Forbes Topline

Oracle shares hit a 2026 intraday high Monday, extending a furious late-May rally that has recast the database pioneer as a marquee AI-infrastructure player and boosted the fortune of cofounder Larry Ellison, who holds roughly 40% of the company. Oracle traded as high as $233.72 Monday, after surging about 11% Friday to cap software's strongest month since 2001. The company has pivoted from a mature software vendor into a major player in the AI boom, renting compute power to the largest AI developers like OpenAI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 3 June 2026

he first NBA Finals appearance in decades for the New York Knicks comes with a hefty cost for fans, who will have to pay thousands of dollars for even the cheapest seats inside Madison Square Garden—rivaling the average monthly rent for a Manhattan apartment, the average price of an engagement ring and several transatlantic flights. The Knicks first host the San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden on June 8 for Game 3, with the cheapest resale ticket priced at $4,247, before the get-in price drops slightly to $3,728 for Game 4 on June 10, according to TickPick. If the series extends to a Game 6, the cheapest price for a ticket to the late-series game rises to a Finals high of $4,917 for Game 6, according to TickPick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 2 June 2026

Claude maker Anthropic has confidentially filed initial paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission, taking a step toward a potential initial public offering that could reportedly come as early as late 2026. The filing sets neither a share count nor a price.  The move arrives just days after the company closed a $65 billion round that valued it at $965 billion—eclipsing rival OpenAI and cementing its status as the most valuable startup in artificial intelligence. Anthropic’s most recent round nearly tripled its valuation of $380 billion in roughly three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 1 June 2026

Uber-rich Americans are collecting multiple residencies and citizenships for the same reason they diversify their stock portfolios—to hedge against risk in an unpredictable world, investment migration experts tell Forbes. The U.S. has replaced China as the largest market for clients seeking secondary or tertiary citizenships, Eric Major, CEO and chairman of the investment migration advisory firm Latitude World, told Forbes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 29 May 2026

UBS analysts raised their price target more than threefold to $1,625, implying a potential valuation of close to $1.8 trillion for the company in the next 12 months. The upgrade was the highest target of any of the 46 Wall Street firms covering Micron, well above the consensus price target of $684.32, per FactSet data Micron is up 177% this year and has surged more than 800% over the past 12 months, making it one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 28 May 2026

The unveiling of a new electric supercar from Ferrari sharply divided the internet Tuesday morning as traditionalists decried the design as “an Apple product on wheels” and supporters praised the luxury brand’s bold attempt at a reinvention. Ferrari's unveiling of the Luce—a $640,000 speedster and its first ever electric model—sent shares down around 6% Tuesday morning as the brand’s fans slammed the new model as an abandonment of its identity, specifically noting its aggressive styling. The car was designed in collaboration with former Apple designer Jony Ive and his business partner Marc Newson, who are credited with designing the Apple Watch, and the pair brought a distinctive Silicon Valley style to the Luce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 27 May 2026

The U.S. will invest $2 billion in grant funding in return for equity stakes in nine quantum computing companies, the Wall Street Journal first reported citing the Commerce Department, including a $1 billion grant for IBM as the Trump administration’s push to take equity stakes in tech and industrial manufacturers continues. Legacy tech firm IBM is expected to receive the largest grant, worth about $1 billion, which it will use alongside $1 billion of its own funds to build a quantum chip foundry to build the specialized semiconductors necessary to power quantum computers in the U.S., the company announced in a separate press release on Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 22 May 2026

Elon Musk’s SpaceX confirmed in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it will take the company public, a multi-trillion-dollar move that could potentially turn Musk into the world’s first trillionaire. Spacex’s IPO valuation could reach between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion, according to multiple reports, which would best the previous all-time IPO valuation record of $1.7 trillion set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 21 May 2026

Details of SpaceX’s IPO are expected to be made public this week as it accelerates plans for a stock debut that will likely make CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, but one analyst warned that trading may be volatile as the stock faces “substantial” downside risks. SpaceX, which filed confidential initial public offering registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission in April, will likely make public its paperwork—offering insight into the firm’s operations and finances—this week as it plans for a June 12 debut on the Nasdaq, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Some have expressed concerns about SpaceX’s stock listing, including PitchBook analyst Franco Granda, who wrote in March that SpaceX may act like Tesla’s stock “on steroids,” suggesting trading volatility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 20 May 2026

A jury declared Elon Musk filed his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman too late in a Monday afternoon verdict, finding the defendants not liable for any of the claims and ending a dramatic court showdown between two of the AI industry’s leading billionaires—at least for now, as a Musk lawyer says he plans to appeal. Musk filed a lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI in 2024, alleging Altman reneged on an initial promise to operate the AI company as a nonprofit for the public good, making claims of unjust enrichment and breach of charitable trust. Musk’s claims, though, were subject to three-year statutes of limitations, and the jury ruled Monday after two hours of deliberation that he had missed the deadlines to file his lawsuit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 19 May 2026

President Donald Trump voluntarily dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS on Monday in exchange for a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund that is expected to pay out money to Jan. 6 rioters, a broadly controversial move that’s already drawn widespread outrage from Democrats and ethics experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 18 May 2026

The cost of the Iran war has ballooned $4 billion since the Pentagon’s last public estimate less than two weeks ago, officials said Tuesday—though the economic costs of the war are likely significantly higher. The war has cost around $29 billion, Defense Department Comptroller Jay Hurst told Congress Tuesday, attributing the increase to “updated repair and replacement of equipment cost and also just general operational cost.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 15 May 2026

From snack packaging to AI chips, the Iran War's supply chain blockades are causing severe global shortages across consumer and industrial goods. Calbee, Japan's biggest snack maker, on Tuesday warned its products will switch from their famously colorful packaging to black-and-white labels by the end of the month due to an Iran war-spurred shortage of an ink ingredient, the latest disruption to hit the supply chain due to the conflict in the Middle East. The packaging change is reportedly due to a shortage of naptha, an ink ingredient derived from petroleum, of which Japan imports 40% of its consumption from the Middle East via the Strait of Hormuz shipping channel that has been closed since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February. The closure of the strait has caused other shortages around the world, including in India, where a lack of the aluminum needed to make cans has led to a scarcity of Diet Coke and spurred "Diet Coke parties," where the drink is treated as limited-availability item and often sold at significant markups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 14 May 2026

Nvidia’s value reached the $5.5 trillion mark for the first time Wednesday, again breaking the record for the highest ever market capitalization in the history of publicly traded companies, as its stock rallied following news that centibillionaire CEO Jensen Huang is joining President Donald Trump’s trip to China. Nvidia’s market cap reached just over $5.5 trillion as shares surged 3% as of early afternoon. The rise in shares was accompanied by news that Huang was traveling with Trump to China, where the president will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, following earlier reports that said he was not invited. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 May 2026

President Donald Trump reportedly invited a group of billionaires—worth a combined $870 billion, according to our estimates—to join him on his trip to China this week to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, their first summit of Trump’s second term, which comes amid tensions over trade, the war in Iran and the future of artificial intelligence. Tesla’s Elon Musk, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Apple’s Tim Cook, General Electric’s Larry Culp and BlackRock’s Larry Fink are among the billionaires expected to travel to Beijing with Trump, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed White House official. Other high-profile CEOs joining the trip include Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon and Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, among 17 total executives from U.S. companies reportedly expected to attend the summit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 12 May 2026

With the Strait of Hormuz closed for nearly 10 weeks, much of the world is running out of jet fuel and summer vacation plans could be disrupted, energy experts told Forbes. “It’s not going to be a short-term issue, because it can’t be easily solved,” Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, the energy data and analytics platform, told Forbes, having likened the jet fuel shortage to a “slow-motion car crash.” “We’re going to be in crisis mode,” John Gradek, who teaches aviation risk management at McGill University, told Forbes, noting “the industry has never seen this before, where the actual supply of the product needed to support aviation, that pipeline, is drying up.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 11 May 2026

The World Health Organization has confirmed dozens of people, including Americans, left the ship upon which a hantavirus outbreak has killed several people and flew home after the death of the first passenger but before they knew they’d been exposed to a contagious and deadly disease. On Thursday, May 7th, Oceanwide Expeditions, operator of the cruise ship MV Hondius, says at least 29 living passengers from 12 countries disembarked the ship and went home after the death of the first passenger on board. This was before officials knew of the outbreak.  Those countries are Canada, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 7 May 2026

FIFA hyped the World Cup as an economic juggernaut for the U.S.—but with five weeks until the tournament kicks off, the hotel industry says advanced bookings in some host cities are on par or lagging any ordinary summer. Nearly 80% of U.S. hoteliers in 11 World Cup host cities say bookings are tracking below original forecasts, with some describing the tournament as a “non-event,” according to an American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) survey of members released Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 6 May 2026

The jet fuel crisis was the straw that broke Spirit Airlines’ back, but other budget airlines are also struggling to be profitable and losing market share—a potential warning for cost-conscious travelers, aviation experts tell Forbes. Low-cost carriers—including Allegiant, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and Sun Country—combined for 35.5% of market share in February, down from 38.2% a year earlier, according to Cirium data. Spirit flew 1.7 million passengers in February—a 24% year-over-year drop, per Cirium. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 5 May 2026

Suno, the AI music generation company that has attracted a staggering 100 million users is reportedly nearing a close of a funding round that could value it at more than $5 billion, more than double what it was valued after its last funding round in November. Suno is expected to close a Series D funding round in the coming weeks, Axios and Billboard reported Monday morning, which Axios reported could value the startup at more than $5 billion. The new funding round comes six months after Suno raised $250 million at a valuation of $2.45 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 5 May 2026

GameStop might issue additional stock to complete its $55 billion takeover of eBay amid skepticism from economists about whether the video game retailer could afford to acquire the company, whose market value is more than double GameStop's. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen told CNBC on Monday the video game retailer’s half-cash, half-stock bid for eBay may rely on issuing stock, or the process in which a company creates and gives new shares of itself to complete a deal instead of paying cash. GameStop has yet to discuss the bid with eBay’s management after publicly announcing its offer on Sunday, Cohen said. Morgan Stanley analysts, in a note last week before GameStop’s offer was made public, said the broader market would be quote “skeptical of a potential deal’s feasibility.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 4 May 2026

Larry Page’s net worth swelled on Thursday, surpassing $300 billion for the first time as Alphabet’s stock rose after reporting a surge in cloud revenue through the Google parent’s latest quarter. Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List estimates Page’s net worth at $313.1 billion as of Friday morning, as the Google cofounder ranks as the second-wealthiest person in the world. Fellow Google cofounder Sergey Brin also had his fortune surge, hitting $288.8 billion as of Friday morning, as he now ranks as the world’s third-richest person ahead of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, whose net worth sank $3.5 billion to $267 billion as of Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2026

LIV Golf, the competitor to the PGA Tour bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is losing its funding from the Gulf state, according to The Wall Street Journal. This follows weeks of speculation surrounding the upstart’s potential shutdown. LIV intends to tell staff and players, some of whom were among the PGA Tour’s most popular when they were poached, on Thursday that the league will lose funding after the conclusion of this season. LIV is in discussions with outside investors to keep the league operating, the Journal reported, though it noted maintaining its current form would be QUOTE “nearly impossible,” as the league has incurred mounting losses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2026

Billionaire Google co-founder and ex-California resident Sergey Brin has said he’s adamantly opposed to a proposed one-time, 5% tax on the wealth of California residents (and has spent $57 million to fight it) because he fears it will lead the state down a similar socialist path as that of the former Soviet Union, which his family fled when he was 6 years old. Brin, who has moved from a backer of liberal causes to a supporter of Republican President Donald Trump, told the New York Times in a rare statement: “I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don’t want California to end up in the same place.” The proposed tax would apply to California residents with assets worth at least $1.1 billion and has pushed a number of bold-faced billionaires, including Brin, to leave the state. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 30 April 2026

The United Arab Emirates has announced it will no longer be a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, starting May 1 after reflecting on its "long-term strategic and economic vision," a move that could impact the group’s ability to control the supply of oil and prices around the world. The UAE made the announcement to leave the so-called oil cartel via the state-run WAM news agency, and cited “near-term volatility” in the market and a desire to ramp up investment in domestic energy production. The statement referred to the Iran war started by the U.S. and Israel in February, which has choked oil transport through the important Strait of Hormuz, and the government’s desire to meet what it thinks will be the “sustained growth” of energy demand in the medium to long term. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 28 April 2026

A U.S. special forces soldier who participated in the raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the operation to win more than $400,000 on the online betting platform Polymarket. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 24 April 2026

Kalshi caught and suspended three political candidates who bet on the outcomes of their own elections, the prediction market company said in a statement on Wednesday, fining the three politicians and issuing five-year bans from their platform. Minnesota State Senator Matt Klein, a candidate running for the Democratic nomination for Minnesota’s second district in the House of Representatives, agreed to pay a $539.85 fine. Ezekiel Enriquez, a former candidate for the Republican primary for a congressional district in Texas, was fined $784.20. Enriquez lost this race after the primary elections in March. Both Klein and Enriquez bought less than $100 worth of contracts on their own elections, according to Kalshi’s filings, and both were also issued five-year suspensions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 24 April 2026

The Trump administration’s acting attorney general Todd Blanche signed an order on Thursday reclassifying FDA-approved and state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug, placing it in the less strictly regulated Schedule III category. The move will not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under federal law, but instead moves state-licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, aligning it with dozens of states that have already legalized medical marijuana. Blanche also scheduled a hearing for June for the Drug Enforcement Administration to consider reclassifying marijuana more broadly as Schedule III. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 23 April 2026

Rivian Automotive’s stock soared by more than 8% in premarket trading on Thursday, after Uber announced it would invest up to $1.25 billion in the electric vehicle maker—whose shares have plummeted in a years-long rout—to deploy tens of thousands of robotaxis across the U.S. by the next decade. Key Facts Shares of Rivan jumped 8.2% in premarket trading on Thursday, marking what would be a slight rebound for the stock after stumbling by more than 14% this year. Uber said Thursday it would invest up to $1.25 billion in Rivian through 2031, with plans to purchase 10,000 of Rivian’s upcoming R2 vehicle and an option to buy an additional 40,000 robotaxis in 2030. An initial $300 million investment from Uber to Rivian is expected shortly after the deal’s signing and is subject to regulatory approval, Uber said. The R2 robotaxis are expected to be available through Uber in 25 cities across the U.S., Canada and Europe, with San Francisco and Miami as the launching sites in 2028, the companies said.  Uber’s Robotaxi Expansion: From Rivian To Nvidia Uber has announced several partnerships over the last year as it competes with the Alphabet-backed Waymo in the robotaxi market. The company announced a strategic partnership with the Amazon-backed Zoox last week, with plans for Zoox’s robotaxis to be made available through Uber by 2027. In October, Stellantis announced a joint project with Uber, Nvidia and Foxconn, with plans for Uber to deploy robotaxis from the automotive conglomerate—spanning Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler and more—in the U.S. That same day, Nvidia said it was partnering with Uber to increase Uber’s autonomous vehicle fleet to 100,000, starting in 2027. Lucid, in September 2025, announced a $300 million investment from Uber, which said it would later deploy Lucid’s robotaxis. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/03/19/rivian-shares-rally-8-after-uber-invests-up-to-125-billion-in-robotaxi-deal/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 22 April 2026

Billionaire investor Vinod Khosla suggested as many as 125 million people should be exempt from paying income taxes in the coming decades as artificial intelligence gets closer to eliminating a mass number of jobs, suggesting the government make up the lost revenue by relying on capital gains tax. Key Facts Khosla wrote on X the AI boom will require a "rethink of capitalism and equity" and suggested increasing capital gains taxes would allow the government to eliminate "the bottom 125 million taxpayers from the tax rolls."  He also suggested eliminating certain tax breaks—like tax-free borrowing against unrealized gains—would help to make up the deficit.  There are only about 160 million taxpaying Americans, and Khosla’s plan would exempt almost 80% of them from income taxes.  Last year, Khosla suggested it may be necessary to implement a universal basic income for lower-income Americans whose jobs are eliminated due to AI automation, predicting 80% of jobs will soon be handled by AI.  A video Khosla shared this week highlighted dozens of jobs being replaced by AI in his venture capital firm's portfolio, including personal assistants, financial analysts, doctors, accountants, customer service agents and more.  Big Number 92 million. That's how many jobs will be displaced by AI by 2030, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025. Key Background Economic experts have been warning about the loss of jobs due to artificial intelligence automation for years. More than 50,000 jobs cuts in 2025 were blamed on AI, according to career services firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, with another 20,000 in 2023 and 2024. Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn’s chief economic officer, said in a New York Times op-ed that AI is destroying the “bottom rungs of the career ladder,” eliminating entry level jobs and significantly cutting into the hiring of recent college graduates. Tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Gates, as well as leaders like Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, have all suggested artificial intelligence is on its way to automating a significant portion of white-color work and, in some scenarios, could eliminate the need for traditional jobs altogether. Last May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted AI could drive unemployment up 10% to 20% in the next five years. Women and people of color are expected to be disproportionately impacted by AI job automation. Crucial Quote “In my little group chat with my tech CEO friends, there’s this betting pool for the first year there is a one-person billion-dollar company, which would’ve been unimaginable without AI. And now [it] will happen,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman saidlast year. Read the full story on Forbes: By Mary Whitfill Roeloffs https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/02/17/billionaire-khosla-if-125-million-are-unemployed-by-ai-they-shouldnt-pay-taxes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 21 April 2026

James Kim’s Los Angeles-based cannabis company grew from a scrappy startup in 2017 to a legal unicorn worth $1.5 billion. Allegations of black-market activity and lawsuits be damned—Stiiizy aims to be the Nike of cannabis. Inside a warehouse in Downtown Los Angeles, next to a strip club, James Kim, the CEO and cofounder of the California-based cannabis brand Stiiizy opens the door to one of his grow rooms, revealing 972 pot plants, thriving three-foot-tall beauties two weeks from harvest. “This room is all money,” says Kim, who is 37 and has tattoos covering his arms, including a portrait of Ben Franklin and a rose made from a $100 bill. These days, Stiiizy is bringing in plenty of Benjamins. The company—which was founded in 2017 and grows cannabis, manufacturers vapes, pre-rolls, gummies and flower—has nearly 50 branded dispensaries across California and generates more than $800 million a year in revenue. Stiiizy, which is also California’s biggest cannabis retailer, is the best-selling weed brand in the country, according to sales data firm Headset. A vertically integrated powerhouse that now operates in seven states, one out of every eight cannabis products sold in the United States is a Stiiizy product. The company, which Forbes estimates to be valued at $1.5 billion, is privately held, secretive and mysterious—out of four original co-founders, only Kim would agree to speak, and he would not confirm the names of his partners. Founded in the gray market days before California legalized recreational marijuana, Stiiizy has also been dogged by lawsuits, rumors of illicit activity (all of which the company denies) and scandals, but none of that has changed the fact that in the $32 billion regulated cannabis industry, Stiiizy is the brand to beat. “We’re the number-one brand in the nation,” says Kim. “I always tell people, if we’re number one in the nation, we’re number one in the world.” A floor below the grow room, Kim walks through his production facility where dozens of employees in blue hairnets and facemasks brush mini blunts with a brown liquid and roll them into a half-pound of kief and put them into trays. In another room, a woman uses a machine to fill 100 Stiiizy vape pens at a time—by the end of the day, workers here will make nearly 100,000 of them. Every month, Stiiizy grows 15,000 pounds of weed and produces about $70 million worth (retail sales) of cannabis products in California, not including how much it produces in Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, and New York, where Stiiizy launched in February and rose to be among the top 10 best-selling brands within a month, according to Lit Alerts.  Kim walks out of his warehouse and jumps in the back of his black Cadillac Escalade and his driver takes him a few minutes down the road to Stiiizy’s DTLA headquarters. “We always had dreams of the brand getting big,” says Kim, while Notorious BIG’s “Juicy” plays over the car speakers. “But we didn’t know it would be this big.”  Kim, who sports an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak chronograph on his wrist, grew up humbly in Cerritos, California. He shared a bed with his older sister so his parents, both immigrants from South Korea, could rent out the other bedroom to help make ends meet. His parents sold women’s clothing at the local Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet and starting at six years old, young James was in charge of setting up the tent, manning the cash register and helping his mom set prices for clothes. (His mom taught him her strategy, which was to price each item at double her cost.)  “They put me to work,” he says. “That swap meet was my life.” Read the full story here: By Will Yakowicz https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2025/04/18/inside-stiiizy-the-worlds-best-selling-weed-brand/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 20 April 2026

Federal Election Commission filings for the first quarter of 2026 showed that billionaires Miriam Adelson and George Soros were the biggest donors backing GOP and Democratic super PACs, respectively, ahead of this year’s midterms, while billionaire Marc Andreessen’s venture capital firm poured $25 million into a pro-artificial intelligence Super PAC. KEY FACTS According to the filings published on Wednesday night, GOP megadonor Adelson donated $30 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, the major super PAC backing Republican Senate candidates. Filings made by the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund—which backs GOP House candidates—showed Adelson had given the super PAC $10 million, bringing her overall contribution to $40 million so far this year. Billionaire George Soros, one of the biggest backers of Democratic candidates, donated $50 million to his Democracy PAC in January through an associated group, the Fund for Policy Reform. The Democracy PAC then donated $9 million to Senate Majority PAC—which backs Democratic Senate candidates. FORBES VALUATION According to Forbes’ Real Time Billionaire’s list, Adelson’s total fortune is worth $37.3 billion, making her the 58th richest person in the world. In comparison Soros’ net worth stands at $7.5 billion as of Thursday morning. WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT FUNDING FROM SILICON VALLEY ?Leaders from Silicon Valley launched the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future in August last year, with venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz among its main backers. Wednesday’s filings showed that the venture firm donated $25 million to the political action committee, with $12.5 million each coming from co-founders Benjamin Horowitz and billionaire Marc Andreessen. BIG NUMBER $27 million. That is how much Democratic Texas Senate Candidate James Talarico has raised in the first three months of the year so far, according to the New York Times. Talarico’s strong numbers appear to reflect Democratic optimism about the race in deep-red Texas, as the GOP has been besieged by infighting among its top two candidates. SURPRISING FACT Filings for a Win for America, a super PAC backed by sports betting platforms, showed it raised more than $40 million in the first three months of the year. FanDuel contributed $19.5 million while DraftKings’ holding company, DK Crown Holdings, donated 17.5 million. An additional $4 million came from Fanatics’ subsidiary FBG Enterprises Opco. Read the full story on Forbes: By Siladitya Ray https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/04/16/billionaire-adelson-pours-40-million-to-back-gop-soros-gives-50-million-to-his-democrat-pac/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 19 April 2026

Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz to all commercial shipping traffic Friday, citing Thursday’s ceasefire with Israel in Lebanon, signaling a major breakthrough in the conflict and sending oil prices plummeting, though President Donald Trump said the U.S. Naval blockade on Iran will remain in effect until a permanent peace deal is reached. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 17 April 2026

Live Nation shares tumbled over 6% on Wednesday after a New York jury found it and Ticketmaster operated as a monopoly, marking a win for dozens of states that accused the live entertainment company of violating antitrust laws around ticketing, music venues and concert promotion—claims Live Nation has denied. KEY FACTS The verdict was reached after four days of deliberations in a trial that lasted several weeks, in which Live Nation was accused of overcharging fans for tickets and pressuring venues into using Ticketmaster—one of its subsidiaries. Live Nation shares closed down 6.3% Wednesday, erasing almost two weeks’ worth of gains. The jury found Ticketmaster overcharged customers by $1.72 per ticket, The New York Times reported. The terms of the incoming settlement will be determined by Judge Arun Subramanian in a later proceeding. Forbes has reached out to Live Nation for comment. WHAT TO WATCH FOR A breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster is being sought by some of the states suing the parent company. Live Nation acquired Ticketmaster in an all-stock deal valued at $2.5 billion. SURPRISING FACT Ticketmaster sells around 10 times the number of tickets sold by its closest rival, AEG, the Times reported, citing testimony from the trial. KEY BACKGROUND The landmark ruling is another knock against Live Nation, which reached a settlement with the Justice Department just last month requiring it to pay $280 million in damages, divest from 13 of its amphitheaters and introduce a cap on ticketing service fees at 15%. Live Nation generated $690.7 million in revenue in 2025, according to its full-year results, which noted the company brought in a record-breaking $25.2 billion that year. Over 30 states rejected the settlement and instead pressed Live Nation in the current trial. New York Attorney General Letitia James said the settlement “fails to address the monopoly at the center of this case, and would benefit Live Nation at the expense of consumers.” Read the full story on Forbes: By ByAntonio Pequeño IV https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/04/15/jury-says-live-nation-operated-monopoly-in-landmark-decision-for-ticketing-market/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 17 April 2026

Allbirds, the former minimalist shoe company that briefly surged in popularity among Silicon Valley tech workers a decade ago, announced it would suddenly become an “AI compute and cloud services company,” selling its branding and footwear assets and rechristening itself “NewBird AI”—and causing its cratering stock to jump over 800% after the announcement. KEY FACTS In a press release issued on Wednesday, the struggling footwear company said it raised $50 million through an unnamed institutional investor to become an “AI compute infrastructure” company. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, according to the release As part of the pivot, the company sold its entire footwear business to brand manager American Exchange Group—a $39 million deal announced in March. The company said the shoes’ “brand and legacy will continue under the ownership of American Exchange Group,” whose portfolio includes other fashion brands like Aerosoles and Ed Hardy. The announcement caused Allbirds stock to skyrocket, rising over 800% after markets opened—although the company’s stock was still only trading around $20 per share, up over 700%, by 11:45 a.m. EDT. BIG NUMBER Over $4 billion. That’s how much Allbirds was valued at after its blockbuster IPO in November 2021, which raised over $300 million for the shoemaker. Allbirds’ stock price quickly sank in the months after the IPO, and the company’s stock was trading at $2.49 per share before the pivot was announced. KEY BACKGROUND Allbirds is not the first company to pivot away from its core business to a trend in tech. The Long Island Iced Tea Company made a similar move in 2017, announcing it would become primarily a blockchain company. Although the stock price also skyrocketed immediately after the announcement, the pivot didn’t exactly work in the long run—the company was delisted by the Securities and Exchange Committee in 2021, which claimed in an order the company’s new “blockchain business never became operational. Read the full story on Forbes: By Zachary Folk https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/04/15/shoemaker-allbirds-suddenly-says-its-an-ai-company-and-stock-jumps-800/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2026

American companies are increasingly skipping traditional price hikes on goods in favor of new surcharges and fees added to checkout screens and monthly bills—often far less visible—as a way to pass rising prices onto consumers amid surging inflation. Key Facts Restaurants, hotels, airlines, retailers and other businesses are increasingly breaking price hikes into separate line items—often labeled as a “fuel surcharge,” “service fee” “processing fee” or “resort fee”—that allow them to preserve advertised prices but still pass inflation-related price increases on to the consumer.  Often these costs only show up on a final bill or check—separate from the original, advertised price. One of the most common examples is a credit card use surcharge—used by one-third of American small businesses—which see companies try to recoup the fees charged to them by credit card companies by hitting customers with a 2% to 4% fee if they use a card instead of cash.  More than 15% of restaurants nationally also now tack on extra fees to the bill at the end of a meal, according to the National Restaurant Association, with some adding credit card surcharges while others opt for automatic gratuity or vague “service charges” to help cover increased supply costs or employee wages.  Airlines advertise ticket prices without including hidden taxes, fees and charges—that can increase ticket prices by roughly 20% at checkout—and carriers like American, Alaska, Delta, United and Southwest this month announced they were hiking the price of baggage fees by $10 per bag to cover Iran war-caused jet fuel increases. Grab, a Nasdaq-listed rideshare and food delivery company that operates in Southeast Asia, told customers it will implement a fuel surcharge through May 31 and Uber Australia said it will introduce a temporary 5-cent-per-kilometer fuel surcharge starting April 15. What To Watch For More price hikes or fees for consumers as businesses themselves fall victim to new surcharges. Amazon has added a 3.5% fuel surcharge for its third-party sellers. UPS, FedEx and the USPS have implemented their own fuel-related price hikes, ranging from 3.5% to 8%, since the Iran war spiked energy costs. Experts have said those logistics companies have little choice but to offset the skyrocketing costs of gasoline and diesel, and as many as 30 to 40% of Amazon sellers subject to the new surcharge will pass it directly on to consumers, a supply chain expert told the New York Post. The owner of Ash & Erie, a small men’s clothing brand, told the Wall Street Journal the fuel surcharges are like “tariffs 2.0” and said he’ll likely have to raise prices to make up for them. Similarly, fresh food distributors are billing restaurants and grocery markets to make up for the rising price of diesel, which could soon get passed along to shoppers and diners. Grocery prices will rise 2% in the next few weeks, according to The Food Institute. Contractor Plus, a management app designed for contractors and businesses like plumbing and electricians, is advisingits clients on how to add fuel surcharges directly to invoices. Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart and Amazon have all started offering fuel price relief options for its delivery and rideshare drivers, the New York Times reported, and that could soon turn into a surcharge for riders or delivery recipients. When the war in Ukraine caused gas prices to jump in 2022, Uber and Lyft added surcharges directly to customers. Will The New Fees Ever Go Away?  Probably not. Often, a fee gets introduced to solve a seemingly temporary cost problem but then becomes permanent, even after the original justification fades. Restaurant service fees, for example, were born amid higher prices and fewer sales during the pandemic but many stayed around when costs dropped. Airline checked baggage fees were introduced during the 2008 oil price spike, when jet fuel costs surged, but didn't disappear once fuel prices stabilized. Rental car companies added "temporary" surcharges after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to offset falling travel demand and pay for added airport security and facility costs, but they stuck around after the travel industry recovered. Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian recently implied airfares likely won't go back down even if oil prices drop, instead saying the lowered fuel costs would "certainly help us boost our margins this year and clearly into next year as well." Read the full story on Forbes: By Mary Whitfill Roeloffs https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2026/04/13/here-are-the-hidden-fees-for-food-flights-more-youre-paying-because-of-the-affordability-crisis/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 15 April 2026

Top 10 Greatest Living Self-Made Americans Oprah Winfrey Harold Hamm David Steward Thomas Peterffy LeBron James Jan Koum Dolly Parton Bill Clinton Diane Hendricks J.D. Vance Grit. Hustle. Resilience. The American Dream is built on the audacious belief that anyone can make it to the top. Every elementary school kid is imbued with the belief that anyone can become president of the United States. Or a hip-hop megastar. Or a space-faring billionaire. The notion is as old as the Republic and stands self-consciously in contrast to class-ridden Europe where one’s prospects were often determined at birth.  This ideal has always had its heroes: from Alexander Hamilton, the orphaned immigrant who crafted America’s first financial system, to Andrew Carnegie, who went from working as a young teen in a textile mill to forging a vast steel empire. Since 1917, it has been the prime subject matter of this publication. So, in honor of America’s semiquincentennial, we feel uniquely qualified to rank the 250 greatest living self-made Americans. (Our list of the 250 greatest historical ones will be released on Friday). To identify these revolutionaries, we first mined Forbes’ 109-year-deep archive for classic tales of entrepreneurial capitalism. Then we asked our current crop of beat reporters for their ideas. We canvassed AI, running hundreds of queries through both ChatGPT and Gemini. While we put a heavy emphasis on rags-to-riches billionaires, we also included pioneering scientists, Supreme Court justices and others whose “wealth” is measured in influence and impact, not just dollar signs.  Next, we ran names past a panel of expert judges: DeAngela Burns-Wallace, CEO of the Kauffman Foundation; Keith Dunleavy, Founder, Inovalon; Rich Karlgaard, Former Publisher, Forbes; Steven Klinsky, Founder and CEO, New Mountain Capital; Jim McKelvey, cofounder of Block (formerly Square); and Ryan Rippel, CEO of NextLadder Ventures. An invaluable resource was , a 1-to-10 ranking that quantifies the “distance traveled” by each individual—separating those who started with nothing from those with a big head start. Only those ranking nine or ten made the cut. The final ranking encompasses financial success, obstacles overcome and enduring impact. Read the full story on Forbes: By Alex Knapp https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2026/04/09/forbes-self-made-250-the-greatest-living-self-made-americans/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2026

Canadian visitation to the U.S. is down 35% since President Trump returned to office—dealing a massive, sustained economic blow to the U.S. economy that shows no sign of reversing in 2026. Key Facts The number of Canadians taking road trips into the U.S.—the most common way of visiting—dropped by 5% last month compared to March 2025 and is down 35% compared to March 2024, according to data released Monday from Statistics Canada. There was also a 14% year-over-year decline in air travelers from Canada to the U.S. in March. In contrast, the volume of Americans visiting Canada in March was up 4% compared to a year ago. For the third consecutive month, more Canadians flew to overseas destinations than drove to the U.S.—flipping a long-established pattern. Canadian visitation overseas was up 5% year over year—a sign Canadians are swapping the U.S. for other international destinations.  Nearly a quarter (23%) of Canadian travelers have canceled a previously planned trip to the U.S., according to a Longwoods International tracking study of Canadian travelers. Crucial Quote “In my 37 years in the travel industry, I have never seen anything like what the Canadians have pulled off,” Amir Eylon, President and CEO of Longwoods International, told Forbes. How Much Has The 14-Month Canadian Boycott Cost The U.s. Economy? In the years leading to President Donald Trump’s re-election to a second term, Canadian tourists were the biggest single source of international visitors to the U.S., comprising roughly one-quarter of all foreign travelers, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO). In 2024, Canadian tourists injected $20.5 billion into the U.S. economy. But in early 2025, the U.S. Travel Association (USTA) warned even a 10% reduction in Canadian inbound travel could translate to $2.1 billion in lost spending and 140,000 lost jobs in the hospitality sector. The actual decline was 22%—more than double that hypothetical drop—which works out to a drop of roughly $4.5 billion in visitor spending. The boycott continued into 2026, with double-digit declines in both January and February, and cumulative two-year drops of more than 30% each month. Read the full story on Forbes: By Suzanne Rowan Kelleher https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2026/04/13/canadian-visits-us-down-35-percent/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2026

SandboxAQ has an AI platform to help materials researchers speed the development of safer, higher-powered, solid-state batteries for autos, the military and data centers. China’s dominance in batteries is powering a global auto industry shakeup. The country didn’t just get better at making them. It got better at making a lot of them cheaply and fast enough to let automakers like BYD and Geely sell electric vehicles at prices that can look like a misprint next to U.S. and European models. Now, SandboxAQ, a moonshot company spun out of Google in 2022, is betting the U.S. doesn’t need to win by outbuilding China cell-for-cell. It just needs to come up with better battery designs. And it says its AI-enabled tech platform can help battery scientists accelerate their research to create new types of safer, cheaper solid-state batteries for EVs, military equipment and data centers.  The Palo Alto, California-based company, which has raised $950 million from backers including Alphabet, Nvidia and AI scientist Yann LeCun, is today releasing a new version of its research platform, AQVolt26. The pitch: compress the earliest, most uncertain part of battery R&D—screening and evaluating candidate materials—so scientists can dump bad ideas quickly and focus their efforts on the ones that might actually ship. The goal is to slash development time to create new battery chemistries, which now takes 10 to 15 years, said Ang Xiao, who leads SandboxAQ’s materials science team. “It's hard to give an exact figure for how many years we can save, but I can tell you that for the discovery phase, we can reduce the time of that by 90% to 95%,” he told Forbes. “Our technology is only focused on the discovery phase, phase one. … But in the end, we will accelerate the entire development pipeline.” The company, chaired by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, says it’s already generating revenue from its tech from customers, including battery developer Novonix and the U.S. Army, as well as other battery and auto companies it declined to name. It also won’t say how much revenue it expects this year. SandboxAQ’s battery strategy is to make money from fees paid by users of its research platform, licensing its tech to other companies or doing research on their behalf, as well as developing its own unique battery materials. With demand rising for batteries across EVs, energy and grid storage and defense applications, it’s chasing a market with real money behind it. “We see the battery market as a $500 billion opportunity this decade, expanding toward $1 trillion as electrification and AI-driven energy demand accelerate,” Xiao said. “Our focus is on the high-value segment of materials discovery and performance optimization.” Like Waymo, another Google Moonshot, Sandbox is using AI for physical applications rather than chatbots. In addition to battery tech, which is part of its chemicals and materials unit, it’s also focused on using AI for drug discovery and medical diagnostics, among other areas. Unlike OpenAI and Google’s Gemini, which lean on large language models (LLMs), Sandbox says its approach is built on large quantitative models (LQMs) trained on physics-based data and scientific principles. Read the full story on Forbes: By Alan Ohnsman https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2026/04/07/this-google-spinout-thinks-ai-can-fix-americas-ev-battery-problem/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 April 2026

Forbes Reporter Phoebe Liu sat down to discuss the escalating legal battle between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ahead of their upcoming April trial. Liu also discusses the allegations of anti-competitive behavior and the financial pressures facing leading AI firms as they navigate rapid innovation, massive capital requirements, and intense competition for market dominance in the emerging artificial general intelligence sector. 00:00 Origins Of The Altman And Musk Partnership 01:47 OpenAI's Transition From Nonprofit To For Profit 03:10 The Upcoming Trial 05:08 Allegations Of Anti Competitive Behavior And Opposition Research 08:12 Financial Motives Versus The Public Good 10:47 Outlook For AI IPOs And Market Valuations InJanuary, OpenAI’s CEO of applications Fidji Simo defended OpenAI’s spaghetti-at-the-wall product approach—ads, shopping, health, a social network, browser, physical devices, video generation and an App Store-like marketplace—as variations on the same theme. “AI is going to transform everything,” Simo told Forbes at the time. “And so we don’t really think of these as completely separate bets.”  But just two months later, OpenAI reversed course on its flashiest initiative yet: its once-viral, beloved-by-some Sora video model and app, and a “landmark” licensing deal with Disney that was set to include a $1 billion equity investment. The retreat points to a strategic shift toward more financial discipline within the company. Facing pressure to build products that actually make money ahead of a potential upcoming IPO — and with rival Anthropic gaining steam — OpenAI has been shedding so-called “side quests” left and right. With $13 billion in 2025 revenue but still deeply unprofitable, the company is now refocusing on areas where demand is already proven: coding and enterprise productivity tools. Every startup pivots if things aren’t working. “We will make some good decisions and some missteps, but we will take feedback and try to fix the missteps very quickly,” CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post about Sora in October.  But OpenAI’s reversals have felt like whiplash. And with many other projects and deals announced but not yet realized — like an AI hardware product designed by famed Apple designer Jony Ive, whose company OpenAI acquired for more than $6 billion in (mostly unvested) stock, or a secretive social network based on people’s biometrics — it’s not clear which of Altman’s many promises will turn into reality.  Here are all the products and deals that OpenAI announced which haven’t lived up to the hype, whether it’s because they’re dead, delayed or still to be determined. Read the full story on Forbes: BY Phoebe Liu https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2026/03/31/openai-graveyard-deals-and-products-havent-happened-openai/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 April 2026

After a rough stretch, investment firm AQR is on a 5-year hot streak thanks to a new AI infused investing strategy and strong tax-friendly returns, beloved by financial advisors. Last year was a banner year for many hedge funds and quant shops, and Greenwich, CT-based Applied Quantitative Research—better known as AQR—was no exception. Its assets under management have ballooned to $187 billion, increasing $73 billion in 2025. All three of its billionaire founders saw their net worths double. Cliff Asness, AQR’s PhD-holding chief investment officer and largest individual shareholder with an estimated 30% stake, is now worth $6.3 billion, making him the 664th richest in the world. Cofounders John Liew and David Kabiller each saw their net worths jump to over $2 billion. The three founders—who started AQR in 1998 after working together at Goldman Sachs Asset Management—are all heavily invested in AQR’s funds, tying their own fortunes to the firm’s performance.  Last year AQR’s core multi-strategy Apex fund, which has $6.7 billion in assets, returned 19.4%, while its Delphi long-short fund (also $6.7 billion in assets) returned 16.7%, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity to share private information. On average over the last five years the two funds have each returned 16.6% on an annualized basis, the person added. (For comparison, the S&P 500 returned 14.4% annualized over that same time period). Among the firm’s more than two dozen open-ended mutual funds, AQR’s Equity Market Neutral Fund, with $3.2 billion in assets and around 2,000 positions, held both long and short, gained 26.5% in 2025. Over the last 5-years it has averaged 19.6% annually versus around 8% for most funds in its category. If AQR maintains last year’s growth trajectory it will soon eclipse its previous all-time high of $226 billion in assets (in 2018), which would cap an impressive comeback for the firm, which managed less than $100 billion as recently as four years ago amid underperformance and customer outflows.  AQR’s turnaround has coincided with its full-throated embrace of AI and deliberate expansion of machine-learning techniques across research and trading. As a factor-based investor, AQR traditionally sought to use value investing metrics like price-to-book or return on equity to determine which equities in the market are over or undervalued. It then relied on human input to assign weights to the various factors they use to drive stock selection. Now, machine learning is helping do that—detecting complex interactions between factors, recalibrating their weights in real time, mining huge datasets for predictive signals. On the research side, natural language processing (think ChatGPT or Claude) is helping analysts comb through reams of data to improve their models.  AQR, whose founders Asness and Liew were schooled under the University of Chicago’s efficient market Nobel Laureate economist Eugene Fama, was late to the AI party compared to peers like Renaissance Technologies and D.E. Shaw. AQR hired its first head of machine learning in 2018, and that person lasted just seven months in the job. But his replacement, Brian Kelly, a Yale finance professor, has made a big splash. In December 2021, Kelly co-published a 141-page academic paper, The Virtue of Complexity in Return Prediction, which concluded that more sophisticated machine learning models outperformed simpler models in forecasting stock returns and constructing investment portfolios. Several academics wrote their own papers in response that disputed Kelly’s findings saying that the research relied on an overly narrow dataset. AQR has defended the paper and continues to stand by its findings.  More recently, Asness himself has taken up the mantle of AI evangelizer-in-chief. He remarked that AQR has “surrendered more to the machine” and that AI was coming for his own job. Despite all the talk, AQR insiders insist AI has not extinguished human input. “ML and AI are definitely paying dividends in our process, but they’re evolutionary, not revolutionary, to what we do,” says a person at the company. To wit, the revolutionary stuff appears to be happening in the less sexy distribution side of the business, where AQR is meeting rising demand from financial advisors seeking tax-friendly funds for their wealthy clients. This category of investor—rather than AQR’s traditional institutional client base like pension funds and endowments—is now its largest source of inflows. The CEO of Affiliated Managers Group, which owns a minority stake in AQR, said during last month’s earnings call that AQR’s advisory client base is “driving significant organic growth,” and that its own full-year net inflows of $51 billion were “primarily driven by AQR.”  Read the full story on Forbes: By John Hyatt https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2026/03/16/how-3-billionaire-investors-used-ai-to-double-their-fortunes-in-a-year/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 April 2026

The Justice Department is investigating the National Football League over alleged anticompetitive practices that harm consumers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday citing anonymous sources familiar with the probe, although the exact scope of the investigation was not immediately clear and not confirmed by investigators or the league. KEY FACTS Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have written to federal regulators, including the DoJ and the Federal Communications Commission, in recent months detailing high costs placed on consumers due to the NFL’s exclusive deals with streaming platforms and cable channels. The NFL has historically been protected from some antitrust regulation by the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Both the Justice Department and the NFL declined to comment on the Journal’s report, and neither organization immediately returned a request for comment from Forbes. KEY BACKGROUND In March, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, asked the Justice Department to examine the NFL’s practice of simultaneously licensing the rights to broadcast games to “subscription streaming platforms, premium cable networks, and technology companies.” The Utah senator said this practice might no longer be protected as “sponsored telecasting” of games as protected in the Sports Broadcasting Act, which was written when games were only available on broadcast television available to all. According to Lee’s letter, a person who wanted to watch every NFL game last season would have had to pay almost $1,000 on various cable and streaming service subscriptions, as well as fees for high-speed internet or satellite connections. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Patrick Ryan, D-N.Y., sent their own letter to the FCC in April, asking regulators to examine whether acquisitions and “forced bundling” have forced consumers to pay higher prices for packages including games they don’t want. Read the full story on Forbes: By Zachary Folk https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/04/09/federal-investigators-probing-nfl-for-alleged-anticompetitive-practices-report-says/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 12 April 2026

Delta is raising fees for checked luggage this week, according to a statement from the company sent to Forbes on Tuesday—as it seeks to cover the increase in jet fuel prices driven by the U.S. war in Iran. Key Facts Delta will increase the fees for a first and second item of checked baggage by $10, pushing prices to $45 and $55, respectively. The airline is also planning to hike the fees for a third item by $50, meaning customers will pay $200 if they take three bags. The new prices “reflect the impact of evolving global conditions and industry dynamics,” Delta spokesperson Chelsea Wollerson said in a statement sent to Forbes on Tuesday. The price increases will begin for tickets purchased on or after Wednesday. The pricing changes only apply to domestic flights and some select short-haul international flights, according to the company. Other Airlines Raise Luggage Fees Delta is the third U.S. airline to announce price increases for baggage as oil disruptions related to the Iran war continue to impact air travel. United announced a similar price hike last week, also raising prices for checked bags by $10. JetBlue also announced changes to their checked baggage fees last week, raising fees for off-peak travel by $4 and peak travel by $9. Key Background Jet fuel prices have skyrocketed in the last few weeks due to the ongoing war in Iran. After the U.S. and Israel began a campaign of air strikes against the country on Feb. 28, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that separates it from the Arabian Peninsula. About 20 million barrels of oil per day passed through the strait in 2025, according to the International Energy Association, or about 25% of the world’s oil transported by sea. The closure has caused prices for oil and petroleum products like jet fuel to spike. The average price of jet fuel reached $4.69 per gallon on Monday, according to data compiled by aviation trade group Airlines for America—up from $2.50 per gallon on Feb. 27, one day before the war began. Read the full story on Forbes: By Zachary Folk https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/04/07/delta-raises-fees-for-checked-bags-as-iran-war-spikes-jet-fuel-prices/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 11 April 2026

Follow Topline Coreweave shares popped 13% after announcing a deal with Anthropic on Friday to power its AI model Claude, following a $21 billion partnership with Meta announced Thursday. KEY FACTS Financial terms of the multi-year Anthropic agreement were not disclosed, though the deal marks the ninth of ten leading AI providers—including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Meta—using CoreWeave’s platform, according to a Friday press release. The Anthropic news comes one day after CoreWeave announced a $21 billion deal to supply Meta with AI cloud capacity through December 2032, delivered from multiple data centers powered in part by Nvidia chips.  The back-to-back announcements pushed CoreWeave's total contracted commitments with Meta alone to $35 billion, with the new Meta pact building on a prior $14.2 billion arrangement. Anthropic is the latest AI model developer to become a customer, highlighting the scramble among tech companies to secure more hardware, processing power and energy—key for training and deploying increasingly complex AI models. KEY BACKGROUND CoreWeave primarily generates revenue by building and renting out data centers packed with Nvidia GPUs that provide the energy and processing power to train and run AI models. Demand for infrastructure to develop AI has exploded since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, with Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon committing a combined $700 billion just this year in a race to build the most sophisticated and advanced models. On Tuesday, Anthropic announced that its leaked Mythos model was so powerful that they would be holding back from releasing it to the public because of its ability to find vulnerabilities in software programs. The Claude maker said it would instead provide the model to 40 select companies including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft in a cybersecurity initiative dubbed Project Glasswing. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei and several former OpenAI employees who departed the ChatGPT maker over concerns about the company’s direction with AI safety. Anthropic is now valued at $380 billion and announced it had reached an annual revenue run rate of $30 billion Monday, surpassing OpenAI’s $25 billion annualizedrevenue as of February. OpenAI is now valued at $852 billion.  BIG NUMBER $2.5 trillion. That’s how much research firm Gartner expects global spend to build AI will reach in 2026, up 44% from last year. AI infrastructure will drive the spend, making up more than half of that figure, the firm estimates. TANGENT The deals come as CoreWeave is simultaneously on an aggressive financing spree. The company is targeting $30 billion to $35 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, up from roughly $15 billion in 2025. Billionaire CEO Mike Intrator defended the spending strategy after the company's February earnings report drew criticism for the increase. "I understand the concerns that people have as they see us allocating a massive scale of money to this market, but the truth of the matter is, our backlog is enormous," he told CNBC at the time. Since going public in March 2025, the stock is up 160%, but is down nearly 45% from its peak last June. This year, the stock has been volatile, up 30% since January. Read the full story on Forbes: By Alicia Park https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2026/04/10/coreweave-stock-surges-13-on-anthropic-deal-a-day-after-21-billion-meta-partnership/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2026

Meta released Muse Spark, previously named Avocado, on Wednesday, the much-anticipated—and delayed—first large language mode under AI chief Alexandr Wang, sending Meta shares soaring as the company seeks to catch up to industry AI giants OpenAI, Google and Anthropic. KEY FACTS The AI model is available on Meta’s AI website and its app, with the company claiming it can carry out the same actions as its previous model, Llama 4 Maverick, with less computing power. Muse Spark is Meta’s first AI model under Wang, a billionaire tech entrepreneur who Meta brought on as its chief AI officer after investing $14.3 billion into his company, Scale AI. Meta shares jumped as high as 9% on Wednesday following the announcement, erasing a string of losses recorded in late March. The release of Muse Spark comes after a delay reportedly caused after the AI model failed to outperform rival models developed by Google, OpenAI and Anthropic in benchmark tests. A comparison table in Meta’s announcement claims Muse Spark can compete with or outperform rival AI models in various benchmarks. BIG NUMBER $135 billion. That is how much money Meta expects to spend on AI this year, nearly double what it spent in 2025. FORBES VALUATION We estimate Wang’s net worth at $3.2 billion. The entrepreneur was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire until October 2025, when Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan took over the title. TANGENT Meta is in the thick of litigation accusing it of designing addictive apps harmful to children and was recently ordered to pay $375 million in damages after a New Mexico jury ruled that the company enabled child exploitation on its platforms. A California jury also found Meta liable in a landmark social media addiction case, forcing the company to pay $3 million in damages to a woman who accused it of intentionally designing its apps to be addictive to children. Read the full story on By Antonio Pequeño IV Forbes:https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/04/08/meta-shares-spike-after-tech-giant-launches-muse-spark-its-ai-bid-against-openai-google/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2026

President Donald Trump is considering moving U.S. troops from North Atlantic Treaty Organization members that have not backed the war against Iran and moving them to more supportive countries, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, while he also mulls trying to withdraw the U.S. from NATO altogether. KEY FACTS The proposal would involve removing American troops stationed in countries Trump believes were not supportive of the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran and moving them to countries deemed helpful amid the conflict, the Journal reported. The potential punishment against some NATO members is one of several being circulated in the White House, according to the Journal. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who met with Trump in a closed-door meeting Wednesday, did not speak to the validity of the Journal’s report in an interview with CNN, remaining tight-lipped and saying he had a very “frank” and “open discussion” with Trump. Trump and Rutte’s meeting came after Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump has considered withdrawing from NATO, the 32-member alliance that acts as a collective military defense for the countries under its banner. But Trump cannot unilaterally withdraw the U.S. from NATO under a 2023 law that says withdrawal requires a two-thirds Senate approval (right now, including at least 14 Democrats supporting it) or a formal act of Congress. That law was co-sponsored by then Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Trump’s secretary of state, who recently told Fox News that after the war with Iran, “we are going to have to reexamine” the U.S. relationship with NATO. TANGENT The U.S. and Iran reached a ceasefire agreement Tuesday night, with Trump saying the two countries would “work closely” to establish a regime change and remove nuclear materials. The agreement was reached after Trump threatened strikes on civilian infrastructure alongside a statement in which he said “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Iran accused the U.S. of breaking the ceasefire after Israel conducted bombings in Lebanon. Trump and Vice President JD Vance claimed Iran misunderstood the terms of the ceasefire and that Lebanon was not included within it. WHAT NATO COUNTRIES HAVE BACKED TRUMP’S WAR ON IRAN? Canada, the Czech Republic, Albania, North Macedonia, Lithuania and Latvia are the only NATO countries to issue letters of support for the strikes the U.S. and Israel have carried out against Iran. Read the full story on Forbes: By Antonio Pequeño IV https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/04/08/trump-mulls-pulling-us-troops-out-of-nato-countries-opposing-iran-war-report-says/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 9 April 2026

Nintendo’s new “Pokémon Champions” game is facing a negative response from fans who say the graphics are poor and the gameplay is limited, a stark reversal from the acclaimed “Pokémon Pokopia” game it released just weeks ago, as Nintendo erases the gains “Pokopia” helped its stock make. Key Facts Nintendo and The Pokémon Company released “Pokémon Champions” on Wednesday for Switch and Switch 2 devices, with a forthcoming mobile game slated to release sometime later this year.  Unlike most “Pokémon” franchise games, “Champions” is free to download for Switch devices but offers in-game purchases. But the fan response to “Champions” appears mixed-to-negative so far, with plenty of posts on X and the Pokémon subreddit describing poor graphics quality, a limited selection of Pokémon to use and other apparent glitches and gameplay limitations.  Nintendo released “Champions” as it loses most of the stock gains it made following the release of “Pokopia,” which sold 2 million copies in four days and earned strong reviews, lifting Nintendo’s share price nearly 20%. Nintendo’s stock closed at its lowest level in a month in Tokyo markets on Wednesday, sliding more than 1.5% from the day prior. What Are Fans Saying About “pokémon Champions”? A primary complaint among “Pokémon” fans is the graphics on “Champions” are allegedly poor. Many fans complained the game appears to run on a 30 frames-per-second rate, slower than previous games like “Pokopia,” which reports say can run close to 60 fps. Some players reported bugs with transferring their Pokémon from the Pokémon Home app, and other gamers made posts on Reddit and X reporting what appear to be gameplay glitches. Fans also complained the game does not support the standard 6 vs. 6 battle format, in which a player and their opponent both use a full team of six Pokémon to battle one another. The game instead supports using three or four Pokémon in single or double battles. Kenneth Shepard, a writer for gaming publication Kotaku, wrote he is “astounded by the limitations” the game is placing on battling, saying it is “constricting competitive play in a way” the Pokémon series has not before. Some negative posts about “Champions” garnered attention on social media. “How many months did we wait for to get a functionally worse game?” one user posted on X alongside a video depicting an apparent in-game glitch, garnering 3 million views and 18,000 likes. Centro Leaks, a widely followed social media account that posts Pokémon news and rumors, called the game’s launch “TERRIBLE” in a post listing multiple alleged flaws, garnering 23,000 likes.  Key Background The release of the tepidly received “Champions” comes just weeks after Nintendo released its best-reviewed Pokémon game to date. “Pokopia” is the best-reviewed Pokémon game on Metacritic, a video game review aggregator, with a score of 89 out of 100. The game usurped the title from “Pokemon Y,” which was released for 3DS consoles in 2013. Some gamers noted the apparent irony of Nintendo releasing a well-received and a poorly received game back-to-back. “The Pokémon Company had to balance the scales somehow after getting all that goodwill from Pokopia's success,” a top comment on Reddit states. Tangent Other pressures have caused Nintendo’s stock price to fall in recent months. Though the success of “Pokopia” gave Nintendo stock a boost after months of decline, Joost van Dreunen, CEO of gaming consulting firm Aldora and professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, previously told Forbes the success of one game wouldn’t alleviate other structural concerns like the surging cost of memory chips. Increased demand for RAM memory chips by AI data centers has siphoned supply from consumer products, making these chips more expensive for game manufacturers. The gaming industry was also rocked over the past year by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which hit countries including China and Vietnam—where many gaming devices are manufactured—particularly hard, forcing some gaming companies to raise prices on their flagship consoles. Bloomberg also reported in March that Nintendo would pull back on Switch 2 console manufacturing as demand fell behind expectations during the 2025 holiday season, which caused the company’s stock to decline as much as 6% in one day. Read the full story on Forbes: By Conor Murray https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/08/fans-blast-pokmon-champions-game-as-nintendo-wipes-pokopia-stock-gains/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 9 April 2026

As the World Cup draws closer, hotel associations in host cities tell Forbes they are resigned to seeing a smaller economic lift than FIFA had promised. KEY FACTS The heads of hotel associations in three World Cup host cities—New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco—told Forbes they have not seen a World Cup surge in demand so far. In recent weeks, FIFA cancelled tens of thousands of reserved rooms in host cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. “The tea leaves are showing us that the demand the World Cup was meant to drive isn’t materializing, at least right now,” Evan Saunders, senior vice president of travel at the location intelligence firm Azira, told Forbes. CRUCIAL QUOTE “My hunch is the World Cup will be a huge success as a sporting tournament. On TV, the stadiums will appear full or almost full—but that's not necessarily the same thing as a tourism success,” Alan Fyall, associate dean at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management, told Forbes.  DEMAND FAILS TO LIVE UP TO FIFA HYPE  Some World Cup host cities are grateful they didn’t put all their eggs in the World Cup basket. “Contrary to the massive hype” accompanying FIFA’s World Cup announcement a year ago, when the soccer body forecasted millions of international visitors would deliver a $30.5 billion economic boost to the U.S., “demand has certainly not been at anywhere near that level,” Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City, told Forbes, adding that forward hotel bookings in New York for June and July are virtually identical to the same period last year. “Now, could all of that change and we see a rush of business? We all certainly hope so, but hope is not an expectation.” Philadelphia hoteliers “weren’t thrilled” when FIFA recently cancelled roughly 2,000 room reservations for the tournament, Ed Grose, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association, told Forbes. “But at the same time, there's still a lot going on in Philadelphia this year. We are still hoping for an awesome FIFA World Cup, but even without that, we’re still having a banner year” thanks to two citywide conventions hosted while the tournament is taking place. In California’s Bay Area, many hotel leaders gauged World Cup demand more conservatively because they remember the last time the U.S. hosted the tournament in 1994, Alex Bastian, president and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, told Forbes. They tracked team placements and match schedules and “brought a clear understanding of the nuances and the true financial impact of the tournament,” he said, “and as a result, they adopted a more conservative forecasting strategy. That being said, we remain excited about the event, not only for its economic potential but because it will put our city in a global spotlight.” Read the full story on Forbes: By Suzanne Rowan Kelleher https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2026/04/08/hotels-world-cup-economic-boon-not-materializing/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 8 April 2026

Follow Forbes Talks  Shares of Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record label that houses artists like Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, surged early Tuesday after billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square offered to buy the company in a transaction worth about $64 billion. KEY FACTS Shares of UMG are up nearly 10% as of 9 a.m. EST on Tuesday, hours after Ackman’s Pershing Square announced a bid to buy the major record label. Pershing Square offered to purchase UMG—which is listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange—in a transaction that would value the company at €30.40, or about $35.13, per share, and pay €9.4 billion, or $10.86 billion, in cash to UMG shareholders. The transaction would merge the record label with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, and it would shift UMG’s primary stock listing from Amsterdam to the New York Stock Exchange. Ackman said he is looking to buy UMG because its “stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business,” citing the postponement of UMG’s New York stock listing, uncertainty over billionaire Vincent Bolloré’s 18% stake, underutilization of its balance sheet and suboptimal investor relations, among other issues. The deal proposed a new employment contract and compensation agreement for UMG CEO Lucian Grainge, and Ackman said the board would be “refreshed” to include Michael Ovitz, co-founder and former chairman of Creative Arts Agency, as its chair with two additional representatives from Pershing Square and members of the current UMG board. Ackman said the cash portion of the transaction would be funded with about $2.9 billion in cash from Pershing Square, $6.2 billion in debt financing and $1.7 billion from selling UMG’s stake in Spotify. BACKGROUND Ackman previously expressed interest in UMG in 2021, vowing to buy a 10% stake in UMG through his SPAC, but he abandoned the deal after pushback from regulators. He purchased a 10% stake instead through Pershing Square, and he sat on the company’s board of directors until he resigned in 2025, citing other commitments. While on the board, Ackman pushed for UMG to shift to a New York stock listing, saying in 2024 the company “trades at a large discount to its intrinsic value with limited liquidity in significant part due to it not having its primary listing” in the United States. Ackman noted in a slide deck posted to his X account Tuesday morning UMG’s shares are down 39% from its peak two years ago, saying it is “trading near an all-time low.” CHIEF CRITICS Nicolas Marmurek, an analyst at Square Global, told Bloomberg the proposal “looks very much dead from the start” unless Bolloré supports the acquisition. “We doubt Bolloré will accept such terms, and had Bolloré been on board he would be recommending the transaction. This is very much a move by Pershing Square to put the proposal in front of shareholders,” Marmurek said. Read the full story on Forbes: By Conor Murray https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2026/04/07/universal-music-group-shares-surge-after-bill-ackmans-pershing-square-offers-to-purchase-label/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 8 April 2026

Follow Steve Forbes: What's Ahead  Steve Forbes breaks down the ugly truth about the cost—and efficacy—of alternatives to fossil fuels like windmills and solar panels, which have stifled Europe's economy and will do the same to the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 7 April 2026