Supercar Blondie Is Going Into the Auction Business
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Supercar Blondie Is Going Into the Auction Business

By Jim Motavalli
Mon, Apr 8, 2024 7:00amGrey Clock 3 min

Social media personality Supercar Blondie, a London-based Australian whose real name is Alex Hirschi, found her niche posting automotive eyecandy for eager viewers rather accidentally.

“I started out as a journalist, and I just fell into cars through my radio show,” says Hirschi.

For someone who “fell into” cars, they’ve certainly been good to her—the Supercar Blondie network of social channels that includes Supercarblondie.com has 110 million subscribers, including 18.4 million on YouTube and 56 million on Facebook. The content has 2 billion views per month, according to the company.

Alex and Nik Hirschi, the Supercar Blondie couple, in Las Vegas.
Jim Motavalli photo

Hirschi, whose first car was a lowly Mitsubishi Lancer, produces the Supercar Blondie content with her husband, Nik Hirschi, who is Swiss. The radio show was on the Arabian Radio Network in Dubai from 2012 to 2017. Dubai is full of supercars, and Hirschi, then known as “Radio Blondie,” said it was a natural fit to drive some of them—Bentleys, McLarens, Ferraris—for on-air features. The independent Supercar Blondie content creation company was launched in Dubai (where Nik Hirschi worked at Bloomberg, Barclays, and Thomson Reuters) in 2017 and has been growing ever since.

“I just loved supercars, and what started out as a hobby after I was loaned a Bentley Flying Spur to drive around Dubai eventually got more serious,” Alex Hirschi says. “We started filming my encounters with cars and uploading the video to our channel.” These days the couple travels 300 days a year; Penta first caught up with them at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas .

The Tyde Icon electric hydrofoil uses BMW batteries.
SBX Cars Photo

And now SB Media Group, based in London with 65 employees, Nik as CEO and Alex as the co-founder and on-air talent, is going into the auto auction business. SBX Cars, based in California, launched this week. The inaugural inventory goes beyond cars, and includes an electric Tyde hydrofoil yacht designed by BMW. There’s also a no-reserve Tesla Cybertruck, a one-of-nine Lamborghini Veneno Roadster, and a one-of-three Lamborghini Veneno Coupe. Likely attracting attention will be the first public auctions of the Mercedes-AMG One and the Hyperion XP-1 hydrogen-powered prototype. There were three LaFerrari prototypes, and one will be auctioned by SBX Cars.

A collection of John Player Special Lotus F1 racing cars will also be auctioned, as well as Lotus transporters, and founder Colin Chapman’s personal plane and some vehicles from his garage. Other high-dollar items include a Mercedes 300SL “Gullwing,” a Lamborghini Miura, a BMW 507, and an Aston Martin DB5. The estimated valuation of the auction lots consigned is US$100 million.

The Mercedes-AMG One was limited to 275 units.
SBX Cars Photo

The auctions will be online, but there could be some in-person events in the future. “We’re going to be the only digital auction site that focuses on the high end,” Nik Hirschi says. “We will focus on cars that are super-cool, with many that are one-of-a-kind, and we’re going to be attracting collectors from all over the world. Every car will be represented on the site with 200 photographs, taken by our global network.” Video will also be available.

SBX Cars says it will speed up the process for consignors, with just a few weeks until their cars become available on the site. Once up, the vehicles will remain available for one to two weeks. SBX Cars Auction Director Lance Butler, a Bonhams veteran, said in a statement that the auction “introduces our clients to a far easier buying and selling process, all while accessing one of the world’s largest global audiences by way of Supercar Blondie.”

The prototype Hyperion XP-1.
SBX Cars Photo

Mercedes 300SLs, Aston Martin DB5s, and BMW 507s are frequently auctioned around the globe, but SBX features some true exotics.



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Tech Giants Double Down on Their Massive AI Spending

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta pour billions into artificial intelligence, undeterred by DeepSeek’s rise

By NATE RATTNER AND JASON DEAN
Fri, Feb 7, 2025 3 min

Tech giants projected tens of billions of dollars in increased investment this year and sent a stark message about their plans for AI: We’re just getting started.

The four biggest spenders on the data centers that power artificial-intelligence systems all said in recent days that they would jack up investments further in 2025 after record outlays last year. Microsoft , Google and Meta Platforms have projected combined capital expenditures of at least $215 billion for their current fiscal years, an annual increase of more than 45%.

Amazon.com didn’t provide a full-year estimate but indicated on Thursday that total capex across its businesses is on course to grow to more than $100 billion, and said most of the increase will be for AI.

Their comments in recent quarterly earnings reports showed the AI arms race is still gaining momentum despite investor anxiety over the impact of China’s DeepSeek and whether these big U.S. companies will sufficiently profit from their unprecedented spending spree.

Investors have been especially shaken that DeepSeek replicated much of the capability of leading American AI systems despite spending less money and using fewer and less-powerful chips, according to its Chinese developer. Leaders of the U.S. companies were unbowed , touting advances in their own technology and arguing that lower costs will make AI more affordable and grow the demand for their cloud computing services, which AI needs to operate.

“We think virtually every application that we know of today is going to be reinvented with AI inside of it,” Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy said on Thursday’s earnings call.

Here is a breakdown of each company’s plans:

Amazon said a measure of its capex that includes leased equipment rose to a record of about $26 billion in the final quarter of 2024 , driven by spending in its cloud-computing division on equipment for data centers that host AI applications. Executives projected it would maintain the fourth-quarter spending volume in 2025, meaning an annual total of more than $100 billion by that measure.

The company—which gets most of its revenue from e-commerce and most of its profit from cloud computing—also projected overall sales for the current quarter that missed analysts’ expectations. Its shares slid about 4% in after-hours trading Thursday. The stock rose more than 40% in 2024 and was up nearly 9% this year before its earnings report.

Jassy said AI has the potential to propel historic change and that Amazon wants to be a leader of that progress.

“AI represents for sure the biggest opportunity since cloud and probably the biggest technology shift and opportunity in business since the internet,” Jassy said.

Google shares are down about 7% since its earnings report Tuesday, which showed disappointing growth in its cloud-computing business. Still, parent-company Alphabet said it is accelerating investments in AI data centers as part of a surge in capital expenditures this year to about $75 billion, from $52.5 billion in 2024. The spending will go to infrastructure both for Google’s own use and for cloud-computing clients.

“I think part of the reason we are so excited about the AI opportunity is we know we can drive extraordinary use cases because the cost of actually using it is going to keep coming down,” said CEO Sundar Pichai .

AI is “as big as it comes, and that’s why you’re seeing us invest to meet that moment,” he said.

Microsoft has said it plans to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in the fiscal year ending in June, and that spending would grow further next year , albeit at a slower pace.

Chief Executive Satya Nadella said AI will become much more extensively used , which he said is good news. “As AI becomes more efficient and accessible, we will see exponentially more demand,” Nadella said.

Growth for Microsoft’s cloud-computing business in the latest quarter also disappointed investors, leaving its stock down about 6% since its earnings report last week.

Meta, too, outlined a sizable increase in its investments driven by AI, including $60 billion to $65 billion in planned capital expenditures this year, roughly 70% higher than analysts had projected. Shares in Meta are up about 5% since its earnings report last week.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said investing vast sums will enable it to adjust the technology as AI advances.

“That’s generally an advantage that we’re now going to be able to provide a higher quality of service than others who don’t necessarily have the business model to support it on a sustainable basis,” he said.

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11 ACRES ROAD, KELLYVILLE, NSW

This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan

35 North Street Windsor

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