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Received today — 13 August 2025Fortune

Perplexity’s AI web browser feels light-years ahead. If it also gets Chrome, are we looking at the next Google?

13 August 2025 at 19:28

Perplexity shocked both Silicon Valley and Wall Street this week after the Wall Street Journal reported on the AI startup’s unsolicited $34.5 billion all-cash offer to buy Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser. The move comes just weeks after Perplexity launched its own AI-powered Comet browser, and as a federal judge considers whether Google must divest Chrome after the tech giant lost a landmark antitrust case brought by the Department of Justice.

Comet, which Perplexity tells Fortune will become available for all Perplexity Pro users starting Wednesday, has several advantages over Chrome. Unlike Google’s web browser, where most AI features arrive via add-ons or extensions, Comet’s AI assistant is always present, staying in the top-right corner of your browser window. It can summarize content instantly, compare information across tabs (a huge time-saver for shopping), automate workflows (booking meetings, sending emails, etc.), remind you about events, and much more. Chrome only recently added limited AI features like Gemini, the Google Lens sidebar, and “tab compare,” but these remain add-ons and do not offer end-to-end automation or context tracking like Comet’s agentic AI.

Comet feels poised to transform browsing as we know it into more of a conversational experience, where you interact with your browser to move as fast as your brain allows. But Perplexity’s blockbuster move this week raises an important question: If Perplexity absorbs Chrome, could it become the next Google?

Perplexity’s play? Going beyond ‘search’

Thomas Grange, cofounder and chief innovation officer at AI-search optimization platform Botify, says “There won’t be a ‘next Google.’”

“The game has changed,” he tells Fortune. “What’s emerging from the blend of AI search and traditional browsers isn’t just a faster search engine, it’s an entirely new hyper-personalized, context-aware, and conversational way of finding information.”

Grange says the promise of AI search engines is having AI agents act on behalf of users, interacting with other agents and transforming web browsing into something much more efficient and automated. Perplexity’s Comet browser, which debuted last month and is rolling out to all Pro users starting this week, exemplifies this shift. Unlike traditional browsers, Comet puts an AI answer engine at the heart of its interface, allowing users to ask questions and get direct answers rather than having to wade through a list of links. Above all, the assistant can act on behalf of users—aiming to make browsing less about navigation and more about productivity.

Usha Haley, Wichita State University professor and Barton Distinguished Chair in International Business, says Perplexity’s bid for Chrome “looks far less audacious once you try Comet.”

“A persistent AI assistant that can operate on any web page changes the web from a place to navigate to one that works for you. Adding Chrome’s massive user base and browser dominance could give Perplexity a once-in-a-generation leap in distribution,” she tells Fortune. But, she notes, “the next Google presents a very high bar.”

But while Perplexity can buy part of Google’s ecosystem (Chrome), scaling to Google’s level of infrastructure, reach, and trust will be extremely challenging. “AI-powered browsers do well at some limited tasks. But the road from wow demo to everyday habit is long and winding,” she says.

Redefining how we use the internet

Joshua McKenty, former NASA architect and CEO of cybersecurity company Polyguard, tells Fortune: “The acquisition of Chrome by any player, but especially by a major AI player, is extremely significant.

“Chrome represents one of the most powerful sources of new training data in existence—especially if it is decoupled from the Google login experience,” he adds. “The browser is the only scraping method that can travel behind every log-in and every firewall to index … literally everything.”

Of course, not everyone is convinced Perplexity will become the next Google—or that it would even be allowed to have Chrome. Ari Paparo, a former Google executive, tells Fortune, “We need to understand that the DOJ and the courts are not going to blindly empower a new monopoly just to replace the one they are breaking up.

“AI is both hungry for the data a web browser accesses, but also becomes more useful to the consumer as it has the context of what they are doing,” Paparo says. “Whether it is Perplexity, OpenAI, or one of the legacy tech giants that ends up as an owner of Chrome, it will be a huge change in the ecosystem.”

Haley also highlights privacy and reliability as key challenges as scale, reliability, and user trust are critical for any challenger of Google to move beyond a “wow demo” moment. But Eric Vaughan, CEO of the AI-focused enterprise-software company IgniteTech, says Perplexity can win by “eliminating the concept of search entirely.”

“The real disruption here is less about improving search results and more about bypassing websites altogether,” he tells Fortune.

For Perplexity, owning Chrome, should regulators allow it to happen, would mean immediate access to billions of daily users, copious behavioral data, and the distribution muscle to push itself to the forefront of the AI race.

What happens next?

Perplexity, which is backed by Nvidia and SoftBank, among others, says funding is available, but its offer for Chrome undoubtedly faces major regulatory, financial, and technical hurdles. To be blunt, Perplexity’s offer for Chrome is a long shot. (For one thing, Google parent Alphabet isn’t willingly selling.) The San Francisco–based startup has only a tiny fraction of the number of users that Google has, and an infinitesimal share of its revenue.

What’s more, rivals in the AI space are working on their own AI web browsers. Microsoft’s Edge browser now has Copilot Mode, which, like Perplexity’s Comet, can see and analyze open tabs, execute autonomous tasks such as booking reservations, respond to voice commands, summarize content in real time, and more—but notably, it’s free and tightly integrated with Microsoft’s ecosystem. OpenAI, the leader in AI, is close to releasing its own AI-powered browser, designed to keep user interactions within a ChatGPT-like interface and leveraging its 500 million weekly active users to challenge Chrome’s dominance. But Perplexity’s original AI-based search tool has already been credited by many in tech with pressuring its rivals like Google to upgrade and rethink their own approach to search.

Whether or not a Perplexity-Chrome tie-up actually happens, the emergence of AI-powered browsers has set the stage for profound industry change. Barry Lowenthal, president of AI-powered ads company Inuvo, says, “Google has been the default search engine for so long it is practically a reflex, but AI-powered search tools like Perplexity are changing that equation.

“If Chrome joins the mix, the potential reach and usability skyrocket,” he tells Fortune. “But becoming the next Google is not just about technology, it is about winning trust, habit, and scale. That is a long game, and right now Perplexity is just starting to play it.”

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© David Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Aravind Srinivas, cofounder and CEO of Perplexity, at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Oct. 30, 2024.

Elon Musk broadens his long-running feud with OpenAI’s Sam Altman by bringing in a third party: Apple

13 August 2025 at 20:29

Elon Musk’s long-standing battle with OpenAI has a new participant: Apple.

On Tuesday, Apple found itself the latest target of Elon Musk’s legal threats when the xAI CEO accused the tech giant of using unfair means to promote OpenAI’s ChatGPT over his company’s rival Grok chatbot in the App Store. Musk called it an “unequivocal antitrust violation” and threatened to take legal action. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who is part of an ongoing feud with the billionaire, quickly weighed in on the dispute, calling Musk’s accusation a “remarkable claim.” He, in turn, accused Musk of manipulating his own platform, X, “to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.”

Apple has denied Musk’s claims, saying in a statement that the App Store “is designed to be fair and free of bias.”

“We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria,” a spokesperson said in a statement shared with news outlets. “Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.”

X users, and Musk’s own Grok chatbot, were quick to point out that Musk’s claim was undermined by apps like DeepSeek and Perplexity having previously taken the top slot on Apple’s App Store.

The issue may have more to do with Apple’s standing deal with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Under a mid-2024 deal, ChatGPT is built into Siri and system-wide writing tools on an opt-in basis. Siri asks for permission before sending queries; no OpenAI account is required; and Apple has said it plans to support additional AI providers over time.

Even so, the integration gives ChatGPT a prominent, first-party placement on hundreds of millions of Apple devices, potentially making it harder for rivals like Musk’s xAI to win users’ attention. With Google weaving its Gemini AI into Android, the mobile AI market could increasingly be shaped by default integrations, which could make it much harder for rivals like xAI to compete.

The OpenAI and Apple deal appeared to get under the billionaire’s skin when it was announced, with Musk taking to X to complain: “It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!”

Musk went on to threaten to bar all Apple devices from his companies if OpenAI technology was integrated into iOS operating systems.

Apple’s antitrust issues

Apple is currently at the center of several other antitrust battles.

Apple’s App Store is one of the few key platforms for app distribution. Whoever gets visibility there is effectively handed a huge share of new users, which has been a point of contention for some of its competitors.

In the U.S., Apple’s App Store practices have been under scrutiny since 2020 when the company was sued by Epic Games over the removal of Fortnite from the App Store for bypassing its payment system to avoid the 30% commission. A federal appeals court recently refused to pause an order from its long-running battle with Epic Games that forces Apple to allow developers to direct users to outside payment options.

Last year, the Justice Department filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit accusing Apple of monopolizing the smartphone market, alleging that its App Store policies block new developers and stifle innovation. Apple has denied the allegations, saying that its practices foster innovation and consumer choice. In June, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey denied Apple’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

In a separate case bought against Google by the Justice Department, Apple’s $15–20 billion-a-year deal with the search giant could also be at stake after federal judge declared in August last year that Google unlawfully maintained a monopoly in internet search, partly through exclusive agreements with companies like Apple. The deal, which made Google the default search engine on its devices, could be disrupted by the remedies currently being weighed by a judge, with JPMorgan analysts warnings that a worst-case ruling could cost Apple about $12.5 billion annually.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Elon Musk's long-standing battle with OpenAI has a new participant: Apple.

‘I am overwhelmed by the need to stay on top of where the deals are’: Back-to-school shopping turns into China tariff-dodging exercise

13 August 2025 at 20:27

Feeling nostalgic for the days when going back to school meant picking out fresh notebooks, pencils and colored markers at a local drugstore or stationary shop? The annual ritual is both easier and more complicated for today’s students.

Big retail chains generate online lists of school supplies for customers who type in their zip codes, then choose a school and a grade level. One click and they are ready to check out. Some schools also offer busy parents a one-stop shop by partnering with vendors that sell premade kits with binders, index cards, pens and other needed items.

Yet for all the time-saving options, many families begin their back-to-school shopping months before Labor Day, searching around for the best deals and making purchases tied to summer sales. This year, the possibility of price increases from new U.S. tariffs on imports motivated more shoppers to get a jump start on replacing and refilling school backpacks, according to retail analysts.

Retail and technology consulting company Coresight Research estimates that back-to-school spending from June through August will reach $33.3 billion in the U.S., a 3.3% increase from the same three-month period a year ago. The company predicted families would complete about 60% of their shopping before August to avoid extra costs from tariffs.

“Consumers are of the mindset where they’re being very strategic and conscientious around price fluctuations, so for back to school, it prompts them to shop even earlier,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, the research division of software company Adobe Inc.

Getting a head start

Miami resident Jacqueline Agudelo, 39, was one of the early birds who started shopping for school supplies in June because she wanted to get ahead of possible price increases from new U.S. tariffs on imported products.

The teacher’s supply list for her 5-year-old son, who started kindergarten earlier this month, mandated specific classroom items in big quantities. Agudelo said her shopping list included 15 boxes of Crayola crayons, Lysol wipes and five boxes of Ticonderoga brand pencils, all sharpened.

Agudelo said she spent $160 after finding plenty of bargains online and in stores, including the crayons at half off, but found the experience stressful.

“I am overwhelmed by the need to stay on top of where the deals are as shopping has become more expensive over the years,” she said.

A lot of the backpacks, lined paper, glue sticks — and Ticonderoga pencils — sold in the U.S. are made in China, whose products were subjected to a 145% tariff in the spring. Under the latest agreement between the countries, general merchandise from China is taxed at a 30% rate when it enters the U.S.

Many companies accelerated shipments from China early in the year, stockpiling inventory at pre-tariff prices. Some predicted consumers would encounter higher prices just in time for back-to-school shopping. Although government data showed consumer prices rose 2.7% last month from a year earlier, strategic discounting by major retailers may have muted any sticker shock for customers seeking school supplies.

Backpacks and lunchboxes, for example, had discounts as deep as 12.1% during Amazon’s Prime Day sales and competing online sales at Target and Walmart in early July, Adobe Insights said. Throughout the summer, some of the biggest chains have advertised selective price freezes to hold onto customers.

Walmart is promoting a back-to-school deal that includes 14 supplies plus a backpack for $16, the lowest price in six years, company spokesperson Leigh Stidham said. Target said in June that it would maintain its 2024 prices on 20 key back-to-school items that together cost less than $20.

An analysis consumer data provider Numerator prepared for The Associated Press showed the retail cost of 48 products a family with two school age children might need — two lunchboxes, two scientific calculators, a pair of boy’s shoes — averaged $272 in July, or $3 less than the same month last year.

Digital natives in the classroom

Numerator, which tracks U.S. retail prices through sales receipts, online account activity and other information from 200,000 shoppers, reported last year that households were buying fewer notebooks, book covers, writing instruments and other familiar staples as students did more of their work on computers.

The transition does not mean students no longer have to stock up on plastic folders, highlighters and erasers, or that parents are spending less to equip their children for class. Accounting and consulting firm Deloitte estimates that traditional school supplies will account for more than $7 billion of the $31 billion it expects U.S. parents to put toward back-to-school shopping.

Shopping habits also are evolving. TeacherLists, an online platform where individual schools and teachers can upload their recommended supply lists and parents can search for them, was launched in 2012 to reduce the need for paper lists. It now has more than 2 million lists from 70,000 schools.

Users have the option of clicking on an icon that populates an online shopping cart at participating retail chains. Some retailers also license the data for use on their websites and in their stores, said Dyanne Griffin, the architect and vice president of TeacherLists.

The typical number of items teacher request has remained fairly steady at around 17 since the end of the coronavirus pandemic, Griffin said. “The new items that had come on the list, you know, in the last four or five years are more the tech side. Everybody needs headphones or earbuds, that type of thing, maybe a mouse,” she said.

She’s also noticed a lot of schools requiring clear backpacks and pencil pouches so the gear can’t be used to stow guns.

Enter artificial intelligence

For consumers who like to research their options before they buy, technology and retail companies have introduced generative AI tools to help them find and compare products. Rufus, the AI-powered shopping assistant that Amazon launched last year, is now joined by Sparky, an app-only feature that Walmart shoppers can use to get age-specific product recommendations and other information in response to their questions.

Just over a quarter of U.S. adults say they use AI for shopping, which is considerably lower than the number who say they use AI for tasks such as searching for information or brainstorming, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in July.

Some traditions remain

Before the pandemic turned a lot more people into online shoppers, schools and local Parent Teacher Associations embraced the idea of making back-to-school shopping easier by ordering ready-made bundles of teacher-recommended supplies. An extra fee on the price helped raise money for the school.

Market data from Edukit, a supplier of school supply kits owned by TeachersList parent company School Family Media, shows that about 40% of parents end up buying the boxes, meaning the other 60% need to shop on their own, Griffin said. She noted that parents typically must commit no later than June to secure a bundle, which focus on essentials like notebooks and crayons.

Agudelo said her son’s school offered a box for $190 that focused on basics like crayons and notebooks but didn’t include a backpack. She decided to pass and shop around for the best prices. She also liked bringing her son along for the shopping trips.

“There’s that sense of getting him mentally prepared for the school year,” Agudelo said. “The box takes away from that.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/LM Otero

Dora Diaz, left, and her daughter Fernanda Diaz, 14, shops for school supplies at a Walmart in Dallas, Texas, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025.

‘I was just dumbfounded’: Trump kicks 15 high school students out of FEMA Youth Preparedness Council

After a few frightening incidents seeing family and friends collapse in Phoenix’s grueling heat, Ashton Dolce, 17, began to wonder why his country’s leaders were not doing more to keep people safe from climate change.

“I was just dumbfounded,” Dolce said.

He became active in his hometown, organizing rallies and petitions to raise awareness about extreme heat and calling for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make such conditions eligible for major disaster declarations.

Just before his senior year of high school in 2024, Dolce got the chance to really make his concerns heard: He became one of 15 students across the United States selected to join the FEMA Youth Preparedness Council, a 13-year-old program for young people to learn about and become ambassadors for disaster preparedness.

“It was this really cool opportunity to get involved with FEMA and to actually have a specified seat at the table where we could develop resources by and for youth,” Dolce said.

Then came signs of trouble.

On Jan. 16, the young people were told by email that a culminating summit in the nation’s capital this summer was canceled. By February, the students stopped hearing from their advisers. Meetings ceased. After months of silence, the students got an email Aug. 1 saying the program would be terminated early.

“We were putting so much time and effort into this space,” he said, “and now it’s fully gutted.”

FEMA took action to ensure it was ‘lean’

In an email to students reviewed by The Associated Press, the agency said the move was intended “to ensure FEMA is a lean, deployable disaster force that is ready to support states as they take the lead in preparedness and disaster response.”

The council’s dissolution, though dwarfed in size by other cuts, reflects the fallout from the chaotic changes at the agency charged with managing the federal response to disasters. Since the start of Republican President Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has reduced FEMA staff by thousands, delayed crucial emergency trainings, discontinued certain survivor outreach efforts and canceled programs worth billions of dollars.

Dolce said ignoring students undermines resilience, too.

“This field needs young people and we are pushing young people out,” he said. “The administration is basically just giving young people the middle finger on climate change.”

Larger federal programs related to youth and climate are also in turmoil.

In April, the administration slashed funding to AmeriCorps, the 30-year-old federal agency for volunteer service. As a result, 2,000 members of the National Civilian Community Corps, who commonly aid in disaster recovery, left their program early.

FEMA did not respond to questions about why it shut down the youth council. In an email bulletin last week, the agency said it would not recruit “until further notice.”

The council was created for students in grades 8 to 11 to “bring together young leaders who are interested in supporting disaster preparedness and making a difference in their communities,” according to FEMA’s website.

Disinvesting in youth training could undermine efforts to prepare and respond to more frequent and severe climate disasters, said Chris Reynolds, a retired lieutenant colonel and emergency preparedness liaison officer in the U.S. Air Force.

“It’s a missed opportunity for the talent pipeline,” said Reynolds, now vice president and dean of academic outreach at American Public University System. “I’m 45-plus years as an emergency manager in my field. Where’s that next cadre going to come from?”

Some speak of a trickle-down effect

The administration’s goal of diminishing the federal role in disaster response and putting more responsibility on states to handle disaster response and recovery could mean local communities need even more expertise in emergency management.

“You eliminate the participation of not just your next generation of emergency managers, but your next generation of community leaders, which I think is just a terrible mistake,” said Monica Sanders, professor in Georgetown University’s Emergency and Disaster Management Program and its Law Center.

Sanders said young people had as much knowledge to share with FEMA as the agency did with them.

“In a lot of cultures, young people do the preparedness work, the organizing of mutual aid, online campaigning, reuniting and finding people in ways that traditional emergency management just isn’t able to do,” she said. “For FEMA to lose access to that knowledge base is just really unfortunate.”

Sughan Sriganesh, a rising high school senior from Syosset, New York, said he joined the council to further his work on resilience and climate literacy in schools.

“I thought it was a way that I could amplify the issues that I was passionate about,” he said.

Sriganesh said he got a lot out of the program while it lasted. He and Dolce were in the same small group working on a community project to disseminate preparedness resources to farmers. They created a pamphlet with information on what to do before and after a disaster.

Even after FEMA staff stopped reaching out, Sriganesh and some of his peers kept meeting. They decided to finish the project and are seeking ways to distribute their pamphlet themselves.

“It’s a testament to why we were chosen in the first place as youth preparedness members,” Sriganesh said. “We were able to adapt and be resilient no matter what was going on.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Rebecca Noble

Ashton Dolce poses for a portrait at Cholla Park on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2025, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Musk says he’s suing Apple for not featuring X and Grok in ‘Must Have’ section of app store

13 August 2025 at 20:17

Billionaire SpaceX, Tesla and X owner Elon Musk says he plans to sue Apple for not featuring X and its Grok artificial intelligence chatbot app in its top recommended apps in its App Store.

Musk posted the comments on X late Monday, saying, “Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Grok is owned by Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI.

Musk went on to say that “Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action.”

He gave no further details.

In an emailed statement, Apple defended the fairness of its App Store.

“The App Store is designed to be fair and free of bias,” it said. “We feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations, and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria. Our goal is to offer safe discovery for users and valuable opportunities for developers, collaborating with many to increase app visibility in rapidly evolving categories.”

The company has faced various allegations of antitrust violations in recent years.

A federal judge recently found that Apple violated a court injunction in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games.

Regulators of the 27-nation European Union fined Apple 500 million euros in April for breaking competition rules by preventing app makers from pointing users to cheaper options outside its App Store.

Last year, the EU fined the U.S. tech giant nearly $2 billion for unfairly favoring its own music streaming service by forbidding rivals like Spotify from telling users how they could pay for cheaper subscriptions outside of iPhone apps.

As of early Tuesday, the top app in Apple’s App Store was TikTok, followed by Tinder, Duolingo, YouTube and Bumble. Open AI’s ChatGPT was ranked 7th.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Leon Neal/Foto de Pool via AP, Arquivo

Elon Musk.

You can now order blueberries, milk and other perishables on Amazon Prime

13 August 2025 at 20:14

Amazon is now rolling out a service where its Prime members can order their blueberries and milk at the same time as basic items like batteries and T-shirts and get them within hours.

The online juggernaut said Wednesday that customers in more than 1,000 cities and towns including Raleigh, North Carolina; Milwaukee; and Columbus, Ohio, now have access to fresh groceries with its free same-day delivery service on orders over $25 for Prime members, with plans to reach over 2,300 cities and towns by year-end.

Amazon called the move “one of the most significant grocery expansions” for the online retailer as it introduces thousands of perishable items into its existing logistics network. The expansion is expected to put pressure on grocery delivery services offered by such rivals as Walmart, Kroger and Target, which all saw their shares take a hit in trading Wednesday.

Amazon’s shares rose 1%.

Amazon said that if an order doesn’t meet the minimum, members can still choose same-day delivery for a $2.99 fee. For customers without a Prime membership, the service is available with a $12.99 fee, regardless of order size.

In the past, Prime subscribers’ grocery orders were fulfilled through Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods Market.

Prime members pay $14.99 monthly or $139 annually.

Amazon launched its Prime membership in 2005, and it has become the gold standard for subscription services with a slew of perks including unlimited streaming with Prime Video and discounts at Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. Walmart, which launched its membership program called Walmart + in 2020, has been racing to add more benefits. It costs $12.95 per month or $98 per year. Depending on members’ location and availability, Walmart members can schedule same-day delivery for their groceries, including perishables.

“We’re continuously innovating to make grocery shopping simpler, faster, and more affordable for our customers, especially Prime members,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, in a statement. “By introducing fresh groceries into our Same-Day Delivery service, we’re creating a quick and easy experience for customers. ”

Herrington noted that customers can order milk alongside electronics; oranges, apples, and potatoes with a mystery novel; and frozen pizza at the same time as tools for their next home improvement project—and check out with one cart and have everything delivered to their doorstep within hours.

The company first tested the service in Phoenix, last year, and then added Orlando, Florida and Kansas City, Missouri, earlier this year.

Amazon noted that many of its customers were first-time Amazon grocery shoppers who now return to shop twice as often with the same-day deliver service compared to those who didn’t purchase food. It also noted that based on early sales, strawberries now regularly knock AirPods out of the top five best sellers of all products sold, while bananas, Honeycrisp apples, limes, and avocados round out the top ten best-selling perishable grocery items in their same-day delivery carts.

“It’s a nice step forward,” said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis Groupe, a global marketing and communications company. “It definitely makes them more competitive” in perishables.

Goldberg noted that Amazon has struggled to succeed in fresh food and that shoppers have been confused ordering shelf stable items and perishables, and having them appear in different online shopping carts, including Amazon Fresh. He said this move will greatly improve the experience.

Amazon said it generated over $100 billion in gross sales of groceries and household essentials last year not including sales from Whole Foods Market and Amazon Fresh.

In June, Amazon said it was investing more than $4 billion to triple the size of its delivery network by 2026, with a focus on small towns and rural communities across the country.

It also noted that it’s using artificial intelligence to help it predict local customer preferences so it can stock popular items alongside items targeted for specific communities

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Steven Senne, File

Amazon Prime, now with perishables.

50 years after Title IX, women’s soccer is surging thanks to brand deals boosting visibility: ‘What’s been proven is people love women’s sports’

13 August 2025 at 20:14

With two World Cup wins, an Olympic bronze medal, and experience in multiple pro leagues around the world, Christen Press is one of the most prolific soccer players of the time. But fans would be hard-pressed to find digital evidence of her early career highlights from when she competed in Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), the precursor to the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) that folded in 2012.

“If you go back and try to find highlights from my first years as a pro, you can’t,” Press told Marketing Brew. “You can find US Women’s National Team (USWNT) highlights always, but that’s what you’ll find. It was like that was my only job.”

Now, highlights of Press—or, really, any other pro women’s soccer player—are abundantly available, just one indication of just how much the landscape of women’s sports has shifted in the last few decades. More than 50 years after the passage of Title IX made it possible for more girls to succeed in sports in grade school, the talent pool of women athletes is deeper than ever, media outlets are showing women’s sporting events in prime time to record-breaking audiences, and major brands are funneling sponsorship dollars into the ecosystem.

Sport to sport, it’s not exactly clear what should be credited with kicking off the boom. But does it matter? Thirteen years after the founding of the NWSL, women’s professional soccer seems here to stay in more ways than one, with two of the biggest revenue drivers in sports—media rights and sponsorships—abundant enough to prop up two pro properties.

Ready for prime time

One of the biggest changes in the women’s soccer ecosystem in recent years has been media coverage of the sport. In the days of the WPS, and even more recently, fans often struggled to find games on TV aside from international tournaments like the World Cup and the Olympics every couple of years.

“When I started playing in the WPS and my first days of the NWSL, I was playing in front of a couple hundred people on bleachers in high schools and colleges,” Press remembered.

It wasn’t until 2022 when CBS Sports aired the NWSL Championship in prime time for the first time, but when it did, the game became the most-watched NWSL match in history, with 915,000 viewers, a 71% increase from 2021, per CBS. (The 2024 Championship beat that record, averaging 967,900 viewers, according to the NWSL.)

The deal for prime-time coverage in part came about thanks to Ally Financial, a years-long sponsor of the NWSL and many other women’s sports properties, which played a key role in conversations with the league and the network.

“You’ve got this vicious cycle that’s never going to be broken unless the brands jump in and kind of force systemic change,” Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer told Marketing Brew at the time. “It takes the brands sitting at the table to demonstrate that they’re willing to come in, that they’ve got the money to invest, but that they need the networks to think differently about the way that they’re selling media and the way that they are giving women’s sports timeslots and the platforms that they deserve.”

The NWSL’s current four-year media rights deal, signed in 2023, indicates a much different approach from networks and streamers, spanning coverage across CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video, and Scripps Sports; it’s reportedly worth $240 million. As of the mid-point of the current NWSL season, livestreams of matches were up 34% year over year, with 1.2 billion minutes viewed, according to the league. Women’s soccer fans can also watch pros play on Peacock, which holds the media rights to the Gainbridge Super League, a new pro women’s soccer league that kicks off its second season on August 23.

New media

While major media outlets play a big role in whether women’s soccer is widely available to audiences, the ecosystem has also been thriving thanks to athletes taking matters into their own hands, leveraging channels like social media and podcasts to increase visibility of the sport.

“Social media completely changed the landscape for women’s sports in a really powerful way, because before, you had all these legacy media channels that really acted as middlemen,” said Tobin Heath, an NWSL and USWNT icon who announced her retirement in July. “Once a year you’d get this terrible window, never prime time, and always it was through a lens of what the patriarchy wanted to see in women’s sports, which was obviously extremely narrow and really didn’t represent our sport’s culture at all.”

That frustration led Heath and Press, who are married, to found Re—Inc, a sports media company that publishes newsletters and podcasts meant to represent “gal culture,” which Heath described as an answer to “bro culture.” Their podcast, The Re—Cap Show, joined the Audacy network for distribution and global ad sales in July, part of a larger wave of growing interest in women’s sports podcasts.

Heath and Press aren’t the only soccer icons who have carved out their own media channels. Former USWNT co-captain Alex Morgan has Togethxr, the media and commerce company she started with Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, Olympic swimmer Simone Manuel, and basketball legend Sue Bird. Bird also founded production company A Touch More alongside her partner, Megan Rapinoe, another retired USWNT co-captain.

Through these platforms, the players can bypass legacy media companies and engage directly with fans on their own terms, which wasn’t always an option for athletes. Brandi Chastain, whose penalty kick delivered the USWNT the World Cup in 1999 and who went on to work with brands including NikeGatorade, and Bud Light, said she sometimes thinks about what her sponsorship roster could have looked like had she been playing in 2025.

“In terms of brands and branding, gosh, I think there’s a part of me that wishes that there were all these resources that existed,” she said.

Brand ball

As the audience for women’s soccer has grown, so too has its list of sponsors. This year, the NWSL kicked off its 13th season with 13 sponsors, including first-time brands E.l.f. Beauty and Alex Cooper’s Unwell Hydration. E.l.f.’s involvement represents a broader trend of beauty brands, which haven’t historically invested much in sports, leaning into sports sponsorship opportunities across leagues, including the NFL and WNBA. In August, E.l.f. further upped its investment in women’s soccer by signing NWSL players Melanie Barcenas, Abby Dahlkemper, Lo’eau LaBonta, and Jaedyn Shaw to its talent roster.

For brands, women’s sports are particularly compelling because the audience tends to encompass different consumers than men’s sports audiences, Super League President Amanda Vandervort told Marketing Brew. In pro basketball, for example, only 5% of Golden State Valkyries season-ticket holders also have Warriors season tickets, despite the teams sharing both an arena and a sport, a standout stat for founding partner JPMorganChase.

“There’s so many communities who haven’t had access to women’s pro soccer, and when you add that to the growing interest, the demographics and behaviors of our fans, and the opportunity for brands and sponsors to get in front of a whole new audience, it just makes business sense,” Vandervort said. “Now, we’re having real conversations about the return on the investment in women’s professional soccer.”

This year, the Super League announced Gainbridge had purchased the league’s naming rights, and it’s only seen an uptick in inbound interest since then, according to Vandervort. The league also has several endemic sponsors, including kit provider Capelli Sport and ball manufacturer Select.

In the NWSL, jersey sponsorships are breaking records at breakneck speed. Last year, Bay FC reportedly had the biggest back-of-jersey deal in the league with Trader Joe’s, and in February, Gotham FC and Dove reportedly broke the record again. Days later, the Portland Thorns and Ring were said to have agreed to the biggest deal in league history, exceeding $2.6 million.

“It’s not just about the dollars,” Matt Soloff, SVP, partnerships and business development at the NWSL, told us. “It’s about leaning into brands that want to lean into us at the highest level.”

Amazon, for instance, has a wide-ranging relationship with the NWSL that includes streaming rights to Friday night games and a playoff match on Prime Video, as well as an exclusive retail sponsorship for Amazon and the presenting sponsorship of the league’s Best XI Awards for Amazon Prime. The company also worked with the league and other media partners, including Togethxr, for a docuseries about the 2024 season.

It was the “rabid fanbase and the growth” of the league that made it stand out to a sponsor as big as Amazon, according to Deb Curtis, global director of marketing for Amazon Prime.

“The growth and the excitement around women’s sports, and obviously the NWSL, is incredibly energizing,” Curtis said. “Fandom fuels growth, and so we see our role as being able to go deeper. People know our brand, so how can our brand help to enhance that experience?”

Brand sponsorship dollars can also be invested back into the leagues, creating a virtuous cycle for women’s soccer.

For some players who have seen the industry shift in real time, it feels like vindication.

“What’s been proven is people love women’s sports,” Heath said. “That’s just the truth, and also, they love women’s athletes as people. Brands love women’s athletes. They’re more approachable. They’re better at marketing.”

This report was originally published by Marketing Brew.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images—Daniela Porcelli/ISI Photos

Players of the United States celebrate the goal from Sophia Smith during the Women's semifinal match between United States of America and Germany during the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de Lyon on August 6, 2024 in Lyon, France.

White House orders huge review of Smithsonian to ‘assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals’

13 August 2025 at 20:13

The White House is ordering a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian museums and exhibitions ahead of the country’s 250th birthday with a goal of aligning the institution’s content with President Donald Trump’s interpretation of American history.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, the White House laid out in detail the steps it expects the organization to take as part of the announced review. The examination will look at all public-facing content, such as social media, exhibition text and educational materials, to “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals,” according to the letter.

“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter said.

The Smithsonian said it remained committed to “scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history.”

“We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents,” it said in a statement.

The review, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is the latest attempt by the president to bring the country’s cultural institutions in line with his vision. In March, Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which accused the Smithsonian of coming under the influence of a “divisive, race-centered ideology” and called upon it to “remove improper ideology” from the institution’s museums.

In February, Trump removed the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees, replaced them with his supporters and named himself chairman. He vowed to end events featuring performers in drag, indicating he would take on a larger role in dictating the institution’s programming schedule.

The review of the Smithsonian will initially focus on eight museums — the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

The letter said additional museums would be reviewed in subsequent phases.

Civil rights leaders have criticized the administration’s particular focus on the National Museum of African American History and Culture as efforts to minimize Black Americans’ contributions to the country and to recast the obstacles they faced throughout history.

The Smithsonian has repeatedly denied allegations that it has changed or removed exhibit details in response to pressure from the administration. Recently, the institution removed references to Trump’s two impeachments from an exhibit on the American presidency.

A spokesman for the museum said the references, which were added in 2021, were intended to be a temporary measure and said a future exhibit would include details on all presidential impeachments.

The review ordered by the White House directs the museums to submit materials from exhibits and drafts for upcoming events within 30 days. Within 120 days, the letter said, museums will be expected to take corrective action, “replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

The Smithsonian Museum of American History.

Goldman Sachs doubles down on tariff research that infuriated Trump, saying average Americans will bear two-thirds of the costs

13 August 2025 at 20:07

Goldman Sachs is refusing to back away from its analysis that Americans—not foreign exporters or overseas governments—are bearing the majority of costs from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. The Wall Street giant doubled down this week on chief economist Jan Hatzius’ research as inflation data showed a jump in consumer prices and the political backlash from the White House intensified.

Goldman’s latest report, published on Sunday, maintains that while U.S. businesses have so far shouldered most of the financial pain from tariffs, the share picked up by everyday Americans is set to rise sharply. As of June, consumers had absorbed 22% of total tariff costs, Hatzius calculated, adding the number is projected to leap to 67% by October if the pattern seen in early rounds of Trump’s trade actions continues. For businesses, the burden will shrink from 64% down to 8%, while foreign suppliers will see a modest uptick from 14% to 25% of the tariff impact.

In reaction to the report, Trump erupted in fury on Tuesday, lambasting Goldman CEO David Solomon and, without naming him, Hatzius.

“We stand by the results of this study,” Goldman economist David Mericle told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street the next day. “If the most recent tariffs, like the April tariff, follow the same pattern that we’ve seen with those earliest February tariffs, then eventually, by the fall, we estimate that consumers would bear about two-thirds of the cost.”

Goldman economists forecast the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) inflation gauge will surge to 3.2% by the end of the year if tariffs remain in place, with about 0.7 percentage points of that attributable directly to the tariff regime—substantially above the underlying trend inflation of 2.4%.

Trump’s rejection—and personal attack

Trump has responded with a barrage of posts, interviews, and public statements disputing Goldman’s findings. He insists “trillions of dollars are being taken in on tariffs,” arguing companies and governments abroad—not U.S. households—are paying most of the bill. On Tuesday, Trump accused Goldman of consistently missing the mark on both market repercussions and the tariff effects.

“David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They made a bad prediction a long time ago on both the Market repercussion and the Tariffs themselves, and they were wrong, just like they are wrong about so much else.”

Analysts say Trump’s attacks on Wall Street figures, coupled with his vocal push for Federal Reserve rate cuts, reflect a calculated strategy to undermine critics and reinforce a pro-tariff narrative—even as evidence mounts that consumers face rising prices at the register. Financial experts warn ignoring the pass-through effect of tariffs onto consumers could muddle the debate on inflation, especially as the Federal Reserve and investors gauge long-term risks.

While the president’s advisers and some Trump administration officials contend there’s no hard evidence tariffs have caused inflation, analysts aside from Goldman Sachs—including those at Morgan Stanley and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget—say the true burden will only become more apparent as new rounds of tariffs embed themselves deeper in the supply chains and pricing structures.

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Brent Lewin/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.

Florida allows first black bear hunt in a decade

13 August 2025 at 20:06

The first black bear hunt in Florida in a decade will take place in December under a rule adopted Wednesday by state wildlife officials despite strong opposition to the eventual use of dogs and targeting the animals in baited locations.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission voted unanimously in favor of the plan during a meeting that drew 168 people for a public hearing in the Panhandle town of Havana, with both supporters and opposents present. The panel had given preliminary approval in May, citing a need to manage growing bear populations.

“We make decisions based on science,” said commission chair Rodney Barreto.

Opponents called the hunt cruel, unnecessary and an excuse for hunters to bag a trophy animal when the real issue is the encroaching human population in bear habitat as Florida continues to grow.

“Not all the hunters support this hunt. We’d like to see nature in balance,” said Lauren Jorgensen, whose family owns a ranch in rural Suwannee County.

There are an estimated 4,000 black bears in Florida, one of the few states with sizable populations that do not have a bear hunting season. Several pro-hunt speakers noted that bears are much more commonly seen in many areas than in the past, causing interactions with humans that provoke fear and concern.

Ottice Amison, a member of the Franklin County Commission, said residents there report bears on porches, rooting through garbage cans, roaming neighborhoods and playgrounds.

“The reality is that the frequency and severity of bear interactions continues to rise,” Amison told the wildlife commission. “Right now, too many of our residents see bears as threats and pests.”

There has been only one documented fatal black bear attack in Florida, the May mauling of 89-year-old Robert Markel and his daughter’s dog in a rural part of Collier County, in southwest Florida.

The plan adopted Wednesday has more stringent rules than the previous Florida hunt in 2015, in which hunting permits were provided to anyone who could pay for them. That led to a chaotic event shut down days early after 300-plus bears were killed, including at least 38 females with cubs, meaning the young bears probably died too.

Hunt opponents predict this year will be more of the same.

“This decision reflects political pressure, not ecological necessity or public will,” said Susannah Randolph, director of the Sierra Club Florida chapter.

Under the new rule, there would be a random drawing of permits with a limit of 187. Hunters could kill only one bear each and only in certain parts of Florida where the bear population is large enough. There would be no killing of cubs and none of females with cubs, according to the FWC staff.

A permit would cost $100 for Florida residents and $300 for nonresidents.

For 2025, the plan is to hold the hunt from Dec. 6 to Dec. 28. In the future, the FWC foresees a bear hunt between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, subject to more studies about the effect of hunting and the population of the animals. In future years, hunters could use up to six dogs each to pursue bears.

Private landowners with 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) or more could hold what the FWC calls a “bear harvest program” on their property under the proposal. Bears could be hunted at bait feeding stations on private property. Also, bowhunting will be allowed under rules similar to those for deer.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times via AP, file)

In this Oct. 24, 2015 photo, a black bear is weighed by FWC Biologists Alyssa Simmons and Mike Orlando at the Rock Springs Run Wildlife Management Area near Lake Mary, Fla.

Trump warns Putin of ‘very severe consequences’ ahead of Alaska crunch talks over Ukraine cease-fire

13 August 2025 at 20:02

President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that there will be “very severe consequences” if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war against Ukraine after the two leaders meet for a summit later this week in Alaska.

Trump made the comment in response to a question from a reporter after announcing this year’s Kennedy Center Honors recipients in Washington. He did not say what the consequences might be.

The remark came soon after Trump consulted with European leaders, who said the president assured them he would make a priority of trying to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine when he meets with Putin on Friday in Anchorage.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined several of Kyiv’s main allies in the virtual meeting with the U.S. leader, and Zelenskyy told the group that Putin “is bluffing” ahead of the planned summit about Russia’s ability to occupy all of Ukraine and shake off sanctions.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said afterward that “important decisions” could be made in Alaska, but he stressed that “fundamental European and Ukrainian security interests must be protected.”

Merz convened Wednesday’s meeting in an attempt to make sure European and Ukrainian leaders are heard ahead of the summit.

He stressed that a ceasefire must come at the beginning of negotiations. He told reporters that Trump “also wants to make this one of his priorities” in the meeting with Putin.

Trump “was very clear” that the U.S. wants to achieve a ceasefire at the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron said at a separate appearance in France.

Following Friday’s summit, Macron added, Trump will “seek a future trilateral meeting” — one involving Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy. He said he hoped that it could be held in Europe “in a neutral country that is acceptable to all parties.”

Merz, who described Wednesday’s conversation as “constructive and good,” said the Europeans made clear that “Ukraine must sit at the table as soon as there are follow-up meetings.”

European allies have pushed for Ukraine’s involvement in any peace talks, fearful that discussions that exclude Kyiv could otherwise favor Moscow.

The Ukrainian president, who traveled to Berlin to join the meeting alongside Merz, has repeatedly cast doubt on whether Putin would negotiate in good faith. He said Wednesday that he hoped an immediate ceasefire will be “the central topic” in Alaska, but also argued that Putin “definitely does not want peace.”

Zelenskyy said Putin “is trying to apply pressure … on all sectors of the Ukrainian front” in an attempt to show that Russia is “capable of occupying all of Ukraine.” Putin is also bluffing that sanctions “do not matter to him and are ineffective,” he added. “In reality, sanctions are very helpful and are hitting Russia’s war economy hard.”

The stakes for Europe

Trump has said he wants to see whether Putin is serious about ending the war, now in its fourth year, describing Friday’s summit as “a feel-out meeting” where he can assess the Russian leader’s intentions.

Yet Trump has disappointed allies in Europe by saying Ukraine will have to give up some Russian-held territory. He has also said Russia must accept land swaps, although it was unclear what Putin might be expected to surrender.

Trump on Monday ducked repeated chances to say that he would push for Zelenskyy to take part in his discussions with Putin, and was dismissive of Zelenskyy and his need to be part of an effort to seek peace. Trump said that following Friday’s summit, a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders could be arranged, or that it could also be a meeting with “Putin and Zelenskyy and me.”

The Europeans and Ukraine are wary that Putin, who has waged the biggest land war in Europe since 1945 and used Russia’s energy might to try to intimidate the European Union, might secure favorable concessions and set the outlines of a peace deal without them.

The overarching fear of many European countries is that Putin will set his sights on one of them next if he wins in Ukraine.

Merz said that “if there is no movement on the Russian side in Alaska, then the United States and the Europeans should and must increase the pressure” on Moscow.

Land concessions a non-starter for Kyiv

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30% of the Donetsk region that it still controls as part of a ceasefire deal, a proposal the leader categorically rejected.

Zelenskyy reiterated that Ukraine would not give up any territory it controls, saying that would be unconstitutional and would serve only as a springboard for a future Russian invasion.

He said diplomatic discussions led by the U.S. focusing on ending the war have not addressed key Ukrainian demands, including security guarantees to prevent future Russian aggression and including Europe in negotiations.

Three weeks after Trump returned to office, his administration took the leverage of Ukraine’s NATO membership off the table — something Putin has demanded — and signaled that the EU and Ukraine must handle security in Europe now while America focuses its attention elsewhere.

Senior EU officials believe Trump may be satisfied with simply securing a ceasefire in Ukraine and that he is probably more interested in broader U.S. interests and great power politics, aiming to ramp up business with Russia and rehabilitate Putin.

Russian advances in Donbas

Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have been closing in on a key territorial grab around the city of Pokrovsk, in the eastern Donbas region that comprises Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, which Putin has long coveted.

Military analysts using open-source information to monitor the battles have said Ukraine’s ability to fend off those advances could be critical: Losing Pokrovsk would hand Russia an important victory ahead of the summit and could complicate Ukrainian supply lines to the Donetsk region, where the Kremlin has focused the bulk of military efforts.

___

Corbet reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Annie Ma in Washington, Lorne Cook in Brussels, Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© JIM WATSON,EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images

Trump has strong words for Putin.

The gap between higher and lower-income households is widening as inequality progress since pandemic has ‘gone into reverse,’ BofA economist says

13 August 2025 at 18:03

America’s consumer economy showed renewed signs of strength in July, but the gains are not being shared equally. According to the Bank of America Institute’s latest report, Consumer Checkpoint: Gains and gaps, higher-income households are enjoying accelerating wage growth and increased spending, while lower-income households face slowing pay gains and flat expenditure—marking the widest such divide in more than four years.

The Institute’s research, based on aggregated and anonymized deposit and transaction data, reveals that after-tax wages for the lowest-income tercile grew just 1.3% year-over-year (YoY) in July, down from 1.6% in June. In contrast, higher-income wage growth accelerated to 3.2% YoY—its third consecutive monthly increase.

The result is the biggest gap between top and bottom earners’ wage growth since February 2021—a warning sign for the economy despite a strong overall spending picture. Bank of America Institute senior economist David Tinsley told Fortune in an interview “in some sense, we had an improvement in lower-income wage growth since the pandemic and now that’s gone into reverse.”

Coming out of the pandemic was a “very unusual situation,” Tinsley added, and lower-income households genuinely did see stronger wage growth than other areas of the economy.

“There was a narrowing of wealth inequality and now it’s widening,” Tinsley said, but cautioned it was “early days,” but when he looks at what’s happening to higher and lower-income Americans, “the divergence is quite stark.”

Overall consumer activity picks up

Tinsley emphasized the overall consumer picture is “fairly healthy,” and his team’s research of the latest data shows total credit and debit card spending per household rose 1.8% YoY in July, the fastest pace since January. On a seasonally adjusted basis, spending climbed 0.6% month-over-month (MoM), following a 0.4% gain in June.

Notably, the rebound was broad-based, as services spending surged 0.9% month-over-month, the strongest increase since April 2024, after three straight months of declines. Retail spending (excluding gasoline and restaurants) also edged higher, though part of the lift came from temporary factors such as extended “Prime Day”-style online promotions and a late surge in back-to-school shopping.

Tinsley and his team cautioned these boosts may fade. Some of July’s uptick may reflect “buy-ahead” behavior linked to the August 1 trade-deal deadline, as consumers sought to avoid potential tariff-related price hikes. Overall, temporary promotional spikes and inflation pass-through from tariffs complicate the picture. Retail transaction volumes rose more modestly than spending values, hinting higher prices, rather than greater quantities, may have driven part of the increase.

The widening wage gap tracks closely with labor market shifts. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics revisions show a sharp slowdown in payroll growth in the second quarter of 2025, with the biggest step-downs in low-wage industries such as retail, wholesale, leisure, and hospitality.

Bank of America deposit data indicates only a modest 4% year-over-year rise in the number of lower-income households receiving unemployment payments, compared with 10% increases among middle- and higher-income households. This suggests low-wage workers are not losing jobs in large numbers, but are instead facing reduced hours or muted pay growth.

Spending divergence now clear-cut

The spending data mirrors the pay trends. “Lower-income households aren’t really spending,” Tinsley told Fortune, finding that their spending growth was flat (0% year-over-year) in the three months to July. Higher-income households posted 1.8% year-over-year growth, with middle-income households up 1.0%.

While the lowest-income 30% of households account for less than 15% of total U.S. consumer spending, their purchases matter for sectors dependent on high transaction volumes, such as discount retail, quick-service restaurants, and budget travel. Importantly, Bank of America’s internal data shows the share of lower-income spending devoted to discretionary categories has barely changed since last year, suggesting they have not yet resorted to cutting non-essentials—but their capacity for future cutbacks remains small.

No early signs of consumer distress—yet

One potentially reassuring takeaway is the absence of typical distress indicators. Retail returns are not rising—the downtrend that began in 2022 has merely flattened, while deposit balances remain above 2019 levels even after adjusting for inflation, and credit card borrowing habits remain healthier than pre-pandemic. However, beneath these broad measures are hints of strain: Among lower-income households that do carry month-to-month card balances, credit card utilization rates have risen faster than in other groups since 2019.

Even with slower wage growth at the bottom, the Institute concludes household finances overall remain “sound.” Continued elevated savings, relatively low revolving credit usage, and stable borrowing capacity suggest consumers still possess spending firepower—a key factor supporting the economy’s resilience so far this year.

That said, the report notes middle- and higher-income households are doing much of the heavy lifting.

As Tinsley’s team observed: “From a macroeconomic perspective, it is reassuring that middle- and higher-income households’ spending growth does not appear to be weakening like it has for lower-income households,” noting the lowest 30% of households by income account for less than 15% of overall U.S. consumer spending. Still, the team added, “there are broader socioeconomic concerns around any slowdown in lower-income households’ wages and spending.”

When asked by Fortune to expand on these broader socioeconomic concerns, Tinsley said “there’s some time to go before this becomes really telling.” He estimated the economy is at least a year or maybe as much as 18 months away from truly reversing all the progress on wealth inequality that was seen coming out of the pandemic, but he said there’s no doubt about it. The widening wealth inequality picture “creates complexities going forward,” Tinsley said.


Key July 2025 Figures:

  • Total card spending per household: +1.8% YoY (fastest since January)
  • After-tax wage growth (lowest-income tercile): +1.3% YoY
  • After-tax wage growth (highest-income tercile): +3.2% YoY
  • Card spending (lowest tercile): 0% YoY
  • Card spending (highest tercile): +1.8% YoY
  • Services spending: +0.9% MoM (largest since April 2024)

For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images

Consumers haven't been spending the way they usually do.

Even a 1% mortgage rate drop could be enough to ‘unlock’ the frozen housing market, Oxford Economics says

13 August 2025 at 17:09
  • Mortgage rates are currently in the high 6% range, and a drop back to the pandemic-era sub-3% levels is considered unrealistic by economists. However, a modest decline in rates to below 6% could motivate some homeowners to sell, potentially thawing the frozen housing market constrained by homeowners holding onto low-rate mortgages.

If you’re waiting for mortgage rates to fall to around 3% to buy a home, don’t hold your breath. The likelihood mortgage rates will drop anywhere near those pandemic-era levels is “unrealistic,” a Zillow economist recently said.

But not all hope is lost on the U.S. housing market, at least according to one economist. Bob Schwartz, a senior economist with Oxford Economics, told Fortune while there’s “no quantifiable rate” that would trigger more home sales, just a 1% drop in mortgage rates to lower than 6% should be “enough of an incentive” for at least some current homeowners to sell their homes and “trade up.”

One of the prime factors keeping the U.S. housing market frozen is mortgage rates. During the pandemic, buyers locked in at a sub-3% mortgage rate. But now that mortgage rates are hovering between 6% and 7%, current homeowners have little incentive to sell their current homes and either “trade up,” as Schwartz puts it, or downsize. New buyers are also resistant to higher mortgage rates than they’ve witnessed in recent memory. 

In fact, the percentage of mortgages outstanding with a rate higher than 6% has more than doubled since 2021, according to Schwartz, but that figure is still less than 20%. More than 50% of outstanding mortgages have rates in the 3% to 4% range. 

While Schwartz told Fortune mortgage rates would have to “drop significantly” from the current 6.63% to move the masses of homeowners off the sidelines and put their homes up for sale, a smaller drop could encourage enough people to do so.

“The housing market would be the biggest beneficiary of lower rates as they would unlock frozen sales by homeowners who are reluctant to give up the low-rate mortgages taken out in the decade following the Great Recession,” Schwartz wrote in an Aug. 8 note. 

Other recent reports have also illustrated how little faith there is in mortgage rates dropping to pandemic-era levels and how other housing market factors play into housing affordability concerns in the U.S. A recent Zillow report showed a 0% mortgage rate in some U.S. cities wouldn’t be enough to make housing affordable because home prices still remain too high; they’re up more than 50% since the start of the pandemic.

High home prices “are the bigger hurdle,” Michelle Griffith, a luxury real-estate broker with Douglas Elliman, based in New York City, previously told Fortune.

“Inventory is tight and competition is high, so the cost of the property itself is what keeps most buyers on the sidelines,” Griffin said.

Refinancing and future mortgage predictions

While a drop in mortgage rates could encourage outright sales, Schwartz told Fortune another likely scenario would be current homeowners refinancing to a lower rate. Although that may not thaw the frozen housing market as much as Americans may hope, it could be good for the economy in other ways. 

“A significant increase in refis could have a significant impact on spending, particularly if a good chunk is of the cash-out variety,” Schwartz said. “Homeowners are sitting on $34.5 trillion of housing equity, which could be tapped into for spending purposes.”

To be sure, mortgage rates would have to “fall pretty drastically” for that to happen, which Oxford Economist doesn’t see in their outlook at this point, he added. 

In relation to mortgage rates, all eyes have been on the Federal Reserve’s upcoming Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting in September that will determine interest rates. On Tuesday, the Consumer Price Index summary reported inflation notched up just 0.2% in July, bringing headline inflation to 2.7%, better than many expected. Still, it’s ahead of the Fed’s 2% target. 

While the CPI report had little impact on the 10-year Treasury rate, which is the benchmark for mortgage rates, it shouldn’t prevent the Fed from cutting rates in September, Schwartz said. 

“Although with inflation still sticky and well above the Fed’s 2 % target … we still believe the Fed will wait until December to cut,” he added. “However, if the upcoming jobs report for August is a dud, similar to the July one, odds are the Fed will cut in September.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Getty Images

One of the prime factors keeping the U.S. housing market frozen is mortgage rates.

Switzerland warns its companies that no, they can’t dodge Trump’s tariffs by routing goods through the tiny neighboring country of Liechtenstein

13 August 2025 at 16:57
  • Switzerland and Liechtenstein have long shared an economic market, but President Donald Trump has imposed a steep tariff on Swiss goods compared to its Liechtensteiner neighbors. The Swiss government has clarified that Swiss businesses will be unable to reroute their products through the neighboring principality. The Trump administration recently implemented a 40% tariff on transshipments, or the movement of goods to an intermediate destination ostensibly with lower levies, to disincentivize this behavior.

The Swiss government is telling its domestic companies that they have not, in fact, found a clever way to skirt President Donald Trump’s tariffs by routing goods through the tiny neighborhood country of Liechtenstein.

Switzerland and Liechtenstein share a 102-year-old customs treaty allowing the 25km-long principality to share the Swiss economic area. But that agreement, which makes it nearly impossible to measure trade between the two closely linked countries, does not mean they are tariffed similarly. While U.S. tariffs on Swiss exports swelled to 39% in Trump’s latest round of tariffs, levies on goods from Liechtenstein are only 15%. The Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) has said Swiss firms cannot pass off goods as Liechtensteiner by routing them through the principality because they would still be recognized as Swiss in origin.

“Such circumvention via Liechtenstein is fundamentally impossible. The United States applies its non-preferential rules of origin when levying additional tariffs,” a SECO spokesperson told Fortune in a translated email statement. “For a product to be considered ‘Liechtenstein origin,’ it must either be entirely manufactured in Liechtenstein or [have] undergone sufficient processing.”

Liechtenstein head of government Brigitte Haas said last week there’s concern, though improbable, of Swiss companies looking to Liechtenstein for ways to dodge import taxes, but the risks are high.

“There’s a fear that there might be some circumvention, but those are subject to a 40% tariff,” Haas said in an interview with Swiss outlet SRF. “I hardly think anyone would want to go through that.”    

Trump’s transshipment crackdown

Last month, the White House imposed a 40% penalty tax on “transshipments,” or the movement of goods to an intermediate destination, meant to disincentivize this particular behavior.

The Trump administration is aware that countries with lower reciprocal tariff rates than its neighbors are incentivized to reroute their products, according to Robert Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment at the Harvard Kennedy School. For years, China has used Mexico and Vietnam, among other countries, as transshipment bases prior to exporting goods to the U.S., according to a Brookings Institute report from June. These transshipments are having meaningful impacts: As China’s trade surplus with the U.S. decreases, it has been completely offset by the increase in its trade surplus with other trading partners, the report found.

While the transshipment penalty was meant to address China, Lawrence told Fortune, it would apply to any country engaging in the behavior—despite some experts arguing the order lacks key details that would help enforce it.

“It was really important with the response to China,” Lawrence said. “But there’s always this incentive to arbitrage between countries who are close to one another but have differentiated tariff treatment.”

High stakes in Switzerland

With Switzerland and the U.S. failing to come to a trade agreement before the Aug. 1 deadline, Swiss companies now fear Trump’s steep tariffs could roil domestic businesses, particularly in the industrial machinery, cheese, and chocolate industries. While Switzerland may rely on the U.S. as a key importer, the U.S. may be able to find suitable alternatives elsewhere, Lawrence said, putting the onus on Swiss companies to absorb the cost of tariffs in order to keep prices competitive in the U.S. market.

Liechtenstein could likewise suffer, according to head of government Haas, who said last week that although the principality has stopped trade negotiations with the U.S. and accepted the 15%, Switzerland’s economic health could waver and impact Liechtenstein, which counts Switzerland as its domestic market. Haas also said many Liechtensteiner products don’t list Liechtenstein as their certified place of origin, leaving uncertainty about how explicit the U.S. was in outlining the reciprocal tariffs for the principality.

U.S. consumers could meanwhile begin to feel the impacts of these steep reciprocal tariffs, responding differently to the alternatives available from other countries, should Swiss imports no longer be as readily available or affordable. For example, according to Lawrence, U.S. consumers may now buy more Cadbury chocolate from the UK—where tariffs sit at 10%—despite not finding the product as appealing as Swiss chocolates, but because it’s theoretically cheaper and more abundant.

But these ramifications are about more than just chocolate.

“There’s going to be a lot of inefficiency,” Lawrence said. “Americans are going to buy inferior products.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© DREW ANGERER/AFP—Getty Images

President of the Swiss Confederation Karin Keller-Sutter and Swiss Economy Minister Guy Parmelin met last week with U.S. officials to continue trade negotiations.

As degrees get branded worthless, LinkedIn’s just revealed the universities that give Gen Z the best shot at corner office jobs

13 August 2025 at 16:25
  • As Gen Z increasingly wonders whether a diploma is worth the debt, LinkedIn says the real test of a school is its career pay-off and ROI. The platform’s newest list of the top 50 colleges crowns Princeton University, Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania as the top institutions for “long-term career success.” Smaller and lesser-known schools can also be hidden gems for young people seeking a fast track to the C-suite or building the next billion-dollar start-up.

Millions of college students are headed back to school in the coming weeks, but the excitement of new classes, reconnecting with friends, and fall weather is being overshadowed by a cloud of uncertainty.

With many recent graduates struggling like never before to land jobs—and some CEOs warning entry-level jobs are on the brink of extinction thanks to AI—Gen Z is left questioning whether spending four years and thousands of dollars on a degree will be well worth it. And ultimately, the answer may come down to where you obtained your degree.

Graduates from Princeton University, Duke University, and the University of Pennsylvania are most likely to experience long-term career success, according to a list of the top 50 U.S. colleges released by LinkedIn this week.

With indications that higher education payoff is slowly dying, it’s more important now than ever to weigh up after-college career results and the likely ROI of a degree, says Andrew Seaman, senior editor-at-large for jobs and career development at LinkedIn News. 

“Long-term success isn’t just about landing a great first job, it’s about sustained career growth and opportunity years after graduation,” Seaman tells Fortune. “For this list, that means looking at how well a school sets alumni up for the long haul.”

Whereas the median annual salary for high school graduates was $48,360 in 2024, those with a bachelor’s degree typically earn just over $80,000—about a 65% increase, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cornell University, and Harvard University round out the top six best colleges, but other typically elite schools are much further down the list. Ivy League institutions Columbia University and Yale University, are No. 18 and 19, respectively. (See the full list below).

Getting a degree from a popular school might not be enough

LinkedIn produced its ranking using five equally weighted pillars:

  • Job placement: Percentage of alumni from recent graduate cohorts (2019-2024) who started a full-time position or a graduate school program within the same year of graduating.
  • Internships and recruit demand: Percentage of alumni from recent cohorts who completed an undergraduate internship; and labor market demand for recent cohorts, based on InMail outreach data.
  • Career success: Percentage of alumni with post-graduate entrepreneurship or C-suite experience.
  • Networth strength: How connected alumni of the same school are to each other, as well as how connected alumni from recent cohorts are to all past alumni and current students
  • Knowledge breadth: Unique fields of study and skills gained by recent graduates.

Focusing on these data points, LinkedIn produced a ranking that saw many well-known schools absent, such as Johns Hopkins University, Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the University of North Carolina. Instead, some institutions with lesser name-recognition made the top-50 cut, such as Bentley University (No. 15), Bucknell University (No. 21), and Fairfield University (No. 28).

The findings overall signal that a popular or Ivy League name isn’t needed to deliver exceptional career outcomes, Seaman says.

“Schools like Bentley University and Fairfield University are excelling at connecting students with high-quality internships, building strong alumni networks, and helping graduates secure jobs or graduate school placements quickly, all factors that drive long-term career success,” Seaman adds.

Among Bucknell’s class of 2024, 93% of students secured career opportunities within nine months of graduation, earning an average starting salary of $73,075.

Smaller colleges, such as Babson College and Colgate University, were also standouts in terms of network strength and job placement. Babson in particular has the highest percentage of graduates who have become entrepreneurs and founders, according to Seaman.

The growing need for AI skills

As the value of college continues to be questioned, what many business leaders agree is that students need to learn AI skills above all—or they could risk becoming part of the growing number of Gen Zers who are NEET, not in employment, education, or training.

Earlier this year, over 250 CEOs, including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi, called for an increase in computer science and AI education among all students. 

“In the age of AI, we must prepare our children for the future—to be AI creators, not just consumers,” the CEOs wrote in a letter sent to lawmakers. “A basic foundation in computer science and AI is crucial for helping every student thrive in a technology-driven world. Without it, they risk falling behind.”

But that doesn’t necessarily mean your college major has to be squarely AI or tech-focused. In fact, when Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was recently asked what the young version of himself would choose to focus on today, he said he’d opt for “more of the physical sciences than the software sciences.” 

The top 50 schools for long-term career success

According to LinkedIn

  1. Princeton University
  2. Duke University
  3. University of Pennsylvania
  4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  5. Cornell University
  6. Harvard University
  7. Babson College
  8. University of Notre Dame
  9. Dartmouth College
  10. Stanford University
  11. Northwestern University
  12. University of Virginia
  13. Vanderbilt University
  14. Brown University
  15. Bentley University
  16. Tufts University
  17. Lehigh University
  18. Columbia University
  19. Yale University
  20. Carnegie Mellon University
  21. Bucknell University
  22. Boston College
  23. Villanova University
  24. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
  25. Wake Forest University 
  26. University of Chicago 
  27. University of Southern California
  28. Fairfield University
  29. Washington and Lee University
  30. University of California-Berkeley
  31. Rice University
  32. Georgetown University
  33. Purdue University
  34. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
  35. Miami University
  36. Colgate University
  37. Southern Methodist University
  38. Bryant University
  39. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  40. The Pennsylvania State University
  41. California Institute of Technology
  42. Trinity College
  43. Boston University
  44. University of Richmond
  45. Stevens Institute of Technology
  46. The University of Texas at Austin
  47. Indiana University Bloomington
  48. Lafayette College
  49. Providence College
  50. University of Wisconsin-Madison

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Ulrich Baumgarten via Getty Images

Move over Harvard and Columbia, Princeton and Duke are the schools most likely to fast-track Gen Z to the C-suite.

Applebee’s and IHOP’s CIO places AI bets that can boost traffic and improve the dining experience

13 August 2025 at 16:06

Justin Skelton, the chief information officer at Dine Brands, envisions a world in the not-too-distant future where an IHOP server can scan a QR code and pull up every detail about a guest’s order preferences and history. Using generative AI to guide them, servers can then suggest the perfect side dishes to complement that order of pancakes and sausage.

This AI-powered “recommendation engine,” which utilizes Google Cloud’s recommendations AI technology, is already in production for online orders at the restaurant operator’s IHOP and Applebee’s chains and will also roll out soon at Dine’s Fuzzy’s Taco Shop. It blends together a guest’s past order history with the buying patterns from a broader pool of similar diners to generate more personalized menu pairings.

But there could be even greater opportunities for targeted, in-person upselling when the technology could be deployed across the chain’s 3,5000 brick-and-mortar restaurants.

“There’s a lot of new technologies we’re looking at that we want to bring to the market,” says Skelton, who has served as CIO at Dine since 2019, after prior technology leadership roles at CVS Health, Bank of America, and Allstate.

Skelton says that all of his generative AI bets are intended to support three outcomes: boost revenue and traffic, improve the guest experience, and bolster worker productivity. Because he runs a small IT team, Skelton says he has to be very careful about his technology bets. “We’re not prepared to go and invest in and hire a lot of people,” says Skelton.

With that in mind, Dine tends to partner and “buy” more solutions from vendors rather than build. Skelton relies on large AI companies like Google and Amazon and non-hyperscalers like IT consulting firm Cognizant. 

The latter helped Dine create and launch an AI Innovation Foundry last fall, a virtual lab that is led by Skelton’s IT team and works with different stakeholder groups including legal and finance to test emerging AI technologies. Initially only available for corporate employees, the Foundry became so appetizing that franchise partners have also been encouraged to submit use cases for Dine’s team to vet.

“There’s a recognition that not all ideas are going to make it and see the light of day,” says Skelton. “It’s really sort of a way we can incubate.” 

With budget planning for 2026 already under way, Skelton and his team will mull the proposed use cases and a steering committee will determine the few select projects that will get capital allocation.

Some newer concepts that Dine is considering include AI-enabled tools that can make it easier for the general manager to understand their staffing levels, inventory, and other data needed to make a restaurant run smoothly and utilize that real-time data to make better decisions.

Another is an evolution of Dine’s generative AI assistant tool that guides the company’s franchise technology services team, a group of technicians that resolves issues like when a printer breaks or a point of sale system is down at a restaurant. In the future, Dine hopes to make this a self-service tool, allowing franchisees to access Dine’s technician data to solve some of their own problems.

Investments in AI to improve back office functions, demand forecasting, and predicting the appropriate staffing level for any given day are all efforts that can bolster the bottom line. That’s especially critical in the restaurant industry, which operates on notoriously thin margins.

For customer-facing applications of AI, many restaurant chains have prioritized AI-enabled recommendation tools that are flourishing online. Chains like Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s have all deployed or tested AI-enabled drive-thru technologies to varying degrees of success.

There is also a fine line that casual-dining chains like Dine must balance when adding technology—a playbook that differs from fast-food operators like McDonald’s and Burger King. At those chains, guests often prioritize the speed of service, which has fueled the popularity of ordering kiosks in recent years. But at Applebee’s or IHOP, diners crave a more personal connection.

“There’s still that human touch and that human interaction that cannot be replaced with technology,” says Skelton. “But it can be enhanced, without a question, and we’ve got to figure out how to get that right.”

John Kell

Send thoughts or suggestions to CIO Intelligence here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Courtesy of Dine Brands

Justin Skelton is chief information officer for restaurant operator Dine Brands.

How Binance’s Yi He became ‘the most powerful woman in crypto’—and steered the company past its biggest ordeal

13 August 2025 at 16:00

When Yi He was a girl in the 1980s, she walked to the well for water and relied on kerosene lamps at times to light the house. Things are different now. Today, Yi He is a celebrity to millions of Chinese and a multibillionaire thanks to her reported 10% stake in the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, where she wields enormous influence as a cofounder and senior executive. Still, life has not been easy.

Binance’s other cofounder, the flamboyant Changpeng Zhao, went to prison last year in the United States as part of a $4 billion plea deal. The situation created a huge business challenge for Binance and for Yi He, a painful personal one since Zhao was not only the company’s CEO but is the father of her young children.

Today, Binance appears to have weathered the ordeal. Zhao has served his sentence, and Binance, despite incurring the sort of blow that would have crippled most companies, is still on top as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. Yi He has been instrumental in achieving this, and after years of wielding power behind the scenes, is taking on a more public role running Binance.

In a rare interview, Yi He told Fortune about her journey from poor village girl to crypto billionaire, the tests she faced during Binance’s year of crisis, and her vision for an industry that is fast transforming global finance.

The common touch

In the course of her life and career, Yi He has overcome many obstacles—one of which has been learning English, which she only took up four years ago in her mid-thirties. During a long Zoom interview, He acquits herself well, only falling back on her translator when she struggles to explain a Chinese idiom or proverb.

The power of communication is something Yi He knows well. At Binance, she is renowned for her marketing and customer service skills, which helped vault the exchange to the biggest in the world in less than a year. To this day, she prides herself on listening to Binance clients on Telegram, X, WeChat, and any other platform where they might be found, and insists everyone else do the same. She has famously required that everyone who comes to work at Binance spend a few weeks on the front lines of customer service.

Yi He describes a recent encounter with a university student who had sent $500 worth of crypto to the wrong wallet, a common mistake and one that typically means the funds are gone for good. Yi He, though, took the time to track down and recover the misdirected funds, recalling how the student had told her, “It’s a small figure for you but everything to me.”

Yi He says she can empathize with such stories given her own experience growing up poor in Sichuan province, where she lost her father at age 9 and, when she was 16, spent long hours working to promote soft drinks outside a supermarket. Though she ultimately made her way to university—He pauses to recall the delights of being in a library for the first time—and a career as a TV host, she says her humble beginnings mean she can still relate to Binance’s many customers of modest means.

Yi He’s tale has echoes of Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny From the Block,” a song about a beautiful woman who keeps the common touch even after she is rich and famous—the sort of story Americans lap up.

But that’s not how it plays in China, says Eowyn Chen, CEO of crypto firm Trust Wallet, who formerly worked for Yi He at Binance. According to Chen, Chinese people are less inclined to root for the underdog, and are more likely instead to hurl insults at those who have risen above their station. Chen says Yi He is the regular target of articles and social media barbs that seek to demean and ridicule her, but that her response is to turn negative rhetoric against those lobbing it.

“She tells people, ‘Sure, I came from a crappy background and made good, so why don’t you do the same?’” says Chen.

Yi He, whom Bloomberg dubbed “the most powerful woman in crypto,” has climbed to the top of the blockchain world using this mix of smarts, hustle, and cockiness—qualities she shares with her cofounder and romantic partner.

Building Binance

When Changpeng Zhao launched Binance in 2017, he had already built an outsize public persona as CZ, by which he is universally known today. Zhao built up the CZ mythology by taking outsize risks—like selling his Shanghai apartment in 2014 to buy more Bitcoin—and by enthusiastically joining in the daily shitposting for the very online community known as Crypto Twitter.

Zhao asked Yi He to join Binance in its early days but only after she had first recruited him years earlier, when she persuaded him to join her as chief technology officer at the exchange OKCoin (now OKX) in 2014. The pair shared an enthusiasm for crypto but other qualities as well. Zhao, like Yi He, spent his early years in an unheated, rural schoolhouse until his father immigrated to Canada where, in high school, Zhao worked minimum wage jobs at Chevron and McDonald’s. Zhao is also inclined to clap back at those who mock his background, even retweeting memes of himself in a Golden Arches uniform.

It was during their time at OKCoin that the pair became a couple as they gained experience operating a massive crypto business. Today, the pair, who never married but remain romantically involved, work closely as parents and business partners. Yi He is co-owner with Zhao of Binance’s venture capital arm turned family office, YZi Labs, and owns at least 10% of shares in the parent company, according to the Wall Street Journal.

On the nature of her relationship with Zhao, Yi He asked not to be quoted on the record and instead provided a written statement: “My personal life is independent from my professional life. My achievements and capabilities as cofounder are often overlooked with my personal life in question,” she wrote, while touting a Binance user base of 280 million customers.

Whatever the personal dimensions of the relationship, the professional side of it has proved highly effective, with Yi He roughly serving as the Binance equivalent of Sheryl Sandberg, the executive who helped build Facebook in its early days while helping to ground the then-unpolished CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

In practice, this has meant Zhao occupying the role of Binance’s larger-than-life frontman and product visionary, with Yi He fanning massive growth through aggressive promotions, including car giveaways. Her approach found favor with the Chinese community abroad and also in China, where crypto is technically banned but still hugely popular, in part because it is an easily transferable asset beyond the reach of government capital controls.

A Binance employee who asked not to be named so as to discuss the firm’s executives described Yi He as an exacting boss, but one who supports employees and advocates for those around her. In discussing Binance’s day-to-day operations, Yi He said a core tenet at the company is “founder culture,” a phrase from the tech world that describes firms that retain the original drive of their early startup days.

In the case of Binance, those early days were defined in part by a willingness to play fast and loose with regulation, and to hopscotch from country to country in response to government scrutiny. While that strategy helped fuel Binance’s incredible growth, it has at times also been the company’s biggest weakness—one that caused it to lose its most prominent founder.

Binance after CZ

By early 2023, the walls were closing in. Following the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange the previous year, the Biden administration redoubled its efforts to bring the crypto sector to heel—with a particular focus on the sector’s biggest player, Binance. The company’s lawyers had been in discussions with the Justice Department about various allegations for years, but finally the time had come to make a deal.

In September of 2023, the agency announced a sweeping settlement that would not only see Binance pay a whopping $4.3 billion fine—the largest of its kind in corporate history—but also force Zhao to step down as CEO and plead guilty to charges of failing to implement adequate anti-money-laundering measures. Both the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, meanwhile, cited multiple unnamed sources to claim the agency sought to force Yi He to leave the company as well. (“Binance’s plea agreements with the U.S. regulators are a matter of public record,” said a company spokesperson.)

Despite this massive blow to both its treasury and leadership, Binance two years later remains the biggest crypto exchange by far under Zhao’s successor, Richard Teng. A former top regulator from Singapore, Teng has helped the company implement a raft of compliance measures and project a new image that suggests it has evolved beyond the fast-and-loose tactics of its early days. In January, Binance also took a major step—for the first time introducing a formal board structure, featuring seven members including Teng and three independent directors.

Despite all this, a former employee at the company told Fortune that the power at Binance very much resides where it always has—with Zhao, Yi He, and two other early Binance executives, Lilai “Roger” Wang and Wei “Sonny” Zhou. The person, who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly, added that Yi He has a final say in all personnel matters and exerts the greatest authority when it comes to customer experience decisions. The Binance spokesperson, meanwhile, said the claim is not accurate and that the company’s culture encourages employees to exercise a high degree of autonomy.

The founder of a venture capital firm, meanwhile, described Binance as a company run with an “iron fist” that, despite dealing with new legal constraints and the challenge of running a sprawling global operation, is in no danger of losing its place as market leader. This assessment appears to be supported by recent data, supplied by CoinGecko, that shows Binance holding on to the lion’s share of trading activity—39% of volume on centralized exchanges in June—despite the emergence of new competitors:

CoinGecko

For Yi He, Binance’s ongoing dominance comes as a validation of her customer-first strategy, and of the company founder’s personal devotion to crypto—a technology she views as transformational, to the same degree that the arrival of the internet changed traditional media and TV.

Yi He predicts that crypto will accelerate its push into the conventional financial system through stablecoins and other blockchain technologies and that, in five to 10 years, both realms will be fully integrated with each other.

On a personal level, Yi He says the mass adoption of crypto feels like yet another massive technological change she has experienced since the days of her girlhood not so long ago, when her house didn’t have electricity or running water.

As for the trials she’s experienced along the way, she cites a Mongolian proverb: “Since you have spoken well, do not speak of pain. If you speak of the good, do not mention the pain.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Binance

AMD CEO won’t offer $100 million salaries to poach talent like Mark Zuckerberg—she says it’s more important staff don’t feel like a ‘cog in the wheel’

13 August 2025 at 15:44
  • Lisa Su, the CEO of $284 billion semiconductor giant AMD, won’t be matching Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million compensation package in the great AI talent war. The tech leader reasons that money isn’t the most important thing in attracting great workers—ensuring they’re “not just a cog in the wheel” is far more alluring in her eyes. Her philosophy echoes that of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who also refused to counter the eye-popping pay, reasoning it would be unfair and money can’t buy loyalty. 

AI is set to become a $4.8 trillion industry by 2033—so the competition to snag the best talent is heating up, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempting to poach rival staffers with $100 million pay packages. But some tech execs leading billion-dollar businesses are pushing back on wooing employees with golden handcuffs

“I think competition for talent is fierce. I am a believer, though, that money is important, but frankly, it’s not necessarily the most important thing when you’re attracting talent,” Lisa Su, CEO of $284 billion semiconductor giant AMD, recently told Wired. “I think it’s important to be in the zip code [of those numbers], but then it’s super-important to have people who really believe in the mission of what you’re trying to do.”

Instead, she wants future hires at AMD to be wooed by the thought of being part of the company’s meteoric rise and making an impact on the future of technology.

“From a recruitment standpoint, it’s always like, ‘Do you want to be part of our mission?’ Because the ride is really what we’re trying to attract people to. It’s the ride of, ‘Look, if you want to come do important technology, make an impact, you’re not just a cog in the wheel, but you’re actually someone who’s going to drive the future of our road map, then you want to be at AMD.’”

Plus, it’s not like AMD staffers are underpaid: “I think people have done relatively well here, because the stock’s done OK,” Su added.

At the end of the day, the 55-year-old CEO says dishing out $100 million salaries to new staff would be unfair to existing workers on lower pay packages, still putting in hard work. 

“It’s not really about one person in our world,” Su reasoned. “I mean, it’s really about great people, don’t get me wrong—we have some incredible people.”

Fortune reached out to AMD for comment.

Zuckerberg’s $100 million pay package is ‘trying to buy something that cannot be bought’

Su isn’t the only Silicon Valley chief executive refusing to match Zuckerberg’s eye-popping pay packages. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also isn’t willing to shell out $100 million in poaching retaliation. And the two leaders agree on one thing: their companies care about fostering innovation above all else—and that drive can’t be bought with nine-figure salaries. 

“I think that what they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought, and that is alignment with the mission. I think there are selection effects here,” Amodei recently revealed on the Big Technology Podcast. “Are they getting the people who are most enthusiastic, who are most mission aligned, who are most excited?”

Meta CEO has managed to poach at least seven staffers from rival AI companies, including OpenAI with its $100 million offer. But Anthropic’s leader is adamant that most of his employees are actually turning it down, and “wouldn’t even talk” to Zuckerberg. 

Echoing AMD’s CEO that it would be unfair to pay or treat staffers differently in the AI talent war, Amodei thinks it could stifle innovation. In fact, he believes fighting fire with fire by offering the same sky-high compensation would actually “destroy” company culture.

“We are not willing to compromise our compensation principles, our principles of fairness, to respond individually to these offers,” Amodei said. “The way things work at Anthropic is there’s a series of levels. One candidate comes in, they get assigned a level, and we don’t negotiate that level, because we think it’s unfair. We want to have a systematic way.”

The Anthropic leader said Meta, and by extension Zuckerberg, are trying to buy employees who will be devoted to driving their AI models to new heights. But he may be hard pressed to find such loyalty; Anthropic has a 80% retention rate for employees hired over the last two years, while Meta is trailing behind at 64%.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Tom Williams / Contributor / Getty Images

Lisa Su, the CEO of $284 billion semiconductor titan AMD, is in agreement with Anthropic leader Dario Amodei that nine-figure pay packages can’t buy innovation or loyalty.

Hand soap recalled due to potentially life-threatening bacteria

13 August 2025 at 15:16
  • DermaRite Industries has recalled several soaps and antiseptic cleaners. The soaps could be infected with a bacteria that could lead to sepsis for immunocompromised people. Consumers are being encouraged to stop using the affected items immediately.

Washing your hands is the best way to kill germs—most of the time. But a New Jersey manufacturer of hand soap has issued an urgent recall after discovering four of its products could include Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc), a bacterial group that can cause chronic lung infections and be potentially deadly to people who are immunocompromised. For those patients, the infection could spread into blood stream leading to life-threatening sepsis.

DermaRite Industries, the company behind the recall, says it has not yet received any reports of illnesses or worse. Consumers in possession of the recalled items can email [email protected]. They’re advised to stop using them immediately.

Several soaps, external-pain management products, antimicrobial foam soaps and antiseptic cleansers were included in the recall. If you’re a DermaRite user, you’ll need to check your product’s brand names and lot numbers to identify whether they’re included.

Here’s a look at the recalled products:

DermaKleen (antiseptic lotion soap with vitamin E)

Packaging: 800ml, 12/case; 1000ml, 10/case

Reorder #0090BB and #0092BB

Expires between July 2025 and February 2027

Variety of lot numbers

DermaSarra (external analgesic cream)

Packaging: 7.5oz tube, 24/ case

Reorder #00188

Expires February 2026

Lot number 40187.2

KleenFoam (antimicrobial foam soap)

Packaging: 1000ml, 6/case

Reorder #0093F

Expires between August 2025 and January 2027

Variety of lot numbers

PeriGiene (antiseptic perineal cleanser)

Packaging: 7.5oz bottle, 48/ case

Reorder #00198

Expires between November 2025 and January 2027

Variety of lot numbers

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Visual Vic—Getty Images

Match Group agrees to pay $14 million to the FTC for misleading ads

13 August 2025 at 14:37
  • Match Group has agreed to pay $14 million to the FTC. The payment will settle charges of deceptive advertising practices. Match will change some business practices as part of the settlement. The company recently laid off 13% of its staff.

Match Group, the parent company of Match.com, Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and PlentyOfFish, has agreed to pay $14 million to settle a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about deceptive advertising practices.

The FTC sued the dating-site company in 2019, accusing it of using misleading ads to drive subscriptions, which were then difficult for people to cancel. Customers who tried to dispute billing charges also complained about being locked out of their accounts.

Match, the FTC alleged, had told customers they could get a free six-month subscription if they didn’t “meet someone special,” but failed to disclose the customers would need to meet numerous requirements before that guarantee would be honored. As part of the agreement, Match has agreed to clearly disclose those terms moving forward.

In addition, the company will make it easier to cancel subscriptions and refrain from retaliating against customers who file disputes.

“Match Group admits no liability as part of this resolution and was fully prepared to take the case to trial, but opted to resolve the case to put the matter behind it,” the company said in a statement. “The FTC’s outdated claims are entirely moot, as the alleged practices at issue ended years ago or are based on mischaracterizations that do not reflect our business today.”

The settlement is just the latest in a string of bad news for Match. In May, it announced plans to lay off 13% of its workforce, cutting approximately 325 jobs. In addition, an investigation earlier this year claimed that it had failed to act on reports of sexual assault.

Match Group has seen its stock price tumble nearly 70% over the past five years (though it is 13% higher year to date in 2025). Bank of America analysts said in a Feb. 5 note that Spencer Rascoff’s appointment as CEO could be a positive for the company, but noted “the online dating industry faces continued headwinds to user growth.”

Rascoff, in March, posted an open letter on LinkedIn, where he said the company’s dating apps were falling short and don’t feel like places “to build real connections.” He has called on Match employees to offer feedback on how to best improve the services.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Patrick T. Fallon / Bloomberg—Getty Images

Spencer Rascoff speaks during the Montgomery Summit in Santa Monica, California, U.S., on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.
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