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Virgin Galactic unveiled its next-generation spaceship, Apeiron, bringing the company closer to its planned return to commercial spaceflight in 2027 after a multiyear pause in operations.
The spacecraft arrived at Spaceport America in New Mexico, where it will undergo final preparations and flight testing before entering commercial service.
Virgin Galactic expects to begin commercial spaceflights aboard Apeiron early in the second quarter of 2027, provided the test program is completed successfully. A second next-generation spaceship is expected to begin commercial operations late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 2027.
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The new spacecraft is designed to fly as often as twice per week and complete more than 500 missions over its operational life, potentially allowing Virgin Galactic to operate commercial flights more frequently.
Virgin Galactic last conducted a commercial spaceflight in 2024 before pausing operations to focus on developing its next-generation spacecraft.
Apeiron, an ancient Greek word meaning “boundless,” was chosen through a public vote that drew responses from thousands of people in more than 80 countries across six continents.
After being revealed at Virgin Galactic’s spaceship factory in Mesa, Arizona, Apeiron was flown beneath the company’s carrier aircraft, Eve, to Spaceport America, which will serve as the spacecraft’s permanent home and operations base. The spacecraft departed Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport at 10:29 a.m. MST and arrived in New Mexico at 12:59 p.m. MDT.
Virgin Galactic said its engineering team will now complete avionics software integration and validation while preparing Apeiron for flight testing.
Meanwhile, production of the company’s broader fleet is underway, with assembly of a second spaceship and a static test article progressing at its Arizona facility.
The timeline remains contingent on successfully completing flight testing and other development work.
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Alphabet is offering the new bonds in seven tranches, with ​total demand just over €17 billion, the memo from one of the banks arranging the sale seen ​by Reuters showed.
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The bonds, expected to be priced later on Monday, have maturities ranging ⁠from 2 to 19 years. They include one floating-rate tranche and six fixed-rate tranches, according to an SEC ​filing.
The offer marks Alphabet’s second euro-denominated sale this year. In May, it sold €9 billion of bonds across six tranches, ​following a rare 100-year sterling bond sale in February.
Alphabet said it intended to use the net proceeds for general corporate purposes, which may ‌include repaying ⁠outstanding debt.
Barclays, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank are the joint book-running managers for the offering, according to the SEC filing.
Alphabet’s shares fell more than 12% last Thursday, their worst day ever, wiping out roughly $500 billion in market value after its quarterly results showed slower-than-expected growth in Google Search and cash burn that rattled investors.
For ​the whole year, the company ​expects capital spending of ⁠as much as $205 billion.
As of September 30, Alphabet had also signed leases, mainly for data centres, that have not yet commenced, with future payments of $130.5 billion that ​are not yet recorded on its balance sheet, the SEC filing showed.
Microsoft, by contrast, ​was the ⁠only Big Tech company generating cash in the quarter.
Still, analysts expect major tech companies to step up bond sales in Europe to fund infrastructure investment, tapping the region’s deep and liquid debt markets.
Alphabet shares were up about 1% in ⁠premarket trading. ​The company’s US-listed shares fell nearly 19% in October, their worst ​monthly performance on record.
Its dollar-denominated 4.1% bond due in 2031 was little changed on Monday at about 95.43 cents on the dollar.
($1 = ​0.8948 euros)
Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe, Anzar Mehraj and Yoruk Bahceli; Editing by Amanda Cooper, Mark Potter and Tomasz Janowski
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Dhara Ranasinghe is the Financial Markets Editor EMEA . She has more than two decades of experience covering global financial markets, including almost a decade in Asia covering emerging markets. Based in London, Dhara plays a key role in Reuters’ European markets coverage and making sure the Reuters file is ahead of the game in capturing the major themes of the day.
Yoruk Bahceli is a correspondent covering European financial markets from London.

Summary
Companies
Indexes up: Dow 1.06%, S&P 500 0.58%, Nasdaq 0.65%
Oracle down on plans of raising $20 billion through debt, share sale
Apple falls ahead of earnings due after markets close
Nov 2 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes climbed on Monday as oil prices tumbled ​more than 7% on hopes of a US-Iran peace deal, with investors also bracing for Tuesday’s midterm elections ‌and another busy week of earnings.
Brent crude prices fell to an over two-week low as Iran’s talks with Qatari officials to end the eight-month-long conflict with the US raised hopes that Middle East supply disruptions could ease.
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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country’s supreme leader has granted “certain authorities” to the government with regard ​to peace talks, state media reported.
Most megacap and growth stocks gained, with Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab rising 1% and 4.5%, respectively.
At 11:49 ​a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), opens new tab rose 549.85 points, or 1.06%, to 52,320.16, the S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab gained 43.80 ⁠points, or 0.58%, to 7,623.75 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab gained 164.91 points, or 0.65%, to 25,601.91.
Eight of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors ​were in positive territory, with consumer discretionary (.SPLRCD), opens new tab leading gains, while energy (.SPNY), opens new tab fell over 2.8%.
The gains offered some respite to the AI trade after ​a bruising October, which left the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 (.NDX), opens new tab close to entering correction territory, as investors grew wary of Big Tech’s soaring AI spending while awaiting evidence of stronger returns.
Concerns, however, lingered as Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab dropped 5.5%, after regulatory filings showed that the cloud infrastructure provider plans to raise $20 billion through a debt and share ​sale, highlighting investor concerns that debt-funded spending could become harder to justify as borrowing costs rise.
Sentiment towards AI remains shaky, as an amended ​IPO filing showed Anthropic’s net loss narrowed sharply in the third quarter, while revenue jumped ahead of a potential listing.
“(AI) Demand still looks strong, but this ‌earnings ⁠season has increasingly been about what companies are spending to capture it and when those investments start showing up in returns,” said Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion.
Marvell Technology (MRVL.O), opens new tab fell 7.6% after the custom chipmaker said that it is buying optical components maker Lumentum (LITE.O), opens new tab in a $115 billion all-stock deal, including debt. Shares of Lumentum were down 12.9%.
Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab extended its losses, down 4.8%, after clocking the stock’s ​worst one-day fall since the ​1980s on Friday. The company forecast ⁠quarterly revenue below market estimates and said it does not expect positive cash flow this year.
Rival chipmaker AMD (AMD.O), opens new tab is set to report its earnings later this week, while tech giant Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab fell 1.6% ahead ​of its quarterly earnings due after the bell.
This week’s key catalysts include the US midterm elections ​on Tuesday, which ⁠will determine whether Democrats can wrest control of Congress away from President Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Democrats are widely predicted to win the House of Representatives, but the Senate is more in doubt. Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress during the first two years of the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, data ⁠showed that ​US manufacturing activity picked up in October amid solid domestic demand.
Advancing issues outnumbered ​decliners by a 2.97-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and by a 1.78-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq.
The S&P 500 posted 30 new 52-week highs and no new lows, while ​the Nasdaq Composite recorded 88 new highs and 182 new lows.
Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Utkarsh Hathi in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel

Over Halloween weekend, some Grok Bot users awoke to something especially spooky: their weekly usage limits were unexpectedly maxed out, even if they hadn’t been using SpaceX’s agentic AI overnight. Some users reported on X that their usage jumped from as low as 50% to 100%.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed in an X post on Sunday that this was not a glitch.
“The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue,” he wrote in a reply to a question from a user. He has not addressed the issue on his main feed, but has continued boasting that Grok Bot can help you buy gifts for your family.
Grok Bot has been positioned as a success story for the newly public SpaceX, which said in a filing last month that AI now makes up 52% of company income. Its renamed “Super Intelligence” division actually turned a profit of $431 million, which is a rarity in the AI industry. Its profit would’ve been higher if not for $1.2 billion of one-time costs related to its acquisition of Cursor. Musk recently referred to Grok Bot as having “the fastest growth of a product that I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Musk has not yet shared how subscribers’ usage limits will be impacted moving forward.