• Stocks fell on Tuesday as Trump signaled that the U.S. could enter the war between Israel and Iran.

Tariffs aren’t the only bearish signal on investors’ minds. Now they have to worry about a brewing war in the Middle East as well. The S&P 500 dropped 0.84% on Tuesday as reports emerged that President Trump was deciding whether to order military action against Iran as Israel wages a campaign to neutralize the country’s nuclear capabilities. Stocks fell across the board, though oil companies saw an increase as investors anticipated higher prices.

Meanwhile, investors are mulling how to price in a looming Federal Reserve decision on interest rates. Even as Trump pushes the central bank to cut rates, analysts expect the agency’s decision makers to hold steady at its scheduled meeting on Wednesday, which has put further downward pressure on stock prices. “I think now [the Fed] particularly wants to assert their independence,” Melissa Brown, managing director of investment decision research at SimCorp, told Fortune, arguing it is likely to keep interest rates the same until it sees substantial evidence to act otherwise.

Growing instability

While Trump’s second term in office has been marked by volatility, much of the market chaos was spurred by his aggressive tariff strategy, rather than geopolitical strife. That could change as Trump weighs whether to deploy U.S. forces to the mounting conflict in Iran—an action that he previously opposed.

On Tuesday, Trump seemed to signal a more aggressive stance, calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” on his social media site, Truth Social, and threatening to kill Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. While Israel is now in the fifth day of its military campaign against Iran, analysts argue that it would need weapons power from the U.S. to attack Iran’s deepest nuclear enrichment site.

Stocks have fluctuated amid the escalating conflict, sinking last week before rebounding on Monday. But the heightened rhetoric on Tuesday spooked investors as Trump met with his national security team.

While a broader war could hurt sectors from tech to retail by disrupting supply chains, the energy sector could rally as Israel targets Iran’s oil and gas infrastructure. Oil prices have risen around 15% over the past five days.

Energy forecaster Dan Pickering told Fortune that Israel seems to be focusing on domestic fuel and power consumption, rather than global experts. “Everybody is taking a hands-off approach to oil [exporting] infrastructure because it meaningfully complicates and escalates the situation,” he said. “Israel doesn’t want to do that, and I don’t think Iran does either.”

Still, he cautioned that anything from a stray bomb to Iran deciding to block the Strait of Hormuz could dramatically impact the world’s oil supply. That could mean higher gas prices and myriad downstream effects for a wide array of industries.

“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,” Pickering said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange in the U.S., is reportedly seeking regulatory approval to offer “tokenized equities” on its platform, a move that would put the company in direct competition with retail brokerages like Robinhood and Charles Schwab. 

Paul Grewal, chief legal officer at Coinbase, told Reuters that the company was seeking the go-ahead from the Security and Exchange Commission for the new product, adding that tokenized equities was a “huge priority.” 

When asked for additional comment, Coinbase confirmed the news to Fortune, and pointed to an additional social media post from Grewal, in which he wrote: “Exciting? Yes. Important? Absolutely. But breaking news? Not exactly. We’ve been saying since earlier this year that @SECGov should enable markets to unlock tokenized securities. Tokenized debt, equity, and investment funds present an opportunity for tailored regulation for securities that are offered and traded via digitally native methods.” 

Grewal followed that up with a link to a March response from Coinbase to a SEC inquiry asking for input from the public about how to regulate the crypto space. The company’s 41-page response to the SEC focused on the advancement of discussions around tokenized equities, among other things.

The SEC did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

“Tokenized equities” refers to an investment product in which shares of a publicly-traded company are converted into a digital token that can be traded on a blockchain, as if it were a form of cryptocurrency. That would allow customers to trade these “equities” around the clock, as blockchain transactions can take place at any time of day rather than regular Wall Street trading hours. 

Tokenized equities have been a long-time goal for Coinbase. The company first tried to bring digitized stocks to market in 2021, the same year as its initial public offering, by issuing a tokenized version of its own stock, Coinbase’s chief financial officer Alesia Haas said in March of this year. She added the plan was halted by Biden-era SEC chair Gary Gensler, but that under a different presidential administration that has embraced the crypto industry, Coinbase would be renewing its push for tokenized equities. 

“I now believe that our U.S. regulators are looking for product innovation and looking to move forward,” she said. “I’m now excited that we may be able to re-engage those conversations with the SEC’s task force, that we may be able to bring forward security tokens.”

Most companies that offer securities trading have to be registered as broker-dealers, like Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade or Fidelity, which Coinbase is not. One way for Coinbase to receive approval from the SEC to offer tokenized equities is by requesting a “no action letter,” Grewal said. That would be a way for the SEC to pledge it would not object to tokenized securities, or recommend an enforcement action.   

“With a no action letter, an issuer of a tokenized equity or a platform that wishes to offer secondary trading in those equities can have some confidence, some comfort, that the SEC has adopted its view of why this product is compliant,” Grewal said. 

It is not clear whether Coinbase is seeking to gain approval for tokenized securities through a “no action letter” or through some other legal means. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy says he expects the company’s workforce to decline in the next few years as the retail and cloud-computing giant uses artificial intelligence to handle more tasks. 

Generative AI and AI-powered software agents “should change the way our work is done,” Jassy said in an email to employees on Tuesday that laid out his thinking about how the emerging technology will transform the workplace. 

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy wrote. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”

From the start of the AI boom, people inside and outside the industry have raised concerns about the potential for artificial intelligence to replace workers. Those concerns have only grown as tech companies introduce more sophisticated AI systems that can write code and field online tasks on a user’s behalf.

Shopify Inc. told employees that requests for new headcount will require an explanation as to why AI can’t do the job. Duolingo Inc. said it would “gradually stop” using contractors to do work that artificial intelligence can handle. And Microsoft Corp. recently announced a round of layoffs that hit software developers hardest.

Dario Amodei, CEO of OpenAI rival Anthropic, recently warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to spike to as high as 20% over the next five years.

Amazon, which has prioritized automation in logistics and headquarters roles for years, is investing heavily in AI. Jassy, in his letter, rattled off some of those initiatives, including the Alexa+ voice software, a shopping assistant, and tools for developers and businesses sold by the Amazon Web Services cloud unit. 

Inside the company, Amazon has used AI tools for inventory placement, customer service and product listings. Jassy encouraged employees to “experiment with AI whenever you can.” 

“It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company,” he said.

Amazon is the largest private U.S. employer after Walmart Inc., with 1.56 million employees as of the end of March. Most work in warehouses packing and shipping items, but about 350,000 of them have corporate jobs. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Cathie Wood’s flagship ETF has staged a powerful comeback from the depths of the trade war panic, rallying more than 50% since early April. But rather than restoring investor faith, the rebound has only been met with skepticism. 

Outflows are persistent. Short sellers are circling in record numbers, driven by bearish conviction and tactical hedging. And a booming class of retail-friendly products — leveraged exchange-traded funds — are competing with Wood’s strategy of making high-conviction bets on famous tech names.

The result: the ARK Innovation ETF, which helped define the disruptive tech story during the pandemic, is delivering performance without inspiring confidence. 

According to data from financial analytics firm S3 Partners, short interest in ARKK has climbed to a record of roughly 37% of free float — surpassing even pandemic-era peaks. In June alone, bearish traders would have incurred over $300 million in mark-to-market losses. Monday’s 4.4% surge in theory added another roughly $93 million to the tab.

Wood’s “funds have gone on great runs, but I wonder if investors who piled in during 2020 and 2021 are still feeling the effects of that rush and decline,” said Todd Sohn, senior ETF strategist at Strategas. 

“Perhaps they’ve moved on to other areas like crypto or levered single stock funds too,” Sohn added.

The short-selling also reflects firms offsetting long bets in large-cap technology names, a strategy that can endure even as those positions rack up mark-to-market losses, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky of S3 Partners.

ARKK’s speculative tech holdings like Tesla Inc., Roblox Corp., and Coinbase Global Inc. have rebounded from tariff-volatility induced lows alongside the broader stock market as President Donald Trump has walked back some of his most extreme trade proposals and corporate earnings have been resilient. 

While bets on Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle company have proved volatile, the company, which is ARKK’s top holding, has outperformed the S&P 500 Index by about 21 percentage points from early April. 

Still, the doubters haven’t budged. On Thursday, ARKK recorded its largest single-day outflow since 2022, contributing to over $840 million in outflows so far this year. It has seen net redemptions for five consecutive weeks. A spokesperson for ARKK did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

To Bloomberg Intelligence’s Athanasios Psarofagis, it’s not just the fund’s poor performance that has investors shunning the ETF, it’s that they can now build arguably better-performing portfolios with single-stock ETFs.

While Wood rose to fame because she offered retail investors access to her high-conviction stock picks — many of which initially fared extremely well — new ETFs on the market are making it easier than ever for investors to place their own concentrated bets on stocks, without relying on managers, he writes in a note. 

Take single-stock ETFs, which offer amped up exposure to a single company like Nvidia Corp. or Tesla. Such funds have grown to command nearly $21 billion in assets since regulators green lit the structure in 2022. 

“With leveraged and inverse ETFs available or in the pipeline for almost all of ARKK’s top holdings, investors can replicate or enhance the strategy sans active management,” Psarofagis writes. “As these products proliferate, flagship thematic ETFs like ARKK risk becoming obsolete, as investors go straight to the source.” 

Underscoring how investors are hungry for double or triple the total return of newly traded stocks, ETF issuers have raced to file plans for funds that would provide leveraged exposure to newly public company Circle Internet Group Inc. 

Aside from more competition, poor longer-term performance also helps explain why short sellers have been so steadfast in betting against Wood. While the fund has rallied over the last few months, it has returned essentially zero over the last five years, compared to the S&P 500’s more than 100% total return. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

The NAACP and an environmental group said Tuesday that they intend to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over concerns about air pollution generated by a supercomputer facility located near predominantly Black communities in Memphis.

The xAI data center began operating last year, powered in part by pollution-emitting gas turbines, without first applying for a permit. Officials have said an exemption allowed them to operate for up to 364 days without a permit, but Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Patrick Anderson said at a news conference that there is no such exemption for turbines — and that regardless, it has now been more than 364 days.

A 60-day notice of an intent to sue, a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit under the Clean Air Act, was sent to xAI in a letter. The SELC is representing the NAACP in its possible legal challenge against xAI and its permit application, now being considered by the Shelby County Health Department.

The xAI company responds

The company said Tuesday that it takes its commitment to the community and environment seriously.

“The temporary power generation units are operating in compliance with all applicable laws,” an xAI statement said.

Musk’s xAI has said the turbines will be equipped with technology to reduce emissions — and that it’s already boosting the city’s economy by investing billions of dollars in the supercomputer facility, paying millions in local taxes and creating hundreds of jobs. The company also is spending $35 million to build a power substation and $80 million to build a water recycling plant to the support Memphis, Light, Gas and Water, the local utility.

The chamber of commerce in Memphis made a surprise announcement in June 2024 that xAI planned to build a supercomputer in the city. The data center quickly set up shop in an industrial park south Memphis, near factories and a gas-powered plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

What opponents are saying

Opponents say the supercomputing center is stressing the power grid. They contend that the turbines emit smog and carbon dioxide, pollutants that cause lung irritation such as nitrogen oxides and the carcinogen formaldehyde.

The SELC said the use of the turbines violates the Clean Air Act, and that residents who live near the xAI facility already face cancer risks at four times the national average. The group also has sent a petition to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics say xAI installed the turbines without any oversight or notice to the community. The company requests to operate 15 turbines at the site, but the SELC said it hired a firm to fly over the facility and found up to 35 turbines operating there at times.

The permit itself says emissions from the site “will be an area source for hazardous air pollutants.” A permit would allow the health department, which has received 1,700 public comments about the permit, to monitor air quality near the facility.

A contentious public meeting

Opponents of the facility say city leaders have not been transparent with the community about their dealings with xAI, and they are sacrificing the health of residents in return for financial benefit.

At a community meeting hosted by the county health department in April, many of the people speaking in opposition cited the additional pollution burden in a city that already received an “F” grade for ozone pollution from the American Lung Association.

A statement read by xAI’s Brent Mayo at the meeting said the company wants to “strengthen the fabric of the community,” and estimated that tax revenues from the data center are likely to exceed $100 million by next year.

“This tax revenue will support vital programs like public safety, health and human services, education, firefighters, police, parks and so much more,” said the statement.

The company also apparently wants to expand: The chamber of commerce said in March that xAI had purchased a 1 million square-foot property at a second location, not far from the current facility.

The mayor of Memphis weighs in

Mayor Paul Young said In his weekly newsletter Friday that an ordinance now requires that 25% of xAI’s city property tax revenue be reinvested directly into neighborhoods within 5 miles of the facility.

Young also said that no tax incentives or public dollars are tied to the project.

“Let’s be clear, this isn’t a debate between the environment and economics,” Young said. “It’s about putting people before politics. It’s about building something better for communities that have waited far too long for real investment.”

Boxtown punches back

One nearby neighborhood dealing with decades of industrial pollution is Boxtown, a tight-knit community founded by freed slaves in the 1860s. It was named Boxtown after residents used material dumped from railroad boxcars to fortify their homes. The area features houses, wooded areas and wetlands, and its inhabitants are mostly working class residents.

Boxtown won a victory in 2021 against two corporations that sought to build an oil pipeline through the area. Valero and Plains All American Pipeline canceled the project after protests by residents and activists led by State Rep. Justin J. Pearson, who called it a potential danger to the community and an aquifer that provides clean drinking water to Memphis.

Pearson, who represents nearby neighborhoods, said “clean air is a human right” as he called for people in Memphis to unite against xAI.

“There is not a person, no matter how wealthy or how powerful, that can deny the fact that everybody has a right to breathe clean air,” said Pearson, who compared the fight against xAI to David and Goliath.

“We’re all right to be David, because we know how the story ends,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Kraft Heinz will be pulling artificial dyes from its U.S. products starting in 2027 and will no longer roll out new products with the dyes.

The move comes nearly two months after U.S. health officials said that they would urge foodmakers to phase out petroleum-based artificial colors in the nation’s food supply.

Kraft Heinz said Tuesday that almost 90% of its U.S. products already don’t contain food, drug & cosmetic colors, but that the products that do still use the dyes will have them removed by the end of 2027. FD&C colors are synthetic additives that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in food, drugs and cosmetics.

Kraft Heinz said that many of its U.S. products that still use the FD&C colors are in its beverage and desserts categories, including certain products sold under brands including Crystal Light, Kool Aid, Jell-O and Jet Puffed.

The company said that it will instead use natural colors for the products.

“The vast majority of our products use natural or no colors, and we’ve been on a journey to reduce our use of FD&C colors across the remainder of our portfolio,” Pedro Navio, North America President at Kraft Heinz, said in a statement.

Kraft Heinz stripped artificial colors, flavors and preservatives from its macaroni and cheese in 2016 and said it has never used artificial dyes in its ketchup.

The company plans to work with licensees of its brands to encourage them to remove the dyes.

In April Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference that the agency would take steps to eliminate the synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, largely by relying on voluntary efforts from the food industry.

Health advocates have long called for the removal of artificial dyes from foods, citing mixed studies indicating they can cause neurobehavioral problems, including hyperactivity and attention issues, in some children. The FDA has maintained that the approved dyes are safe and that “the totality of scientific evidence shows that most children have no adverse effects when consuming foods containing color additives.”

The FDA currently allows 36 food color additives, including eight synthetic dyes. In January, the agency announced that the dye known as Red 3 — used in candies, cakes and some medications — would be banned in food by 2027 because it caused cancer in laboratory rats.

Artificial dyes are used widely in U.S. foods. In Canada and in Europe — where synthetic colors are required to carry warning labels — manufacturers mostly use natural substitutes. Several states, including California and West Virginia, have passed laws restricting the use of artificial colors in foods.

Many U.S. food companies are already reformulating their foods, according to Sensient Colors, one of the world’s largest producers of food dyes and flavorings. In place of synthetic dyes, foodmakers can use natural hues made from beets, algae and crushed insects and pigments from purple sweet potatoes, radishes and red cabbage.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Do you know if you snore or not? Maybe you had a partner or family member deliver the surprising (or not) news, or perhaps you have had sleepless nights listening to someone else’s snores. Snoring can often be a sign of obstructive sleep apnea, the most common sleep-related breathing disorder estimated to impact over 25 million U.S. adults. It causes people to repeatedly stop and start breathing while they sleep, when the throat muscles relax and block the airway, according to the Mayo Clinic.

A seemingly unrelated phenomenon could be worsening this potentially dangerous sleep disorder, according to recent research: climate change. A new study published in Nature Communications found that warmer temperatures caused participants to have a 45% higher probability of having obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on a given night.

“Overall, we were surprised by the magnitude of the association between ambient temperature and OSA severity,” said lead author Bastien Lechat at Flinders University Health and Medical Research Institute in Australia in the press release.

That can have not only worrying implications for health, but also the economy: OSA is associated with significant decreases in workplace productivity and absenteeism, and as it becomes more prevalent with rising temperatures, that could cost the global economy $30 billion in lost productivity, and another $68 billion from worsened well-being.

Researchers analyzed sleep data of 116,620 participants across 29 countries over 3.5 years, using a Food and Drug Administration-cleared OSA monitor to establish the link between daily ambient temperature and nightly OSA status.

“Higher rates of diagnosis and treatment will help us to manage and reduce the adverse health and productivity issues caused by climate related OSA,” coauthor Danny Eckert said in the press release.

The health toll of obstructive sleep apnea and climate change

As OSA is exacerbated by warming temperatures, that can lead to detrimental health impacts. Untreated or severe cases of OSA can increase the risk of dementia, Parkinson’s disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, anxiety and depression, and even a shorten your lifespan. People with OSA may also suffer from frequent fatigue and mood swings, caused by continually disrupted sleep from breathing interruptions that inhibits settling into a deep, restorative sleep.

Poor sleep is also linked to faster brain aging, decreased cognitive functioning, worsened mental health, inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and a suppressed immune system.

Higher ambient temperatures also have well-established negative effects on health, including worsened mental well-being and overall worsened sleep quality and duration. Previous research shows that warmer temperatures overall magnify the impacts of OSA, as warmer temperatures lead to lighter sleep stages and more frequent disruptions and awakenings.

The economic burden of OSA

In the study, researchers estimated that the global warming-related increases in OSA prevalence in 2023 was associated with a loss of 788,198 healthy life years in 29 countries.

Given how OSA impacts mood and energy levels caused by disrupted sleep, it’s common that people experience lower productivity and more frequent missed days at work. But if OSA frequency and severity continues to increase, that could be catastrophic for the global economy. In 2023, researchers observed that the increase in OSA led to an additional 25 million absenteeism days across the 29 studied countries, leading to an economic cost of $30 billion from the lost labor.

Researchers caution that the study population likely underestimates the potential health and economic burden: All participants owned a sleep tracking device and resided in highly developed countries with greater access to heat-mitigating tools like air conditioning, leaving lower socioeconomic groups with the greatest heat burden underrepresented.

With the mean global temperatures projected to increase by 2.1°C to 3.4 °C, the impacts of heat are likely to worsen.

“Our findings highlight that without greater policy action to slow global warming, OSA burden may double by 2100 due to rising temperatures,” Lechat said.

“Going forward, we want to design intervention studies that explore strategies to reduce the impact of ambient temperatures on sleep apnea severity as well as investigate the underlying physiological mechanisms that connect temperature fluctuations to OSA severity,” Eckert added.

For more on sleep:

• Make this one diet change during the day to sleep better at night
• Good news for night owls: When you need sleep is determined not by laziness, but chronotype. Here’s what that means
• 3 things driving the global sleep deficit—which is turning into a health crisis and costing companies

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Ethereum is dead. Ethereum will be fine. The social media takes are flying on the state of the world’s second most valuable blockchain. Conceived in 2013, Ethereum has experienced a series of dramatic ups and downs, including an existential hack in 2016 and a remarkable technological upgrade in 2022. But this year has brought unprecedented scrutiny of the current and future direction of the project.

A big part of this is due to the price of Ethereum, which is badly lagging Bitcoin. The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency has notched a series of all-time highs and a flurry of interest from Wall Street investors. Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, Ethereum was trading around $2,500, about 50% lower than its all-time high, according to data from crypto exchange Binance. 

Ether’s lackluster price movement has prompted some to proclaim Ethereum’s end. “Ethereum died,” wrote Max Keiser, a prominent Bitcoin booster, on X. “It just hasn’t been buried yet.”

This is an overstatement. But questions remain on whether Ethereum’s price slump reflects a temporary stumble, or whether the blockchain—long hailed by boosters as the computer of the future—will never grow into its promise.

Congestion fees and scaling

“Bitcoin has died many times… Ethereum has died several times,” Joseph Lubin, CEO of the blockchain technology firm Consensys and cofounder of Ethereum, told Fortune. “When there are challenges, we learn from them.”

Those challenges have been present since 2013, when a wiry 19-year-old from Canada named Vitalik Buterin had an idea for a new type of computer. Fearing that Big Tech firms had an unhealthy monopoly over cloud computing that could stifle developers, Buterin looked to blockchains instead. He and others came up with Ethereum—a decentralized blockchain-based computing platform where programmers’ code was immune to the whims of corporate behemoths.

Developers soon flocked to Ethereum, but the increase in activity brought a rise in “gas fees.” Every time users send each other assets on Ethereum, they need to pay with cryptocurrency—in the same way Amazon requires users to pay dollars to use its cloud computing network. The only difference is that Ethereum’s gas fees are distributed to the decentralized cohort of computers supporting the blockchain, instead of one corporate entity. In 2021, sending a few dollars of cryptocurrency to other users on Ethereum resulted in charges of sometimes hundreds of dollars, and developers looked for a solution.

That solution is what Ethereum’s critics say has sapped the network of some of its financial value. Instead of immediately working to speed up Ethereum’s core network, developers fostered a system of layer 2 blockchains, or L2s, built on top of Ethereum. These L2s—including Arbitrum, Optmism, and Polygon—package user data into one bundle and post that onto Ethereum, rather than ask the blockchain to process each transaction individually. 

If gas fees are any indication, that strategy has worked. Since a peak in mid-2020, transaction costs have plummeted more than 99% on Ethereum, according to data from Glassnode. 

But Kyle Samani, managing partner at crypto investment firm Multicoin Capital, believes this approach has made the core network of Ethereum less valuable. “It’s my fundamental view that a network is not sustainable or valuable without direct user activity,” he told Fortune.

Users have moved to L2s and drained Ethereum of some of the activity that propped up its cryptocurrency’s price, Samani, a noted supporter of the competing Solana blockchain, argued. 

However, Paul Brody, chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, an advocacy group for the blockchain, said fixation on the price of Ether in the short term is missing the point. “Ethereum is the amazing world computer,” he told Fortune. “I don’t think it can or should try to be all things, all people, and, especially, I don’t think Ethereum should also try to be the best, most deflationary cryptocurrency.”

Back to layer one

Ethereum’s upgrades, not any explicit work to buoy Ether’s price, should prompt a rise in demand for the cryptocurrency, said Brody. And that’s what developers are working on, said Danny Ryan and Vivek Raman, cofounders of the Ethereum advocacy group Ethrealize—one of many wings of a robust technical and cultural community based around the blockchain that convenes at large annual get-togethers like ETHDenver in Colorado.

Programmers are now optimizing the speed of the layer-1 network, not just its ecosystem of layer-2 chains, say Ryan and Raman. Plus, the duo believe that the flood of Wall Street and Big Tech firms exploring blockchain technology will spur a rush to buy the cryptocurrency. “I don’t think that we should pretend like the asset doesn’t need to be valuable,” added Danny Ryan. His cofounder Raman even equated Ethereum to “digital oil.”

“When you ask institutions, when we go have our meetings and say, ‘Which is a civilizational infrastructure, which is the global, neutral infrastructure that you can actually deploy real assets with real trust?’” Raman added. “Ethereum is the obvious choice.”

But whether Wall Street titans decide to go with Ethereum, rather than competitors like Solana, remains to be seen. Still, proponents are hopeful. “If we do our job, and we become the first place for everybody to do business,” said Brody, “then the asset price is just something that takes care of itself.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this edition…OpenAI wins a $200 million Pentagon contract…Salesforce finds AI models can’t use CRM software very well…and a new study shows how AI scrapers are overwhelming cultural institutions.

Back in April, Microsoft published some research about the modern workday, drawn from data it gathers anonymously about the use of its software applications. And honestly, the conclusions were kind of depressing. It found that we are all trapped in what the company is calling “the infinite workday.”

People start checking their emails before they even get out of bed. Then, when we are at work, the most productive hours of the day are filled with meetings and distractions. During core working hours, people are getting interrupted by messages or emails every two minutes on average—that’s 275 interruptions per day—Microsoft found. Nearly half of all meetings take place between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. or between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., which is exactly when neuroscientists say that most people’s brains are at their best for focused work and problem-solving. In fact, most people’s productive potential peaks at 11 a.m. but that’s exactly the most overloaded hour of the day, with chat traffic hitting its highest volume on average, as well as meetings and app usage spiking.

Things don’t get better in the evenings, either. For many employees, work peaks again after dinner. With teams working across time zones, the number of meetings taking place after 8 p.m. was up 16% year over year, according to Microsoft. Many people are still checking those emails as they crawl back into bed at 10 p.m.

This exhausting schedule has helped produce what Microsoft calls a “capacity gap”—53% of leaders say productivity must increase, but 80% of workers say they lack the time or energy to do their jobs.

So what’s AI got to do with this? Well, everyone is hoping that AI will save us from this perfect storm of impossible expectations meeting human limitations. But the technology itself won’t do this. In fact, a lot of the ways companies are deploying AI and people are using the technology could make things worse.

Forcing people to work faster, not better

Think about it. If you’re already drowning in meetings, emails, and constant interruptions, having AI help you write more emails and summarize more meetings isn’t really solving the problem—it’s just greasing the wheels of a dysfunctional system.

That was the main takeaway from my conversation last week with Jamie Teevan, Microsoft’s chief scientist and technical fellow, and Alexia Cambon, one of the lead researchers on Microsoft’s Work Trends Index. 

“AI is delivering real productivity gains, but it’s not enough,” Teevan tells me. “The speed of business is still outpacing the way we work today.”

She says that crafting prompts for AI to perform tasks for us, such as conducting research or generating a business presentation, “actually increases our metacognitive burden.” In other words, to write a good prompt, a person has to think clearly about the steps they want the AI to perform, and provide a list of dos and don’ts. This thinking process necessitates concentration, and it also requires someone to transform things they know tacitly into explicit instructions. Having to do this, “can feel overwhelming,” Teevan says.

But there are better ways to work with AI that can alleviate this burden—or at least share it. AI itself can be used to help craft prompts, for instance, Teevan says. Cambon says that too many people are viewing AI as just another software tool. It’s better, she says, to think about it like a digital colleague—something to which you can assign entire tasks or processes.

More importantly, to get the most out of AI, companies need to change their organizational structures, the way their employees work, and also how they measure value. Microsoft has identified companies they call “Frontier Firms” that are doing this. At these organizations, 71% of workers say their company is thriving, compared to just 37% globally.

Now, it should be said, there are not too many of these Frontier Firms out there. Out of 31,000 companies Microsoft looked at, only 840 met the criteria. Most of these companies were in tech—many of them so-called “AI native” startups that have the benefit of being able to design their processes around AI from the start. “They don’t have to unlearn a whole load of stuff,” Cambon says. But interestingly, she says that some of the Frontier Firms were in professional services, like consulting, accounting, and law, which is an area where AI is rapidly disrupting traditional work processes and even challenging entire business models.

For non-AI native companies, getting the full benefits of AI means changing organizational management and structures. “It is about how do you externalize knowledge and make things available for AI to learn from,” Teevan says. “It is about creating feedback loops and being very intentional about the content we create for our teams.”

What ‘Frontier Firms’ are doing differently

Microsoft’s research suggests there are some key changes that differentiate the Frontier Firms from the rest. They prioritize impact over activity, focusing on the 20% of tasks that create 80% of a business’s value. They redesign workflows instead of just trying to automate them. (Rather than have AI write status reports, for instance, ask whether you need status reports in the first place.) And they increasingly use AI as agents that can handle entire workflows, not just individual tasks. In this world, employees become “agent bosses,” Microsoft says.

Cambon says that the Frontier Firms also tend to have much flatter organizational structures, where teams are organized around completing a specific project, not around areas of expertise. Does Microsoft have an interest in selling this narrative in order to convince companies to buy its AI software and cloud services? Sure it does. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It is clear that the companies that get this right will have a big advantage. And the ones that don’t? They’ll just have increasingly efficient chaos and burnt out employees.

With that, here’s the rest of today’s AI news.

Jeremy Kahn
[email protected]
@jeremyakahn

Want to know more about how to use AI to transform your business? Interested in what AI will mean for the fate of companies, and countries? Why not join me in Singapore on July 22 and 23 for Fortune Brainstorm AI Singapore. We will dive deep into the latest on AI agents, examine the data center build out in Asia, and talk to top leaders from government, board rooms, and academia in the region and beyond. You can apply to attend here.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The man shot and killed while participating in the “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City was a successful fashion designer and former “Project Runway” contestant who devoted his life to celebrating artists from the Pacific Islands.

Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, was killed Saturday night when two men shot at a person allegedly brandishing a rifle at demonstrators, and one accidentally struck Ah Loo in the stomach, authorities said. Ah Loo later died at the hospital.

Salt Lake City police said it remained unclear Monday whether the individuals, one of whom identified himself as part of a “peacekeeping” team for the protest, were brought in by the event organizers or acted on their own initiative.

Arturo Gamboa, 24, never shot the rifle he pointed at protesters, but police arrested him on murder charges and said he created the dangerous situation that led to Ah Loo’s death. Police said they were investigating whether the man who shot at Gamboa — and fatally hit Ah Loo — was justified in firing his gun. He has not been identified publicly.

Victim was a self-taught designer

Ah Loo leaves behind a wife and two young children, according to a GoFundMe page for his family that raised over $100,000 in 48 hours.

The self-taught fashion designer known to many as Afa devoted his life to doing “good things for his neighbors and community,” state Rep. Verona Mauga, a close friend, told The Associated Press. Their families were from the small village of Lotopa in Samoa, she said.

Ah Loo was born in Samoa and has lived in Utah for about a decade, his friend Benjamin Powell said.

Mauga, who was born in Hawaii, was at the “No Kings” protest a few blocks from where Ah Loo was shot. The Democratic lawmaker said she only realized something was wrong when she saw the crowd scattering.

Peaceful protest turns deadly

The protest Saturday was one of hundreds in cities nationwide to counter President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, which marked the Army’s 250th anniversary and coincided with Trump’s birthday.

There is no record in the Salt Lake City event permit indicating that armed security would be present, police said.

Carl Moore, a 49-year-old Indigenous advocate, was filming the protest when three gunshots rang out through the crowd estimated at 10,000 people. Moore said he observed confusion among police as protesters hid behind barriers and took shelter inside parking garages and nearby businesses.

“They don’t know what they’re looking for. They’re just yelling like, ‘What does he look like?’” Moore recalled.

Weaving culture and community through fashion

Mauga said Ah Loo would have been proud that his last moments were spent advocating for what he believed in.

“If Afa was going to go out any other way than natural causes, it would be standing up for marginalized and vulnerable communities and making sure that people had a voice,” she said.

Powell, a hair salon innovator from Fiji, co-founded Create Pacific with Ah Loo shortly after they met four years ago. The organization uplifts artists from the Pacific Islands, allowing a new generation to connect with their heritage.

The two artists were friends with a rare creative synergy, Powell said. Ah Loo’s vibrant work weaves traditional Pacific Island attire with modern silhouettes and design. He used flowers indigenous to Samoa as motifs and frequently incorporated Tapa, a cloth traditionally made from tree bark in the Pacific Islands, into the garments he created.

Powell admired Ah Loo’s attention to detail that made his work distinctive.

“You would know right away that it was an Ah Loo design,” he said.

Ah Loo was a contestant in 2019 on Bravo’s “Project Runway,” a reality show where fashion designers compete in front of celebrity judges to create runway looks on tight deadlines.

Recently, he designed a garment for the star of the animated Disney movie “Moana 2,” Hawaiian actor Auliʻi Cravalho. According to an interview with Vogue, Cravalho wore the outfit inspired by the Hawaiian ʻahu ʻula — a feather cloak worn by ancient Hawaiian royalty — to the film’s red carpet premiere in Hawaii last November.

A posthumous honor

In an Instagram post Monday, Cravalho said there were “no words to hold the grief of losing” Ah Loo.

“My deepest condolences, sympathies and Aloha to his family, and all who felt his impact,” Cravalho wrote.

Powell and Ah Loo were working on an upcoming August fashion show when he died. Powell said the show will continue and will honor Ah Loo’s unwavering commitment to his community.

Ah Loo also volunteered his time and resources to tailor clothing for people who needed help, often refusing to let people compensate him for his work, Mauga said. Sometimes, he would playfully criticize the outfits the state lawmaker wore on the campaign trail and invite her to his studio so he could make her new blazers or dresses.

“He was just very involved in whatever was going on in the community,” Mauga said. “He cared about making a difference.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Louisiana is poised to hike taxes on sports betting to pump more than $24 million into athletic departments at the state’s most prominent public universities.

Legislation pending before Gov. Jeff Landry would make Louisiana the first state to raise taxes to fund college sports since a judge approved a landmark settlement with the NCAA allowing schools to directly pay athletes for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL). Anticipating the court’s approval, Arkansas this year became the first to waive state income taxes on NIL payments made to athletes by higher education institutions.

More states seem almost certain to adopt their own creative ways to gain an edge — or at least keep pace — in the rapidly evolving and highly competitive field of college sports.

“These bills, and the inevitable ones that will follow, are intended to make states ’college-athlete friendly,’” said David Carter, founder of the Sports Business Group consultancy and an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California. But “they will no doubt continue to stoke the debate about the `perceived’ preferential treatment afforded athletes.”

The new NCCA rules allowing direct payments to college athletes kick in July 1. In the first year, each Division I school can share up to $20.5 million with its athletes — a figure that may be easier to meet for big-time programs than for smaller schools weighing whether to divert money from other purposes. The settlement also continues to allow college athletes to receive NIL money from third parties, such as donor-backed collectives that support specific schools.

Louisiana bill sponsor: ‘We love football’

The Louisiana legislation won final approval just two days after a judge approved the antitrust settlement between the NCAA and athletes, but it had been in the works for months. Athletic directors from many of Louisiana’s universities met earlier this year and hashed out a plan with lawmakers to relieve some of their financial pressures by dividing a share of the state’s sports betting tax revenue.

The biggest question for lawmakers was how large of a tax increase to support. The initial proposal sought to double the state’s 15% tax on net proceeds from online sports betting. But lawmakers ultimately agreed on a 21.5% tax rate in a compromise with the industry.

One-quarter of the tax revenue from online sports wagering — an estimated $24.3 million — would be split equally among 11 public universities in conferences with Division I football programs. The money must be used “for the benefit of student athletes,” including scholarships, insurance, medical coverage, facility enhancements and litigation settlement fees.

The state tax money won’t provide direct NIL payments to athletes. But it could facilitate that indirectly by freeing up other university resources.

The legislation passed overwhelmingly in the final days of Louisiana’s annual session.

“We love football in Louisiana – that’s the easiest way to say it,” said Republican state Rep. Neil Riser, who sponsored the bill.

Smaller universities are feeling the squeeze

Many colleges and universities across the country have been feeling a financial squeeze, but it’s especially affected the athletic departments of smaller schools.

Athletic departments in the top Division I football conferences take in millions of dollars from media rights, donors, corporate sponsors and ticket sales, with a median of just 7% coming from student fees and institutional and government support, according to the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database.

But the remaining schools in Division I football bowl conferences got a median of 63% of the revenue from such sources last year. And schools without football teams got a median of 81% of their athletic department revenues from institutional and governmental support or student fees.

Riser said Louisiana’s smaller universities, in particular, have been struggling financially and have shifted money from their general funds to their sports programs to try to remain competitive. At the same time, the state has taken in millions of dollars of tax revenue from sports bets made at least partly on college athletics.

“Without the athletes, we wouldn’t have the revenue. I just felt like it’s fairness that we do give something back and, at the same time, help the general funds of the universities,” Riser said.

Other states are investing in college sports

Louisiana would become the second state behind North Carolina to dedicate a portion of its sports wagering revenues to colleges athletics. North Carolina launched online sports wagering last year under a state law earmarking part of an 18% tax on gross gaming revenue to the athletic departments at 13 public universities. The state’s two largest institutions were excluded. But that might be about to change.

Differing budget plans passed by the state House and Senate this year both would start allotting sports betting tax revenue to the athletic programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. The Senate version also would double the tax rate. The proposals come a year after University of North Carolina trustees approved an audit of the athletics department after a preliminary budget projected about $100 million of debt in the years ahead.

Other schools also are taking actions because of deficits in their athletic departments. Last week, University of Kentucky trustees approved a $31 million operating loan for the athletics department as it begins making direct NIL payments to athletes. That came after trustees in April voted to convert the Kentucky athletics department into a limited-liability holding company — Champions Blue LLC — to more nimbly navigate the emerging financial pressures.

Given the money involved in college athletics, it’s not surprising that states are starting to provide tax money to athletic departments or — as in Arkansas’ case — tax relief to college athletes, said Patrick Rishe, executive director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis.

“If you can attract better athletes to your schools and your states, then this is more visibility to your states, this is more potential out-of-town economic activity for your state,” Rishe said. “I do think you’re going to see many states pursue this, because you don’t want to be the state that’s left exposed or at a disadvantage.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Pioneering computer scientist and ex-Googler Geoffery Hinton predicts the healthcare industry will weather the AI storm that’s coming for most jobs. The Godfather of AI warns only “very skilled” workers will stay employed—echoing Anthropic CEO’s job wipeout warnings, and Deepmind leader Demis Hassabis, who sees healthcare staying human. 

CEOs and experts agree that AI is creating a new world of work, but many are starkly divided on what it’ll look like. As AI agents and robots enter the picture,  the pioneering computer scientist dubbed the Godfather of AI, Geoffery Hinton, has predicted one industry will be safe from the potential jobs armageddon: healthcare.

“They’re much more elastic,” Hinton explained yesterday on The Diary of a CEO YouTube series. 

“If you could make doctors five times as efficient, we could all have five times as much health care for the same price,” he continued. “There’s almost no limit to how much healthcare people can absorb—[patients] always want more healthcare if there’s no cost to it.”

The Nobel Prize winning scientist is one of many experts who anticipate that healthcare will be buoyed in this digital transformation—but many others won’t be so lucky.

Hinton believes that jobs that perform mundane tasks will be taken over by AI, as roles like receptionists and customer service representatives are already vulnerable. That, Hinton predicted, will wipe out a high number of roles right off the bat: “You’d have to be very skilled to have a job that it couldn’t just do.”

Most jobs will be replaced by tech, and only the ‘skilled’ will stay employed 

Tech leaders with rosy lenses like Jensen Huang contend that humans won’t be replaced by AI, but rather their AI-enabled coworkers will take their jobs. But the Godfather of AI thinks that’s too optimistic. 

“There are jobs where you can make a person with an AI assistant much more efficient, and you won’t lead to less people, because you’ll just have much more of that being done,” Hinton said. “But most jobs are not like that.”

He concluded that AI will likely lead to companies needing far fewer workers and that the new technology’s impact can’t be compared to previous technological advances, which created an explosion of new jobs.

“This is a very different kind of technology. If it can do all mundane human intellectual labor, then what new jobs is it going to create?” Hinton said. “You’d have to be very skilled to have a job that it couldn’t just do.”

It isn’t just leading scientists, CEOs, and workers ringing the alarm bills—even major consulting firms and banks are projecting a bleak labor market. McKinsey predicted that by 2030, 30% of current U.S. jobs could be automated; Goldman Sachs projected that up to 50% of jobs could be fully automated by 2045, driven by generative AI and robotics.

Other CEOs agree that healthcare jobs are safe from AI disruption

It’s been estimated by leaders like Anthropic’s CEO that nearly half of entry-level white collar jobs are on the chopping block thanks to AI—and Klarna’s CEO admitted that “a lot of the jobs are going to be threatened.” But many healthcare roles will be safe and sound. 

Healthcare is a key industry expected to thrive amid the U.S.’s digital workplace disruption, according to a 2024 report from McKinsey. AI still can’t perform a majority of tasks that healthcare workers can—like sterilizing surgical equipment, or administering at-home aid. 

Plus, there’s something much more comforting about a human handling your medical care over a cold, metal robot. Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google’s AI research lab DeepMind, also echoed Hinton’s prediction that healthcare workers will be optimized—but not fully replaced—by AI. The tech executive believes the tools will help us cure disease, and create “superhuman” productivity. But people will still be at the heart of medical care. 

“There’s a lot of things that we won’t want to do with a machine,” Hassabis told Wired in a recent interview. “You wouldn’t want a robot nurse—there’s something about the human empathy aspect of that care that’s particularly humanistic.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

President Donald Trump suggested on Tuesday that he would likely extend a deadline for TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest the popular video sharing app.

Trump had signed an order in early April to keep TikTok running for another 75 days after a potential deal to sell the app to American owners was put on ice.

“Probably yeah, yeah,” he responded when asked by reporters on Air Force One whether the deadline would be extended again.

“Probably have to get China approval but I think we’ll get it. I think President Xi will ultimately approve it.”

He indicated in an interview last month with NBC that he would be open to pushing back the deadline again.

If announced, it would be the third time Trump has extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when the ban approved by Congress — and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — took effect. The second was in April, when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement.

It is not clear how many times Trump can — or will — keep extending the ban as the government continues to try to negotiate a deal for TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance. Trump has amassed more than 15 million followers on TikTok since he joined last year, and he has credited the trendsetting platform with helping him gain traction among young voters. He said in January that he has a “warm spot for TikTok.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Billionaire Mark Cuban isn’t a believer in taking a day off if you’re serious about building a business. The former Shark Tank star admitted that the secret to success is outperforming your competition and with it comes the expectation that somebody else is working 24 hours a day to “kick your ass.” Cuban adds that he looks to Warren Buffett’s grind for inspiration.

Gen Z may be known as the FOMO generation—driven by fear of missing out on parties, trends, or social movements. But for business leaders, FOMO takes on higher stakes: It’s the fear of missing the next big innovation or investment opportunity.

That pressure to stay ahead is a driving force of motivation for billionaire Mark Cuban, so much so that he said work-life balance isn’t achievable for those on the grind to success.

“There is no balance,” Cuban said on “The Playbook,” a series from Sports Illustrated bringing together athletes and business leaders.

“If you want to work nine-to-five, you can have work-life balance,” he told Dallas Cowboys’ Micah Parsons. “If you want to crush the game, whatever game you’re in, there’s somebody working 24 hours a day to kick your ass.”

The former Shark Tank star knows a thing or two about finding success the hard way. After all, he recently admitted he didn’t take a vacation and lived with five roommates when he first started out in entrepreneurship. 

All roads lead to Warren Buffett

Cuban’s grind begins each morning by reading and answering messages on his phone or laptop, something that takes between eight and 10 hours of his day, he recently told People. 

Despite having over $8 billion to his name as an investor in hundreds of companies, there’s no sign Cuban is slowing down his embrace of the hustle culture. In fact, the 66-year-old just launched a new $750 million sports-focused private equity fund.

And his inspiration for still grinding while others start thinking about their retirement plans comes from Warren Buffett—who at 94 years old only just announced plans to step back as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

“I want to see what he’s going to do next,” Cuban said. “That’s the way I look at things. I’ve accomplished a lot in my life, I want to change health care, but that’s not the end-all, be-all.”

Other leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon have also sung the Berkshire Hathaway founder’s praises. But what might truly differentiate Buffett from all others is that his work-life balance is reportedly relatively healthy. He avoids technology, has minimal meetings, and gets plenty of rest.

“I’ve created a good environment,” Buffett told the Wall Street Journal. “All I have to do is think and not be influenced by others.” 

Fortune reached out to Cuban for comment.

CEOs and presidents agree: Work-life balance isn’t always achievable

Cuban is far from the first leader to have strong feelings about work-life balance. In fact, former President Barack Obama weighed in on the work-life debate earlier this year, admitting that finding balance isn’t possible while seeking excellence.

“If you want to be excellent at anything—sports, music, business, politics—there’s going to be times in your life when you’re out of balance, where you’re just working and you’re single-minded,” Obama admitted on The Pivot Podcast.

Moreover, for Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, whose company has arguably blurred the boundaries between work and life by making it easier than ever to work from literally anywhere, “There’s no way to balance. Work is life, life is work.”

But there’s one exception for Yuan: “Whenever there’s a conflict, guess what? Family first. That’s it.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Retail sales fell sharply in May as consumers pulled back from a spending surge early this year to get ahead of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on nearly all imports.

Sales at retail stores and restaurants dropped 0.9% in May, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, after a decline of 0.1% in April. The figure was pulled down by a steep drop in auto sales, after Americans ramped up their car-buying in March to get ahead of Trump’s 25% duty on imported cars and car parts. Excluding autos, sales fell 0.3%.

The sales drop is hitting after sharp declines in consumer confidence this year. Still, inflation has cooled steadily and unemployment remains low, which could fuel steady spending in the coming months, as the economy has remained mostly solid.

A category of sales that excludes volatile sectors such as gas, cars, and restaurants rose last month by 0.4%, a sign that consumers are still spending on some discretionary items.

Overall, the report suggests consumers have pulled back a bit but not dramatically so. The retail sales report covers about one-third of consumer spending, with the other two-thirds consisting of spending on services. Economists expect overall consumer spending to grow in the April-June quarter.

“Today’s data suggests consumers are downshifting, but they haven’t yet slammed the brakes,” Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley wealth management, said in an email. “Like the economy as a whole, consumer spending has been resilient in the face of tariff uncertainty.”

Yet many categories saw sharp declines. Car sales plunged 3.5%, while sales at home and garden centers dropped 2.7%. They fell 0.6% at electronics and appliance stores and 0.7% at grocery stores. There were some bright spots: Sales rose 0.9% at online retailers, 0.8% at clothing stores, and 1.2% at furniture stores.

Sales at restaurants and bars, a closely watched indicator of discretionary spending, fell 0.9% in May, though that followed a solid gain of 0.8% in April.

It is a difficult time for retailers, many of whom built up large inventories this spring after Trump warned that he would impose widespread import taxes. Traffic at the port in Los Angeles has fallen sharply in recent weeks, suggesting fewer goods are entering the United States.

Some consumer products companies say they are seeing the impact of tariffs on their own costs and sales.

Paul Cosaro, CEO of Picnic Time, Inc, which makes picnic accessories like baskets, coolers, and folding chairs, said that orders from retailers are down as much as 40% this summer compared with a year ago. His company sells to a variety of stores like Target and Williams-Sonoma.

Cosaro noted that some stores have been cautious because they’re not sure how shoppers will react to higher prices. Some cancelled orders because Cosaro couldn’t tell them how much the new prices would be due to all the uncertainty. Roughly 80% of the company’s goods are made in China, with the rest in India and Vietnam.

The company, founded roughly 40 years ago and based in Moorpark, California, was forced to raise prices on average from 11% to 14% for this summer selling season, Cosaro said.

A folding outdoor chair now costs $137 this month, up from $120 in late 2024, he added. The company’s sales are still down this year, even though some shoppers accelerated their purchases out of concern that prices would rise.

“Shoppers are very price sensitive,” Cosaro said.

The company has implemented a hiring freeze because of all the extra tariff costs, he added. So far this year the company, which employs from 70 to 100 people, has had to pay $1 million in tariffs. A year ago at this time, the bill was a third of that amount.

The retail sales report comes as other evidence indicates shoppers have been pulling back more amid worries about higher prices from Trump’s tariffs.

Naveen Jaggi, president of retail advisory services in the Americas for real-estate firm JLL, said that he’s hearing from malls that sales are slowing down heading into the official summer months. Retailers are pushing up back-to-school promotions to this month from July, he said. They want to get shoppers in early for fear consumers may not want to spend in the later months when prices will likely go up, he said.

So far, Trump’s tariffs haven’t yet boosted inflation. Consumer prices rose just 2.4% in May compared with a year ago, the government said last week.

Many stores and brands, including Walmart, Lululemon, and J.M. Smucker Co., have said they plan to or have raised prices in response to tariffs.

Deckers Outdoor, which is behind such shoe labels as Hoka and Uggs, said late last month that it plans price increases, which will likely hurt sales.

“We expect to absorb a portion of the tariff impact,” Chief Financial Officer Steven Fasching told analysts. “We also believe there is potential to see demand erosion associated with the combination of price increases and general softness in the consumer spending environment.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Duracell has filed a lawsuit against Energizer. The battery companies are battling over Energizer’s claims that its Max batteries last 10% longer than Duracell. Duracell, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, says it has suffered “irreparable reputational harm” because of the ads. The companies have a long history of lawsuits against each other.

Warren Buffett is suing the Energizer Bunny.

Battery maker Duracell, which has been owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway since 2014, has filed suit against Energizer, saying the rival battery maker ran a deceptive advertising campaign that caused “irreparable reputational harm” to the brand.

The complaint, filmed June 13 in a Manhattan federal court, is the latest in a long series of legal battles between the two companies. (They were last in court five years ago over similar claims on a different line of batteries. Those suits were voluntarily dismissed.)

Duracell alleges Energizer has falsely claimed its Energizer Max batteries last 10% longer than Duracell’s Power Boost brand.

“The Energizer MAX False Advertising is a clear effort by Energizer to expand its market share—at Duracell’s expense—by confusing and misleading consumers about the comparative performance of Energizer MAX batteries and Duracell Power Boost batteries with blatantly false advertising in a transparent, and unfair, effort to drive sales,” the complaint said.

Duracell is hoping to end the ad campaign and is seeking monetary damages.

An Energizer Holdings spokesperson said the company does not comment on active litigation.

The battles between the two companies go back almost 80 years when Duracell first entered the market in 1946. Energizer, then known as Ever Ready, had invented the AA battery in 1907, and the battle was on.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• The annual fee on the Sapphire Reserve card is jumping 45% to $795 per year. With that increase come a wave of new perks. JPMorgan Chase is looking to take a bigger share of the premium credit card market.

Carrying a Sapphire Reserve credit card in your wallet is about to get a lot more expensive

JPMorgan is raising the annual fee on the Sapphire Reserve card to $795 per year, a 45% increase over the current cost. Even for a luxury credit card, that’s steep, but the bank is seemingly hoping that new perks that come with the Sapphire Reserve will make it worth it.

JPMorgan argues cardholders will get $2,700 in annual benefits when the updated card launches on June 23. Some of those are tied with existing benefits, but there are plenty of additions.

Dining at restaurants that are part of the Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables network will gather up to a $300 credit, for example. And subscriptions to Apple TV+ and Apple Music will be included (a $275 value). Use your card for select travel offers and you could earn a $500 credit as well.

If you’re a frequent user of the card and spend more than $75,000 annually on it, you’ll unlock other perks, such as top-tier status at Southwest Airlines and IHG Hotels and Resorts.

A business version of the Sapphire Reserve card features all of these perks, as well as credits for ZipRecruiter and Google Workspace.

All of these rewards come on top of existing incentives for cardholders, who earn 3X points on dining and travel purchases, as well as elevated rates through Chase Ultimate Rewards. There’s also a $300 annual travel credit that applies automatically to any travel purchase—including flights, hotels and rideshares.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is expected to approve legislation Tuesday that would regulate a form of cryptocurrency known as stablecoins, the first of what is expected to be a wave of crypto legislation from Congress that the industry hopes will bolster its legitimacy and reassure consumers.

The fast-moving legislation, which will be sent to the House for potential revisions, comes on the heels of a 2024 campaign cycle where the crypto industry ranked among the top political spenders in the country, underscoring its growing influence in Washington and beyond.

Eighteen Democratic senators have shown support for the legislation as it has advanced, siding with the Republican majority in the 53-47 Senate. If passed, it would become the second major bipartisan bill to advance through the Senate this year, following the Laken Riley Act on immigration enforcement in January.

Still, most Democrats oppose the bill. They have raised concerns that the measure does little to address President Donald Trump’s personal financial interests in the crypto space.

“We weren’t able to include certainly everything we would have wanted, but it was a good bipartisan effort,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., on Monday. She added, “This is an unregulated area that will now be regulated.”

Known as the GENIUS Act, the bill would establish guardrails and consumer protections for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency typically pegged to the U.S. dollar. The acronym stands for “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins.”

It’s expected to pass Tuesday, since it only requires a simple majority vote — and it already cleared its biggest procedural hurdle last week in a 68-30 vote. But the bill has faced more resistance than initially expected.

There is a provision in the bill that bans members of Congress and their families from profiting off stablecoins. But that prohibition does not extend to the president and his family, even as Trump builds a crypto empire from the White House.

Last month, Trump hosted a private dinner at his golf club in Virginia with top investors in a Trump-branded meme coin. His family holds a significant stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto project that launched its own stablecoin, USD1.

Trump reported earning $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty Financial in 2024, according to a public financial disclosure released Friday. A meme coin linked to him has generated an estimated $320 million in fees, though the earnings are split among multiple investors.

The administration is broadly supportive of crypto’s growth and its integration into the economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week said the legislation could help push the U.S. stablecoin market beyond $2 trillion by the end of 2028.

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase — the nation’s largest crypto exchange and a major advocate for the bill — has met with Trump and praised his early moves on crypto. This past weekend, Coinbase was among the more prominent brands that sponsored a parade in Washington commemorating the Army’s 250th anniversary — an event that coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.

But the crypto industry emphasizes that they view the legislative effort as bipartisan, pointing to champions on each side of the aisle.

“The GENIUS Act will be the most significant digital assets legislation ever to pass the U.S. Senate,” Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., said ahead of a key vote last week. “It’s the product of months of bipartisan work.”

The bill did hit one rough patch in early May, when a bloc of Senate Democrats who had previously supported the bill reversed course and voted to block it from advancing. That prompted new negotiations involving Senate Republicans, Democrats and the White House, which ultimately produced the compromise version expected to win passage Tuesday.

“There were many, many changes that were made. And ultimately, it’s a much better deal because we were all at the table,” Alsobrooks said.

Still, the bill leaves unresolved concerns over presidential conflicts of interest — an issue that remains a source of tension within the Democratic caucus.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been among the most outspoken as the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, warning that the bill creates a “super highway” for Trump corruption. She has also warned that the bill would allow major technology companies, such as Amazon and Meta, to launch their own stablecoins.

If the stablecoin legislation passes the Senate on Tuesday, it still faces several hurdles before reaching the president’s desk. It must clear the narrowly held Republican majority in the House, where lawmakers may try to attach a broader market structure bill — sweeping legislation that could make passage through the Senate more difficult.

Trump has said he wants stablecoin legislation on his desk before Congress breaks for its August recess, now just under 50 days away.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Prime Day will return from July 8-11 in 2025. This is the first time the company has run the promotion for four days. This year marks the 10^th anniversary of Prime Day.

On July 15, 2015, Amazon launched an experiment. Would a flashy sale, in the retail desert of summer, turn people’s attentions away from outdoor activities and captivate them in a way akin to Black Friday? The company called that event Prime Day—and the results speak for themselves.

Now, as the 10th anniversary of that retail event comes up, Amazon is ramping things up even further. Prime Day 2025 will last an unprecedented four days, Amazon announced Tuesday. And it’s offering a slew of deals long before things get started.

Prime Day 2025 will take place from July 8 through July 11. The offers for Prime members, though, start a week earlier. Amazon will cut prices on a number of its own brands by 30% on July 1, dropping school supplies and “household essentials” to as low as $3 and dresses to $12.

The big draw for Prime members, though, might be the offer that will run from July 3 to 6. During that time, Prime members can get $1 off per gallon for up to $35 gallons at over 7,500 bp, Amoco and select ampm locations.

Other offers for Prime members include:

• Save $10 on a Grubhub+ delivery order over $20 with the code “PRIME10” now through July 7
• Get a $200 Amazon Gift Card instantly upon approval for Prime Visa (through July 14) or an $80 Amazon Gift Card instantly upon approval for Prime Store Card (from July 2–11).
• Rent a car with Avis and get up to 30% off base rates and 10% back in an Amazon.com gift card.

Beyond the usual Prime accounts, Amazon also announced an enhanced membership for people 18-24. Prime for Young Adults, as it’s called, will cost $69 per year (or $7.49 per month) and will include 5% cash back savings on popular categories (and 10% cash back during Prime Day) in addition to all of the usual Prime perks. New members can get 6 months for free.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez arrived at a federal prison on Tuesday to begin serving an 11-year sentence for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt. The New Jersey Democrat has been mocked for the crimes as “Gold Bar Bob,” according to his own lawyer.

The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that Menendez was in custody at the Federal Correctional Institution, Schuylkill in Minersville, Pennsylvania. The facility has a medium-security prison and a minimum-security prison camp. Given the white-collar nature of his crimes, it’s likely he’ll end up in the camp.

The prison is about 118 miles (190 kilometers) west of New York City. It’s home to about 1,200 inmates, including ex-New York City organized crime boss James Coonan and former gas station owner Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa, whom the New York Post dubbed “Gas-Station Gotti” for his ruthless, violent ways.

Menendez, 71, maintains his innocence. Last week, a federal appeals court rejected his last-ditch effort to remain free on bail while he fights to get his bribery conviction overturned. A three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied his bail motion.

Pleading for leniency, Menendez told a judge at his sentencing in January: “I am far from a perfect man. I have made more than my share of mistakes and bad decisions. I’ve done far more good than bad.”

Menendez has also appeared to be angling for a pardon from President Donald Trump, aligning himself with the Republican’s criticisms of the judicial system, particularly in New York City.

“This process is political and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system,” Menendez told reporters after his January sentencing.

In posts Tuesday on the social platform X that were later deleted, Menendez criticized prosecutors as politically motivated and opposed to his foreign policy views and praised Trump for “rising above the law fare.”

Menendez resigned last year after he was convicted of selling his clout for bribes. FBI agents found $480,000 in cash in his home, some of it stuffed inside boots and jacket pockets, along with gold bars worth an estimated $150,000 and a luxury convertible in the garage.

In exchange, prosecutors said, Menendez performed corrupt favors for New Jersey business owners, including protecting them from criminal investigations, helping in business deals with foreign powers and meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials before helping Egypt access $300 million in U.S. military aid.

Menendez, who once chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, resigned a month after his conviction. He had been in the Senate since 2006.

Two business owners were also convicted last year along with Menendez.

His wife, Nadine Menendez, was convicted in April of teaming up with her husband to accept bribes from the business owners. Her sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 11.

At his sentencing, Menendez’s lawyers described how the son of Cuban immigrants emerged from poverty to become “the epitome of the American Dream” — rising from mayor of Union City, New Jersey, to decades in Congress — before his conviction “rendered him a national punchline.”

“Despite his decades of service, he is now known more widely as Gold Bar Bob,” defense lawyer Adam Fee told the judge.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com