opposing defenses are forced to operate, and his significantly more decorated championship and individual award history.

Ross retired from the NBA in 2023 after an 11-season career that included stints with the Toronto Raptors, Orlando Magic and Phoenix Suns, among other teams. His comments add to an ongoing conversation among current and former players about how to properly weigh pure individual skill against overall career achievement and team success when evaluating and comparing two of the most stylistically distinct and individually accomplished guards of their generation.

HOUSTON — The Houston Rockets have secured the long-term future of their young core, locking up 23-year-old guard Amen Thompson with a five-year, $208 million contract extension, a move that drew an emphatic reaction from veteran teammate Kevin Durant.

According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, Thompson agreed to the rookie-scale extension on Sept. 3, with the deal including a 10% trade kicker and running through the 2031-32 season. The Rockets later officially announced the agreement.

Durant, who saw the news announced on social media, responded on his Instagram Story with a direct message aimed at his younger teammate.

“Don’t wanna hear a word; everything on twin all year,” Durant wrote over an ESPN graphic announcing the extension.

Thompson earned the significant financial commitment following the best statistical season of his young career. During the 2025-26 season, Thompson averaged 18.3 points, 7.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 1.5 steals per game while shooting 53.4% from the field and starting all 79 games he appeared in. He also led the entire NBA in total minutes played over the course of the season.

Thompson’s production placed him among an elite statistical group last season. He was one of just nine players in the league to average at least 18 points, seven rebounds and five assists, joining a list that includes Alperen Sengun, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, Scottie Barnes, Jalen Johnson, Paolo Banchero and Giannis Antetokounmpo, with Thompson standing as the youngest player to reach that statistical threshold.

Rockets general manager Rafael Stone addressed the significance of the extension in the team’s official announcement, pointing specifically to Thompson’s development and two-way impact on the roster.

“Amen represents everything we want our organization to be about,” Stone said, adding that Thompson has improved “in every facet of his game.”

Thompson’s new deal comes as part of a broader pattern of the Rockets locking up their young core over the past two seasons. Houston has now reached multiyear contract extensions with Thompson, Sengun, Jabari Smith Jr. and Tari Eason, giving the franchise financial cost certainty around its core rotation players for at least the next several seasons, until Sengun reaches a player option in his own contract that he can exercise for the 2029-30 season.

Thompson becomes only the second player from the 2023 NBA Draft class to sign a rookie-scale extension, joining San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama. Several other players from that same draft class remain eligible for extensions but have not yet reached agreements with their respective teams, including Charlotte’s Brandon Miller, Detroit’s Ausar Thompson, Utah’s Keyonte George, Oklahoma City’s Cason Wallace and Milwaukee’s Jaime Jaquez Jr.

Under the terms of Thompson’s previous rookie contract, he was set to earn $12.3 million during the 2026-27 season, with that figure rising sharply to $35.8 million in 2027-28. Notably, that 2027-28 salary would have matched what his former Rockets teammate Jalen Green is currently earning, despite Thompson having been drafted two years after Green. Green, who was traded to the Phoenix Suns last summer as part of the deal that brought Durant to Houston, reacted to news of Thompson’s extension on social media with a heart emoji.

Durant’s own contract situation with the Rockets adds additional context to his reaction. Before last season, Durant agreed to a two-year, $90 million extension with Houston that included a player option for the 2027-28 season, a deal widely characterized as a pay cut relative to what Durant could likely have commanded on the open market, one made specifically to help give the Rockets additional financial flexibility to reward their emerging young core with extensions of their own, including Thompson’s new deal.

Durant joined the Rockets last summer in a blockbuster trade that sent Green to the Suns in return. Since arriving in Houston, Durant and Thompson have developed what has been described as a close working relationship and mutual admiration, with Thompson reportedly viewing Durant’s arrival, and the scoring attention Durant draws from opposing defenses, as an opportunity to further sharpen his own defensive game.

Despite Thompson’s clear offensive and defensive growth, some analysts have identified his outside shooting as the most significant area still requiring development. Thompson shot just 21.6% from three-point range last season, with the majority of his made field goals coming on dunks and finishes near the basket rather than perimeter shots.

Former NBA player Joe Johnson, appearing on the Night Cap podcast with Shannon Sharpe, was direct in describing the priority Thompson should place on his jump shot heading into the offseason.

“All he should be doing is putting up jump shots, you know, this summer,” Johnson said. “I mean, because look, that tells me one thing. The Houston Rockets really believe that he is like that. You know, invest that type of money into you. Come on, bro. You got to develop this jumper. They’re going to need that.”

The Rockets have taken steps to address that specific area of Thompson’s game, hiring a new shooting coach in July who is expected to work closely with Thompson on refining his jump shot heading into the coming season.

Durant’s own experience during his first season in Houston highlighted the stakes tied to Thompson’s shooting development. Opposing teams frequently sent double-teams at Durant in crucial situations last season, in part because they were comfortable leaving Thompson open as a kickout option in the paint, given his limited perimeter shooting threat at the time.

Should Thompson and the Rockets’ new shooting coach make meaningful progress on that specific weakness, and should Durant continue mentoring Thompson on navigating those defensive coverages, analysts have suggested the Rockets’ overall offensive ceiling could rise significantly. With Thompson, Sengun, Smith and Eason all now under contract for multiple additional seasons alongside Durant, Houston enters the 2026-27 campaign with one of the more financially secure young cores in the league, giving the franchise, which has won 52 games in each of the past two seasons, a clear runway to continue building around its emerging star group in the years ahead.

This article was written by

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YouTube users began reporting access problems early Sunday morning, with outage-tracking services logging a surge in complaints, marking the latest in a series of intermittent disruptions to affect the video platform over the past several days.

According to outage-tracking reports, the volume of user complaints on Downdetector’s UK tracker surged starting around 5:07 a.m. BST, which corresponds to 12:07 a.m. Eastern time, with users reporting trouble accessing the platform across both the website and mobile app.

Independent monitoring service StatusGator recorded 253 user-submitted outage reports over the preceding 24-hour period as of early Sunday, while overall characterizing YouTube as currently operational. Top reported outage locations over that window included Texas, California and Illinois in the United States, according to the service’s tracking data.

Sunday’s reports add to a pattern of recurring, shorter disruptions that have affected YouTube throughout the past week. StatusGator’s incident log shows a separate outage lasting 2 hours and 9 minutes detected on Sept. 3 at 9:23 p.m., in which users reported YouTube failing to load or connect, along with an earlier incident detected Sept. 2 at 12:21 a.m. that lasted 6 hours and 32 minutes, involving similar connectivity and loading problems. Neither of those prior incidents was officially acknowledged by YouTube at the time they were logged, according to StatusGator’s records.

The recurring smaller disruptions this week follow a considerably larger, global YouTube outage that struck the platform in February 2026. That earlier incident began around 7:50 p.m. ET on Feb. 17, with a massive spike in reports on Downdetector showing more than 280,000 complaints in the United States alone and more than 30,000 in the United Kingdom. YouTube TV was also affected during that outage, with more than 8,000 additional reports logged for that separate streaming service, making it one of the more significant Google-related outages recorded in recent memory.

During the February incident, YouTube’s official TeamYouTube account on X acknowledged the disruption directly.

“If you’re having trouble accessing YouTube right now, you’re not alone — our teams are looking into this and will follow up here with updates,” the TeamYouTube account posted at the time.

Google later confirmed the specific technical cause behind that February outage in a statement posted to YouTube’s official help page.

“We’re aware some of you are having issues accessing YouTube right now. Our teams are aware, and we’ll provide updates as soon as we have them,” the statement read, before the company later attributed the disruption specifically to an issue with YouTube’s recommendation system, which had prevented videos from appearing across various parts of the platform, including the homepage, the YouTube app, YouTube Music and YouTube Kids.

According to Variety’s coverage of that February incident, users were still able to access videos directly through their existing subscriptions during the disruption, even as the homepage and the suggestion bar within the video player displayed as completely blank across both the mobile app and desktop versions of the site. TeamYouTube later confirmed on X that the homepage had been restored, though the recommendation and suggestion features took additional time to fully return to normal function.

That February 2026 disruption itself echoed an earlier, comparably large YouTube outage recorded in 2018, when the platform went down for an extended period beginning around 6:15 p.m. Pacific time, drawing widespread attention at the time given how rarely YouTube experiences significant downtime relative to its massive daily user base.

YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, remains one of the most heavily trafficked websites in the world, serving billions of users who watch and upload video content across virtually every category imaginable. Given that scale, even relatively brief or localized disruptions tend to generate significant public attention and social media discussion, as users quickly turn to platforms like X to check whether an issue they are experiencing reflects a broader outage or is instead isolated to their own device or internet connection.

Outage-tracking platforms including Downdetector and StatusGator compile crowdsourced reports from affected users, comparing the volume of incoming complaints against typical background activity levels to help determine whether a genuine, widespread service disruption is underway. A sudden, sharp spike in reports across a large number of users and locations, as occurred early Sunday, is generally treated as a reasonably strong signal of an emerging platform-level issue, though the underlying cause and full scope of any given disruption can vary significantly from incident to incident.

As of Sunday morning, it remained unclear whether YouTube had issued any official acknowledgment of the reported access issues, or what, if any, technical cause might be responsible for the latest spike in complaints. Given the pattern of intermittent, unacknowledged outages recorded over the preceding days according to StatusGator’s tracking, it also remained uncertain whether Sunday’s reports represented a continuation of that same underlying issue or a separate, unrelated disruption.

Affected users experiencing trouble accessing YouTube were advised to check both Downdetector’s live outage tracker and YouTube’s official help page and support channels for the most current information, while independent monitoring services continued tracking the platform’s real-time availability across different regions and device types in the absence of a detailed public statement from Google addressing the specific cause of Sunday’s reported disruption.

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