WASHINGTON — Rep. Tim Moore (R-N.C.) appears to have missed a required disclosure deadline under a federal transparency law, failing to properly disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of personal stock purchases he made immediately before or after President Donald Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariff declaration, according to congressional financial records reviewed by Fortune.
Moore also appears to have profited from his flurry of purchases after he quickly sold his stock shares off as financial markets swung wildly during April.
Moore did not publicly disclose a dozen stock trades—involving American Airlines Group Inc., Ford Motor Company and Harley-Davidson Inc.—that he made throughout early- and mid-April until Friday, which is well after a federal deadline for doing so. The federal Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, a law designed to defend against conflicts of interest and insider trading, requires federal lawmakers to disclose any personal stock trade within 45 days of the trade’s execution.
Moore’s congressional office acknowledged a phone call and email from Fortune seeking comment but did not immediately respond to questions.
Moore—a freshman lawmaker who serves as vice chairman of the U.S. House’s Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations—disclosed making six separate purchases of American Airlines Group stock from April 1 through April 22, together worth between $90,000 and $300,000, congressional financial records indicate. (Lawmakers are only legally required to disclose the values of their personal stock trades in broad ranges.)
Then, on May 2, Moore sold American Airlines shares worth between $250,000 and $500,000 while indicating in a congressional financial document that he earned an undisclosed amount of capital gains from the transaction. American Airlines Group stock price trended upward during the time Moore bought and sold his shares.
Similarly, Moore disclosed making four purchases of Ford Motor Company stock from April 7 to April 10 together worth between $95,000 and $250,000.
He then sold shares of Ford stock valued at between $100,000 and $250,000 on April 15, again indicating in a federal document that he earned an unspecified amount of capital gains. Ford shares increased in value in the days between Moore’s purchases and sale.
On April 4, Moore purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 in Harley-Davidson stock. He bought more shares, also valued between $15,000 and $50,000, on May 1.
On May 14, he disclosed selling between $50,000 and $100,000 in Harley-Davidson stock, again noting he earned capital gains from the sale.
In his capacity as vice chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Moore’s congressional office said he would “help lead critical efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in financial regulations and federal spending.”
Although Moore, like all members of Congress, may legally buy and sell stock, “the timing of Congressman Moore’s stock trades certainly looks and smells bad,” said Aaron Scherb, senior director of legislative affairs for Common Cause, a nonprofit government watchdog group.
During his run for Congress last year, the Raleigh News & Observerreported that a personal financial disclosure filed by Moore—an attorney by trade—failed to disclose full information about legal clients or provide mandatory reasons for withholding the information.
As for Moore’s seemingly tardy stock-trade disclosures from April, first-time offenders are subject to a $200 late-filing fine administered by the House Committee on Ethics. The committee generally waives this fine for any trades that are less than a month past the federal deadline.
Repeat or willful STOCK Act disclosure offenders can face steeper penalties or even a criminal investigation, although such actions are rare.
“Even though Congressman Moore appears to have missed the deadline for reporting these stock trades, the penalties are just a slap on the wrist, which leads to many members just ignoring the law,” Scherb said.
Indeed, dozens of members of Congress have violated the STOCK Act’s disclosure provisions this decade, accordingtovariousmediareports.
These trades come at a moment when a bipartisan group of lawmakers—from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on the far left to Sen. Josh Hawley (D-Mo.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) on the far right—have sponsored several similar bills that each aim to ban or otherwise limit members of Congress from buying or selling individual stocks.
They argue the current STOCK Act has proven inadequate and must be strengthened in order to strengthen the public’s trust in Congress.
Both Republican and Democratic Party leaders—including President Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)—have each signaled support, in principle, for a congressional stock-trade ban.
Beyond that, at least three members of Congress—Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), Dave Min (D-Calif.) and George Whitesides (D-Calif.)—have already voluntarily sworn off stock trading this year in order to avoid conflicts of interest, be them actual or perceived.
Trump, as president, is exempt from most of the STOCK Act’s requirements, although members of his Cabinet and broader administration, including Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, are facing scrutiny for their personal stock trades made while in office, Fortune reported last week.
(Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. keeps writing bigger checks in pursuit of its artificial intelligence strategy, and traders keep cheering it on, encouraged that the expensive bets will keep paying off.
The stock is back near record territory after soaring about 45% from its April low. Last week, Meta finalized a $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, whose leader is joining a team being assembled by Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg to pursue artificial general intelligence. That came just after Meta raised its capital spending forecast for 2025 to as much as $72 billion.
“The amount of spending might give some pause, but we’re confident Meta can use AI to drive revenue and accelerate growth,” said Jake Seltz, who manages the Allspring LT Large Growth ETF. “This shows Meta is committed to making the investments it needs to maintain its leadership, and while the stock has had a nice run, we’re still bullish on the long-term opportunity.”
Shares rose 2.6% on Monday. Earlier, the company said it would begin showing ads inside of its WhatsApp messaging service.
Meta’s rally has coincided with a resurgence in trader appetites for AI-related stocks, after the earnings season alleviated fears that Big Tech companies might rein in spending on expensive computing gear. The rebound marks a shift from earlier in the year, when stocks such as Nvidia Corp. tumbled on concerns about AI models developed on the cheap in China.
An exchange traded fund that tracks AI stocks including Amazon.com Inc. is up 32% from a low on April 8, the day before US President Donald Trump paused tariffs on trading partners, sparking a broad relief rally in stocks. Over that period, the Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF has outperformed the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which have gained about 20% and 27%, respectively, as of their last close.
Allen Bond, portfolio manager at Jensen Investment Management, bought Meta shares for the first time in recent weeks, in part because of the company’s aggressive spending on AI. He also cited improved operational efficiencies and the shift away from the so-called metaverse, which prompted the company to change its name from Facebook in 2021.
“Using AI to optimize the data it has on users for revenue is a clear application, one that allows Meta to play offense while Alphabet is playing defense,” Bond said, referring to concerns that the Google parent could lose market share in the lucrative search business to AI services like ChatGPT. “While AI is expensive, there is good evidence that it is really paying off so far.”
Meta’s return on invested capital hit a record high of 31% in the first quarter, more than double the levels from 2023 when the company’s metaverse ambitions were driving higher spending.
Meta uses AI to improve ad targeting and increase engagement across its apps, which also include Instagram and WhatsApp. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Meta is looking to fully automate ad creation, using AI technologies.
Dan Salmon, an analyst at New Street Research, estimated that generative AI creative tools could boost Meta’s annual ad revenue growth by 1% to 2% over the next several years, and as much as 4% by the end of the decade.
Still, long-term tailwinds from AI are widely expected, raising the question of how much further the stock can rally in the near term. Shares trade at 25 times estimated earnings, cheaper than other megacaps, but still above its own average over the past decade of about 22 times.
While Wall Street is broadly optimistic — nearly 90% of the analysts tracked by Bloomberg recommend buying — Meta shares are just shy of the average price target, suggesting limited expectations for additional gains.
“It is still in the buy range, since you’re getting pretty strong growth for a pretty reasonable price,” said Greg Halter, director of research at the Carnegie Investment Counsel. “Still, rallies like this don’t continue forever, and it certainly isn’t the screaming buy it was not too long ago.”
Standard Chartered Plc said it would maintain a flexible attitude toward its employees’ working arrangements, bucking a trend among some of its Wall Street rivals that are ordering workers to return to office five days a week.
After a recent assessment, the London-listed lender concluded that keeping the “current approach, with strong guardrails, remains right for us,” Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters said in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News.
“There are many reasons to join and stay at Standard Chartered,” Winters wrote to the bank’s 81,000-strong workforce. “This element of our increasingly differentiated employee value proposition is undoubtedly one of them.”
The current hybrid work policy at the lender has remained largely unchanged since the pandemic led businesses around the world to embrace work from home. However, in recent years — after the end of the global health crisis — competitors including JPMorgan Chase & Co. have told their employees to return to the office five days a week. HSBC Holdings Plc recently told its UK retail banking staff to expect smaller bonuses if they failed to show up in office frequently enough.
Calling such mandates as “prescriptive policies,” Winters however added that while technology has enabled collaboration effectively from anywhere, it still cannot fully replace the unique benefits of face-to-face interactions.
Winters cautioned that for the current hybrid policy to be maintained would require “real commitment” from the company’s staff and that workers who failed to come to the office for extended periods of time could face action from their managers.
“The underlying principle is clear; flexible working and in-person collaboration are complementary, not mutually exclusive,” Winters wrote.
India’s deadliest plane crash in more than decade is set to send shock waves through the aviation insurance industry and trigger one of the country’s costliest claims, estimated at around $475 million.
“This aviation insurance claim could be one of the biggest in India’s history,” said Ramaswamy Narayanan, chairman and managing director at General Insurance Corporation of India, one of the firms that has provided coverage for Air India.
The claim for the aircraft hull and engine is estimated at around $125 million, according to Narayanan. He estimates additional liability claims for loss of life for passengers and others will be around $350 million. The sum is more than triple the annual premium for the aviation industry in India in 2023, according to GlobalData.
The financial repercussions of the crash that killed 241 people on board and others as it fell in a densely populated part of Ahmedabad in western India on Thursday will ripple through the global aviation insurance and reinsurance market. It’s also likely to make insurance costlier for airlines in India.
Insurance premiums across the aviation industry are expected to rise in India, either now or at the time of policy renewals, according to people familiar with the matter.
On the Air India insurance payout, totals could climb, since there were foreign nationals killed in the accident, and those claims will be calculated according to the rules in their respective jurisdictions, the people said, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.
A spokesperson for Air India did not immediately reply to request for comment.
Insurers will first settle the hull claim followed by liability claims, according to Narayanan. “It will take some time for liability claims to be settled,” he said.
The impact on the domestic market will be partly mitigated by the fact that both companies only generated about 1% of their total insurance premium from aviation, and ceded most of it to global reinsurers, according to GlobalData’s insurance data.
Broadly, domestic insurers have offloaded more than 95% of their aviation insurance direct written premium, or DWP, to global reinsurers.
Due to this, “the financial burden will predominantly fall on international reinsurers, leading to the hardening of the aviation reinsurance and insurance market,” said Swarup Kumar Sahoor, senior insurance analyst at GlobalData in a release on Monday.
Crude oil prices, maybe surprisingly, dipped modestly on Monday after spiking at the end of last week, even as Iran and Israel continue firing missiles at each other with no easy end in sight.
The U.S. oil benchmark hovered around $71 per barrel on June 16—about where it started the year—but up roughly 9% from a week prior. The current price tag is considered a relatively healthy value—profitable for most oil producers without creating particularly high fuel prices.
So, even though Israel successfully targeted some of Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure over the weekend, oil markets have stayed relatively calm, and Iran, which is not in a position of strength, is reportedly signaling its interest in returning to nuclear negotiations with the U.S.
Why? Here are four takeaways:
Even though Israel bombed oil and gas facilities and fields, notably, none of Iran’s oil-exporting infrastructure was touched.
Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, the Shahran fuel depot, and the Shahr Rey oil refinery, but all of these targets are for domestic fuel and power consumption, and not global exports. That contributed to a run on fuel and potential shortages within Iran, but it has much less impact on global oil markets and Iran’s roughly 1.5 million barrels per day of crude oil exports.
“Everybody is taking a hands-off approach to oil [exporting] infrastructure because it meaningfully complicates and escalates the situation,” said energy forecaster Dan Pickering, founder and chief and investment officer for Pickering Energy Partners consulting and research firm. “Israel doesn’t want to do that, and I don’t think Iran does either.”
On the other hand, Pickering told Fortune. “You’re one stray bomb away from a problem. If you get to a point where people stop acting rationally, things get crazy quickly.”
That’s why the range of outcomes is vast from $55 per barrel oil if things calm down—a low price that hurts the bottom lines of oil producers—up to $120 or so if war escalates and overall OPEC production is impacted, Pickering said.
Iran sits next to the Strait of Hormuz, and the exports through that relatively narrow body of water account for about 20 million barrels daily, or one-fifth of global consumption. Impacting those flows changes everything.
To be clear, oil at or above $120 per barrel is bad for almost everyone because skyrocketing fuel costs would trigger widespread demand destruction around the world.
Israel’s attack on Iran comes two months after Saudi Arabia-led OPEC and its allies surprisingly announced production increases.
The so-called OPEC+ group increased their monthly quotas, essentially aiming to grow production by more than 2 million barrels daily by the end of the year, and undoing years of self-imposed curtailments.
While the decision didn’t necessarily anticipate a conflict in Iran, the OPEC’s move did give President Trump more leverage in the U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran.
“If anything in this situation could be called elegant, it is a relatively elegant set up when dealing with the risk of problems in the Middle East,” Pickering said of OPEC’s moves. “It looks like the return of production pretty closely mirrors Iran’s exports, and so it was probably more geared toward a reduction of exports [through sanctions] as opposed to a conflict.”
Kathleen Brooks, research director the the XTB brokerage house, highlighted how Trump wants to keep oil and fuel prices low, and that the White House could actually have a “calming effect” on markets.
“Instead, we think that U.S. involvement could see the [Israeli] attacks on Iran narrow to nuclear sites, after Israel said that it gathered intelligence that Iran had enough uranium to make nine atomic bombs,” Brooks added.
U.S. fuel prices will rise in the days ahead, but the spikes should prove modest and potentially short-lived if escalations are avoided.
However, the math is changed with any prolonged war.
“With Israel and Iran trading attacks, oil prices have surged to multi-month highs—setting the stage for additional price hikes at gas pumps across the country,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “As long as tensions in the Middle East continue to escalate, the risk of further impacts on oil prices remains high.”
De Haan projects fuel prices could rise by 10 to 20 cents per gallon moving forward. “Motorists should prepare for what will likely be modest price increases—for now—but the situation has the potential to worsen at any moment.”
Thus far, the national average price of gasoline has risen 1.1 cents per gallon in the last week, averaging $3.08 per gallon as of the morning of June 16, according to GasBuddy. However, the national average is down 9.5 cents from a month ago and 32.7 cents lower than a year ago.
As Pickering said, “[Iran] is on the naughty list, but their sanctions haven’t been particularly aggressively applied because the world is so focused on oil prices and the impact on inflation and economies. The developed world has decided that cheap gasoline prices are better than truly punishing bad actors.”
The higher-for-now oil prices are unlikely to trigger any changes in the actions of U.S. oil and gas producers.
U.S. oil drillers were showing restraint and capital discipline—and not the ‘drill, baby, drill’ mentality—last year even when prices were a bit higher than today.
“The volatility is dramatic, OPEC is adding supply, and it’s not a given that Iran is going to reduce supply,” Pickering said. “So, why step up and spend capital speculatively when we could wake up in a month and oil is back to $55?”
So, how should everything in the Middle East be viewed from the energy perspective?
“This is a conflict that could have meaningful impacts, so people should be paying attention,” Pickering concluded. “Right now, it looks like an inconvenience with a potentially temporary price spike. It could become much worse, so pay attention and cross your fingers it doesn’t escalate.”
U.S. stocks rose Monday despite escalating attacks between Israel and Iran. The Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all ended higher after falling Friday. The price of crude oil also fell almost 2% after a report claimed Iran is looking to negotiate with Israel to end the conflict.
Despite several confrontations between Israel and Iran over the weekend and on Monday that have left hundreds of civilians dead, investors in the U.S. seemed to shrug off the escalating tensions in the Middle East as stocks rebounded to start the week.
In fact, after falling Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 0.75% higher Monday, while the S&P 500 increased 0.94%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.52%.
Jeff Buchbinder, chief equity strategist for LPL Financial, says the U.S. market is holding up well due to a confluence of factors, including that both Iran and Israel have an “interest in keeping the conflict contained.”
“There are several key questions to answer before we know how stocks will handle this geopolitical shock, including how much of Iran’s energy infrastructure will be impaired and for how long, whether Iran’s nuclear capabilities will be completely wiped out, and whether the current regime will remain in power,” says Buchbinder.
Though U.S. crude oil surged Friday following Israel’s initial attack, it fell almost 2% Monday, after The Wall Street Journalreported that Iran wants to negotiate an end to the conflict with Israel. That said, the two countries continued to attack each others’ energy facilities Monday, and Israel struck the headquarters of Iran’s state television live on air.
The conflict in the Middle East is adding yet another layer of uncertainty to the economy, in a time when President Donald Trump’s tariff policies are causing concern, as are the White House’s immigration policies and the GOP tax bill.
Investors will also be watching the Federal Reserve meeting this week. Though officials have signaled a hold on interest rates is likely, all eyes will on on Chair Jerome Powell for information on when the central bank could move.
Sleep is commonly elusive. Whether you’re one of the roughly 18% of Americans who struggles with insomnia or often wake up tired from poor-quality sleep, you may be familiar with common recommendations to improve sleep: Limit screen time before bed, keep your room cold and dark, and create a wind-down routine. While those tips can be helpful, it turns out what you do during the day—specifically what you eat, and not just before bed—could play a pivotal role in boosting your sleep quality.
A small new study led by researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine and Columbia University found that eating more fruits and vegetables during the day was associated with better sleep at night.
“Dietary modifications could be a new, natural and cost-effective approach to achieve better sleep,” said co-senior author Esra Tasali, MD, director of the UChicago Sleep Center in a UChicago write-up on the study.
While research already shows that sleep can impact what you eat, with poor sleep causing people to reach for unhealthier foods higher in fat and sugar, the relationship appears to go both ways. Previous research has associated high fruit and vegetable intakes with better overall sleep quality—but this new study is the first to establish a connection between daytime dietary choices and sleep quality that same night.
The study looked at self-reported food consumption and sleep data from a wrist monitor of 34 healthy U.S. adults ages 21 to 35 who regularly sleep seven to nine hours a night. They were specifically looking at “sleep fragmentation,” which refers to how often someone wakes up or shifts from deep to light sleep throughout the night.
Researchers found that increasing dietary intake of fruits and vegetables from zero to five cups per day—the Centers for Disease Control’s recommendation—was associated with 16% better sleep quality, with participants experiencing deeper, less interrupted sleep that same night. A similar association was found for eating more complex carbohydrates like whole grains as well. Those who ate higher intakes of red and processed meat, however, had more disrupted sleep.
“People are always asking me if there are things they can eat that will help them sleep better,” co-author Marie-Pierre St-Onge, PhD, director of the Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research at Columbia, told UChicago. “Small changes can impact sleep. That is empowering—better rest is within your control.”
How to increase your fruit and vegetable intake
The CDC estimates that only 12% of U.S. adults meet the recommended 1.5 to 2 cups of fruits per day, and only 10% are hitting the recommended 2 to 3 cups of vegetables per day. But it can be tricky to visualize what exactly that might look like if you’re not measuring out a cup of berries.
The Department of Agriculture says the following are all equivalent to one cup (so double it for fruits and double or triple it for vegetables):
1 large banana
½ cup of dried fruit
32 red seedless grapes
1 cup of 100% juice
12 baby carrots
1 large sweet potato
2 cups of raw spinach
1 cup of cooked black beans
If you’re struggling to up your fruit, veggie, and complex carbohydrate intake, here are tips nutrition experts shared with Fortune:
Swap out animal proteins for plant-based ones, such as chickpeas, lentils, or beans, in meals like curries or stews.
Put more beans and corn into your favorite chili.
Fill half your plate with vegetables, or try to add one extra serving of vegetables to every meal.
Swap whole grains for refined carbohydrates, like bulgur or barley in place of white rice, or whole grain bread for white bread, for example.
As peak trade season approaches, import volumes at the Port of Los Angeles fell 19% in May compared to April and 9% from a year ago as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The Port of LA’s executive director warns fewer shipments may mean higher prices on fewer available goods, starting for back-to-school shopping and impacting even winter holiday products.
Steep tariffs have continued to slash the volume of U.S. imports, and consumers have yet to see the brunt of their impacts, according to new data from the Port of Los Angeles and Yale Budget Lab.
Import volumes through the Port of Los Angeles, the country’s latest trade center, fell 19% in May compared to the month before and 9% from a year ago as a result of President Donald Trump’s trade policy.
Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka told reporters on Friday the higher prices as a result of tariffs will likely mean fewer, and more expensive, goods for consumers toward the end of the year.
“Buying products out of China right now still costs one-and-a-half times more than it did earlier this year, making products of all types extremely expensive and creating a decision platform for companies that not necessarily is going to be in our best interest as consumers will likely see lower inventories, fewer selections on store shelves, and higher prices in some cases,” he said.
Last month’s import declines came despite Trump backing off some of his highest tariff rates.
In April, many of the goods leaving China for the U.S. were taxed at 145% before a May trade deal lowered tariffs by 115%. But economists have said that even returning the levies to pre-“Liberation Day” levels is still high enough to wipe out trade between the U.S. and China.
The summer marks the beginning of peak trade season, a bustle of shipment activity in preparation for major shopping events later in the year. But as back-to-school and Halloween shipment periods come and go, Seroka said the port has been “very slow,” and warned of fewer goods and higher prices for not just the fall, but the winter as well.
“That cargo for those micro seasons needs to be here on the ground right now,” he said. “I don’t necessarily see that in inventory levels.”
He added: “Retailers are not telling me that they’re boosting inventory levels to have wide selections on products beginning that Thanksgiving week and running to the end of the year.”
Emptier shelves, higher prices
Beyond consumers facing emptier shelves in stores, they will feel the impact of tariffs on their wallets. Prices on items like shoes have jumped 31% in the short term as a result of 2025 tariffs, according to June data from the Yale Budget Lab. Apparel prices more broadly have increased 28% for consumers in the short-run.
For consumers, more expensive goods means an average 1.5% increase in price levels that cost a household on average $2,500 in disposable income, per the data. While most consumers will see steeper prices, lower-income shoppers will be feeling the biggest stretch: Consumers at the bottom end of the income scale will see a 2.5% increase in price levels.
Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale, argued the uncertainty surrounding tariffs, not just higher prices, has contributed to a consumer pullback.
“Consumers and businesses who don’t know what tariff policy will be at the end of this press conference—let alone a week, a month, an hour from now—[are] sitting on their hands and not making all of the long-run purchasing investment and hiring decisions that they would otherwise make if they had certainty about what policy would be,” he told reporters.
As shoppers raced to get ahead of tariffs, consumer spending rose in March, and first-quarter spending on durable goods increased 2.3% from the prior year to $2.2 trillion.
“It’s very clear that the main thing driving that shift in durables was anticipation of tariffs,” Tedeschi said. In April, when tariffs increased, spending slowed.
If tariffs level off, he warned price increases will likely stick around as a result of businesses adapting to and making substitutions in their supply chains. Yale Budget Lab calculated a 15% increase in apparel prices and 10% increase in textile prices in the long run, for example.
“Even after the economy, consumers, and businesses have a chance to react,” Tedeschi said, “that is not going to be able to mitigate all of the price increase.”
But now come findings that could challenge that—specifically, the connection to early mortality, which had come out of a body of research including a 2015 meta-analysis and another from 2018.
The new international study, led by researchers at the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences and published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, has found that loneliness, while common among older adults receiving home care, is not associated with an increased risk of death.
“Our findings suggest that loneliness may not independently increase the risk of death after controlling for other health risk factors among older adults in home care,” said lead author Bonaventure Egbujie, a professor in Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences, in a news release. “This contradicts much of the existing literature based on the general population.”
For the latest study, researchers analyzed data from more than 380,000 home care recipients aged 65 and older in Canada, Finland, and New Zealand. “Home care recipients are a particularly important population to consider because they may be especially vulnerable to adverse effects of loneliness,” the study authors write. “Mobility problems, sensory impairments, and complex health needs may limit their engagement in the community, leaving them relatively isolated in their homes.”
But what researchers found was that lonely individuals actually had a lower risk of dying within one year compared to their non-lonely counterparts (after adjusting for health conditions, age, and other risk factors).
Still, said senior study author John Hirdes, a professor in Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a serious health concern.
“Loneliness is a serious threat to psychological well-being,” Hirdes said in the news release. “The mental health consequences of loneliness make it an important priority for public health, even if loneliness doesn’t kill you.”
In the new research, loneliness prevalence—meaning the number of people per 100 who reported feeling lonely—ranged from 15.9% of home care recipients in Canada to 24.4% in New Zealand. “Interestingly,” notes the news release, “people in better physical shape and who got less help from family or friends were likelier to feel lonely, suggesting a complex link between health status, caregiving needs, and social connection.”
The authors call for more longer-term studies and for policymakers and health-care providers to treat loneliness as a quality-of-life issue, not only focusing on its potential link to mortality.
“Home and community care services,” said Hirdes, “must play a protective role by supporting social contact for isolated people.”
As the first large-scale military parade in decades made its way down the streets of Washington, DC on Saturday, organizers gave thanks to the country’s men and women in uniform—and also to various corporate sponsors, including the giant crypto exchange Coinbase. Not everyone was comfortable with the spectacle of the crypto industry—which was founded in opposition to government power—being so closely aligned with a display of force by the U.S.
Coinbase was one of a slew of corporations that sponsored the parade, according to a statement from America250, the official body organizing the events to honor the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Other corporate sponsors included data firm Palantir, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, and household names like Walmart, Coca-Cola and Chrysler.
Kara Calvert, Coinbase’s vice president of U.S. policy, represented the company at the parade.
“It was an absolute personal honor to attend the 250th celebration of the @USArmy with my son and mom,” Calvert said in a post on X. “I was also honored to represent @coinbase at the event, a proud sponsor of @America250.”
While some saw the sponsorship as a way to bring awareness to crypto, others saw it as a major break from the industry’s ethos as a financial system independent from a centralized entity.
“What Coinbase did by sponsoring this army parade feels like an insult to everything our industry stands for,” one user wrote on X. “Crypto emerged from ideals of decentralization, individual sovereignty, and freedom from oppressive state control.”
Adam Cochran, managing partner at blockchain venture capital firm Cinneamhain Ventures, said that as a result of the sponsorship, he would sell his shares in the company and withdraw his crypto assets from the platform, in a post on X.
Cochran pointed out that the sponsorship went against Coinbase’s policy on political causes. “We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission,” the company says on its website.
“Sponsoring a military parade, in a divided country, with already split views of crypto isn’t true to this policy,” Cochran said. “It’s just bad marketing that hurts this industry’s adoption.”
It is unclear how much money Coinbase spent on the sponsorship or if any top-level executives, like CEO Brian Armstrong, were in attendance. A spokesperson for Coinbase declined to comment when contacted by Fortune.
However, some people argued that the military is an apolitical institution and therefore, Coinbase’s sponsorship of the event is not an endorsement of any political party.
“$COIN supporting our military in no way implicates their political affiliation,” one user wrote in response to Cochran’s post. “Military should always be apolitical for the good of the nation.”
Despite the criticism, Coinbase shares are up 5% since the market opened on Monday, growing from $248 to $256.
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Leavenworth, Kansas, occupies a mythic space in American crime, its name alone evoking a short hand for serving hard time. The federal penitentiary housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly — in a building so storied that it inspired the term “the big house.”
Now Kansas’ oldest city could soon be detaining far less famous people, migrants swept up in President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations of those living in the U.S. illegally.
The federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm CoreCivic Corp. to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth as part of a surge of contracts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued without seeking competitive bids.
ICE has cited a “compelling urgency” for thousands more detention beds, and its efforts have sent profit estimates soaring for politically connected private companies, including CoreCivic, based in the Nashville, Tennessee, area and another giant firm, The Geo Group Inc., headquartered in southern Florida.
That push faces resistance. Leavenworth filed a lawsuit against CoreCivic after it tried to reopen without city officials signing off on the deal, quoting a federal judge’s past description of the now-shuttered prison as “a hell hole.” The case in Leavenworth serves as another test of the limits of the Republican president’s unusually aggressive tactics to force migrant removals.
To get more detention beds, the Trump administration has modified dozens of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts. One pays $73 million to a company led by former federal immigration officials for “immigration enforcement support teams” to handle administrative tasks, such as helping coordinate removals, triaging complaints or telling ICE if someone is a risk to community safety.
Just last week , Geo Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detention center in southeastern Georgia so that the company could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants — and earn $66 million in annual revenue.
“Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now,” said CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger during an earnings call last month with shareholders.
A tax-cutting and budget reconciliation measure approved last month by the House includes $45 billion over four years for immigrant detention, a threefold spending increase. The Senate is now considering that legislation.
Declaring an emergency to expedite contracts
When Trump started his second term in January, CoreCivic and Geo had around 20 idle facilities, partly because of sentencing reforms that reduced prison populations. But the Trump administration wants to more than double the existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds and — if private prison executives’ predictions are accurate — possibly to more than 150,000.
Only three of the nine potential facilities were listed in ICE’s document: Leavenworth, a 2,560-bed CoreCivic-owned facility in California City, California, and an 1,800-bed Geo-owned prison in Baldwin, Michigan.
The agreement for the Leavenworth facility hasn’t been released, nor have documents for the other two sites. CoreCivic and Geo Group officials said last month on earnings calls that ICE used what are known as letter contracts, meant to speed things up when time is critical.
Charles Tiefer, a contract expert and professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School, said letter contracts normally are reserved for minor matters, not the big changes he sees ICE making to previous agreements.
“I think that a letter contract is a pathetic way to make big important contracts,” he said.
A Kansas prison town becomes a priority
CoreCivic’s Leavenworth facility quickly became a priority for ICE and the company because of its central location. Leavenworth, with 37,000 residents, is only 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the west of the Kansas City International Airport. The facility would hold men and women and is within ICE’s area of operations for Chicago, 420 miles (676 kilometers) to the northeast.
“That would mean that people targeted in the Chicago area and in Illinois would end up going to this facility down in Kansas,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center.
Prisons have long been an important part of Leavenworth’s economy, employing hundreds of workers to guard prisoners held in two military facilities, the nation’s first federal penitentiary, a Kansas correctional facility and a county jail within 6 miles (10 kilometers) of city hall.
Resistance from Trump country
The Leavenworth area’s politics might have been expected to help CoreCivic. Trump carried its county by more than 20 percentage points in each of his three campaigns for president.
But skeptical city officials argue that CoreCivic needs a special use permit to reopen its facility. CoreCivic disagrees, saying that it doesn’t because it never abandoned the facility and that the permitting process would take too long. Leavenworth sued the company to force it to get one, and a state-court judge issued an order requiring it earlier this month.
An attorney for the city, Joe Hatley, said the legal fight indicates how much ill will CoreCivic generated when it held criminal suspects there for trials in federal court for the U.S. Marshals Service.
In late 2021, CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees in its Leavenworth facility after then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the use of private prisons. In the months before the closure, the American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders detailed stabbings, suicides, a homicide and inmate rights violations in a letter to the White House. CoreCivic responded at the time that the claims were “false and defamatory.”
Vacancies among correctional officers were as high as 23%, according to a Department of Justice report from 2017.
“It was just mayhem,” recalled William Rogers, who worked as a guard at the CoreCivic facility in Leavenworth from 2016 through 2020. He said repeated assaults sent him to the emergency room three times, including once after a blow to the head that required 14 staples.
The critics have included a federal judge
When Leavenworth sued CoreCivic, it opened its lawsuit with a quote from U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson — an appointee of President George W. Bush, a Republican — who said of the prison: “The only way I could describe it frankly, what’s going on at CoreCivic right now is it’s an absolute hell hole.”
The city’s lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as punishment. It said that sheets and towels from the facility clogged up the wastewater system and that CoreCivic impeded the city police force’s ability to investigate sexual assaults and other violent crimes.
The facility had no inmates when CoreCivic gave reporters a tour earlier this year, and it looked scrubbed top to bottom and the smell of disinfectant hung in the air. One unit for inmates had a painting on one wall featuring a covered wagon.
During the tour, when asked about the allegations of past problems, Misty Mackey, a longtime CoreCivic employee who was tapped to serve as warden there, apologized for past employees’ experiences and said the company officials “do our best to make sure that we learn from different situations.”
ICE moves quickly across the U.S.
Besides CoreCivic’s Leavenworth prison, other once-shuttered facilities could come online near major immigrant population centers, from New York to Los Angeles, to help Trump fulfill his deportation plans.
ICE wants to reopen existing facilities because it’s faster than building new ones, said Marcela Hernandez, the organizing director for the Detention Watch Network, which has organized nationwide protests against ICE detention.
Counties often lease out jail space for immigrant detention, but ICE said some jurisdictions have passed ordinances barring that.
ICE has used contract modifications to reopen shuttered lockups like the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall Facility in Newark, New Jersey, and a 2,500-bed facility in Dilley, Texas, offering no explanations why new, competitively bid contracts weren’t sought.
The Newark facility, with its own history of problems, resumed intakes May 1, and disorder broke out at the facility Thursday night. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who previously was arrested there and accused of trespassing, cited reports of a possible uprising, and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed four escapes.
The contract modification for Dilley, which was built to hold families and resumed operations in March, calls its units “neighborhoods” and gives them names like Brown Bear and Blue Butterfly.
The financial details for the Newark and Dilley contract modifications are blacked out in online copies, as they for more than 50 other agreements ICE has signed since Trump took office. ICE didn’t respond to a request for comment.
From idle prisons to a ‘gold rush’
Private prison executives are forecasting hundreds of millions of dollars in new ICE profits. Since Trump’s reelection in November, CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%.
“It’s the gold rush,” Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Florida who studies private prisons. “All of a sudden, demand is spiraling. And when you’re the only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your terms.”
Geo’s former lobbyist Pam Bondi is now the U.S. attorney general. It anticipates that all of its idle prisons will be activated this year, its executive chairman, George Zoley, told shareholders.
CoreCivic, which along with Geo donated millions of dollars to largely GOP candidates at all levels of government and national political groups, is equally optimistic. It began daily talks with the Trump administration immediately after the election in November, said Hininger.
CoreCivic officials said ICE’s letter contracts provide initial funding to begin reopening facilities while the company negotiates a longer-term deal. The Leavenworth deal is worth $4.2 million a month to the company, it disclosed in a court filing.
Tiefer, who served on an independent commission established to study government contracting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said ICE is “placing a very dicey long-term bet” because of its past problems and said ICE is giving CoreCivic “the keys to the treasury” without competition.
But financial analysts on company earnings calls have been delighted. When CoreCivic announced its letter contracts, Joe Gomes, of the financial services firm Noble Capital Markets, responded with, “Great news.”
“Are you hiding any more of them on us?” he asked.
A judge has halted CoreCivic, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, from housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered facility that the private prison operator now calls the Midwest Regional Reception Center, in Leavenworth, Kan., pictured Monday, March 3, 2025, unless it can get a permit from frustrated city officials.
Costco is planning to open a stand-alone gas station. The station will be located in Mission Viejo, Calif. in an area formerly occupied by Bed, Bath & Beyond. The station is expected to open next spring. The gas will only be available to Costco members.
If cheap hot dogs aren’t of interest and you don’t need a pack of paper towels that fills up your car’s trunk, Costco’s latest business venture could be right up your alley.
The retailer will reportedly launch its first stand-alone gas station in Mission Viejo, Calif. – a part of Orange County. The gas station, which will take over the space formerly occupied by a Bed, Bath & Beyond store, will be two miles away from the nearest Costco retailer and it’s going to be a whopper.
With 40 pumps, it will be Costco’s biggest gas station – and, like the ones that are part of Costco stores, the pumps (and discount prices) will only be accessible to Costco members. It’s also located just off of the 5 freeway, one of the nation’s busiest roads.
The station won’t have a convenience store attached, so don’t plan on getting a bit to eat or a drink when you fill up. Construction is expected to begin this fall and the facility should open in the spring of 2026.
Costco does not comment on locations that will be opening more than three months in the future.
Gasoline has been an increasingly valuable commodity for Costco. The retailer reported its two highest gallon sales weeks in the U.S. in April after extending gas station hours and opening new stations earlier this year.
CEO Ron Vachris said the extension of gas station hours in North American “was a great indicator that the throughput for our members improved nicely, and we saw that immediately in gallon increases.”
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban didn’t take a vacation for seven years when he first built the $30 million-a-year tech company MicroSolutions. At the time, he was “broke as f-ck,” recently fired and living with five men in a three-bedroom apartment. But working hard at a young age paid off. Cuban is today worth $5.7 billion—and it’s a work philosophy he now recommends.
Most people in their 20s already have their weekends booked out for bar hopping and hanging with friends, but one CEO lived a very different life in his youth. When billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban launched his first technology company at just 24, trips to Bora Bora weren’t on the table.
“[I] didn’t take a vacation for the next seven years,” Cuban said in an interview with Sports Illustrated’s series “The Playbook” on June 3. “I was broke as f-ck, where else was I going to go?”
Today, Mark Cuban may be sleeping in a $25 million, 24,000-square foot mansion in a wealthy Dallas neighborhood. But in the 1980s when the 66-year-old former Shark Tank investor first launched MicroSolutions, a software business also providing computer consulting services, he had just been fired from his job. At that time Cuban was sharing a “nasty” three-bedroom apartment with five roommates, where he often slept on the floor.
“I was living, six guys in a three-bedroom apartment, which wasn’t great. It was a sh-thole,” Cuban said.
But experiencing rock bottom lit the match to finally invest all his time into building his technology business into a million-dollar success. Without a 9-to-5 to report to or a financial safety blanket to back him up, Cuban made it his mission to work night and day until the venture took off.
“If I took the weekend, the whole thing could fall into the sh-tter,” Cuban explained. During those seven years with no days off, he said MicroSolutions climbed to over $30 million in sales, eventually being sold to H&R Block for $6 million.
Cuban’s advice for young people: ‘Work your ass off’ and learn while you sleep
The entrepreneur worth $5.7 billion has always given advice that young people should have an intense work ethic to propel them to success. And in the new era of AI, Cuban said that teens should even be learning in their sleep.
“If I was 16, 18, 20, 21 starting today, I would spend every waking minute learning about AI,” Cuban said at SXSW earlier this year. “Even if I am sleeping, I am listening to podcasts talking about AI.”
“Those people who put in the time are going to crush it.”
In March, Cuban even rolled out a chatbot with MasterClass on Call so users can ask AI-Cuban questions and for advice on emulating his success. At anytime, day or night, people can field ideas and issues by the tool. When Fortune asked the chatbot questions—like how to make your first million dollars—it echoed the same philosophy Cuban has been espousing for years.
“Work your ass off, learn everything you can, and stay adaptable,” Cuban’s AI chatbot responded. “Success rarely happens overnight, but persistence and smart decisions can get you there.”
The entrepreneur was 24-years old and living with five men in a “nasty” three bedroom apartment, when he put his all into making MicroSolutions a success.
Despite competing for consumers’ eating-out budgets, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol and Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright spend most mornings together in the gym. In between sets, they discuss the latest trends, like AI and the protein craze, while also kindling a friendship—something some business leaders say can be a struggle.
At 5 a.m., before most of their customers have even ordered their first latte or burrito bowl, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol and Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright are already side by side—spotting each other on the weight rack.
Despite running rival fast-casual empires, the two millionaire bosses start most mornings in the gym together, debating trends like AI, protein-packed menus, and getting fresh perspectives on each other’s business ideas, like Chipotle’s guacamole-making robots.
“I was actually in the gym with (Niccol) just this morning, talking about what’s going on at Starbucks, sharing some thoughts around what’s happening at Chipotle,” Boatwright recently revealed at Fortune’sCOO summit. Although the CEOs didn’t reveal their preferred workout routine, Niccol has previously told Fortunethat he alternates between strength training, weight lifting, and a “run-slash-walk.”
Of course, the two gym-going executives weren’t always competing for consumers’ dining budgets: Their relationship first blossomed in 2018 when Niccol was tapped to serve as chief executive of the burrito brand, with Boatwright serving as his right-hand man as chief operating officer.
“Brian and I made a great tag-team because I was effectively running the business,” Boatwright added. “I think I ran a pretty good business, and I know that Brian really managed a great stock.”
Their paths diverged when Niccol was tapped to lead Starbucks’ and Boatwright was promoted to take his place. “Don’t screw it up,” Boatwright recalled the advice shared by his bench press spotter.
And it’s a reminder that even at the very top, having a friend you can turn to for career advice still matters.
Fortune reached out to Niccol and Boatwright for further comment.
Keep your friends close at the top of the corporate ladder
Not many business leaders can say they live in the same neighborhood as Niccol and Boatwright and can network at the treadmill. Executives often face isolation in leadership roles, making close professional connections a practical asset.
No business relationship may be better known than billionaire Warren Buffett’s close connection with Charlie Munger. In fact, the Berkshire Hathaway founder has said that his relationship with Munger was critical to both of their success.
“Every time I’m with Charlie, I’ve got at least some new slant on an idea that causes me to rethink certain things,” Buffett said to CNBC. “We’ve had so much fun in the partnership over the years.”
“I think the vast majority of people, if they reach out to someone, someone will want to help them,” he said on Michelle Obama’s podcast IMO. “They reach out to an old friend, the old friend will want to reach back out to them, and that is the path for reconnection. It’s a path for relationships, and it’s a path for purpose.”
Exercise: CEOs’ key to maintaining health at the top
Beyond having friendships, free time is one of the things many leaders would likely say they wish they had more of. But for leaders like Niccol and Boatwright, carving out time to exercise is essential—not just for health, but as a key driver of their success.
For Airbnb’s Chesky, two workouts are sometimes part of his routine. The former competitive bodybuilder begins each morning around 8:30 a.m. with light cardio—either on the StairMaster or walking his dog through his hilly neighborhood—before starting work, he told Fortune.
Then, around 7:30 p.m., he works out again with a personal trainer. But above all, he said getting sleep is the biggest health practice he prioritizes.
“[A] non-negotiable is I want to try to get at least seven hours of sleep,” he said. “I know there are people that go off four, five, even six hours of sleep, but the extra hour you save by not sleeping probably makes every hour the next day a little less productive.”
Despite being in his 70s, Disney CEO Bob Iger starts his day early—at 4 a.m. He uses the time to get in a workout, something he said helps maintain the energy to run one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.
“Staying in shape and having stamina is critical for me—that’s eating well and exercising,” Iger told the In Good Company podcast last year. “Just taking care of my body and my mind is really important, I could not do this job if I were not in some form of physical and mental health.”
The Trump Organization is licensing the family name to a mobile carrier that will be called Trump Mobile. Included in the phone plan’s monthly bill are a slew of benefits like a telemedicine service, roadside assistance, and device protection. Slated for August of this year is a Trump-branded smartphone named the T1.
The Trump Organization is continuing its expansion from real estate and hospitality to technology.
On Monday, the Trump family company announced it was licensing its name to a new wireless service dubbed Trump Mobile—and a soon-to-be released gold-plated smartphone called the T1.
The Trump Organization’s executive vice presidents Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump appeared at a launch event at Trump Tower in New York on Monday. The event took place on the 10-year anniversary of the day their father, President Donald Trump, announced his candidacy for president.
Trump Mobile will be powered by a wireless provider called Liberty Wireless, according to its website.
The Trump Mobile plan will include unlimited talk, text, and data. The plan also comes with additional features aimed to help customers get “true value” from a mobile carrier, Trump Jr. said. Trump Mobile includes benefits as telemedicine access, roadside assistance, and phone warranty plans.
The plans will cost $47.45 a month, an apparent reference to Trump having been the 45th and 47th president.
Announced in the plans was an effort to ensure Trump Mobile was an entirely U.S.-based company. The T1 smartphone, slated for release in August, will be manufactured in the U.S. Trump Mobile’s website lists it at a retail price of $499, with a $100 down payment. The company will also have a 250-person customer service center, in St. Louis, Trump said.
Under the elder Trump, the Trump Organization had a long history of branching out into different branded products in addition to its traditional real-estate business. Over the years, the company has sold Trump-branded vodkas, board games, and even made attempts at an airline. More recently, the Trump family business has focused on tech businesses, launching several crypto products and starting a company for its upstart social-media platform, Truth Social.
“This year has been a year of technology,” Eric Trump said on Monday. “Don and I have spent so much of our time on that.”
Trump Mobile is the latest expansion of the Trump family business at a time when its patriarch sits in the Oval Office. Before taking office, Trump placed his assets in a revocable trust of which he is the sole beneficiary; the trust is managed by his son, Trump Jr. So far this year, the Trump Organization has made major strides in developing new properties in Vietnam and Qatar.
The Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the holding company that owns Truth Social, also launched a fintech platform that includes several cryptocurrency ETFs. That latest venture is in addition to TMTG’s existing social-media site and streaming service.
Another separate initiative saw Trump launch a memecoin in January, just one day before his inauguration. The price of the Trump branded cryptocurrency shot up in the first couple days after its release, but has since fallen 77% since its peak. Last month, Trump held a dinner for the top 220 investors in his coin.
A nonprofit run by Anne Wojcicki, the cofounder and former CEO of 23andme, has agreed to buy the genetic testing company for $305 million. Wojcicki’s return is likely to spark lawsuits. The nonprofit, TTAM Research Institute, says it will comply with 23andme’s privacy policies.
The swift and sudden fall—and attempted rebirth—of genetic-testing company 23andme has taken a final twist. A nonprofit run by Anne Wojcicki, the co-founder and former CEO of the company, has reached an agreement to buy the company, with a $305 million offer.
The deal, announced late Friday, will see Wojcicki take control of essentially all of the company’s assets.
For a long time, it appeared Wojcicki wouldn’t regain control of the company she left in March. New York-based biotech company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals was set to buy 23andMe for $256 million, but in the final round of bidding, Wojcicki’s TTAM Research Institute came out of top.
The sale of 23andme, which was once valued at $6 billion, led to a wave of consternation about what would happen with the customer genetic data it held. Approximately 15% of its customers, some 1.9 million people, have requested their data be deleted from the company servers since 23andme filed for bankruptcy in March. The sale of the company has also attracted the interest of the House Oversight Committee, which was concerned about where the data could end up.
TTAM says it will comply with 23andMe’s “privacy policies and applicable law” and has made “binding commitments” to create additional protections and privacy safeguards. These will include a consumer-privacy advisory board.
23andme’s troubles came following a hack of the company in 2023 which raised several concerns about the company. For instance, one online post that offered data for sale bragged of having a huge database of Ashkenazi Jews, including people whose ties with that ancestry are less than 1%.
Wojcicki, while she was still CEO, oversaw three rounds of layoffs and suggested a plan that would transform the company from just a supplier of ancestral data and into a healthcare company that develops drugs and sells subscription health reports.
Wojcicki first offered to buy the company in mid-2024. The 23andMe board rejected her bid to take the company private, later quitting en masse.
The purchase of 23andme by a group run by Wojcicki is likely to spark lawsuits. Earlier this year, an independent investor in 23andMe spoke with Fortune expressed disbelief that Wojcicki, whom he held responsible for allowing 23andMe’s valuation to plunge, could turn around and buy the company at a low price. “I can’t understand why there aren’t other bids,” the investor, who asked that his privacy be protected, told Fortune.
On a Wednesday night in early June, Rene Nezhoda leaned back in a Secretlab gaming chair, fiddled with a computer keyboard, and stared into a camera while looking very much at home. Clad in his company’s black “Bargain Hunters Breaks” T-shirt, Nezhoda carried what could be viewed as an imposing thick-built frame, until he opened his mouth and revealed a self-deprecating charm coated by a soft German accent that would be familiar to fans of A&E’s reality TV franchise Storage Wars – where he and his wife Casey have appeared as central characters for the past decade.
With a box-cutter in hand, Nezhoda sliced open the plastic film covering the back of an ultra premium box of baseball trading cards, the contents of which would soon leave some viewers on the other end of his screen ecstatic, and others likely devastated.
“We got a situation! We got a situation!” he bellowed as he slowly revealed what would turn out to be not just a typical trading card, but instead a small booklet featuring images of two San Diego Padre star teammates – along with tiny pieces of their game-used bats – known as “relics” in the sports card world. A collector’s dream.
“Get some fire,” Nezhoda urged his audience. “Get some fire!”
Fire emojis soon lit up the comments thread at the bottom of the screen, and cartoony flames began bordering the video frame.
A night later, Nezhoda would livestream another high-end card show for his 47,000 followers, with one lucky bidder walking away with a card autographed by New York Yankee star Aaron Judge that also included a swatch from one of his game-worn jerseys embedded within. It was a one-of-one, meaning the only one ever printed – a true “monster hit” in industry speak.
The biggest business you’ve never heard of
Nezhoda’s hundreds of viewers were tuning in to this drama not on traditional TV – but through their smartphone screens and more specifically, a five-year-old shopping app called Whatnot. Over the past couple of years, Whatnot has quietly climbed App Store charts – as one of the leaders of the growing trend of live-streamed commerce in the U.S. – while also capitalizing on reinvigorated collectibles markets. The result? Whatnot currently ranks inside the Top 15 most popular free iPhone apps in the U.S., sandwiched between household names Instagram and Netflix, and No. 1 in the shopping category overall.
While hawking merchandise via live video streams has become lucrative and mainstream for businesses big and small in Asia over the past decade, Whatnot and TikTok are two of a much smaller subset of live-streaming services in the West that have found meaningful success in this area of e-commerce. This sales method, which offers a new spin on the QVC and HSN cable TV shopping channels of yesteryear, marries some of the auction model and enthusiast appeal of eBay with the camaraderie and communal viewing euphoria of Twitch. Merchants on Whatnot sold a combined $3 billion in goods in 2024, mainly in collectible categories like trading cards and sports cards, but also in fast-growing verticals like women’s fashion and sneakers, too. The startup, while unprofitable, is forecasting more than $6 billion in gross merchandise volume, or GMV, in 2025, or about double its 2024 numbers. (EBay’s GMV is about 12 times Whatnot’s but its growth is largely stagnant.) Whatnot would not disclose its revenue, but some back of the envelope math suggests that 2025 revenue could range from perhaps $700 million to around $1 billion based on its average seller commission of around 11% plus a fast-growing advertising initiative.
Courtesy of Whatnot
“We’re the biggest business you’ve never heard of,” Grant LaFontaine, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, told Fortune recently.
While e-commerce incumbents and other would-be acquirers have shown Whatnot “surprisingly little” attention according to LaFontaine (“I am surprised,” the CEO admitted, chalking it up to possibly being “underestimated”) his company has attracted significant interest from venture capitalists, who have poured more more than $700 million into his startup since its 2019 founding, with some recently valuing the company at a nearly $5 billion valuation during a $265 million round announced in early 2025. The Los Angeles-based company now employs around 750 people, and operates in nine countries in North America and Europe, plus Australia.
LaFontaine, the 37-year-old co-founder and CEO, said that while the entertainment and deal-hunting characteristics of the app play roles in its success, he likes to think it’s mostly about community.
“The most salient characteristic of what really makes Whatnot work is just about people,” he said. “You come back to a shop because you know that human being, or know the human beings who frequent it.”
But big questions remain: Can Whatnot (the name is a riff on the idea that all sorts of goods can be sold on the platform) build a big enough profitable business to justify its lofty valuation while built in part on live auctions, impulse buys, and trend-boosted niches? As Whatnot attracts more sellers, will the company be able to attract enough who are as interested in building long-term customer relationships – and real businesses – as they are making a quick buck? And at a macro level, how well will the startup survive a potential economic slowdown that could weaken crucial merchandise categories most reliant on discretionary spending?
At least for the last question, LaFontaine believes his company has at least several years of new-customer runway before they’d have to seriously consider the impact of such a reality.
“We’re still so relatively under-penetrated in every market that we’re in–both from a buyer and seller perspective–that the macro doesn’t deeply affect the business,” he said, “because our experience is so new, and so many new [buyers and sellers] are coming on, that overall growth is still so high.”
Time will determine whether that assessment was realistic or naive.
Baseball trading cards, particularly autographed cards, attract lots of bids in Whatnot auctions
Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images
From Funkos to the Wild, Wild, West
Whatnot was founded in 2019 by two product managers: LaFontaine, who had worked at Facebook and Google and had dabbled in selling collectibles and sneakers online from childhood into his 20s; and Logan Head, a one-time medical marijuana dispensary owner who immediately before Whatnot was a senior product manager at GOAT, the sneaker and apparel resale app. Initially, Whatnot was designed more as a high-end version of Craigslist but the founders quickly pivoted it toward a focus on collectibles, starting with Funko Pop! Figures exclusively for the first year. In 2020, the startup also began experimenting with the livestreaming feature that would become so crucial to its success.
While Whatnot merchants can list products for sale on the app in a more traditional online storefront format, the vast majority of sales on the platform occur via livestreams, in which the seller, or a streamer they pay to host, engages with, and answers product questions from, viewers who can comment in an onscreen thread.
Whatnot’s strength is in collectibles, whether Pokemon cards, sports cards or rare coins. Seth Chandler, owner of the 65-year-old Witter Coin shop in San Francisco has sold millions to coin enthusiasts on Whatnot over the past few years.
But the app’s appeal to buyers and sellers in other categories has broadened over time to include luxury bags, electronics and its fastest-growing segment, women’s fashion.
Ryan Maresch and Jose Lim-Valle are lifelong friends and two of the business owners that have turned Whatnot’s entry into women’s apparel into a multi-million-dollar business. The duo previously ran an apparel liquidation storefront out of a Southern California warehouse before starting to experiment with live streaming on Whatnot in 2023 when they couldn’t sell enough of the clothing that they bought as part of a bulk liquidation purchase of excess Sam’s Club merchandise. Now their business Circle City OC has become the first women’s fashion seller to cross $1 million in monthly Whatnot sales across its three streaming channels targeting three types of customers.
“We realized the reach of customers is endless,” Lim-Valle said, “There’s a morning crowd, the afternoon crowd, the night crowd. East coast and West coast. We started realizing that as long as we keep streaming, we can keep moving product. It lit a fire underneath us knowing that it’s up to us on our success and how far we want to push it. It’s a free-for-all. It’s like the Wild Wild West.”
Other merchandise categories include electronics, beauty products, golf gear, and even live plants. Often with enthusiasts in the audience bonding over time with the fellow enthusiasts who are hosts. Consumer brands like Dolls Kill have also been experimenting with liquidating excess inventory directly on Whatnot.
“What’s really exciting about Whatnot is that they are combining the best of entertainment, shopping, and community to reimagine what a commerce experience is like for sellers and buyers,” said Marcie Vu, a well-regarded investment banker-turned-VC who’s now a partner at venture capital firm Greycroft, which co-led the latest Whatnot investment. Vu took a board observer role with Whatnot alongside her firm’s investment. DST Global and Avra also co-led the round, while Andreessen Horowitz, CapitalG, BOND, and Y Combinator have backed the company as well.
Basketball card roulette
Sellers on Whatnot can choose to sell merchandise either at set prices, including in time-limited “flash sales,” or in live auctions – which themselves can come in various forms. Whatnot’s design makes bidding dead-simple through an almost-too-easy swipe to the right. An auction countdown clock creates urgency. And when your bid wins, a digital confetti explosion greets you in celebration.
Some have criticized these design elements as creating fertile ground for regrettable impulse buys, or worse, addiction. But LaFontaine insists that the only way Whatnot will become a long-term durable business is if buyers come back again and again, and feel good about it. He believes buyers who feel burned, or have buyer’s remorse, won’t return.
“If people go in over their skis or they pay too much money through an impulse purchase, those aren’t people who are going to come back; they’re going to feel burned,” he said. “Let’s say we saw a deep problem where people were having all these impulse purchases, they felt really terrible about those purchases, and that was making people talk incredibly negatively and never come back to Whatnot, we would look very deeply into it. We don’t see a ton of that today.”
The CEO added that fun digital design elements are “the cherry on top” and not what keeps viewers returning. Rather, it’s a connection with people, either the hosts of their favorite streams or the fellow viewers who frequent a certain show. Whatnot users spend 80 minutes on average on the app each day.
For Nezhoda, of Storage Wars fame, he told Fortune he makes a point of being as transparent as possible with his viewers about the potential risks of the sales events he hosts. On a recent June night, this reporter tuned into one of his nightly shows unannounced while waiting in a car outside a youth soccer practice. What viewers were witnessing was Nezhoda’s latest “break”—a type of group-buying event that has gained popularity among trading card enthusiasts, collectors, and opportunists in recent years—where buyers either bid on, or buy, the right to receive certain cards from a pack or case of cards that the host “breaks” or sells portions of to different buyers.
In this break, Nezhoda was selling 30 “slots,” each representing one of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. By purchasing a slot (the New York Yankees slot sold for $710, for example), the buyer is essentially claiming the right to the card that corresponds to that particular team—if that team happens to be one of the eight random cards that comprise the set that Nezhoda opens.
For the lucky eight people whose teams turn out to be in the case, the payoff is great. Nezhoda was pulling from a case of 2025 Topps Sterling line of ultra-premium autographed cards, each card essentially a collector’s item. But for the folks who spent hundreds of dollars apiece to snag one of the 22 other team slots, the break is a bust: they’ll walk away with just a $5 pack of basic cards, “skunked” in industry speak. High risk indeed.
Nezhoda sold $8,000 in total slots across all 30 teams. Before the break began, he offered a verbal disclaimer and cautioned that if you didn’t understand the mechanics of what was about to transpire, you’d be better off leaving the virtual room altogether. Whatnot livestreams and their various sale formats and auction types can be confusing to first-timers or novices.
“Please understand the risk of this break,” Nezhoda told his viewers. “This is like roulette.”
“Eighty percent of you will most likely skunk,” he added.
For Nezhoda, that candor – coupled with his celebrity and strong relationships with trading card maker Topps, owned by Fanatics – have been crucial to a lucrative pivot away from his old business of reselling hauls from storage unit auctions, which was his and his wife Casey’s previous claim to fame. The move to selling sports cards – and specifically through live streamed events – has been so successful, he said, that Bargain Hunters Breaks should generate $15 million to $18 million in sales on Whatnot in 2025 alone. (Watching him in action on Whatnot, I quickly understood why. I haven’t purchased a pack of baseball cards since the 1990s but Nezhoda’s show still left me with a tantalizing urge to buy in.)
Nezhoda puts in long hours in this new sector, but it’s not the same grind as scouring storage unit auctions all over the country.
“The big battle was always sourcing product,” he said of his past business.
Given the current frothiness in the sports card market – where card makers release new sets frequently – and Nezhoda’s deep relationship with some card companies, his sourcing work has become much easier.
“I don’t have to hunt for product,” he said.
The next great e-commerce war
While Nezhoda has built a real big business and presence on Whatnot, he does host and sell elsewhere. His other main sales channel is Fanatics Live, a livestream commerce experience but one mainly focused on trading cards – at least for now. Nezhoda said that while Whatnot allows a broad range of sellers – from big companies like his to “somebody that breaks on their living room desk…and has a 9 to 5 [job] – “Fanatics Live is a lot more regulated.”
On the other hand, “Whatnot has the benefit of a lot of different categories,” he said, which attract different kinds of consumers who might not otherwise have come across his digital shop.
“You can pick up new customers – maybe a coin [collector] will see it, or a sneaker guy, and they’ll come over to trading cards.”
DJs perform at Whatnot booth at New York Comic Con
Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ReedPop
Then there’s the 30-year-old online collectible marketplace giant eBay. The company debuted its eBay Live streaming section in 2022, but has started pushing it aggressively over the past year. Nezhoda sees the onetime sleeping industry giant as a real, potential threat.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if eBay Live might become the market leader because they just have such a big user database,” he said. “But I actually think it’s great that we have different companies, different competitors, because it’s good for the ecosystem.”
The charm of the barroom
Spend some time on the app, and you’ll find shows that vary widely in production value and style. Some sellers like to present themselves to the audience face first, whether in card breaking or to show off and describe a collection of women’s clothes. Others keep the camera’s focus on the cards, with pounding hip hop setting the vibe, and an on-screen Google spreadsheet in view that’s keeping track of which viewer purchased which team or slot in the upcoming card break. And then there’s those who aren’t afraid to reveal their business anxieties – whether real or manufactured – and apply pressure to their viewers with the zealous schtick of an old-time ticket scalper. “Bid me up, chat!” is a refrain you might encounter.
On a recent afternoon, a sneaker seller auctioning off merchandise broke from his jovial demeanor to lay a demand on his audience.
“Do not buy that!” he barked after a collection of Patrick Ewing basketball sneakers was about to sell in his auction too quickly or perhaps well under the price he was looking for. A few beats later, looking dejected, it seemed like he was coming to grips that he had acted too late.
“We just got absolutely killed on those,” he lamented. “Gosh dang it! Fuck!”
It was unclear if the host was legitimately distraught, or rather a talented salesman wanting his audience to believe the sale in question was an amazing steal. Perhaps that’s part of the appeal.
On another day, A 20-something woman hawking luxury bags and other accessories struggled to suppress her laughter after mistakenly referring to high-end tree ornaments as “brown balls.” A few minutes later, she sold a $3,400 saddle purse like nothing.
Whatnot’s CEO said his company aggressively monitors customer feedback for complaints and refund requests, and will remove sellers who breach company thresholds. But he also contends that what might not seem like a quality and entertaining seller experience or setup to some viewers, may hold a different appeal for others. He likened it to how a dive bar may attract loyal customers who frequently visit because of a specific bartender or a connection with fellow patrons – factors that are more important to some than the grime that may cover the barroom floor.
“We want Whatnot to be open to all flavors and tastes,” he said.
Bid me up, chat!
Are you a current or former Whatnot employee, seller, or customer with thoughts on this topic or a tip to share? Contact Jason Del Rey at [email protected], [email protected], or through messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp at 917-655-4267. You can also contact him on LinkedIn or at @delrey on X, @jdelrey on Threads, and on Bluesky.
“Millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones. That kind of this is going to come to America.”
That was U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s pitch in April for the Trump administration’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, the most radical shift in U.S. trade policy since the 1930s.
The administration has used many rationales for tariffs, but the one that seems to animate the president most is a wish to bring manufacturing back home to the U.S. Over the past few decades, many industries including tech have shipped most of their production overseas, where wages are lower, skilled labor is easier to find, and suppliers are more plentiful.
But reversing the status quo for companies like Apple is far more complicated than Trump lets on, if it’s possible at all. Behind a finished smartphone extends a chain of suppliers and assemblers, particularly in Asia, that is difficult to replace.
Trump’s wrecking ball to global trade has already proved too fast and too disruptive to encourage companies like Apple to quickly move their production to the U.S. Instead, to bring U.S. manufacturing back, Washington will need a more targeted, more methodical— and more stable—strategy, according to economists and experts who have spent years, if not decades, studying trade and global supply chains.
“There is no single industrial policy tool which will do this alone. It takes a whole ecosystem,” says Marc Fasteau, coauthor of Industrial Policy for the United States: Winning the Competition for Good Jobs and High-Value Industries.
How it happened
Over the past several decades, manufacturing has steadily declined as a share of U.S. GDP, from around 25% in the 1950s to 10% today. Meanwhile, in Asian manufacturing powerhouses like China, Japan, and South Korea, the proportion has grown higher than 20%.
China, in particular, has captured much of the world’s manufacturing, thanks to a massive pool of skilled labor and deeply integrated supply chains. Countless industries—toys and household goods, consumer electronics, and even bespoke products—rely on Chinese factories.
“There’s this deep ecosystem of hundreds, if not thousands, of suppliers and sub-suppliers. You have amazing logistics within the country and then through the ports to the rest of the world,” says Dexter Roberts, a nonresident senior fellow at U.S. think tank Atlantic Council.
Also in China’s favor is that it has an “order of magnitude” more manufacturing workers (105 million) than the U.S. (13 million), notes Dan Wang, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Additionally, China has installed over half of the world’s industrial robots compared with the U.S.’s share of just 7%.
“You can collapse weeks’ worth of coordination time into just telling all of your suppliers that they need to be in your office at 8 a.m. tomorrow,” says Wang, who’s also author of the forthcoming book Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.
25% / 10%
U.S. manufacturing as a share of GDP in 1950s vs. today
The most popular images of Chinese manufacturing are complexes like “iPhone City,” a 5.6-million-square-meter campus where 300,000 workers assemble most of Apple’s smartphones. But that narrative is increasingly out-of-date.
China isn’t just an offshoring hub. Thanks to heavy investment, it has taken the lead from the U.S. in some key technologies, like electric vehicles and batteries. “The U.S. is in this very strange position of trying to engage in technological catch-up with a lower-wage competitor,” Wang says.
Some final assembly for U.S. Big Tech has moved to “China plus one” destinations like Vietnam, India, and Mexico. This strategy, which involves starting assembly in China and finishing it elsewhere, began under the first Trump administration and accelerated during COVID, when U.S. executives scrambled to find alternative manufacturing hubs after China went into lockdown.
The obvious incentive for companies, as Apple shows, is to create separate supply chains for different markets. When it comes to Apple, Yuqing Xing, at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, says China could continue to be a major supplier of iPhones for non-U.S. markets while India supplies the U.S. and Indian markets. Meanwhile, Vietnam would assemble Apple’s other products such as Mac laptops.
Still, even if the final assembly moves to Vietnam and India, the components must come from somewhere—likely China. And that might suit Beijing just fine, since China dominates many of the industries that produce those components. And yet, “China is not so sad to see this low-value manufacturing leave,” Roberts suggests, noting that Chinese officials are instead encouraging domestic production of higher-value items like semiconductors and batteries.
Estimated price of a U.S.-made iPhone: $3,500
105 million/13 million: number of manufacturing workers in CHina vs. U.S.
$500 billion: Apple’s promised U.S. investment over the next four years
300,000: Number of workers in China’s iPhone city
But there are risks from the U.S. side, too. Trump is not a fan of Apple’s shift to India, threatening tariffs on any iPhone that’s not made in the U.S. “I expect [Apple’s iPhones] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted on social media in late May.
The U.S. still makes a lot of stuff, and a lot of that is high-end. Aircraft engines, chipmaking tools, and industrial machinery are just some of the manufactured goods still produced in and exported from the U.S.
A 145% tariff on Chinese goods, or even one at the 54% level first proposed by Trump on April 2, would have wiped out U.S.-China trade. Anything supplied by China for U.S. manufacturing would have become unaffordable immediately. Finished products from countries like Japan or Vietnam could be imported at a lower tax rate, even if they relied on Chinese components, and still undercut U.S.-made products on price.
After initially creating turmoil in the financial markets, Trump has backtracked on many of his original tariff plans. At the time this article was published, the U.S. had a 10% tariff on imports from most countries, 30% tariffs on imports from China, and 25% tariffs on goods deemed important to national security, such as steel and auto parts. Some final products, like smartphones and laptops, are exempt from import taxes.
“There is no single industrial policy tool which will do this alone. It takes a whole ecosystem.”
Marc Fasteau, coauthor, Industrial policy for the United States
Of course, the Trump administration could always decide to hike tariffs again later. Or perhaps the courts may strike down the entire tariff regime as an example of executive overreach, as some federal judges have suggested in recent weeks. In reality, no one knows what will come next, which makes it difficult for businesses to plan much of anything.
Is reshoring possible?
Trade deals, from a legal perspective, are also more squishy than proper trade agreements, which take months, if not years, to negotiate. Since they’re not legally binding, trade deals aren’t enforceable, nor is the Trump administration bound by its own promises. Many companies, in the short term, are therefore wary of pledging large investments in the U.S. Factories are expensive and take years to build—and constant policy changes don’t make the U.S. an attractive investment destination.
Still, even without tariffs, reshoring is a “fool’s errand,” Roberts says. Bringing something like the iPhone back to the U.S. would make it exorbitantly expensive. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, in an April report, estimated that producing an iPhone entirely in the U.S. would triple its price from $1,000 to $3,500.
The Trump administration may have tried to do too much too fast. “You want to start with a small tariff to indicate that you’re serious, and a schedule that ramps it up to track the developing ability of U.S. manufacturers to make this stuff a scale,” Fasteau says.
From the start, tech companies have tried to curry favor with the Trump administration to influence his policies. How much of that courtship is a product of the trade war and what it might accomplish are unclear. In mid-February, in anticipation of the coming import levies, Apple promised to invest $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, bringing its suppliers Foxconn and Wistron with it. Then in early March, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s leading chipmaker, promised to invest an additional $100 billion into its Arizona plant.
If Trump’s tariffs—in whatever form they take—aren’t the best way to encourage U.S. manufacturing, what could?
Fasteau thinks the answer is more investment in automation. The U.S., he says, has significantly underinvested in robotics, compared with other manufacturing hubs like China and Germany. “Without investment in robotics, I don’t see large-scale manufacturing being economically workable in the U.S.,” Fasteau says.
But perhaps most important, the U.S. needs to decide what kind of manufacturing it really wants. The answer, despite what Lutnick says, likely isn’t a U.S.-based iPhone factory.
“If U.S. policymakers really want iPhone manufacturing in the U.S., they should go visit China,” Xing says, implying that it would be eye-opening—in a bad way. “They should see how much workers are paid and what their working conditions are—then report that back to the U.S.”
This article appears in the June/July 2025: Asia issue of Fortune with the headline “Reviving U.S. tech is manufacturing is harder than you think.”
Yachting has long been the vacation style of choice amongst Europe’s ultra-wealthy. The continent offers manageable sailing distances, pleasant waters, and an abundance of spectacular coastlines and gorgeous islands to moor at.
Plus, Europe dominates the luxury yacht market, with shipbuilders in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands renowned for high-quality craftsmanship and technological innovation.
According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, the luxury yacht market size was valued at $5.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $12.8 billion by 2031, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8% from 2022 to 2031. In terms of volume, Europe occupied around two-thirds of the market share in 2020.
Research by Yacht Sourcing found that emerging markets in Eastern Europe are contributing to this soaring sector growth. Croatia and Montenegro have invested heavily in yachting infrastructure and are incentivizing foreign yacht purchases.
So here’s where Europe’s senior executives and C-suite of the Fortune 500 will be vacationing on yachts this summer and how sailing trips are gaining favor as a way for luxury travelers to escape overcrowded hotels and destinations.
The trending yachting destinations of Europe’s most powerful
Southern Italy, the French Riviera, the Greek Aegean islands, and Turkey’s Turquoise Coast are some of Europe’s classic yachting hotspots. But according to Nick Hatfield, managing director of Sanlorenzo Yachts UK, the top destinations he is seeing for this year in the Mediterranean are the Balearic Islands. Mallorca is proving to be a particular favorite, thanks to its “unique blend of stunning coastlines, crystal clear water and vibrant cultural heritage,” he says.
Croatia is also on the rise, with more yachts being based along and visiting the Dalmatian coast. “Its popularity is growing as it is less crowded and more secluded than other destinations yet still offers the same, sought after azure waters and sunshine,” Hatfield says.
He adds that the stern to mooring (where yachts are lined up along a marina or quay) along the coastline “ensures guests can enjoy easy access to the shore and make the most of the yacht’s beach clubs and water toys.”
The annual calendar of Europe’s most glamorous events also influences the popularity of destinations. “Events like the Monaco Grand Prix or Cannes Film Festival cause fluctuations in where charters might visit, if they haven’t originated in these areas—that’s the beauty of a luxury yacht, you can visit more than one destination in a charter,” Hatfield says.
Luxury yachts are becoming an alternative to high-end hotels
As overtourism strains Europe’s vacation hotspots, the ultra high net worth (UHNW) are increasingly turning to yachts to escape the crowds, Hatfield says. “We’re certainly seeing yachting enjoy renewed momentum among individuals seeking alternatives to traditional holidays as charter experiences offer greater privacy, flexibility, and a sense of true freedom,” he explains.
This is “something which is becoming more important to the UHNW as many stunning destinations are becoming more accessible to a growing number of travellers, making them more crowded and less exclusive,” he adds.
“Events like the Monaco Grand Prix or Cannes Film Festival cause fluctuations in where charters might visit, if they haven’t originated in these areas—that’s the beauty of a luxury yacht, you can visit more than one destination in a charter.”
As such, yachts are increasingly favored as an alternative to high-end hotels: “No matter how exclusive a hotel is, you are still sharing it with others, whereas on a charter it is just you and your chosen guests and/or family with everything designed just for you,” Hatfield says.
Plus, today’s yachts can easily rival the amenities of even the most exclusive hotels, with spas, gyms, cinemas, beauty salons, helipads, wine cellars and hottubs.
The 278-feet Fountainhead, built for American billionaire and former CEO of the Sears retail group, Eddie Lampert, has an open-air basketball court. While on board the 258-feet Feadship Hampshire II, guests can play badminton, tennis, and football on the expansive foredeck, equipped with specially designed nets to prevent balls from going overboard. The yacht, owned by British billionaire and Ineos CEO Sir Jim Ratcliffe, also has a zipline and a squash court.
The 278-feet Fountainhead, built for American billionaire and former CEO of the Sears retail group, Eddie Lampert, has an open-air basketball court.
Angela Rowlings/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images
Onboard greenery is another superyacht luxury. The VSY Stella Maris features a glass-walled, vertical garden that rises up from the main deck to the level above, while the Benetti Ocean Paradise calms guests with a Zen garden in the main-deck foyer that is redesigned every day.
So as Europe’s hotspot destinations fill up, the ultra-wealthy are investing in yachting as the ultimate luxury of crowd-free, exclusive, personalized experiences.
– Soda success. Ten years ago, Allison Ellsworth started mixing fruit, apple cider vinegar and soda water in her kitchen with the goal of making a “healthy” soda that was low in sugar and high in fiber. Last month, PepsiCo closed the acquisition of Ellsworth’s beverage company, now known as Poppi, for $1.95 billion (this figure includes an estimated $300 million of cash tax benefits).
“From day one, we knew that this [selling the company] was always something we wanted to do,” says Ellsworth, who cofounded Poppi with her husband, Stephen, and will remain with the brand as a creative advisor. It was PepsiCo who made the first approach, and the big draw from Poppi’s perspective—in addition to the dollar signs, of course—was the impact an acquisition would have on its distribution system, she adds. In 2024, Poppi, which brands itself as “prebiotic soda,” had annual revenue of more than $500 million, according to the company, and was sold in over 120 different retailers, including Whole Foods, Target and CVS. It is currently only available in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. “There were places we couldn’t get in before, like sports arenas and certain fast casual restaurants,” Austin-based Ellsworth explains. “Now we have a Ferrari underneath us for distribution.” (The “functional” beverages market, meaning drinks that claim to offer health benefits beyond hydration, was worth around $175.5 billion in 2022 and is expected to soar to $339.6 billion by 2030.)
Allison Ellsworth founded Poppi in 2020 and is now an advisor to the company.
Courtesy of Poppi
It’s a remarkable trajectory for a company that only officially launched in 2020, and one facilitated in part by Ellsworth’s determination that Poppi be “a community” at the intersection of wellness and influencer culture, rather than a straightforward drinks brand. “We are not just a soda,” she says. Cans of Poppi come in 16 flavors and are known for their bold, neon branding and celebrity fans (Olivia Munn, Post Malone, Alix Earle and Nicole Scherzinger are all investors). Ellsworth, who in 2018 appeared on Shark Tank while nine months pregnant, resulting in a $400,000 investment from Rohan Oza, is the face of the brand. She frequently communicates with its approximately 1.2 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, announcing new initiatives and addressing controversy when it arises. Notably, Poppi has recently settled a class action lawsuit for $8.9 million, following allegations from a consumer that the company’s marketing promises around gut health are misleading. One can contains 3 grams of fiber and 5 grams of sugar, according to the company. The lawsuit contends that the drinks would need more prebiotic fiber and less sugar to positively impact digestion. “It’s something that big brands go through,” says Ellsworth of the lawsuit. “It feels good that it’s behind us.” The company’s official statement on the settlement adds that Poppi “acknowledges no fault, liability or wrongdoing.”
Ellsworth compares handing over the reins of her company to watching a child go off to college. “You’re happy but you have anxiety,” she says. “You want to see it flourish, but you want to hold on. But I have a calmness. We did good. Poppi is in good hands.”
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
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